Research in Economics最新文献

This essay explores the mechanics of financial shocks within a globalized framework, employing a two-country macroeconomic model to distinguish between core and periphery economies. Our research indicates that intangible assets, serving as stable collateral, respond more robustly to economic shocks than traditional physical forms. Moreover, the study highlights the complex transmission mechanisms of productivity and leverage shocks, revealing that while the financial sector effectively assimilates the positive economic outcomes resulting from a productivity shock, leverage shocks, despite depleting capital, paradoxically stimulate overall economic output.

Digital transformation entails new sources of economic information in the form of rich texts, which can provide a deeper understanding of banking sector developments. With textual data available and accessible in digital format, this paper develops three distinct indices based on a large corpus of economic news articles to forecast banking crises. The methodological approaches feature the identification of key topics within a large volume of texts. A Banking Crisis Lexicon Index and Sentiment Index are developed through analysing a vast number of economic articles to detect the evolution of banking sector discourse. Findings from Granger causality highlight leading indicator status of the Banking Crisis Lexicon Index, signalling a change in the banking crisis series four years in advance, accentuated by innovations from a VAR analysis using Cholesky decomposition, and substantiated by receiver operating characteristics with under the curve estimates suggesting robust predictive performance strength above 70%, on a global scale, for developed economies and crisis countries. Serving as benchmark, the Sentiment Index constitutes a concurrent indicator, which moves in tandem with the crisis series, thereby providing more granular information on banking developments. A combined Banking Crisis Lexicon and Sentiment Index exhibits solid forecasting performance, which is comparable to the Banking Crisis Lexicon Index, yet with shorter lead time. In a robustness test, German-based indices outperform those based on English reporting in a predominantly German speaking region, highlighting the value of textual analysis in the vernacular. In reading between the lines, this paper contributes to the literature on quantitative analyses of textual data in constructing text-based banking crisis indicators to support a preemptive policy response.

Under the threat of a rapid expanding virus like the 2020 COVID-19, policy-makers need to decide relatively fast whether and under which conditions to invest in a vaccine, and eventually adopt other protective measures like social distancing or lockdowns, or to wait for natural herd immunity. Taking into account that vaccines take time to be fully developed and effective, this paper considers a unified framework at the crossroad between economics and epidemiology to study optimal public spending in medical research to obtain a vaccine against an infectious disease evolving according to a SIR dynamics. We prove that developed economies always invest in the search of a vaccine. The more individuals care about consumption, the more they actually reduce their current consumption and the more they invest in the vaccine research program to recover their consumption potential at the earliest. Our model would only recommend economies with very poor technology to restrain from investment and wait for herd immunity.

The relationship between cognitive biases and infection prevention behavior remains unexplored in the existing literature. This study uses data from a questionnaire survey conducted in Japan on the first wave of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) from February to May 2020 to empirically investigate the impact of Bayesian probability inference, the influence of cognitive biases of PCR test results on infection prevention behavior, and the discrepancy between infection prevention intentions and behaviors. We used a bivariate ordinal probit model when considering the correlation between behaviors. The results showed that the higher probability responses, implying pessimistic biases, were more likely to indicate that declaring a state of emergency was necessary and effective, and were more health-oriented in ensuring infection prevention behavior even at the expense of the economy. However, the study found that although they wanted to reduce the frequency of their outings and the number of people they met, they did not reduce them in terms of actual behavior change. It also found that those with pessimistic biases had a higher WTP for the vaccine.

The purpose of this paper is to test Minsky's financial instability hypothesis for the Eurozone by focusing on his main conclusion: corporate debt ratios rise during the ascendant phase of the business cycle. Depending on how debt ratios are measured, our results are divided between (i) robust and (ii) imperfect empirical evidence of procyclical debt ratios. Moreover, we suggest that rising interest rates may not be the best policy to avoid a Minskyan process and that alternative measures deserve some attention. We believe these results call for future research.

We model a stochastic, demographic-based framework to examine how an empirically proven, so-called first mover advantage affects the long-term sporting success of states by considering, among other things, demographic developments and the accumulation of sport-related human capital. In order to clarify and formalize this advantage in a sports economics framework, we draw on the concept of the stochastic dominance. Since our model is dynamic, it allows us to show how the probability of success of a nation evolves and under which conditions the stochastic dominance reduces.

Climate finance is an increasingly sought-after instrument for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by financing adaptation and mitigation measures. There is a global commitment to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly with regard to tackling climate change. The mobilization and use of climate finance could influence environmental quality. This paper focuses on analyzing the impact of climate finance on environmental quality in 111 countries worldwide over the period 2000-2019. This study uses the generalized method of moments (GMM) in panel data. The main results indicate a positive effect of climate finance on environmental quality, reflecting the theory of financial ecology. More specifically, climate finance targeting climate change mitigation measures has a significant effect on environmental quality. Member countries of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and private sector actors should implement strategies to monetize climate finance and invest heavily in mitigation and adaptation measures to improve environmental quality.

This paper analyzes the effects of a stronger patent regime on innovation incentives, patenting propensity and scientist mobility when an innovating firm can partially recover its damage due to scientist movement from the infringing rival. The strength of the patent system, which is a function of litigation success probability and damage recovery proportion, stipulates expected indemnification. We show that stronger patents fail to reduce the likelihood of infringement and further, decrease the innovation’s expected profitability. Higher potential reparation also reduces the scientist’s expected return on R&D knowledge, entailing greater R&D investment. Our results suggest important considerations for patent reforms.