The Dark Side of Shareholder Protection: Cross-country Evidence from Innovation Performance

Proponents of minority shareholder protection state that national legal institutions protecting small investors boost stock markets and, in turn, long-term countries’ performance. In this paper, we empirically challenge this argument. We perform three-stage least-square estimation on a sample of 48 countries over 1993-2006 and find that countries with stronger shareholder protection tend to have larger market capitalization but also lower innovation activity. We cope with stock market’s endogeneity and industry heterogeneity, and circumvent omitted variables bias, so that this finding is unlikely to be driven by misspecification problems. We interpret our estimation results arguing that stronger shareholder protection may depress, rather than encourage, the most valuable corporate productions, because it enables small and diversified shareholders to play opportunistic actions against undiversified stockholders, after specific investments are undertaken by the company; innovation activity, largely based on specific investing, is particularly exposed to this problem.shareholder protection, innovation, specific investments, inter-shareholder opportunism.

Do Labor Market Institutions Affect International Comparative Advantage? An Empirical Investigation

The aim of this paper is to explore the different determinants of international comparative advantage. Starting from a theoretically well founded neoclassical framework, where specialization depends on relative factor endowments and technological differences, we study the role of the institutional diversity in the labor market. We use an international trade model where endogenous effort is included in an otherwise standard production function. Since the effort level can be affected by country-specific labor institutions, the institutional context may in turn be able to influence the international comparative advantage. After illustrating the theoretical motivations for such an effect, we implement a rigorous econometric analysis on a group of OECD countries to test its empirical validity. We obtain that institutions have an important role in explaining the relative economic performance of a number of manufacturing sectors. In particular, stronger labor market institutions are found to advantage capital-intensive sectors and disadvantage labor-intensive ones. Policy implications are derived and discussedComparative Advantage, Labor Market Institutions, International Specialization

International economic assistance and migration: the case of Sub-Saharan countries

Development aid is commonly advocated as one of the most effective instruments to reduce international migration. Nevertheless, empirical evidence shows that push factors do not automatically result in massive migrations and that aid policies systematically fail to meet their stated objectives. Recently, several contributions have argued that an increase in sending countries’ wealth may lead to a rise in migration, rather than to a reduction, because it enables people to assume the costs and risks of migrating. However, despite the growing number of studies on this phenomenon, the role played by Official Development Assistance (ODA) has not received attention yet. This paper is aimed at providing empirical evidence on this specific issue. In particular, we investigate the relation between ODA and international migration rates of Sub-Saharan countries. We argue that ODA may have a positive effect on migration decisions for two reasons. First, ODA improves workers’ ability to cover the costs of migration, by providing new job opportunities and in turn increasing incomes in the recipient country. Second, ODA, that is often associated with development programs in education, communication services and business opportunities, may also stimulate mobility aspirations of potential migrants. We develop an econometric analysis in order to investigate this hypothesis. Specifically, we perform a three-stage least square estimation on a sample of 48 Sub-Saharan countries. We build a two-equation model, so as to allow for endogeneity of ODA, and find that ODA has a positive and statistically significant effect on migration outflows. Thus, as our main contribution, we argue that development aids are not substitute for migration and that the traditional aid policies (such as those of the European Union), aimed at curbing migration by providing international financial aids, might need to be reconsidered.international migration; official development assistance; Sub-Saharan countries

A Two-Country NATREX Model for the Euro/Dollar

This paper develops a NATREX (NATural Real EXchange rate) model for two large economies, the Eurozone and the United States, which are fully specified and allowed to interact. After description of the theoretical framework grounding on dynamic disequilibrium modelling approach in continuous time, we implement empirical analysis. First, we estimate the model in its structural form as a simultaneous nonlinear differential equation system for the 1975-2003 period. Second, we simulate the Euro/USD NATREX series in- and out-of-sample by using parameters estimates. The simulated equilibrium real exchange rate enables us to determine a benchmark against which the dynamics of the actual real exchange rate can be measured.NATREX, equilibrium exchange rate, Euro/USD, structural approach, continuous time econometrics, misalignment

Partisan Liberalizations. A New Puzzle from OECD Network Industries?

