Newsletter / House of Finance, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt 4/10

Credit Rating Announcements – The Impact of the Agency’s Reason, Public Information, and M&A ; Toward a New European Financial Architecture in the Rating Sector – an Economic Analysis and Legal Solutions ; Where Finance Meets Macro ; Clear Enforcement rules for the Stability and Growth Pac

Endogenous market structures and labour market dynamics

We propose a flexible prices model where endogenous market structures and search and matching frictions in the labour market interact endogenously. The interplay between firms’ endogenous entry, strategic interactions among producers and labour market frictions represents a strong amplification channel for technology shocks on labour market variables and helps in addressing the unemployment- volatility puzzle. Consistently with US evidence, new firms create a large fraction of new jobs and grow faster than more mature firms, net entry of firms is procyclical and the price mark-up is countercyclical.endogenous market structures; firms’ entry; search and matching; friction

Changing Commercial Policy in Japan During 1985-2010

In this paper we examine the changing nature of Japan's commercial policy over the last 25 years while reviewing Japan's changing structure of trade, FDI and economy that underlay policy changes. We argue that until the late 1990s Japan adopted a two-track approach of relying on multilateral liberalization under the GATT/WTO and open regionalism under Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) on the one hand and on the bilateral trade relationship with the US on the other. Although the Japan-US bilateralism sometimes resulted in "managed trade" and encountered negative perceptions of the US approach in Japan, overall, it had a positive impact on the Japanese economy in opening domestic markets through various reforms and deregulation measures. Japan's more recent commercial policy focuses on bilateral and plurilateral economic partnership agreements particularly with-but not limited to-East Asian economies. We argue that agricultural sector liberalization is key to the further integration of Japan with the Asian and global economies.japan commercial policy; economy; trade; gatt; wto; fta

A new comparative approach to macroeconomic modeling and policy analysis

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the state of macroeconomic modeling and the use of macroeconomic models in policy analysis has come under heavy criticism. Macroeconomists in academia and policy institutions have been blamed for relying too much on a particular class of macroeconomic models. This paper proposes a comparative approach to macroeconomic policy analysis that is open to competing modeling paradigms. Macroeconomic model comparison projects have helped produce some very influential insights such as the Taylor rule. However, they have been infrequent and costly, because they require the input of many teams of researchers and multiple meetings to obtain a limited set of comparative findings. This paper provides a new approach that enables individual researchers to conduct model comparisons easily, frequently, at low cost and on a large scale. Using this approach a model archive is built that includes many well-known empirically estimated models that may be used for quantitative analysis of monetary and fiscal stabilization policies. A computational platform is created that allows straightforward comparisons of models’ implications. Its application is illustrated by comparing different monetary and fiscal policies across selected models. Researchers can easily include new models in the data base and compare the effects of novel extensions to established benchmarks thereby fostering a comparative instead of insular approach to model development

Employment, exchange rates and labour market rigidity

There is increasing evidence that the interaction between shocks and labour market institutions is crucial to understanding the dynamics of employment. In this paper, we show that the inclusion of labour adjustment costs in a trade model affects the impact of exchange rate movements on employment. We also explore how labour market rigidities interact with the degree of exposure to international competition and with the technology level. Our model-based predictions are consistent with estimates obtained using panel data for 23 OECD countries. Namely, our estimates suggest that employment in low-technology sectors that have a very high degree of openness to trade and are located in countries with more flexible labour markets are more sensitive to exchange rate changes. Our model and estimates therefore provide additional evidence on the importance of interacting external shocks and labour market institutions.exchange rates, international trade, job ?ows, employment protection.

Imperfect exchange rate pass-through : the role of distribution services and variable demand elasticity

This paper examines which mechanisms are likely to dampen the price pressures in the wake of exchange rate movements. In addition to nominal frictions frequently used in sticky-price models, it jointly introduces two features that have hitherto been considered separately in the existing literature, i.e. a variable demand elasticity à la Kimball (1995) and distribution services in the form of non-traded goods as in Corsetti and Dedola (2005). The paper explores the respective role of each feature and assesses the quantitative importance of these theoretical explanations for the exchange rate pass-through to a broad range of prices as well as for the real exchange rate and for the trade balance. Segmentation of national markets through distribution services and imperfect competition with variable mark-ups are important for accounting for the observed stability of import prices "at the border". Hence, these mechanisms help to explain the observed stability of import prices in local currency with realistic durations of price contracts.exchange rate pass-through, general equilibrium