Empirica最新文献

This paper provides new empirical evidence of purchasing power parity (PPP) in 18 countries. We thoroughly test for the non-stationarity and nonlinearity jointly of the real effective exchange rates (REERs) using a variety of transition functions, which allow for asymmetric adjustment of the REERs depending upon the size and sign of deviation from the equilibrium. The empirical results reveal that the REERs possess nonlinearity. The stationarity of the REERs is strongly dependent upon the size of disequilibrium, which is theoretically attributed to the transaction costs. The autoregressive model associated with the exponential smooth transition function dominates the other transition functions in characterizing the size nonlinearity of the REERs. In addition, if the Heaviside indicator variable of the threshold autoregressive model is assumed to be the lagged real effective exchange rate, then the asymmetric adjustment, theoretically suggested by the price stickiness, is indispensable to validating the PPP hypothesis.

The unexpected arrival of covid-19 in 2020 stressed the vulnerabilities of the Spanish labor market. In this paper, we analyze the immediate impact of the pandemic on labor market outcomes in Spain. We find that, during the national lockdown period, individuals worked 3 h less per week. Moreover, we associate the pandemic with a 5.7 percentage point’s reduction in labor force participation. Finally, we do not find heterogenous effects across sectors.

We study intra- and intergroup cooperation in the production and distribution of a jointly created good. Over several periods, members of one group can choose whether or not to contribute to the good’s production. Members of the other group vote to implement a fair or a discriminatory sharing policy for the good’s proceeds. More cooperative behavior by members of an outgroup renders ingroup members more willing to cooperate in turn. Our experiment documents reciprocity in intergroup cooperation settings. This reciprocity at times leads to mutually beneficial cooperation but when one group defects, it may also lead to cooperation breaking down. Understanding how one group’s cooperation influences another group’s decisions can improve resource allocation as well as influence policy-makers’ decisions towards fairer distribution strategies.

The 2009 and 2012 earthquakes in Italy occurred in a close-knit region and time horizon but differed substantially on both the initial shock to the stock and the subsequent flow of resources. This paper considers the short run impact on the dynamic response of labor market outcomes. Both earthquakes lowered employment and labor force participation by more than 0.5%. With its negative effect on the resources available, the 2009 shock led to a drop in real wages of 1.3% and a sharp—but short-lived—widening of the wage gap generated by the skill premium. The 2012 earthquake, which led firms to upgrade their technology, increased wages by 2.2% and led to a more balanced—but persistent—widening of the wage gap. The predictions of a model developed in this paper are consistent with these results.

This paper deals with the possibilities of designing optimal fiscal policy under uncertainty. First, different forms of uncertainty are discussed for economic policy analysis and design. For dynamic models under uncertainty, a stochastic optimum control framework is presented. Algorithms for nonlinear models are briefly reviewed: OPTCON1 for open-loop control, OPTCON2 for open-loop feedback (passive learning) control, and OPTCON3 for dual control with active learning. The OPTCON algorithms determine approximately optimal fiscal policies. The results from calculating these policies for a small macroeconometric model for Slovenia serve to illustrate the applicability of the OPTCON algorithms and compare their solutions. The results show that the most sophisticated and time intensive active-learning solution, which requires the use of an extremely small and simple model of the economy, is not necessarily superior to the simpler solutions. For actual policy design problems and policy advice, it will often be better to neglect the stochastic uncertainty and use deterministic optimization instead, especially since in practice, the most important forms of uncertainty are not stochastic but relate to the model specification, the behaviour of other policy makers or other agents, or fundamental uncertainty that cannot be dealt with at all.

The rise of big data in the global economy has altered the ways in which firms do international business. The digital revolution has also changed how international business is regulated. Personal information protection is one of the new challenging regulatory issues. In this study, we build a framework to discuss how data privacy regulation affects cross-border e-commerce. We show that data privacy regulation has four effects: the web traffic effect, the data collection effect, the advertising effect and the data sharing effect, all of which negatively affect cross-border e-commerce. We also demonstrate the heterogenous effects of data privacy regulation. Specifically, we argue that data privacy regulation has a stronger cross-border e-commerce reduction effect on countries with higher labor cost and marketing cost, and data privacy regulation has a larger negative effect on cross-border e-commerce for differentiated products than homogenous products. By empirically testing the impact of General Data Protection Regulation on cross-border e-commerce between 183 countries and European Union countries from 2015 to 2020, we confirm all the proposed hypotheses. There are few studies exploring specifically how data privacy regulation affects cross-border e-commerce. We contribute to the literatures by filling this gap. Our research results provide new insights for multinational companies and public policymakers on this globally important issue in the digital age.

