Economic Systems最新文献

Multidimensional poverty is an important issue of the world economy. The present paper uses data from China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS) from 2015 to 2018 and macro data at the prefectural level to investigate the impact of infrastructure investment on multidimensional poverty of rural migrant workers. First, we find relatively high incidence of multidimensional poverty among rural migrant workers. Second, we find that infrastructure investment can significantly reduce poverty. Such result is robust after considering various forms of endogeneity and robustness tests. Government intervention strengthens alleviation effect of infrastructure investment on multidimensional poverty, whereas financial development weakens such effect. The multiplier effects and marginal benefits of infrastructure investment is relatively small at present, shown in the limitations in enhancement in social security and lodgment of rural migrant workers. Infrastructure investment related to transportation and telecommunication has the greatest effects in reducing poverty and the effects are stronger in regions with lower income.

The international propagation of uncertainty shocks from the United States is not fully understood, despite extensive literature on domestic effects. This study examines the impact of U.S. financial, macroeconomic, and policy uncertainty on credit growth, stock prices, economic activity, bond yields, and inflation in five major recipients of U.S. foreign investment from 1950 to 2019. Findings highlight the pivotal role of U.S. financial uncertainty in driving global business cycles. Increased uncertainties in the U.S. financial sector negatively affect global economic activity by impeding credit and stock prices, limiting funding opportunities for firms and households worldwide. This underscores the significant influence of U.S. financial markets on global economic fluctuations.

Existing research focuses on the crowding out effect of local government debt on the quantity of corporate bank loans, but hardly explores the impact of local government debt on bank loan prices. This paper empirically finds that a rise in local government debt increases bank loan prices, based on the loan-level data of Chinese listed companies from 2011 to 2018. This result is robust to a battery of sensitivity tests. Besides, local government debt is found to affect the costs of unsecured loans and short-term loans more strongly. Hence, in response to the expansion of local government debt, enterprises may replace transaction loans with relationship loans to control financing costs. The mechanism tests show that local government debt increases loan prices by increasing both financial constraints and environmental uncertainty. The paper provides new insights into the impact of local government debt on corporate financing.

Using a dataset obtained by matching and merging three major databases, this paper investigates the impact of counterfeiting on firm survival in a sample of Italian manufacturing firms established between 2004–2006. This paper contributes to the literature on firm survival, which has identified firm-level characteristics, macroeconomic conditions and institutional features as key contributing factors to growth and survival probability among firms. The topic is hugely significant since this illegal competition may displace and damage the firms that produce genuine products. Overall, our analysis finds that the presence of counterfeit products negatively affects the chances of firms surviving. Moreover, after performing an in-depth analysis, we find that the presence of counterfeit products affects firms operating in lower tech sectors and smaller in size. Our evidence, which is robust to an alternative measure of counterfeiting and different estimation methods, provides room for policy interventions.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the dynamic relationships binding European financial market indices over the decade 2013–2022. In particular, we estimate a quantile VAR to study spillovers in different volatility scenarios using a measure of realised volatility robust to jumps and microstructural noise. Our results reveal that, especially for low quantiles, the degree of implied interconnectedness between the indices is affected negatively by the Brexit and the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, while it augments after the Covid-19 pandemic occurrence. We also found that the EU central markets (Belgian, Dutch, French, and German) are important for the stability of the Eurozone system when uncertainty increases. On the other hand, the Italian and Portuguese markets transmit spillovers when volatility is high, whereas when the volatility is moderate or reduced, they absorb spillovers. The role of Scandinavian markets is mixed since the Finnish and Swedish markets are spillover emitters, while the Danish and the Norwegian emit only when the volatility is high. Our empirical analysis provides valuable information to policymakers, practitioners, and financial institutions.