The Effect of Macroeconomic Fundamentals in Financial Liberalization to the Stability of Indonesia's Exchange Rate

Paper ini mengkaji hubungan antara nilai tukar dengan fundamental makroeko¬nomi Indonesia dari tahun 1997 sampai 2004. Kajian ini menerangkan faktor-faktor yang mempengaruhi nilai tukar rupiah terhadap US dollar, baik dalam jangka pendek maupun jangka panjang dengan menggunakan teori kointegrasi. Untuk melihat kestabilan nilai tukar rupiah sebelum dan sesudah krisis ekonomi digunakan Uji Chow. Objektif lain dari kajian ini adalah ingin membuktikan apakah terjadi lonjakan yang tajam (overshoot) terhadap rupiah ketika krisis berlangsung. Hasil kajian menunjukkan bahwa rupiah memang melonjak tajam akibat adanya peningkatan penawaran uang dan inflasi. Hasil juga menunjukkan ter¬jadi hubungan kointegrasi antara nilai tukar dan fundamental makroekonomi serta terjadi Perubahan struktural setelah tahun 1998

Labor Market Institutions: Curse or Blessing?

Previous literature has identified considerable non-pecuniary costs to macroeconomic fluctuation and uncertainty. The present paper investigates whether and to what extent labor market institutions can mitigate those costs. We study how life satisfaction of European citizens is affected by employment protection and the level and duration of unemployment benefit payments. We differentiate between direct effects (at given macroeconomic conditions) and total effects (including the feedback through the institutions? effect on macroeconomic outcomes). We find that the total effect of employment protection is positive, whereas the total effect of benefit duration is negative. The direct and indirect effects of a higher benefit level nearly neutralize each other.unemployment benefit; employment protection; macroeconomic uncertainty; cost-benefit analysis; life satisfaction; happiness

Institutional Causes, Macroeconomic Symptoms: Volatility, Crises and Growth

Countries that have pursued distortionary macroeconomic policies, including high inflation, large budget deficits and misaligned exchange rates, appear to have suffered more macroeconomic volatility and also grown more slowly during the postwar period. Does this reflect the causal effect of these macroeconomic policies on economic outcomes? One reason to suspect that the answer may be no is that countries pursuing poor macroeconomic policies also have weak 'institutions,' including political institutions that do not constrain politicians and political elites, ineffective enforcement of property rights for investors, widespread corruption, and a high degree of political instability. This paper documents that countries that inherited more 'extractive' instit utions from their colonial past were more likely to experience high volatility a nd economic crises during the postwar period. More specifically, societies where European colonists faced high mortality rates more than 100 years ago are much more volatile and prone to crises. Based on our previous work, we interpret this relationship as due to the causal effect of institutions on economic outcomes: Europeans did not settle and were more likely to set up extractive institutions in areas where they faced high mortality. Once we control for the effect of institutions, macroeconomic policies appear to have only a minor impact on volatility and crises. This suggests that distortionary macroeconomic policies are more likely to be symptoms of underlying institutional problems rather than the main causes of economic volatility, and also that the effects of institutional differences on volatility do not appear to be primarily mediated by any of the standard macroeconomic variables. Instead, it appears that weak institutions cause volatility through a number of microeconomic, as well as macroeconomic, channels.

Does Macroeconomic Indicators exert shock on the Nigerian Capital Market?

This study examines the long-run and short-run effect of macroeconomic variables on the Nigerian capital market between 1984 and 2007. The properties of the time series variables are examined using the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test and most of the variables have a unit root at level. The Augmented Engle-Granger Cointegration test revealed that macroeconomic variables exert significant long-run effect on stock market performance in Nigeria. Also, the employed Error Correction Model (ECM) showed that macroeconomic variables exert significant short-term shock on stock prices as a result of the stochastic error term mechanisms. However, the empirical analysis showed that the NSE all share index is more responsive to changes in exchange rate, inflation rate, money supply and real output. While, all the incorporated variables which serve as proxies for external shock and other macroeconomic indicators have simultaneous significant impact on the Nigerian capital market both in the short and long-run.Economic Shock; Macroeconomic Variables; Capital Market; Unit root and Cointegration.

Growing Up in a Recession: Beliefs and the Macroeconomy

Do generations growing up during recessions have different socio-economic beliefs than generations growing up in good times? We study the relationship between recessions and beliefs by matching macroeconomic shocks during early adulthood with self-reported answers from the General Social Survey. Using time and regional variations in macroeconomic conditions to identify the effect of recessions on beliefs, we show that individuals growing up during recessions tend to believe that success in life depends more on luck than on effort, support more government redistribution, but are less confident in public institutions. Moreover, we find that recessions have a long-lasting effect on individuals' beliefs.beliefs formation, macroeconomic shocks

Macroeconomic News, Announcements, and Stock Market Jump Intensity Dynamics

This paper examines the effect of macroeconomic releases on stock market volatility through a Poisson-Gaussian-GARCH process with time varying jump intensity, which is allowed to respond to such information. It is found that the day of the announcement, per se, has little impact on jump intensities. Employment releases are an exception. However, when macroeconomic surprises are considered, inflation shocks show persistent effects while monetary policy and employment shocks show only short-lived effects. Also, the jump intensity responds asymmetrically to macroeconomic shocks. Evidence that macroeconomic variables are relevant to explain jump dynamics and improve volatility forecasts on event days is provided.Conditional jump intensity, conditional volatility, macroeconomic announcements.

