The determinants and employment effects of international outsourcing: the case of Italy

Using a new firm-level database, we address micro determinants and employment consequences of international production outsourcing (INPOU). Regarding the former, we confirm that INPOU in Italy mostly counters emerging economies. threats to traditional manufactured goods: INPOU disproportionately targets developing countries and intensifies in sectors with stiffest Chinese competition. Concerning employment consequences, we concur with previous literature that INPOU firms. domestic employment performances are no worse than at matching no-INPOU firms. However, given Italy.s industrial structure (small-sized networked enterprises), INPOU might negatively affect subcontracting firms. Our evidence that employment performances worsen in the productive segments with strongest INPOU supports our conjecture.international outsourcing, multinational firms

More analysts, better ratings: Do rating agencies invest enough in less developed countries?

Rating agencies' track record is good in developed countries but poor in emerging economies. Why? Given the almost-monopolistic structure of the industry, we conjecture that agencies might underinvest in information gathering. We propose an indicator quantifying the agencies' effort to gather information and assess whether greater effort affects rating levels. We detect: (i) absolute underinvestment for non-OECD sovereigns (less effort in spite of greater opaqueness); (ii) relative underinvestment for non-OECD firms compared with OECD ones (though the former receive a larger effort, more intense effort boosts firm ratings in non-OECD countries while depressing them in OECD countries).sovereign risk, credit ratings, rating agencies' effort

The Effect of Rating Agencies on Herd Behaviour

This paper purports to provide some evidence on the effect of rating agencies on herding in financial markets. By means of a laboratory experiment, we investigate the effect and interaction between private and public information. Previous experiments showed that lemmings behaviour can survive in a market context where information is private (Hey and Morone, 2004), and that an experimental market can be very volatile and not efficient in transmitting information (Alfarano et al., 2006). We study experimentally, if socially undesirable behaviour - that survives in a market contest - may be eliminated owing to the presence of rating agencies.herd behaviour; informational cascades; rating agency; bubble

Firing at Subcontractors? Spillover Employment Effects of Offshoring in Italy

Using firm-level data for Italy, we address the employment consequences of international production offshoring. We concur with previous literature that offshoring firms’ individual employment performances are no worse than at matching non-offshoring firms. However, offshoring might impart negative spillover effects on subcontracting firms, and this indirect effect might be felt particularly in Italy’s industrial structure (small-sized networked enterprises). To study this, we group firms within their typical subcontracting clusters, identify high offshoring clusters and compare them with a matching low offshoring sample. The evidence that employment performances worsen in the productive clusters with high offshoring supports our conjecture.International outsourcing, multinational firms, employment effects, propensity

The real impact of financial shocks : evidence from the Republic of Korea

The debates surrounding the recent East Asian crisis have focused not only on causes but also on policy actions in the wake of the initial shock. This has raised questions about the relationship between monetary policy and market confidence. Specifically, would rising interest rates bolster or depress market confidence? To answer this question requires assessing whether, and to what extent, monetary and financial shocks are magnified through the economy via the credit channel. The authors focus on the Republic of Korea - a particularly good case for testing credit channel effects - with two objectives: a) To ascertain whether and to what extent interest rate spreads could help predict subsequent fluctuations in real economic activity. b) To test whether small and medium-size enterprises suffer more than other business do from the adverse effects of the credit channel. The author's empirical findings support the hypothesis that spreads that capture credit channel effects do indeed influence economic activity. Specifically, spreads contain significant information for predicting the future course of industrial production. The effect is, as one might have assumed, disproportionately larger for small and medium-size enterprises. Thus policymakers, in Korea and elsewhere, who neglect credit channel effects might be"overkilling the economy"and altogether overlooking the disproportionate effects of monetary and financial shocks on various segments of the economy.Economic Theory&Research,Financial Intermediation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Intermediation,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Economic Theory&Research

Does Europe Need Its Own Rating Agencies?

