Characterizing the Business Cycles of Emerging Economies

We document the properties of business cycles using the dating algorithm by Harding andPagan (2002) on a quarterly database for 58 countries —21 industrial countries and 37 emerging market economies (EMEs)— from 1970q1 to 2007q4. We find that: (a) recessions are deeper, steeper and costlier among EMEs (especially, in East Asia and Latin America) and that recoveries are swifter and stronger. (b) Recessions have become less costly during the globalization period (1990-2007) than before (1970-89) for industrial countries and EMEs. (c) The main characteristics of downturns are amplified when associated to crisis episodes. (d) The time path of macroeconomic indicators around peaks in real GDP is more volatile in downturns associated with crisis compared to other downturns. (e) Financial cycles (credit and asset prices) tend to precede real output cycles. (f) Credit and stock prices are strongly pro-cyclical while real exchange rates, capital flows and terms of trade tend to be a-cyclical. Finally, an exploratory analysis on the conditional correlates of the cost of recessions shows that: (i) adverse terms of trade shocks raise the cost of recessions in countries with a more open trade regime and deeper financial markets. (ii) Recessions tend to be deeper if they coincide with a sudden stop, but the effect is smaller in countries with deeper domestic credit markets. (iii) Floating exchange rate regimes appear to act as shock absorbers.Business cycles, peaks and troughs, emerging markets

Removing the Constraints for Growth: Some Guidelines Some Guidelines

One strand of the empirical growth literature has cast doubt on the ability of the policy recommendations from Washington Consensus in enhancing growth. They argue that not only the design but also the policy mix has an important country-specific component (e.g. Hausmann, Rodrik and Velasco, 2005 and Zettelmeyer, 2006). We argue that the effectiveness of policies in promoting growth depends upon the set of structural policies implemented or already existing in the country. This paper empirically examines the role of policy complementarities in explaining growth and development from two dimensions. First, we construct a regression-based policy index in the same vein of Burnside and Dollar (2000), and we decompose this index afterwards into domestic and outward policy indices. Second, we evaluate the role of policy complementarities in the growth process by interacting our policy index with specific country characteristics that affect growth. We repeat the same exercise with the domestic and outward policy indices. We found that outward oriented and domestic policies are highly complements to each other. Specifically, the growth effects of trade and financial openness are enhanced when domestic policies are correct and, moreover, financial and trade openness are also complements. Regarding structural factors, we found that human capital increase growth as expected but it is neither a complement nor a substitute of economic policy. On the other hand institutions and financial depth are complements with economic policy. This could be an explanation why some countries have stabilized their economies but they are not growing faster, this could be due to low financial development or bad institutions. Finally, we should remark that in addition to the Fatas and Mihov (2006) result that policy volatility hurts growth, we find that a good policy environment could propel growth by mitigating the negative effect of aggregate volatility and, more specifically, the volatility of external shocks.Growth, volatility, economic policy

Labor Market Regulations and Income Inequality: Evidence for a Panel of Countries

This paper presents evidence on the impact of labor regulations on income inequality using two recently published databases on labor institutions and outcomes (Rama and Artecona, 2002; Botero, Djankov, La Porta, López-de-Silanes and Shleifer, 2003) and different cross-section and panel data analysis techniques for a sample of 121 countries over the 1970-2000 period. When we consider the techniques most likely to be robust, we find that: (i) de jure regulations do not improve income distribution; (ii) relative compliance with existing regulations improves income distribution; (iii) de facto regulations are weakly associated with improving income inequality. This result partly reflects the fact that regulations are endogenous and, more interestingly, different regulations have quite distinct effects. In particular, we find that any redistributive effect of labor regulations may come from trade union membership, public employment and mandated benefits (proxied by maternity leave).