We investigate the political determinants of liberalization in OECD network industries, performing a panel estimation over thirty years, through the largest and most updated sample available. Contrary to traditional ideological cleavages, we find that right-wing governments liberalize less than left-wing ones. This result is confirmed when controlling for the existing regulatory conditions that executives find when elected. Furthermore, governments’ heterogeneity, proportional electoral rules, and European Union membership all show positive and statistically significant effects on liberalization. Our findings suggest that, despite the conventional wisdom, the political-economic rationale behind liberalization paths in network industries is far from being assessedLiberalization – Network Industries – Government heterogeneity and Partisanship – Electoral systems - Panel data

Politics-Business Interaction Paths

Most pre-crisis explanations of the various corporate governance systems have considered the separation between ownership and control to be an advantage of the Anglo-American economies. They have also attributed the failure of other countries to achieve these efficient arrangements to their different legal and/or electoral systems. In this paper we compare this view with the co-evolution approach based on the hypothesis that politics and corporate governance influence each other, generating complex interactions of financial and labour market institutions. Countries cluster along different complementary politics-business interaction paths and there is no reason to expect, or to device policies for, their convergence to a single model of corporate governance. We argue that this hypothesis provides a more convincing explanation of the past histories of major capitalist economies and can suggest some useful possible scenarios of their future institutional development. Bayesian model comparison suggests that the co-evolution approach turns out at least as influential as the competing theories in explaining shareholder and worker protection determination.employment protection, corporate governance, ownership concentration, Bayesian model estimation, Bayesian model comparison

International Trade, Factor Mobility and the Persistence of Cultural-Institutional Diversity

Cultural and institutional differences among nations may result in differences in the ratios of marginal costs of goods in autarchy and thus be the basis of specialization and comparative advantage, as long as these differences are not eliminated by trade. We provide an evolutionary model of endogenous preferences and institutions under autarchy, trade and factor mobility in which multiple asymptotically stable cultural-institutional conventions may exist, among which transitions may occur as a result of decentralized and un-coordinated actions of employers or employees. We show that: i) specialization and trade may arise and enhance welfare even when the countries are identical other than their cultural-institutional equilibria; ii) trade liberalization does not lead to convergence, it reinforces the cultural-institutional differences upon which comparative advantage is based and may thus impede even Pareto-improving cultural-institutional transitions; and iii) by contrast, greater mobility of factors of production favors decentralized transitions to a superior cultural-institutional convention by reducing the minimum number of cultural or institutional innovators necessary to induce a transition.institutions, incomplete contracts, evolutionary game theory, culture, trade integration, factor mobility, globalization

A Two-Country NATREX Model for the Euro/Dollar

This paper develops a NATREX (NATural Real EXchange rate) model for two large economies, the Eurozone and the United States. The NATREX approach has already been adopted to explain the medium-long term dynamics of the real exchange rate in a number of industrial countries. So far, however, it has been applied to a one-country framework where the "rest of the world" is treated as given. In this paper, we build a NATREX model where the two economies are fully specified and allowed to interact. Our theoretical model offers the basis for empirical estimation of the euro/dollar equilibrium exchange rate that will be carried out in future research. JEL classification: F31; F36; F47Key words: NATREX; equilibrium exchange rate; euro/dollar; structural approach

Urban wage premia, cost of living, and collective bargaining

In this paper, we estimate the urban wage premia (UWP) in Italy, with its economy characterized by the interplay between collective bargaining and spatial heterogeneity in the cost of living. We implement a reduced-form regression analysis using both nominal and real (in temporal and spatial terms) wages. Our dataset for the 2005-2015 period includes, for workers’ characteristics, unique administrative data provided by Italian Social Security Institute and, for the local CPI computation, housing prices collected by Italian Revenue Agency. For employees covered by collective bargaining, we find a zero UWP in nominal terms and a negative and non-negligible UWP in real terms (-5%). To capture the role played by centralized wage settings, we also consider various groups of self-employed workers, who are not covered by national labour agreements, while living in the same locations and enjoying the same amenities as employees. We find that the UWP for self-employed workers are up to 25 times greater than for employees. Moreover, sorting proves more notable in the case of self-employed workers, i.e. the larger UWP provide the higher incentives for high-skilled individuals and better firms to locate in cities. Our findings are confirmed on extending the analysis along the wage distribution