Monetary unions generally boost financial markets. But European private capital markets have progressed at an unsatisfactory pace even with the euro. What accounts for this? We focus on an increasingly key financial infrastructure: Rating Agencies (RAs). Taking an international perspective, we show that: (i) financial market development increases with the presence of national RAs; (ii) in four studied Asian countries, smaller-sized companies disproportionately hold a rating from national RAs, while disregarding the global RAs (Moody’s, S&P, Fitch). We argue that the absence of European RAs may currently limit the extent of rated companies and financial market evolution in Euroland.national vs. global credit rating agencies, financial market development

How the proposd Basel Guidelines on rating-agency assessments would affect developing countries

Using historical data on sovereign and individual borrowers, the authors assess the potential impact on non-high-income countries of linking capital asset requirements for banks to private sector ratings, as the Basel committee has proposed. They show that linking bank's capital asset requirements to external ratings would have undesirable effects for developing countries. First, ratings of banks and corporations in developing countries are less common, so capital asset requirements would be practically insensitive to improvements in the quality of assets-widening the gap between banks of equal financial strength in higher- and lower-income countries. Second, bank and corporate ratings in developing countries (unlike their counterparts in high-income countries) are strongly linked to the sovereign ratings for the country-and appear to be strongly related (asymmetrically) to changes in the sovereign ratings. A sovereign downgrading would bring greater changes in capital allocations than an upgrading, and would call for larger capital requirements at the very time access to capital markets was more difficult. Under the new guidelines, capital requirements in developing countries would thus be exposed to the cyclical swings associated with the revision of sovereign ratings in recent crises. Ultimately, linking banks'capital asset requirements to private sector ratings would reduce the credit available to non-high-income countries and make it more costly, limiting economic activity. Bank capital needs in developing countries would be more volatile than those in high-income countries. These findings suggest that the Basel Committee should assess the role it proposes assigning to external ratings, to minimize the detrimental impact of the regulatory use of such ratings on developing countries.Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Financial Intermediation

Editorial

Diversity matters, both at the firm and at the macro-economic level. This is the driving mission of JEOD. While the importance of diversity is already quite well recognized in other disciplines as a major source of wellbeing and quality of life, an open discussion on diversity in economics (meaning both diversity of enterprise types and diversity in the possible combinations of public and private sector roles in different economic systems) has long been taboo. JEOD wants to remove this anomaly

The credit channel at work - lessons from the Republic of Korea's financial crisis

The authors suggest that the credit channel - as a transmitter of monetary and financial shocks - appears to have aggravated the Republic of Korea's economic crisis. They use micro-data gathered at the bank level to better identify this channel of transmission. They find that: 1) Monetary tightening broadens the spread between marginal bank lending rates and corporate commercial paper rates (consistent with hypothesis that bank lending is a transmitter of monetary shocks). 2) Credit limits on overdrafts - arguably a proxy to identify shifts in the loan supply - react negatively to the monetary squeeze. 3) After the stiffening of bank capital adequacy requirements, banks suffering from larger negative capital shocks experience a more marked slowdown in lending and deposit-taking and also raise their loan rates disproportionately. These findings lend support to the hypothesis that autonomous contraction by banks restricts the availability of credit and magnifies the increase in its cost. This phenomenon compounded the Korean crisis by aggravating liquidity constraints for most agents that rely on bank credit as their only external source of funds. Policymakers may want to provide relief - possibly through market-based actions - to the small and medium-sized enterprises (and other businesses) that suffer unduly from such a credit crunch. To reduce obstacles to recovery, they may also want to devise market-based incentives to make bank loans available to healthy firms in sectors (such as exports) on which recovery depends.Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Financial Intermediation,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Intermediation,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Banking Law

Do Global Credit Rating Agencies Think Globally? The Information Content of Firm Ratings around the World

What is the information content of firm ratings? We disentangle the relative contribution to firms? ratings of sovereign risks and individual firms? performance indicators, reportedly employed by rating agencies. We reach three conclusions. First, sovereign risks? contribution is disproportionately greater in developing countries vis-ý-vis developed countries. Second, even controlling for the ?country ceiling effect??private ratings being constrained by their sovereign?s rating?firm ratings? information content is much smaller in developing countries. Third, cross-country indicators of information quality help explain but do not solve the puzzle entirely. Thus, global rating agencies do not (yet) think globally.