Bulletin of Economic Research最新文献

This paper makes comparative statics in a model in which oligopolistic and monopolistically competitive firms that are heterogeneous in productivity compete. We demonstrate that (i) entry of oligopolistic incumbents, (ii) reduction in entry cost of monopolistically competitive entrants, and (iii) market size expansion improve the average productivity in the whole economy. However, (i) and (iii) raise welfare, but (ii) may lower welfare because of the presence of oligopolistic firms.

“Broadband China” (BC), the new Chinese government implementation in 2013, has led to substantial investments in internet infrastructure development. Furthermore, accurately evaluating its effects is of great significance. BC is taken as a quasinatural experiment in this paper. Data from 278 Chinese cities from 2007 to 2019 are used to evaluate this policy influence on city innovation ability by building a regression discontinuity (RD) design model. In addition, its heterogeneity and mechanism are also analyzed. The results show that (1) city innovation ability is significantly improved by the BC policy, and this is still valid after robustness tests. (2) The influence of the BC policy on city innovation ability is heterogeneous and more significant in more prosperous regions, such as in the eastern regions and in large cities. (3) Mechanism analysis shows that the city innovation ability is enhanced by improving knowledge spillover and stimulating entrepreneurial activities.

We examine the welfare implications of two tariff regimes when firms have a forward-looking view on trade policy. Discriminatory tariffs lead to Cournot competition, whereas uniform tariffs lead to diverse competition modes. If exporters are identical in production costs, all the trading countries are better off under the uniform rather than discriminatory tariff regime, which suggests a possibility that countries reach an agreement on the most-favored nation (MFN) as a preferred tariff regime. For asymmetric costs among exporters; however, the competition mode determined endogenously under the uniform tariffs does matter for the welfare comparison. If Cournot competition emerges, then each country's preference is consistent with conventional wisdom. That is, the importing country and high-cost exporters prefer a discriminatory tariff while low-cost exporters have a uniform tariff regime. However, if the uniform regime leads to either Bertrand or asymmetric competition mode, then the cost gap between exporters would be the determinant factor. Only when the cost gap is sufficiently small, the uniform tariff, required by the MFN clause of the World Trade Organization, can be beneficial to all trading countries.

The growth and financial sustainability of a firm is tied to its ability to retain existing and potential clients. On the contrary, the defection of customers has a huge implication on firms including microfinance institutions (MFIs), suggesting that the attainment of customer loyalty is an important strategy for MFIs to improve their performance. Hence, this study attempts to investigate the level of loyalty demonstrated by rural microfinance borrowers toward their respective service providers. To accomplish this, an unbalanced panel data, comprising 1101 unique MFIs and spanning the timeframe 2010–2018, were obtained from the World Bank database and thereafter subjected to conventional econometric techniques and a series of robustness tests, including endogeneity-corrected methods, alternative proxies, and sub-sample analyses. The findings indicate that rural microfinance borrowers generally demonstrate loyalty to their service providers, particularly when measured by borrower retention rates; however, these findings vary with the adopted techniques, sub-samples, and proxies employed during the analysis.

The COVID-19 (Coronoavirus Disease 2019) pandemic has had many disastrous effects on welfare globally, particularly in European countries. In recent research, a new debate has arisen as a result of the shift of day-to-day activities to virtual platforms, which has augmented concerns related to smart (data) access and smart (data) protection. This study examines the economic, social, and psychological indicators of welfare gain within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and examines their impact on smart access and smart protection using the data of Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and real-time Google Trends from June to August 2020. The findings indicate a negative relationship between smart access and economic crisis caused by COVID-19, while households with sufficient resources support smart protection. Psychological effects including nervousness and anxiety are highly related to smart access. Likewise, being helpful in a time of uncertainty, societal contact, and social measures (hygiene and face mask) significantly and positively impact smart protection. The findings suggest that countries should combine their welfare agencies with health and economic institutes, and initiate projects related to cybersecurity.

Applying panel threshold regression technics along with alternative econometric investigation on a panel database of 48 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period 2000–2012, this paper analyzes the structure of housing finance in SSA countries and mainly verifies if there is a threshold effect on shared prosperity. Independently of the method used, our findings offer strong evidence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between housing finance and inequality. The current level of development of housing finance in SSA, which is at its very early stage, is not yet an effective tool for reducing economic inequality; however, beyond a given threshold, housing finance becomes effective in reducing inequality. Indeed, higher values of housing finance depth above a certain threshold of 6.35% reduce inequality, whereas values below 6.35% and very high values have no significant impact. In addition, there is a slightly positive relationship between housing finance and labor productivity growth in SSA. Results also show that the way housing finance impact inequality is highly dependent on their ability to implement effective crisis fight policies. Controlling for countries’ income levels, legal origin, and regional proximity revealed relative benchmarking, typology, and characteristics of SSA housing finance. These findings suggest some policies to stimulate the development of housing finance in SSA. As a bonus, this paper also highlights several other pillars that can be used to support shared prosperity in SSA.

We assess the relationship between regime-dependent volatility in S&P 500, economic policy uncertainty, the S&P 500 bull and bear sentiment spread (bb_sp), as well as the Chicago Board Options Exchange's VIX over the period 2000–2018. Our findings from two-covariate GARCH–MIDAS (GM) methodology, regime switching Markov Chain, and quantile regressions suggest that the association of realized volatility and sentiment varies across high- and low-volatility regimes and depends on investors’ sensitivity toward incidents of market uncertainties under these regimes. The findings suggest that these indicators may not be useful in volatility forecasting, especially under high-volatility regimes.

Medical expenses have been associated with a large proportion of consumer bankruptcies in the United States. The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between the Medicaid expansion implemented in the context of the Affordable Care Act and consumer bankruptcy, overall and by chapter filing. We used a longitudinal study design with a study period of 2008–2017. We tested three approaches: difference-in-differences, fixed effect panel linear regression, and triple difference. We constructed a panel dataset from 2008 to 2017 with states’ data using data from various sources on insurance, bankruptcy filings, and characteristics that may affect bankruptcy, such as income and ethnicity. The outcomes were the annual rates of consumer bankruptcies overall and by chapter at the state level. Between 2008 and 2017, the overall unadjusted bankruptcy filing rate fell from 0.36% to 0.24%. We found that the expansion was associated with a decrease in overall consumer bankruptcy varying between 0.035 and 0.039 percentage points and that the intensity of the effect was modulated by the intensity of the treatment. Results were consistent across models and suggest that the Medicaid expansion had a significant negative effect on overall bankruptcy filings and specifically on Chapter 7 filings.

Tax reforms are often motivated by their potential to improve tax revenue mobilization. However, their actual impacts are difficult to quantify. Using cross-country panel data over the period 2000–2021, this article evaluates the impact of the 2012 tax reforms on tax revenue performance in Togo. We follow the Synthetic Control Method (SCM) estimation procedures. After comparing the observed evolution of Togo's tax revenue output in the period 2013–2021 with that of synthetic Togo, our estimates show that an accumulated yearly average gain is about 3.09% of GDP. Hence, the article concludes that after 9 years of reform, the improvement in Togo's tax performance is remarkable. However, more tax-related and institutions-related reforms are crucial to make Togo's tax system more buoyant and sustainably improve tax revenue mobilization.