Government spending shocks and the multiplier: New evidence from the U.S. based on natural disasters

The literature on estimating macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy requires suitable instruments to identify exogenous and unanticipated spending shocks. So far, the instrument of choice has been military build-ups. This instrument, however, largely limits the analysis to the US as few other countries have been involved in mainly extraterritorial conflicts. Moreover, the expenditure associated with military build-ups affects primarily the defense sector so that the resulting multiplier does not necessarily approximate the effects of changes to general government spending. We propose an alternative instrument: government relief expenditure in the wake of natural disasters which is more similar in its scope to general government spending. We construct a rich data set of natural disasters and the corresponding government responses at the US state level. We apply this methodology both at the state as well as national levels and show that natural disasters serve as a powerful instrument for identifying government spending shocks. Furthermore, we show that the multiplier pertaining to non-defense government spending is higher than the defense-spending multiplier estimated in the literature using military build-ups

A New Socio-Economy in Africa? Thintegration and the Mobile Phone Revolution

Much has been written about the impacts of information and communication technology (ICT) in Africa and its transformational socio-economic potential. The penetration of mobile phones in particular has been particularly marked in recent years. This paper seeks to interrogate the hypothesis of transformation by examining the ways in which Africa is integrated into global mobile phone value chain, and the uses to which this technology is put on the continent. While mobiles are having significant, and sometimes welfare enhancing impacts, their use is also embedded in existing relations of social support, resource extraction and conflict. Consequently their impacts are dialectical, facilitating change but also reinforcing existing power relations. As Africa is still primarily a user, rather than a producer or creator of ICT, this represents a form of thin integration (“thintegration”) into the global economy, which does not fundamentally alter the continent’s dependent position.

Use, misuse and proper use of national accounts statistics

In this paper, the relevance of national accounts statistics and their underlying conceptual framework is investigated for their four roles: description and object of analysis, tool for analysis and forecasting, tool for communication and decision-making and input for alternative accounts budgetary rules and estimates. For each role, the merits and limitations of national accounts statistics are described and discussed. Proper use should be stimulated by improving education and marketing and by supplementing national accounts with information about their meaning and reliability.National accounts; relevance and reliability; forecasting; economic and fiscal policy

The Global Risks Report 2016, 11th Edition

Now in its 11th edition, The Global Risks Report 2016 draws attention to ways that global risks could evolve and interact in the next decade. The year 2016 marks a forceful departure from past findings, as the risks about which the Report has been warning over the past decade are starting to manifest themselves in new, sometimes unexpected ways and harm people, institutions and economies. Warming climate is likely to raise this year's temperature to 1° Celsius above the pre-industrial era, 60 million people, equivalent to the world's 24th largest country and largest number in recent history, are forcibly displaced, and crimes in cyberspace cost the global economy an estimated US$445 billion, higher than many economies' national incomes. In this context, the Reportcalls for action to build resilience – the "resilience imperative" – and identifies practical examples of how it could be done.The Report also steps back and explores how emerging global risks and major trends, such as climate change, the rise of cyber dependence and income and wealth disparity are impacting already-strained societies by highlighting three clusters of risks as Risks in Focus. As resilience building is helped by the ability to analyse global risks from the perspective of specific stakeholders, the Report also analyses the significance of global risks to the business community at a regional and country-level

Different paths to the modern state in Europe: the interaction between domestic political economy and interstate competition

Theoretical work on state formation and capacity has focused mostly on early modern Europe and on the experience of western European states during this period. While a number of European states monopolized domestic tax collection and achieved gains in state capacity during the early modern era, for others revenues stagnated or even declined, and these variations motivated alternative hypotheses for determinants of fiscal and state capacity. In this study we test the basic hypotheses in the existing literature making use of the large date set we have compiled for all of the leading states across the continent. We find strong empirical support for two prevailing threads in the literature, arguing respectively that interstate wars and changes in economic structure towards an urbanized economy had positive fiscal impact. Regarding the main point of contention in the theoretical literature, whether it was representative or authoritarian political regimes that facilitated the gains in fiscal capacity, we do not find conclusive evidence that one performed better than the other. Instead, the empirical evidence we have gathered lends supports to the hypothesis that when under pressure of war, the fiscal performance of representative regimes was better in the more urbanized-commercial economies and the fiscal performance of authoritarian regimes was better in rural-agrarian economie

Perspectives on Global Concentration and Public Policy

This paper is an essay in political economy. It defines globalization and discusses its key role in economic development over the past two centuries as well as today. Globalization may have broadened markets, thereby affecting the nature of competition within those larger markets, or it may have simply introduced more trade or foreign direct investment to existing markets. One conclusion is that there is no global market for high value food, or for any particular high value food. To date the impacts of multinational firms in political forums at the state, regional or national as well as the global level have been in many instances as important as their impacts on economic markets. Issues and concerns discussed range from general observations on governance of the global economy to the impact of global concentration on specific problems in the agricultural and food markets of the United States. We conclude that the scope and extent of public policy is a direct function of the degree of development and globalization in an economy.International Development, International Relations/Trade, Political Economy,

Pricing Decisions and Competitive Conduct Across Manufacturing Sectors: Evidence from 19 European Union Manufacturing Industries

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019This paper investigates the pricing decisions across the manufacturing sectors of 19 EU countries over 1995–2014. The markup formulation of De Loecker and Warzynski (Am Econ Rev 102(6):2437–2471, 2012) is employed in order to estimate the price–cost margin of 10 2-digit NACE Rev.2 level manufacturing sectors and conclude whether the selling price of the final product exceeds the marginal cost of production. Subsequently, the pricing decisions of the constituent industries are tested with respect to (i) liquidity constraints, (ii) export orientation and (iii) the level of productivity when the factors of market regulation and industrial value are controlled for. A panel VAR framework is employed to take into account the presence of cross-section dependency and stationarity emerging in the panel sample. The findings suggest the presence of imperfect competitive conduct across every manufacturing industry through overpricing decisions. Moreover, higher markup ratios are charged by those sectors with access to credit, higher export orientation and higher levels of productivity.Peer reviewe

STRATEGIC APPROACHES WITH EFFECTS ON COMPETITIVENESS AND PROFITABILITY OF TEXTILE MARKET IN IRAQ

This article contains the results of the research aimed at understanding the effects of the market strategies the textile organizations follow to increase profitability, considering that this sector is a pillar of the national economy. In this respect, 7 hypotheses are stated and verified. This research is an attempt to know how to face competition in this industry.strategic management, competitive market strategy, offensive strategy, defensive strategy, rational strategy, competitiveness, profitability

Security After 9/11: Strategy Choices and Budget Tradeoffs

The White House issued a National Security Strategy document in 2002 that stated the nation's new foreign policy and national security policy goals. Are the choices it identifies the right choices, and how best should resources be allocated to reach those or alternative goals? This briefing book includes data and analysis of these topics by analysts from several research organizations, intended to help expand and deepen public debate on these issues