Credit chains and sectoral comovemen t: does the use of trade credit amplify sectoral shocks ?

This paper provides evidence of the presence and relevance of a credit-chain amplification mechanism by looking at its implications for the correlation of industries. In particular, it tests the hypothesis that an increase in the use of trade-credit along the input-output chain linking two industries results in an increase in their correlation. The analysis uses detailed data on the correlations and input-output relations of 378 manufacturing industry-pairs across 44 countries with different degrees of use of trade credit. The results provide strong support for this hypothesis and indicate that the mechanism is quantitatively relevant.Economic Theory&Research,Access to Finance,Bankruptcy and Resolution of Financial Distress,Investment and Investment Climate,

Liquidity needs and vulnerability to financial udnerdevelopment

The author provides evidence of a causal and economically important effect of financial development on volatility. In contrast to the existing literature, the identification strategy is based on the differences in sensitivities to financial conditions across industries. The results show that sectors with larger liquidity needs are more volatile and experience deeper crises in financially underdeveloped countries. At the macroeconomic level, the results suggest that changes in financial development can generate important differences in aggregate volatility. The author also finds that financially underdeveloped countries partially protect themselves from volatility by concentrating less output in sectors with large liquidity needs. Nevertheless, this insulation mechanism seems to be insufficient to reverse the effects of financial underdevelopment on within-sector volatility. Finally, the author provides new evidence that: 1) Financial development affects volatility mainly through the intensive margin (output per firm). 2) Both the quality of information generated by firms, and the development of financial intermediaries have independent effects on sectoral volatility. 3) The development of financial intermediaries is more important than the development of equity markets for the reduction of volatility.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Markets and Market Access,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,Markets and Market Access

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

Are external shocks responsible for the instability of output in low income countries?

External shocks, such as commodity price fluctuations, natural disasters, and the role of the international economy, are often blamed for the poor economic performance of low-income countries. The author quantifies the impact of these different external shocks using a panel vector autoregression (VAR) approach and compares their relative contributions to output volatility in low-income countries vis-à-vis internal factors. He finds that external shocks can only explain a small fraction of the output variance of a typical low-income country. Internal factors are the main source of fluctuations. From a quantitative perspective, the output effect of external shocks is typically small in absolute terms, but significant relative to the historic performance of these countries.Economic Theory&Research,Inequality,Macroeconomic Management,Achieving Shared Growth,Fiscal&Monetary Policy

When the rivers run dry : liquidity and the use of wholesale funds in the transmission of the U.S. subprime crisis

This paper provides systematic evidence of the role of banks'reliance on wholesale funding in the international transmission of the ongoing financial crisis. It conducts an event study to estimate the impact of the liquidity crunch of September 15, 2008, on the stock price returns of 662 individual banks across 44 countries, and tests whether differences in the abnormal returns observed around those events relate to these banks'ex-ante reliance on wholesale funding. Globally and within countries, banks that relied more heavily in non-deposit sources of funds experienced a significantly larger decline in stock returns even after controlling for other mechanisms. Within a country, the abnormal returns of banks with high wholesale dependence fell about 2 percent more than those of banks with low dependence during the three days following Lehman Brothers'bankruptcy. This large differential return suggests that liquidity played an important role in the transmission of the crisis.Banks&Banking Reform,Debt Markets,Access to Finance,Financial Intermediation,Emerging Markets

Evaluating two soil carbon models within the global land surface model JSBACH using surface and spaceborne observations of atmospheric CO₂

The trajectories of soil carbon (C) in the changing climate are of utmost importance, as soil carbon is a substantial carbon storage with a large potential to impact the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) burden. Atmospheric CO2 observations integrate all processes affecting C exchange between the surface and the atmosphere. Therefore they provide a benchmark for carbon cycle models. We evaluated two distinct soil carbon models (CBALANCE and YASSO) that were implemented to a global land surface model (JSBACH) against atmospheric CO2 observations. We transported the biospheric carbon fluxes obtained by JSBACH using the atmospheric transport model TM5 to obtain atmospheric CO2. We then compared these results with surface observations from Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) stations as well as with column XCO2 retrievals from the GOSAT satellite. The seasonal cycles of atmospheric CO2 estimated by the two different soil models differed. The estimates from the CBALANCE soil model were more in line with the surface observations at low latitudes (0 N–45 N) with only 1 % bias in the seasonal cycle amplitude (SCA), whereas YASSO was underestimating the SCA in this region by 32 %. YASSO gave more realistic seasonal cycle amplitudes of CO2 at northern boreal sites (north of 45 N) with underestimation of 15 % compared to 30 % overestimation by CBALANCE. Generally, the estimates from CBALANCE were more successful in capturing the seasonal patterns and seasonal cycle amplitudes of atmospheric CO2 even though it overestimated soil carbon stocks by 225 % (compared to underestimation of 36 % by YASSO) and its predictions of the global distribution of soil carbon stocks was unrealistic. The reasons for these differences in the results are related to the different environmental drivers and their functional dependencies of these two soil carbon models. In the tropical region the YASSO model showed earlier increase in season of the heterotophic respiration since it is driven by precipitation instead of soil moisture as CBALANCE. In the temperate and boreal region the role of temperature is more dominant. There the heterotophic respiration from the YASSO model had larger annual variability, driven by air temperature, compared to the CBALANCE which is driven by soil temperature. The results underline the importance of using sub-yearly data in the development of soil carbon models when they are used in shorter than annual time scales

Performe Emotionalität!« Emotion und/als (geschlechtsspezifische) Arbeit in Inscourcing des Zuhause. Menschen in Scheiss-Hotels (2001) und SEX nach Mae West (2002) von René Pollesch

Als ein Exempel zeitgenössischer Auseinandersetzung mit Emotionen auf der Bühne wird in diesem Artikel der Autor-Regisseur René Pollesch herangezogen werden, der ausgesprochen energetische Theaterproduktionen realisiert (hat), wie nicht nur der Schrei (überwiegend) in seinen frühen Inszenierungen, die rhythmisch-melodische Ausrichtung schnell geäußerter Textfluten oder etwa das komische Potential und der Unterhaltungscharakter der Stücke verdeutlichen. Pollesch erinnert bei seiner praktischen Annäherung an das Thema der Emotionen an Bertolt Brechts Episches Theater sowie dessen Diktum der Rücknahme gefühlsmäßiger Darstellung zum Zweck der Tilgung illusionistischer Verklärung. Mit diesem Vorgehen versucht Pollesch auch, einer universalistischen »Repräsentationsfalle« zu entkommen, in der er eines seiner großen Feindbilder, das Hollywood-Kino, sieht. Die dort präsentierten Liebesgeschichten oder »Schnulzen« werden bei Pollesch auf deren geschlechtsspezifische Verabredungen hin geprüft, da sie meist Heterosexualität normalisieren, Sexismen oder auch rassistische Konnotationen (re)produzieren. Bei Pollesch lässt sich dagegen beobachten, wie diese Heteronormativität als eigentliches soziales Problem (auch im Rahmen theatraler Darstellungsweisen) exponiert und diskursiv verhandelt wird