6,701 research outputs found

    The impact of labour market dynamics on the return-migration of immigrants

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    Using administrative panel data on the entire population of new labour immigrants to The Netherlands, we estimate the effects of individual labour market spells on immigration durations using the “timing-of-events” method. The model allows for correlated unobserved heterogeneity across migration, unemployment and employment processes. We find that unemployment spells increase return probabilities for all immigrant groups, while re-employment spells typically delay returns

    Rational Asset Prices

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    The mean, co-variability, and predictability of the return of different classes of financial assets challenge the rational economic model for an explanation. The unconditional mean aggregate equity premium is almost seven percent per year and remains high after adjusting downwards the sample mean premium by introducing prior beliefs about the stationarity of the price-dividend ratio and the (non) forecastability of the long-term dividend growth and price-dividend ratio. Recognition that idiosyncratic income shocks are uninsurable and concentrated in recessions contributes toward an explanation. Also borrowing constraints over the investors' life cycle that shift the stock market risk to the saving middle-aged consumers contribute toward an explanation.

    Financial constraints and capacity adjustment in the United Kingdom: Evidence from a large panel of survey data

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    The interrelationship between financial constraints and firm activity is a hotly debated issue. The way firms cope with financial constraints is fundamental to the analysis of monetary transmission, of financial stability and of growth and development. The CBI Industrial Trends Survey contains detailed information on the financial constraints faced by a large sample of UK manufacturers. This paper uses the quarterly CBI Industrial Trends Survey firm level data between January 1989 and October 1999. The cleaned sample contains 49,244 quarterly observations on 5,196 firms. As more than 63% of the observations refer to firms with less than 200 employees, the data set is especially well suited for comparing large and small companies. The data set is presented and a new method of checking the informational content of the data is developed. Whereas the relationship between investment activity and financial constraints is theoretically ambivalent due to simultaneity, the link between financial constraints on the one hand and the prevalence and duration of capacity gaps on the other should be unambiguously positive. Looking at the relationship between both types of constraints, two important results emerge. First, there is shown to be informational content in the survey data on financial constraints. Specifically, financially constrained firms take longer to close capacity gaps. This indicates that financial constraints do indeed play a part in the investment process. Second, small firms close their capacity gaps faster than large firms do, but financial constraints seem to be of higher relevance to their adjustment dynamics. --Financial constraints,investment,capacity adjustment,small firm finance,duration analysis

    Optimal Interest Rate Rules, Asset Prices and Credit Frictions

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    We study optimal monetary policy in two prototype economies with sticky prices and credit market frictions. In the first economy, credit frictions apply to the financing of the capital stock, generate acceleration in response to shocks and the "financial markup" (i.e., the premium on external funds) is countercyclical and negatively correlated with the asset price. In the second economy, credit frictions apply to the flow of investment, generate persistence, and the financial markup is procyclical and positively correlated with the asset price. We model monetary policy in terms of welfare-maximizing interest rate rules. The main finding of our analysis is that strict inflation stabilization is a robust optimal monetary policy prescription. The intuition is that, in both models, credit frictions work in the direction of dampening the cyclical behavior of inflation relative to its credit-frictionless level. Thus neither economy, despite yielding different inflation and investment dynamics, generates a trade-off between price and financial markup stabilization. A corollary of this result is that reacting to asset prices does not bear any independent welfare role in the conduct of monetary policy

    Community-based risk management arrangements : an overview and implications for social fund programs

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    Risk and its consequences pose a formidable threat to poverty reduction efforts. This study reviews a plethora of community-based risk management arrangements across the developing world. These types of arrangements are garnering greater interest in light of the growing recognition of the relative prominence of household or individual-specific idiosyncratic risk as well as the increasing shift towards community-based development funding. The study discusses potential advantages (such as targeting, cost, and informational) and disadvantages (such as exclusion and inability to manage correlated risk) of these arrangements, and their implications for the design of innovative social fund programs.Rural Poverty Reduction,Labor Policies,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Currencies and Exchange Rates,Debt Markets

