EconomiA最新文献

Research on economic complexity has shown that a country’s type of exports conditions its future path of economic diversification and economic growth. Yet little emphasis has been put on the inequality associated with the types of products traded between countries and different regions of the world. Here we analyze the income inequality associated with the imports and exports of 116 countries in the period from 1970 to 2010. Our analysis shows that methods from network science and visual complexity research can help to reevaluate old theories in economics, such as core-periphery structures in international trade or structural development traps. Our results illustrate that the core-periphery structure of global trade affects not only the income inequality between countries, but also the income inequality within countries. Moreover, they reveal the structural constraints that developing and emerging economies face in promoting inclusive growth and benchmark their productive transformations with cases of successful catching up and developed economies. The results show that countries, such as South Korea or Germany, have benefited from outsourcing high inequality products. In contrast, some middle-income countries, such as Brazil or South Africa, face structural development constraints consisting of a large average distance of their export products to low inequality products and a “gravitational force” towards high inequality products. Finally, developing economies, such as Nicaragua or Sri Lanka face a double development trap for inclusive growth, as their economies depend on both a large share of high inequality exports and imports.

This paper examines Nigeria’s long run growth path using the externally and internally constrained version of Thirlwall’s growth model from 1982 to 2015. The present study modifies the SCA-BOPCG to take into account the effects the foreign contents in exports growth and the domestic investment. Three Stage Least Squares method is used to obtain the required elasticities for the estimation of the domestic income growth. The study affirms the robustness and validity of the modified model in determining the growth path for Nigeria. The outcome of the empirical study reveals that Nigeria’s economic growth process is balance-of-payment constrained. Even though monetary policies improve growth performance, Nigeria sustainably grows faster with policies aiming at improving external balance or reducing the import components of demands, increasing export share to products with high elasticity of demand as well as keeping budget deficits within the universally acceptable limits.

In macroeconomic theory, different approaches discuss the ability of monetary policy to affect real variables in the long run. This research proposes the empirical application of a theoretical model that includes nominal rigidities arising from transaction costs and real rigidities arising from the firms’ competition structure. Thus, based on data from the US economy we propose to test the theoretical results combining the existence of shocks arising from both real factors and factors affecting the money market, establishing tests for shocks of supply and aggregate demand. The concern is to investigate if the economic policy is capable of affecting the long run (average) values of the real private consumption. Time series analysis methodology of Structural Vector Autoregressive (SVAR) models was used to test long run relationship for US economy. The ability to establish the long run relationships between these aggregates with some degree of confidence, allow simulating shocks by impulse response functions and variance decomposition. The theoretical results of the model indicate that productivity, transaction costs (number of transactions with credit/debit cards) and currency money tend to positively influence consumption, whereas delinquency have a negative effect on consumption. We tested two empirical specifications and both confirmed the theoretical results for the US economy and, therefore, the research can help policymakers to measure the long run consequences of their decisions, that is, the results converge on the non-neutrality of money in the long run in the US economy.

Economic performance increasingly relies on global economic environment due to the growing importance of trade and financial links among countries. This work aims to analyze the possible effects of a potential economic growth downturn or one large negative shock in China, Germany and United States on the growth of other economies. We use a univariate Global autoregressive approach to assess interdependence across 38 countries. We simulate two types of phenomena. The first one is a one time large shock of $-2.5$ standard deviations. The second experiment simulates the effect of a hypothetical downturn of the aforementioned economies. Our results suggest that the United States play the role of a global economy affecting countries all over the globe whereas Germany and China play an important regional role.

The goal of this paper is to address the role of the real effective exchange rate (fundamentals, misalignment and volatility) for the current account using a panel data analysis for a set of 58 countries, over the period of 1994–2014. The results suggest that exchange rate misalignment is relevant for current account adjustment where countries with a more appreciated (depreciated) exchange rate face a worse (better) current account performance. Regarding the role of other control variables, current account adjustment is affected by the savings rate where higher (lower) values are associated with better (worse) current account performance, corroborating the lessons from the consumption smoothing approach. There is also evidence of a positive effect for the lagged current account (persistence effect). For emerging and less developed countries, there is evidence of a significant role played by monetary independence where more (less) monetary independence is associated with better (worse) current account performance.

