Economic Notes最新文献

Motivated by the regulatory changes introduced by the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, this study investigates its impact on the cost efficiency of US banks. Using a parametric cost frontier methodology previously linked to bank failure risk, the analysis reveals a 13% average decline in cost efficiency under the new regulatory framework. The study also examines the Act's potential heterogeneous effects across banks of different sizes, revealing that while larger banks are typically more efficient, the stricter regulatory oversight imposed on them by the Dodd–Frank Act reduced the efficiency gap with smaller banks.

The study examines the relationship between crime and firm entry in India. Using district-level data for a decade, we find that an increase in crime is related to fewer firms registering in the district. The results are robust to estimation approaches that address the endogeneity related to crime variable. We also explore the pathways through which crime negatively affects firm entry in India. We provide suggestive evidence in favour of a fall in demand caused by the lower income of existing firms in the market as one of the reasons why crime lowers firm entry. Additionally, we show that fear of victimisation is also a possible channel that drives the negative relationship between crime and firm entry. However, we do not find any evidence that crime increases the expenses incurred by existing firms. The findings have important policy implications in terms of the importance of a stable environment for firm entry.

In recent literature, various social implications arising from the COVID-19 pandemic have been extensively deliberated upon. In this study, we introduce an ordinal random effects model designed to explore the changes in individual perceived happiness during periods of lockdown. We delve into the impact of diverse factors such as social and family relationships, spirituality, religiosity, and trust in institutions, alongside a range of demographic and economic variables. Our data set comprises responses from 1212 individuals in the United States gathered between March and April 2020. The findings reveal an anticipated decline in overall happiness during the COVID-19 crisis, particularly noticeable within specific demographic and behavioural segments: social connections, trust, and religiosity exhibit nuanced variations, contingent upon the level of spirituality and the specific institutions under consideration.

Financial inclusion universally remains one of the critical means to end poverty in the world, especially Africa, where the level of poverty is high. It has however been argued that financial inclusion equally has the tendency to destabilize the financial system, thwarting the poverty reduction efforts, which necessitates the interrogation of the relationship between the variables. This study therefore investigates how financial stability mediates the financial inclusion and poverty reduction relationship in Africa. Using the panel Autoregressive Distributive Lag model, covering a period of 2004–2020, the study found that financial inclusion is positively related to financial stability in both short and long-run, with education, Gross National Income per capita (GNI) and domestic credit to private sector, contributing to financial stability, and trade openness negatively related to financial stability in the long-run. The study further established that financial stability is positively related to household consumption expenditure as such leads to poverty reduction with trade openness, government expenditure, GNI, education, domestic credit to private sector, and institutional quality contributing significantly to poverty reduction. This confirms the mediating role financial stability plays in enhancing the impact of financial inclusion on poverty reduction in Africa and must therefore be given the necessary attention, through proper regulatory mechanisms.

This paper aims at extracting a common factor from major carbon pricing which is interpreted as an effective carbon pricing or a shadow pricing. For this purpose, we use a dynamic factor model for which the unobserved common factors and idiosyncratic noises are potentially nonstationary processes. The two-step Kalman smoother procedure is used to estimate the model. We found (i) that the extracted common factor (i.e., the effective carbon pricing) exhibits very low values which range from 2.05 to 16.1 USD per ton, and more importantly, (ii) this factor does not cointegrate with the market prices. This last result highlights a total lack of integration of carbon markets.