A Portofolio Balance Approach to Euro-Area Money Demand in a Time-Varying Environment

As part of its monetary policy strategy, the European Central Bank has formulated a reference value for M3 growth. A pre-requisite for the use of a reference value for M3 growth is the existence of a stable demand function for that aggregate. However, a large empirical literature has emerged showing that, beginning in 2001, essentially all euro area M3 demand functions have exhibited instability. This paper considers euroarea money demand in the context of the portfolio-balance framework. Our basic premise is that there is a stable demand-for-money function but that the models that have been used until now to estimate euro area money-demand are not well-specified because they do not include a measure of wealth. Using two empirical methodologies - - a co-integrated vector equilibrium correction (VEC) approach and a time-varying coefficient (TVC) approach - - we find that a demand-for-money function that includes wealth is stable. The upshot of our findings is that M3 behaviour continues to provide useful information about medium-term developments on inflation.Money demand; VEC, time varying coefficient estimation; Euro area

Experimental analysis of computer system dependability

This paper reviews an area which has evolved over the past 15 years: experimental analysis of computer system dependability. Methodologies and advances are discussed for three basic approaches used in the area: simulated fault injection, physical fault injection, and measurement-based analysis. The three approaches are suited, respectively, to dependability evaluation in the three phases of a system's life: design phase, prototype phase, and operational phase. Before the discussion of these phases, several statistical techniques used in the area are introduced. For each phase, a classification of research methods or study topics is outlined, followed by discussion of these methods or topics as well as representative studies. The statistical techniques introduced include the estimation of parameters and confidence intervals, probability distribution characterization, and several multivariate analysis methods. Importance sampling, a statistical technique used to accelerate Monte Carlo simulation, is also introduced. The discussion of simulated fault injection covers electrical-level, logic-level, and function-level fault injection methods as well as representative simulation environments such as FOCUS and DEPEND. The discussion of physical fault injection covers hardware, software, and radiation fault injection methods as well as several software and hybrid tools including FIAT, FERARI, HYBRID, and FINE. The discussion of measurement-based analysis covers measurement and data processing techniques, basic error characterization, dependency analysis, Markov reward modeling, software-dependability, and fault diagnosis. The discussion involves several important issues studies in the area, including fault models, fast simulation techniques, workload/failure dependency, correlated failures, and software fault tolerance

A Portfolio Balance Approach to Euro-Area Money Demand in a Time-Varying Environment

As part of its monetary policy strategy, the European Central Bank has formulated a reference value for M3 growth. A pre-requisite for the use of a reference value for M3 growth is the existence of a stable demand function for that aggregate. However, a large empirical literature has emerged showing that, beginning in 2001, essentially all euro area M3 demand functions have exhibited instability. This paper argues that a proper understanding of the determination of money requires a portfolio analysis where the demand for broad money is seen as just one element in the wealth portfolio. Under this framework, wealth is the variable that constitutes the total budget constraint on the holdings of assets, including money, and changes in equity prices are a key transmission channel of monetary policy. Understanding money behaviour thus requires good data on euro area wealth which at present do not exist. Our basic premise is that there is a stable demand-for-money function but that the models that have been used until now to estimate euro area money-demand are not well-specified because they do not include a measure of wealth. Using two empirical methodologies - - a co-integrated vector equilibrium correction (VEC) approach and a time-varying coefficient (TVC) approach - - we find that a demand-for-money function that includes wealth is stable. The upshot of our findings is that M3 behaviour continues to provide useful information about medium-term developments on inflation.Money demand; VEC, time varying coefficient estimation; Euro area

Post-conflict aid, real exchange rate adjustment, and catch-up growth

Post-conflict countries receive substantial aid flows after the start of peace. While post-conflict countries'capacity to absorb aid (that is, the quality of their policies and institutions) is built up only gradually after the onset of peace, the evidence suggests that aid tends to peak immediately after peace is attained and decline thereafter. Aid composition broadly reflects post-conflict priorities, with large parts of aid financing social expenditure and infrastructure investment. Aid has significant short-term effects on the real exchange rate (RER), as inferred from the behavior of RER in the world. While moderate RER overvaluation is observed in post-conflicts, it cannot be traced down to the aid flows. The empirical evidence on world growth reveals new findings about the pattern of catch-up growth during post-conflicts and the role of key growth determinants on post-conflict growth. Aid is an important determinant of growth, both generally and more strongly during post-conflict periods. Because RER misalignment reduces growth, RER overvaluation during post-conflicts reduces catch-up growth. Aid and RER overvaluation combined also lower growth. But the negative growth effect of RER overvaluation declines with financial development.Social Conflict and Violence,Economic Theory&Research,Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,Post Conflict Reintegration,Achieving Shared Growth