    Pending issues in protection, productivity growth, and poverty reduction

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    This paper selectively synthesizes much of the research on Latin American and Caribbean labor markets in recent years. Several themes emerge that are particularly relevant to ongoing policy dialogues. First, labor legislation matters, but markets may be less segmented than previously thought. The impetus to voluntary informality, which appears to be a substantial fraction of the sector, implies that the design of social safety nets and labor legislation needs to take a more integrated view of the labor market, taking into account the cost-benefit analysis workers and firms make about whether to interact with formal institutions. Second, the impact of labor market institutions on productivity growth has probably been underemphasized. Draconian firing restrictions increase litigation and uncertainty surrounding worker separations, reduce turnover and job creation, and poorly protect workers. But theory and anecdotal evidence also suggest that they, and other related state or union induced rigidities, may have an even greater disincentive effect on technological adoption, which accounts for half of economic growth. Finally, institutions can affect poverty and equity, although the effects seem generally small and channels are not always clear. Overall, the present constellation of labor regulations serves workers and firms poorly and both could benefit from substantial reform.Labor Markets,Labor Standards,Economic Theory&Research,Work&Working Conditions,Labor Management and Relations

    Systemic risk: A survey

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    This paper develops a broad concept of systemic risk, the basic economic concept for the understanding of financial crises. It is claimed that any such concept must integrate systemic events in banking and financial markets as well as in the related payment and settlement systems. At the heart of systemic risk are contagion effects, various forms of external effects. The concept also includes simultaneous financial instabilities following aggregate shocks. The quantitative literature on systemic risk, which was evolving swiftly in the last couple of years, is surveyed in the light of this concept. Various rigorous models of bank and payment system contagion have now been developed, although a general theoretical paradigm is still missing. Direct econometric tests of bank contagion effects seem to be mainly limited to the United States. Empirical studies of systemic risk in foreign exchange and security settlement systems appear to be non-existent. Moreover, the literature surveyed reflects the general difficulty to develop empirical tests that can make a clear distinction between contagion in the proper sense and joint crises caused by common shocks, rational revisions of depositor or investor expectations when information is asymmetric ('information-based' contagion) and 'pure' contagion as well as between 'efficient' and 'inefficient' systemic events. JEL Classification: G21, G29, G12, E49banking crises, Contagion, currency crises, financial markets, financial stability, payment and settlement systems, systemic risk

    Inflation, Investment Composition and Total Factor Productivity

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    This paper employs a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with a financial market friction to rationalize the empirically observed negative relationship between inflation and total factor productivity (TFP). Specifically, an empirical analysis of US macroeconomic time series establishes that there is a negative causal effect of inflation on aggregate productivity. Rather than taking the productivity process as exogenous, the model is therefore set up to feature an endogenous component of TFP. This is achieved by allowing physical investment to be channelled into two distinct technologies: a safe, but return-dominated technology and a superior technology which is subject to idiosyncratic liquidity risk. An agency problem prevents complete insurance against liquidity risk, and the scope for insurance is endogenously determined via the relevant liquidity premium. Since the liquidity premium is positively related to the rate of inflation, the model demonstrates how nominal fluctuations have an influence not only on the overall amount, but also on the qualitative composition of aggregate investment and hence on TFP. The quantitative relevance of the underlying transmission mechanism which links nominal fluctuations to TFP via corporate liquidity holdings and the composition of aggregate investment is corroborated by means of the quantitative analysis of the calibrated model economy as well as a detailed analysis of industry-level and firm-level panel data. Notably, the empirical findings are consistent with both the properties of the agency problem postulated in the theoretical model and its implications for corporate liquidity holdings and physical investment portfolios.

    Desperate Housewives? Communication Difficulties and the Dynamics of Marital (un)Happiness

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    This paper develops a model of marital dissolution based on communication difficulties. The quality of a marriage depends on the proximity of an action to a target. The target is unknown, and must be learned over time. Each individual receives private signals about the target, and can communicate them only imperfectly to his or her spouse. Because of imperfect communication, spouses may hold different beliefs about the optimal action. The action actually chosen is a compromise of the spouses’ distinct beliefs. If a couple’s beliefs diverge too widely, one or both of them may prefer to dissolve the marriage. The paper explores how poor communication contributes to marital unhappiness, as well as its implications for the dynamics of divorce risk, the welfare properties of divorce decisions, and the role of counseling. When the distribution of decision-making power in the household favors men, wives (but not husbands) can find themselves trapped for prolonged periods in a marriage that leaves them as unhappy as it is possible to be without seeking relief through divorce.marriage, divorce, communication difficulties, learning
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