Economic Systems最新文献

Using data from 180 countries and 24,833 publicly traded firms worldwide, this study examines how cultural and political factors influence the stringency of a government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and, in turn, the stock prices of firms and industries operating in a given country. Existing research demonstrates that government behavior during a pandemic can directly or indirectly affect stock prices. This study explores twelve political and cultural characteristics that might influence government policies. Interestingly, our results indicate that democratic and less long-term-oriented countries employ stricter responses to the pandemic. Furthermore, countries with higher individualism, coalition governments, and governments not battling for re-election appear to employ a smoothing strategy: although they implement stringent responses early on, they tend to react less aggressively when the number of COVID-19 cases increases. This study finds that increased stringency has a negative impact on corporate abnormal returns, especially during the early stages of the pandemic. Our study has important policy implications and offers valuable insights to investors: stock price reactions depend on political and cultural factors, industry, and firm characteristics. Most importantly, larger firms with more cash operating in collectivist and politically stable countries are more resilient.

This paper analyzes the conflict of interests between capitalists and workers concerning patent and monetary policy in a Schumpeterian growth model with cash-in-advance (CIA) constraints in the R&D sector, where capitalists own assets and workers supply labor. We find that (i) higher R&D productivity, lower CIA constraints, and a lower discount rate produce non-linear effects in the conflicts concerning the markup and the nominal interest rate, decreasing the former and increasing the latter in low-growth environments and having the opposite or no effects otherwise, (ii) the markup and the nominal interest rate have non-linear effects on the conflicts concerning the other similar to (i), (iii) considering less restrictive distributions of assets, labor supply, seigniorage revenues, monetary balances and financing of CIA constraints reduces, in general, the conflicts concerning the markup and interest rate. We conclude that policymakers will only be able to use patent and monetary policies to simultaneously promote economic growth and reduce the conflict of interest concerning the other if R&D productivity is sufficiently high. Otherwise, each policy can be used either to promote economic growth at the cost of exacerbating the conflicts of interest concerning the other or achieve the opposite effect.

In this paper, we assess the interaction between corruption, bank cost efficiency, and economic development. Existing literature on the subject normally focuses separately on the link between corruption, financial development, and growth, and finds ambiguous results, not distinguishing between different types of credit institutions. We use Italian disaggregated data from 2004 to 2012, considering cooperative and non-cooperative banks, to determine whether controlling corruption affects banks’ cost efficiency in Italian provinces and promotes economic development. Utilizing a panel autoregressive model, we find that controlling corruption magnifies the positive impact of banks’ cost efficiency on economic development. Evidence of a positive effect of the interaction is observed, particularly in the case of non-cooperative banks and for higher values of the Control of Corruption Index.

Debt levels, both private and public, were already at record highs before the Covid-19 pandemic and surged further in 2020. The high indebtedness raises concern that it will undermine future economic prospects. Contributing to the ongoing debate, we use the local projection method to dynamically study the behavior of economic activity and its main components after public and private debt surges. A new dataset on debt surges in 190 countries between 1970 and 2020 is used. Debt surges are followed by persistently weaker economic growth. However, this negative relationship does not always hold, as it depends on the type of debt surge: rapid increases in public debt have the most negative impact, particularly when an economy operates with a large positive output gap. Debt surges also tend to be followed by worse economic performance if the initial total debt levels are high. Public debt surges lead to weaker private and public investment. Surges in nonfinancial corporate debt are followed by lower private and public investment.

This paper investigates whether and how monetary policy shock (MPS) affects corporate innovation using a large sample of 3,082 Chinese listed firms over the period 2007–2019. We provide robust evidence that firms increase their innovative activities when faced with MPS. Further analyses show that firms in competitive industries or with less market power are more inclined to increase innovation in the event of MPS, and that the influence of MPS on corporate innovation is more pronounced for firms with more growth opportunities or better financial conditions. We also find that firms tend to increase innovation to a larger extent in expansionary periods than in contractionary ones.

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.