LA DINÁMICA DE LOS ACTORES EN LA INTERNACIONALIZACIÓN DE LA EDUCACIÓN SUPERIOR EN ARGENTINA

La actividad de la Internacionalización de la Educación Superior puede ser entendida como un fenómeno inevitable para las universidades. A partir de la década de los 90 mostró tener un enorme desarrollo. Aunque vale preguntarse ¿qué significado tiene hacia el interior del sistema de educación superior y de las propias instituciones universitarias?. En la revisión del nivel de las producciones académicas sobre el tema, a nivel latinoamericano y particularmente en Argentina, se denota que es escaso el tratamiento del tema. La mayor cantidad de publicaciones pertenecen a países europeos y de América del Norte, los cuales analizan experiencias que marcaron algunas tendencias en el desarrollo de la educación superior. Al respecto se ha generado una suerte de ilusión en torno a la internacionalización. Con lo cual, resulta importante analizar lo que representa la dimensión internacional para las universidades, cuando esta asume un carácter complejo y multidimensional. Por otro lado, obliga pensarlo desde la arena política, respectivamente. En consideración a ello, la ponencia busca realizar un análisis contextual sobre las políticas universitarias que promueven la actividad de la internacionalización en las universidades argentinas. También importa reconocer la dinámica y la trama de esta actividad, en relación a los distintos actores que intervienen, sobre todo cuando se caracterizan por ser agentes claves en el rol de la promoción, el fomento, la coordinación, la gestión y en la creación de un conjunto de instrumentos y de políticas para internacionalizar las universidades. El tratamiento del mismo, estará abordado desde el registro de documentaciones y de publicaciones concerniente al tema. Además, se analizará críticamente en el marco de las tendencias que provoca la globalización de la educación superior y de los avances producidos por la economía del conocimiento y la llamada sociedad del conocimiento y la información

Cuanto Explican las Reformas y la Calidad de las Instituciones el Crecimiento Chileno? Una Comparación Internacional

The main goal of the present paper is to evaluate the sources of growth in Chile and the world over the last decades, but stressing the role of complementarities in economic policies. Hence, we evaluate the growth determinants for a sample of 28 countries with information over the 1970-2000 period. In contrast to Gallego and Loayza (2002), we test directly the existence of complementarities between trade and financial liberalization policies with: a) the initial conditions of the economy, b) human capital policies, and c) the level of institutions.

Banks, remittances and financial deepening in receiving countries : a model

A remarkable fact of the mushrooming remittances market is the absence of commercial banks as relevant players. Furthermore, remittances have been identified as a potential catalyst for the financial deepening of receiving countries through higher access to banking services by migrants' families. Building upon these features, this paper sets up a two-period financial model of remittances without uncertainty. The formulation acknowledges, on the one hand, the altruism component of remittances sent by migrants to their families and, on the other hand, the dominant position of Money Transfer Operators (MTO's) due to migrants' mistrust to banks, which hinders the access of banks to the market. Altruism compounded with a non-competitive market allows MTO's to set excessively high remittance fees and to attain monopolistic rents. The model shows that banks can challenge this position thanks to their role as providers of remunerated saving and credit, which enables them to overcome the competitive disadvantage derived by migrants' mistrust. Notwithstanding this, the main positive impact of banks' entry is attained through higher competition, not through the provision of financial services. All in all, the entry of banks reduces the fees and increases the level of remittances, allows an optimal consumption smoothing and improves the welfare of migrants and their families, although it also increases the volatility of remittances. [resumen de autor

Information entropy production of maximum entropy markov chains from spike trains

"The spiking activity of neuronal networks follows laws that are not time-reversal symmetric; the notion of pre-synaptic and post-synaptic neurons, stimulus correlations and noise correlations have a clear time order. Therefore, a biologically realistic statistical model for the spiking activity should be able to capture some degree of time irreversibility. We use the thermodynamic formalism to build a framework in the context maximum entropy models to quantify the degree of time irreversibility, providing an explicit formula for the information entropy production of the inferred maximum entropy Markov chain. We provide examples to illustrate our results and discuss the importance of time irreversibility for modeling the spike train statistics.

Análisis del fallo de la Sala Especializada de lo Contencioso Tributario de la Corte Nacional de Justicia, dictado dentro del recurso No. 188-2010, referente a la legalidad de la Tasa por Servicios de Seguridad Ciudadana (Jurisprudencia)

El presente trabajo tiene por objeto analizar la sentencia emitida por la Sala de lo Contencioso Tributario de la Corte Nacional de Justicia, relativa a la impugnación de la legalidad de la “Tasa de Seguridad ciudadana”, que aplica el Municipio del Distrito Metropolitano de Quito. Fallo controversial en que se decidió desechar la demanda por caducidad del derecho para la impugnación, toda vez, que a criterio de los juzgadores ha transcurrido más de tres años desde que la referida tasa entró en vigencia. Con tal propósito, se examina críticamente los fundamentos sobre los cuales la Sala decidió desechar la demanda, así mismo, se establece los parámetros de orientación sobre cuál pudo ser el contenido de un pronunciamiento conforme con la Constitución y leyes vigentes.The current work aims to examine the decision issued by the Tax Litigation division of the National Court of Justice, relating to the challenge to the legality of the ""Public Safety Tax"", which is applied by the Metropolitan District of Quito. controversial ruling in which it was decided to reject the application for revocation of the right to challenge, once that, at the discretion of the judges it has been over three years since the aforementioned tax took effect. To this end, the foundations upon which the Tax Litigation Division decided to dismiss the lawsuit are exhaustively examined, in like manner, the orientation parameters on what could have been the content of a statement in accordance with the current constitution and laws are also established