Bulletin of Economic Research最新文献

This study empirically investigates the relationships between tariffs and non-tariff measures before and after the global financial crisis (GFC). The panel analysis is based on traded products of 70 countries from 1997 to 2015. For developed countries, we find that tariffs and non-tariff measures were complementary before the crisis, but they became substitutional afterward. We do not find such shift for developing countries. We also run the analysis by income levels and by types of products and observe differential effects of the GFC on the relationship between the two trade policies.

This paper examines the impact of a rise in oil prices on the wages of workers in the unorganized sector of a developing economy. The model economy is comprised of two non-traded transport sectors, formal and informal, along with other sectors. The main results that we obtain are as follows. The informal transport sector contracts when fuel price rises and lowers the real income of the informal workers. The per-unit return to land rises, and the factor readjustments even raise the output of other sectors in the economy. We also show why inclusion of non-passenger transport services does not alter the main outcomes of the model.

We consider marriage markets with externalities. We focus on weak externalities, that is, markets in which each agent is primarily concerned about her partner. We formalize and prove the claim that weak externalities are not so significant in the marriage market: in this case, the ω-core and the α-core coincide and are both nonempty. In addition, we show that, if we allow agents to block matchings without changing their mate, the results do not longer hold.

Using official communiqués about fiscal policy, we develop a fiscal sentiment indicator, and we verify the reaction of disagreements in inflation expectations to fiscal sentiment. This analysis is relevant to inflation targeting (IT) countries because transparency and communication can influence expectations. The results suggest that a more optimistic fiscal sentiment reduces disagreements in inflation expectations. Estimates show that, for higher disagreements in inflation expectations at 12-month maturity, an optimistic fiscal sentiment can reduce the disagreement more sharply. In turn, the fiscal sentiment effect on the disagreement for the 48-month maturity is stronger the smaller the disagreement is. The results allow us to outline the following policy recommendations. First, an optimistic fiscal environment is important in the task of guiding inflation expectations and reducing inflation uncertainty. Second, fiscal communication is an important tool for the expectations formation process, and therefore it must be carefully managed to help in the task of forward guidance of inflation expectations, being important for the IT regime. Third, both fiscal credibility and monetary policy credibility are important for the expectations formation process, particularly for the reduction of inflation uncertainty, representing aspects that must be preserved in countries that adopt the IT regime.

In the early 2000s, the Montgomery County (Maryland) Public School system implemented district-wide changes to funding, curriculum, staffing, and technology. Using data from 1995 to 2014, we employ a difference-in-differences strategy to show that the reforms significantly increased the percentage of students in Montgomery County who scored advanced on third- and fifth-grade math and reading tests. Using an event study strategy, we find that the positive impacts extended through the end of the panel. Our results contribute to the literature on school reform by finding positive impacts of school reform in a district that was high performing prior to reforms.

This paper investigates the extent to which domestic and foreign money balances in emerging European countries are influenced by foreign exchange considerations. A well-specified and stable relationship between real money demand and the exchange rate can be perceived as an important part of a successful monetary policy. This study examines the long-run determinants of real exchange rates (RERs) associated with the behavioral equilibrium exchange rate (BEER) approach and identifies currency misalignments in these countries. The misalignment is later used to test the nonlinear behavior of the demand for money. The results indicate that the RER misalignments have a significant impact on domestic money demand. When the currencies are overvalued, there is a reduction in domestic money demand, and when they are undervalued, there is an increase in domestic money demand. Furthermore, it can be concluded that overvaluation causes an increase in foreign money demand indicating a shift of preference from domestic to foreign currency.

Large lending in the banking industry has sparked concerns about banks’ efficiency performance, particularly, if it is related to their credit risk, as trade credit, provided by large, creditworthy firms. We provide evidence of a rather neglected issue regarding the impact of large lending on banks’ efficiency using cost and profit stochastic functions. A unique dataset was constructed concerning all US banks collected from the Statistics on Depository Institutions report compiled by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Our sample contains US banks tracked yearly for the period 2010–2017, creating an unbalanced panel of year observations. An econometric framework based on nested non-neutral frontiers was developed to estimate the influence and the decomposition of large lending on the three banks’ performance aspects. Moreover, different types of frontiers aiming at the cost and profit sides have been investigated, and the associated elasticities have been calculated. We notice that large lending plays a crucial role in banks’ technical efficiency. Variations among different frontier models, type of bank and size, banks’ ownership structure, and macroeconomic conditions appear to be present. By considering all capital adequacy asset quality management earnings liquidity parameters, we notice that banks’ financial strength affects banks’ efficiency.

Using Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies data, we explore the relation between cognitive ability, proxied by an explicit test of individual numeracy level and the reported satisfaction of individuals with their job. The paper identifies a relation of individual cognitive ability on job satisfaction interacting with some characteristics of the job related to job complexity, namely job autonomy and learning opportunity in the workplace. We found that individuals with different levels of cognitive ability exhibit different levels of job satisfaction depending on how much learning and job autonomy allows their employment. Individuals with low level of cognitive ability enjoy more their job autonomy than individuals in the top of the ability distribution. The learning effect brings the most profits to the utility of workers from the middle quartiles. Finally, planning is most enjoyed at the top of the distribution. We discuss the implication of these findings from a practical perspective.

We show how diseases can affect economic growth in a Solow growth model, with population growth and no technical progress, but modified to include a saving rate that depends on the individual health status. We successively insert this model into the SIS (susceptible–infected–susceptible) and SIR (susceptible–infected–recovered) models of disease spreading. In these two models, the spread of the infection proceeds according to the so-called basic reproductive number. This number determines in which of the two possible equilibria, the disease-free or the pandemic equilibrium, the economy ends. We show that output per capita is always lower in the pandemic steady state, which implies a contraction in the economy's production possibilities frontier.

We introduce polluting emissions in a sequential noncooperative oligopoly model of bilateral exchange. In one sector, a leader and a follower use polluting technologies which create negative externalities on the payoffs of strategic traders who belong to the other sector. By modeling emissions as a negative externality, we show that the leader pollutes more (less) than the follower when strategies are substitutes (complements). Then, we consider the implementation of public policies to control the levels of emissions, namely, two taxation mechanisms and a permit market. We study the effects of these public policies. Moreover, we determine the conditions under which these public policies can implement a Pareto-improving allocation.