Journal of Economic Surveys最新文献

Central banks' forecasts are important monetary policy inputs and tools for central bank communication. We survey the literature on forecasting at the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of England, and Bank of Canada, focusing especially on recent developments. After describing these central banks' forecasting frameworks, we discuss the literature on central bank forecast evaluation and new tests of unbiasedness and efficiency. We also discuss evidence of central banks' informational advantage over private sector forecasters, which appears to have weakened over time, and how central bank forecasts may affect private sector expectations even in the absence of an informational advantage. We discuss how the Great Recession led central banks to evaluate their forecasting frameworks, how the Covid-19 pandemic has further challenged central bank forecasting, and directions for future research.

This survey article provides an overview of the recent experimental economic literature on fairness-related behaviors in children and adolescents. We discuss different motives underlying fair behavior, summarize the development of fairness and inequality acceptance across different developmental stages, and we shed light on behavioral heterogeneity with respect to gender, SES, and cultural background. Moreover, we also discuss the role of preferences and social norms as determinants of fair behavior in children and adolescents. To learn about the origins of fair behavior, we address the influence of social environments, such as the family and we discuss the potential contribution of the genetic disposition.

Transitioning to a low-carbon economy will entail sweeping transformations of energy and economic systems. A growing research body has raised concerns about the effect of such strain on financial stability. This literature on “financial transition risk” has highlighted that the conjunction of climate policy, technological change and shifts in consumption patterns may propagate to financial markets. In extreme cases, these dynamics may result in a “Climate-Minsky” moment with systemic implications. The field has developed quickly, covering many methods and research questions. While this expansion in literature is advantageous when studying a complex issue like the low-carbon transition, it also comes with downsides. The large number of methods hampers result comparison, and the integration of research designs. It also makes it difficult to provide a synthetic view of results in the literature as well as identify remaining uncertainties. To bridge these gaps, I propose a critical review of the literature. I examine three sub-fields: the asset stranding literature, the direct assessment of transition risks through prospective models and the financial empirics of the low-carbon transition. I expound their main results, critically assess underlying methodologies and propose a framework to compare results. The review ends by suggesting some avenues for future research.

As a result of the growth of the football players' transfer market and the increased availability of data, scholars from different fields have been investigating the topic of the empirical determination of the football players’ valuation, that is, transfer fees or monetary valuation proposed by media, for 30 years. We propose a systematic review of the topic to provide the research community with an overview of the determinants of football players' valuation. Peer-reviewed papers written in English on men's football presenting fully available and interpretable econometrical results were selected. Based on the careful analysis of the 29 selected papers and their empirical models, this study has two main implications. First, it classifies all the independent variables used in the literature to explain or predict football players’ valuation, and proposes a set of core explanatory variables, with associated expected signs, that constitutes the common ground on which to build further research. Second, by presenting the state of the art in the current empirical literature, it highlights the existing gaps and suggests precise future research objectives. From a more general perspective, the review provides empirical insights for researchers interested in the valuation of human resources, signaling theory, market design, or bargaining theory.

This paper discusses the evolution of central bank communication, focusing on recent efforts by central banks to engage with a wider audience via social media. We document the social media presence of major central banks and discuss how analyzing Twitter content by and about monetary policy makers can inform about the effectiveness of communication in influencing beliefs. We focus on recent techniques employed in analyzing social media content in order to understand how central bank communication affects expectations and, subsequently, behavior in financial markets.

We survey the literature on the effects of increased transparency of gender segregated wages on the pay gap between men and women in comparable jobs. Pay transparency is promoted by countries and supra-national institutions and we categorize reforms according to their content and coverage. A growing number of papers have used variations of difference-in-difference estimation methods to analyze the impact of reforms on the gender pay gap (GPG), and from these we extract four main findings: First, reform-based studies find that pay transparency reforms reduce the GPG in all countries but one, which finds no effect. Second, in Canada, Denmark and the UK, the reduction in the GPG from transparency reforms originate from a reduction in the growth rate of male income and less from an increase in women's pay. Third, there is fragmented evidence for the impact of transparency reforms on other labor outcomes and firm productivity. Fourth, the monetary implementation cost of transparency reforms is, in general, small both for individual firms and public administration. These finding are consistent with the notion that gender wage transparency reforms are an effective policy tool to reduce the GPG.

The recent extreme volatility in agriculture prices determines serious repercussions to various stakeholders and levels in the food value chain, that is, producers, intermediaries, and customers, at micro-, meso- and macro-economic governance levels, respectively. Persistent high/low degree of agriculture prices leads to unsustainable production/consumption patterns, thus representing an impediment to reaching the goal of responsible consumption and production (UN-SDGs 12). The lack of comprehensive real-time information on price volatility's internal and external factors often resulted in an inconclusive and counterintuitive outcome while performing empirical estimation. The present review was conducted using the PRISMA framework to systematically identify and analyze literature from two important databases. Papers have been grouped by volatility drivers, governance levels, theoretical approaches, and background data types. The present review is a valuable starting point for understanding the links between multi-dimensional factors affecting the persistent price volatility and the theoretical and empirical analytics trends to provide the computational advancement needed to cope with model estimation issues. It also highlights the importance of a paradigm shift in researching agriculture price volatility to addressing food crises, considering principal objectives and perspectives such as food security, poverty alleviation, sustainability in food value chains, and resilience of food systems across the globe.

I analyze the development of the loan-to-value (LTV) ratio limit for households as a macroprudential policy tool in both theory and practice, by surveying theoretical and empirical literature. I argue that the practical implementation of LTV caps preceded theoretical studies, but research has caught up since the global financial crisis, including research on which indicators seem to work best in flagging a potential future crisis. In practice, LTV ratio limits tend to be effective tools in buffering credit and house price growth, although attributing casual effects in empirical studies is not always straightforward. The benefits of LTV policy seem to outweigh some potential side-effects, such as the output costs of tightening credit. I then survey the recent success with LTV policy in New Zealand and Ireland, particularly by targeting the riskier borrowers. Their experience reveals that learning and fine-tuning of LTV policies along the way are inevitable.

Credit default swaps (CDS)—the fiercely discussed derivatives instrument since the explosion of the recent global credit crunch—are still subject to considerable theoretical and practical debate. More than a decade after significant developments in CDS literature, we currently lack a holistic understanding of the disparate strands of evidence, synthesizing analytical advancements in the field. We, therefore, conducted a systematic review of 143 publications (peer-reviewed and first-tier grey literature), focusing on three key areas: CDS characteristics and development, credit risk hedging, and determinants of CDS use, and performed the first bibliometric mapping for CDS. Our review makes the following contributions. First, measuring CDS characteristics and development gives a snapshot of how CDS remained a significant indicator for hedging corporate lending risk. Second, by mapping the research landscape, we provide insights into banks’ use of CDS; in particular, we show that banks use CDS to obtain capital relief, enhance liquidity and profitability, limit credit supply, and consequently mitigate their NPLs’ level. Moreover, the use of CDS by lenders increases firms’ leverage and value. Leaving a fertile area for debates and future research, the outcomes of this review help provide policy guidance to regulators and financial institutions that make informed decisions to use CDS as a credit risk management instrument.

This paper surveys developments in the literature on trade and inequality over the past decade. I first discuss the impact of trade on nominal income inequality, with a focus on firm heterogeneity and the role of mobility frictions. Then, I provide an overview of the literature on the redistributional role of government in an open economy. Finally, I assess the current state of studies on how trade affects real income inequality through the expenditure channel.