Impact of World Bank lending in an adjustment-led growth model

Within a financial- and growth-programming framework, this paper develops a policy-driven growth model and addresses the effects of World Bank lending on economic growth in a sample of 30 countries, after having controlled for the effects of key macroeconomic variables. Both static and dynamic panel estimates suggest a positive significant effect of the rate of growth in World Bank lending on economic growth, conditional on other variables, namely changes in exchange rate, domestic credit growth, and inflation. Empirical evidence also reveals the positive effect of a macroeconomic policy index in this sample of developing countries

Ambitious entrepreneurship, high-growth firms and macroeconomic growth

We examine the impact of ambitious entrepreneurship (entrepreneurs expecting to grow their firm) and high-growth firms (firms that have actually realized high growth rates) on subsequent macroeconomic growth in a sample of high and low-income countries, in the period 2002-2005. Our empirical evidence shows that once we control for the share of ambitious entrepreneurs the overall positive effect of entrepreneurship on macroeconomic growth disappears. Growthoriented entrepreneurship seems to contribute heavily to macroeconomic growth in both low- and high-income countries. In low-income countries, the overall positive effect of entrepreneurship on macroeconomic growth does not disappear after introducing the share of ambitious entrepreneurs into the statistical model. In contrast to ambitious entrepreneurship in nascent and young businesses, established high-growth firms do not seem to contribute to macroeconomic growth.These established high-growth firms seem to flourish in countries with high levels of entrepreneurship in general, while there appears to be no connection between the rate of high-growth firms and the share of ambitious entrepreneurs. �

Resource Price Turbulence and Macroeconomic Adjustment for a Resource Exporter: a conceptual framework for policy analysis

Increased global demand for energy and other resources, particularly from the rapidly developing economies of China and India and the opening up of global resource markets to global investors and speculative activity, has resulted in considerable recent turbulence in resource prices. The recent magnitude of change in resource prices, both positive and negative, and their macroeconomic implications is of considerable contemporary importance to both resource importing and exporting economies. For a resource exporting economy, such as that of Australia, the recent resource price boom has resulted in: increased government taxation revenue, increased employment and wages in the resource and resource related sectors, increased spending in the domestic economy that contributed to buoyant economic growth, increased resource exports to the booming economies of China and India and contributed to a stronger domestic currency with beneficial effects upon inflation. On the other hand these developments have had adverse effects on the non resource sector by: subjecting it to more intense competition for limited resources, contributing to a loss of international competitiveness and reduced exports arising from a stronger exchange rate, reducing employment in the relatively more labour intensive non resource sector, and contributing to an eventual slow down in the overall economy. These positive and negative effects, and the overall impact of a resource price boom, require a fundamentally closer analysis of the structure of the economy under scrutiny. In this context the policy response by government is likely to be pivotal in determining the overall macroeconomic outcomes from a resource price boom. The aim of this paper is to develop a generic analytical framework to appraise economic outcomes in the wake of a resource price boom for a resource producing and exporting economy. To this end a dynamic long run macroeconomic model is developed, emphasising the important role and contribution of government fiscal policy in influencing subsequent macroeconomic outcomes. The adjustment process in the model arising from a resource price shock emphasises a spending (or wealth) effect, an income effect, a revenue effect, a current account effect and an exchange rate effect, which facilitate a robust analysis of subsequent macroeconomic outcomes from such a shock as well as related policy responses.Resource price shock, dynamic macroeconomic model, simulation analysis, macroeconomic adjustment, policy analysis

How Remittances Contribute to Poverty Reduction: a Stabilizing Effect

We argue in this paper that migrants remittances contribute significantly to poverty reduction in developing countries and that their effect is all the more important that they are sent to countries which are more vulnerable. Since migrants remittances represent an important source of income for households living in home countries, these flows may have an effect on poverty in developing countries. Several microeconomic studies have shown that remittances often play an insurance role for migrants' families, but no analysis studied the stabilizing role played by remittances at the macroeconomic level. This specificity could be all the more determinant for developing countries that they are characterised by macroeconomic instability, especially trade instability based on their dependency on basic products. While the negative effect of instability on development is largely recognized, to our knowledge, instability has not been taken into account at the macroeconomic level in the debate on the role played by remittances in development of home countries. Using a panel sample of 65 developing countries over the period 1980-2005, we first find that remittances have a significant and positive effect on poverty reduction in countries of origin. Furthermore, the effect of macroeconomic instability, and more precisely of trade instability and of climatic instability on poverty in home countries, is all the more attenuated that remittances are important. This result about the stabilizing role of remittances in developing countries confirms the microeconomic theory according to which remittances can play an insurance role for migrants' families.