Complementarity Among Vertical Integration Decisions: Evidence from Automobile Product Development

This paper examines complementarity among vertical integration decisions in automobile product development. Though most research assumes that contracting choices are independent of each other, contracting complementarity arises when the returns to a single vertical integration decision are increasing in the level of vertical integration associated with other contracting choices. First, effective coordination may depend on the level of (non-contractible) effort on the part of each agent; contracting complementarity results if coordination efforts are interdependent and vertical integration facilitates a higher level of non-contractible effort. Second, effective coordination may require the disclosure of proprietary trade secrets, and the potential for expropriation by external suppliers may induce complementarity among vertical integration choices. We provide evidence for complementarity in product development contracting by taking advantage of a detailed dataset that includes the level of vertical integration and the contracting environment for individual automobile systems in the luxury automobile segment. Using an instrumental variables framework that distinguishes complementarity from unobserved firm-level factors, the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that contracting complementarity is an important driver of vertical integration choices. The findings suggest that contracting complementarity may be particularly important when coordination is important to achieve but difficult to monitor.

The reciprocal relationship between systemic risk and real economic activity

The contribution of this paper to the literature is three-fold: (1) it empirically uncovers the directionality and persistence of systemic risk surrounding "the great recession"; (2) it quantifies the reaction of the macro-economy to financial (banking) system shocks; and (3) it unearths feedback effects from the macro-economy to the (in)stability of a banking system. These contributions are attained by looking at the extremal dependence structure among banks, by presenting a multivariate framework for identifying and modeling their joint-tail distributions, and by constructing an aggregate system-wide distress index, a risk-stability index, which quantifies the systemic risk of a bank.Persistence, distress, contagion, panel VAR

Recent Developments in Cointegration

It is well known that inference on the cointegrating relations in a vector autoregression (CVAR) is difficult in the presence of a near unit root. The test for a given cointegration vector can have rejection probabilities under the null, which vary from the nominal size to more than 90%. This paper formulates a CVAR model allowing for multiple near unit roots and analyses the asymptotic properties of the Gaussian maximum likelihood estimator. Then two critical value adjustments suggested by McCloskey (2017) for the test on the cointegrating relations are implemented for the model with a single near unit root, and it is found by simulation that they eliminate the serious size distortions, with a reasonable power for moderate values of the near unit root parameter. The findings are illustrated with an analysis of a number of different bivariate DGPs

Are North-South Technological Spillovers Substantial? : A Dynamic Panel Data Model Estimation

This paper argues that actual technological spillovers are not substantial in developing countries because of the absence of an absorptive capacity. We carry out a panel data analysis in an attempt to gain insight into the specific aspects that enable economies to benefit from the backlog of existing knowledge. Our findings indicate that low productivity effects of human capital coupled with weak or virtually inexistent systems of innovation are at the root of the observed ambiguity with regard to the spillovers gains that are expected to play a significant role in sparking growth.absorptive capacity, spillovers, developing countries, systems of innovation

Is the Endangered Species Act Endangering Species?

We develop theory and present a suite of theoretically consistent empirical measures to explore the extent to which market intervention inadvertently alters resource allocation in a sequentialmove principal/agent game. We showcase our approach empirically by exploring the extent to which the U.S. Endangered Species Act has altered land development patterns. We report evidence indicating significant acceleration of development directly after each of several events deemed likely to raise fears among owners of habitat land. Our preferred estimate suggests an overall acceleration of land development by roughly one year. We also find from complementary hedonic regression models that habitat parcels declined in value when the habitat map was published, which is consistent with our estimates of the degree of preemption. These results have clear implications for policymakers, who continue to discuss alternative regulatory frameworks for species preservation. More generally, our modeling strategies can be widely applied -- from any particular economic environment that has a sequential-move nature to the narrower case of the political economy of regulation.

Effects of fiscal policy and institutions on the economic growth of Asian economies: Evidence from dynamic panel data analysis

This paper investigates the effects of fiscal policy and institutions on the economic growth of Asian economies through the application of the GMM-SYS approach to dynamic panel estimator as a preference analysis. It examines two different channels through which fiscal policy can affect long-run economic growth in Asia. The first channel is when aggregate government expenditure, aggregate of other fiscal variables, and institution affect the real per capita GDP, and the second channel is to determine the role of institutions on the real per capita GDP. The dynamic panel data result, especially GMM-SYS, established a longrun relationship between fiscal policy, institution, and economic growth. We found positive and statistically significant impact of aggregate of government expenditure and aggregate of other fiscal variables and institution on real per capita GDP. Furthermore, we found that there is a role of institutions on the real per capita GDP