Stabilization programs and policy credibility: Peru in the 1990s

This paper uses a rational expectations macroeconomic model in which economic agents formulate the probability about the sustainability of the economic policy—that is, policy credibility—using current and lagged values of government expenditures and lagged values of the inflation rate. The estimation of the model is based on Hamilton’s switching regime procedure. The contribution of this paper is the empirical estimation of the credibility of the stabilization program implemented in Peru in August 1990. The results of the estimation show that there are two different regimes in the government expenditure process. According to the economic agents’ inferences, the stabilization program in Peru is not credible. This lack of credibility in the economic policy of the government authority explains the presence of hysteresis in currency substitution between August 1990 and June 1995. The estimation involves an expected inflation rate that includes the credibility of the economic policy in its formulation.

Development of strategic options for Italian wine cooperatives through a new membership integration pattern

Italian agro-food cooperatives are involved in mergers, acquisition and alliances processes, that require a renovating model of membership management. Wine cooperatives are particularly dynamic in this context. The aim of the research is to identify new integration patterns between the cooperative and its members, starting from the analysis of the members’ structural and strategic choices. The research has been conducted in a wine cooperative of Veneto Region. Five elements of differentiation have been discussed and moving from five clusters of members, a linear regression model has been applied. The actual mechanism of patronage return does not comprehend the complexity of membership, but it confirms the hypothesis that the cooperative should follow differerentiated integration strategies for the diverse typologies of members. The large structural, strategic, social-demographic and cultural heterogeneity of the members (especially in the big cooperatives) suggests to foresee different patterns in term of development projects, in order to propose diverse solutions for new investment initiatives and the quality improvement of deliveries, ensuring a more widespread satisfaction of stakeholders’ expectations.Wine Cooperative, Cooperative Nexus, Patronage Return, Membership Integration, Agricultural and Food Policy,

Can capital-skill complementarity explain the rising skill premium in developing countries? evidence from Peru

The factors behind the increase in the relative wages of skilled workers in developing countries are still not well understood. The authors use data from Peru to analyze the determinants of within-industry share of skilled workers. They use a translog cost function for gross output and are therefore able to incorporate the effects of materials, both domestic and imported, in addition to capital. The authors find that capital accumulation can explain a large fraction of the increase in the wage bill share and relative wages of skilled labor. This finding is contrary to the commonly held view that unobservable technological change is responsible for the rising skill premium in both developing and developed economies. A test for separability indicates that a gross output cost function is the appropriate one to use, and therefore share equations based on value-added cost functions could be misspecified.

The effect of immigration on output mix, capital, and productivity

The growing influx of immigrants into the United States has prompted concerns about potential negative effects on native workers, especially the less skilled. Such concerns have not been borne out by many studies of the effect of immigration on wages. However, the typical theoretical negative effect of immigration flows on wages may be offset by changes in other aspects of the economy, including output mix, productivity, and capital. ; This article examines the relationship between immigration and three factors-output mix, labor productivity, and capital-in the skilled and unskilled sectors in the U.S. manufacturing sector at the state level. The authors develop a simple two-sector model of the effect of immigration on these three factors. The authors then test the model's predictions using data from the 1982 and 1992 Census of Manufactures and other sources. ; The results indicate that immigration-induced changes in labor supply caused labor productivity in both the low- and high-skilled sectors to increase more slowly in states that attracted a larger share of immigrants during the 1980s than in other states. This slower growth may result from the gradual assimilation process many immigrants undergo as they acquire language skills and familiarity with U.S. institutions, the authors believe, and they call for further study of immigration's longer-term effects on productivity.Emigration and immigration ; Productivity ; Labor supply ; Labor productivity

Trade and the skill premium in developing countries: the role of intermediate goods and some evidence from Peru

The rise in income inequality in developing countries after trade liberalization has been a puzzle for trade theory, which predicts the opposite effect. The authors present a model with imported intermediate goods in which the relative wages of skilled labor can rise due to higher imports of inputs or due to skill-biased technological change. The evidence from Peru in the post-liberalization phase in the early 1990s supports the skilled-biased technological change hypothesis. The authors find that most of the decrease in the blue-collar wage share in the manufacturing industries can be explained by the increase in machinery imports that followed liberalization, suggesting that the skilled-biased technology is embodied in imported machinery.Peru ; Economic development ; Latin America ; Trade

The labor market experience and impact of undocumented workers

Using administrative data from the state of Georgia, the authors find that average wages among documented workers are lower in industries that employ undocumented workers and that a greater share of undocumented workers in those industries further lowers wages. In addition, undocumented workers have significantly lower labor supply elasticity, likely as a result of their limited employment and grievance opportunities. Furthermore, the inflow of undocumented workers does more to displace earlier hired undocumented workers than it does to displace documented workers.Immigrants

New financing trends in Latin America : an overview of selected issues and policy challenges

This article summarizes a 2007 conference that explored the nature and implications of major transformations in Latin American financial markets, such as the shift from cross-border to domestic financing and the development of domestic bond markets.Finance ; Economic policy ; Latin America

Employer monopsony power in the labor market for undocumented workers

Using matched employer-employee data from the state of Georgia, this paper investigates the potential for employer monopsony power in the labor market for undocumented workers. We find that the labor supply elasticity of undocumented workers is about 13 percent lower than that estimated for documented workers, suggesting that at least some of the observed wage gap between documented and undocumented workers can be explained by firms' exploiting their monopsony power. There is also evidence of some displacement, with the hiring of undocumented workers being associated with a small amount of documented worker separation.Labor market

Emotion regulation strategies and psychosocial well-being in adolescence

To study whether and how emotion regulation strategies are associated with adolescents' well-being, 633 Italian adolescents completed a survey that measured, using the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ; Gross & John, 2003), the strategies of cognitive reappraisal (CR) and expressive suppression (ES), and their relationship with several well-being measures. Factor analysis and reliability results confirmed the validity of ERQ to assess adolescents' regulation strategies. Correlation and regression results showed that a greater reliance on CR was positively associated with better well-being outcomes for most indicators, especially Life satisfaction, Social support perception and Positive affect; greater preference for ES conversely was associated with lower well-being level for all indicators, including Psychological health, Emotional loneliness, and Negative affect. Neither gender nor age differences were observed for CR nor ES; CR and ES were positively correlated with each other. Both analysis of variance and regression results showed gender to be a significant factor for well being indicators (e.g., males' higher Positive affect and Life satisfaction than females'), whereas age was associated with differences in Psychological health only, with 16-year olds reporting the lowest health, and 14-year olds the highest. The findings overall show that adolescents' well-being is related to preferred emotion regulation strategies, mirroring associations found in the adult population. The study results also suggest the need to further explore this relationship in adolescence