The aim of this paper is to study empirically the existence of precautionary saving in Spain at the end of the Great Recession using the micro data provided by the Spanish Survey of Household Finances. Using the panel component of these data, I construct a measure of income uncertainty for each household from the observed household real income and use it to test for the strength of precautionary saving. I find that an increase of 1% in the standard deviation of income reduces household consumption by 8.8% when using the logarithm of the household consumption as dependent variable; however, when using the ratio between consumption and average income as dependent variable, given the average normal income and consumption in the sample, consumption will decrease by 8.1%.

This study aims to construct a sound theory of consumption convergence and empirically test its viability. To do this, we employ a Solovian framework in which the Keynesian exogenous savings-consumption allocation rule plays a crucial role. We demonstrate that consumption convergence performance is determined by both the average propensity to save (the indirect effect) and the average propensity to consume (the direct effect). In the empirical section, we use a system GMM estimator to test our consumption convergence equation on a panel data set of 177 countries and four income groups from 1970 to 2019. Our empirical findings indicate (i) absolute consumption convergence within high- and low-income country groups; (ii) strong evidence of conditional consumption convergence within high-, upper-middle-, and lower-middle-income groups; (iii) a robust and significant effect of the average propensity to save on the convergence process in high-, upper-middle-, and lower-middle-income groups; and (iv) a more robust and significant effect of the average propensity to consume in upper-middle- and lower-middle-income countries. In summary, we find that as income rises, the indirect impact plays a larger role in explaining consumption convergence, whereas the direct effect plays a smaller role. The policy implication of this conclusion is that policy makers in upper-middle- and lower-middle-income countries should restore the balance in the tradeoff between current and future consumption in favor of savings, as the former will harm consumption convergence within each middle-income group.

Export performance is a highly debated topic in the literature, with no consensus on how to measure it or what factors determine it. Most studies divide these factors into internal and external determinants, with a focus on internal determinants. This study, however, focuses on external determinants, namely agglomeration economies such as localization and urbanization economies and export spillovers, and their impact on a firm’s export intensity. Based on a large sample of Portuguese manufacturing SMEs over the period 2010 to 2018 (191,920 firm/year observations), the estimation results through the two-stage least squares method with fixed effects strongly indicate the existence of a positive relationship between agglomeration economies, particularly localization economies and export spillovers, and export performance. These findings suggest that firms located in areas with a high concentration of other firms in the same industry and other exporting firms tend to have better export performance, which has important implications for policymakers.

Three small Baltic economies of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have undergone extreme economical system change from the planned economy to the market one. The institutional infrastructure have been reorganized and all three countries joined the EU and Euro area. We aim to answer which channels of economic integration are of the largest importance for the small open European economies. We showed that all three countries could be treated as one region due to development, institutional and economic similarities. Secondly, we explore whether the trade or common currency is the main channel for the business cycle synchronization across the region of three small Baltic economies. The business cycle synchronization and trade intensity (TI) between the Baltic States and their main trading partners before and after joining the EU have been investigated as an example of an ex-post case for the small economies. We have observed a large increase in TI with the trading partners from EMU and EU countries, irrespective of the TI calculation method. The analysis of business cycle synchronization of the Baltic States with their main trading partners is captured by the correlations of the cyclical component of GDP series, using the quarterly real and de-trended GDP growth data from 1995 Q1 to 2019 Q4. The panel model has indicated an important empirical feature that the common currency strongly and significantly impacted the business cycle synchronization whilst the bilateral trade intensity between the Baltic States and their main trading partners have a significant negative effect on the business cycle synchronization when controlling for time effects. The Granger causality test confirmed that the most robust impulses to the Baltic States are coming from EU trading partners.