This paper evaluates the diffusion of peer effects on academic achievement of 4th grade students in the Brazilian public school system. Using data from Prova Brasil 2013, the identification strategy builds on the use of an IV approach, in which the instruments for peers’ performance are the proportions of classmates born in the second semester of the year (and alternatively, in each quarter). The idea behind the instruments is that compulsory school enrolment laws generate variation in the child’s age at school entry, which, in turn, make the date of birth within the year an important determinant of educational achievement and, at the same time, plausibly exogenous to the quality of the student’s peers. The results demonstrate that classrooms with higher proportions of peers born in the 2nd semester (started school at a relatively older age) tend to perform better, on average, than those that concentrate children born in the 1st semester, even after the inclusion of a wide range of control variables. For the math and Portuguese language evaluations, a one standard deviation increase in the classmates’ test scores improves individual achievement by 30% of a SD.

Global warming and climate impact on agricultural output, land use and food production. This paper seeks to verify the economic impacts of climate change in the Legal Amazon region, especially on agricultural production, land use, GDP and job creation. We employ the Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, REGIA - Inter-regional General Equilibrium Model for the Brazilian Legal Amazon, to assess changes in agricultural production and land use in the region due to climate change scenarios proposed by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). The results indicate a drop in economic indicators in the Legal Amazon leading to a loss in real GDP in the order of 1.18% in 2049 due to decrease in production and employment in the agricultural sector. Deforestation will increase due to the gradual replacement of pasture areas by crop fields. Such changes are not homogeneous in the space, affecting more the states of Mato Grosso, Tocantins and Pará, whose economy are dependent upon agriculture.

This work explores that Brazilian public firms were allowed to hire workers either as statutory ("civil servants") as well as under private market labor regime ("CLT"). We use RAIS that matches employer-employee data for all formal firms in Brazil from 2014 to 2016 to control for fixed effects at the individual and firm levels and the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to quantify the size of the wage differential explained by the labor regime versus individual characteristics. We find that CLT civil servants earn in average R$ 310.00 per month less than similar statutory positions, a difference of 13% comparing the average wage of each group. Only for high skilled workers we found a salary R$ 95.98 larger for CLT employees. Last, our decomposition strategy reveals that the largest share of the gap is not explained by endowments differences.

In 2013, 7.32% of the Brazilian population, or almost 15 million people, declared that they had some disability. Based on empirical evidence, this study sought to answer the following three questions: 1) Are men with disabilities paid less in the Brazilian labor market? 2) If so, is this predominantly due to differences in individual socioeconomic characteristics, underperformance, or is it a case of discrimination? 3) What are the main determinants of wage differential among disabled men? To answer these questions, we used data from a sample of men aged 18–65 working in Brazil’s private sector to estimate Tobit wage equations and perform a twofold decomposition of the disabled-nondisabled wage differential by applying the traditional Oaxaca-Blinder technique. DeLeire (2001) methodology was then employed to isolate the roles of discrimination and underperformance in the analysis, which was performed separately by the severity of the disability effect on activities. It was found that male employees with disabilities that limit daily activities earn lower wages than comparably employed nondisabled men and that this difference increases with the severity of the disability; that the estimated wage differentials were associated with both discrimination and underperformance, especially the latter; that there was a wage “reward” for the disabled positively correlated with their level of education; that the onset period of a disability did not significantly affect wages; and that men with intellectual disabilities are the most wage disadvantaged. These results provide useful information for policy makers in Brazil when allocating resources to support people with disabilities.

Since the mid 1990s, theories of speculative attacks have argued that fixed exchange rate regimes induce excessive borrowing in foreign currency as an optimal response to implicit guarantees that the government will not devalue the domestic currency. Using data on Brazilian firms before and after the end of the fixed exchange rate regime in 1999, we estimate the relevance of the government guarantees by comparing the changes in foreign debt of two groups of firms: those that hedged their foreign currency debt prior to the exchange rate float and those that did not. Using the difference-in-differences approach, in which firm-specific characteristics are introduced as control variables, we exclude the macroeconomic effects of the change in the exchange rate regime and the possible differences in foreign debt trends of the two groups of firms, thus obtaining an estimate of the impact of the government guarantees on borrowing in foreign currency. The results suggest that the guarantees do not induce excessive borrowing in foreign currency.