Beyond Leveraged Losses: The Balance Sheet Effects of the Home Price Downturn

macroeconomics, financial crisis, subprime, house, home, market, household, downturn, balance sheet

Domestic Jobs and Foreign Wages: Labour Demand in Swedish Multinationals

The labour demand decisions of multinational corporations (MNCs) are likely to depend not only on domestic, but also on foreign labour costs. This paper tests this hypothesis by estimating labour demand equations for a sample of Swedish MNCs. Indeed, higher foreign costs increase an MNC's Swedish employment and reduces its foregin employment. As MNCs become more important in many OECD countries, the role of foreign labour costs in the determination of aggregate domestic employment is likley to increase.

Foreign Direct Investment, Capital Formation and Labour Costs: Theory and Evidence for Germany

This paper shows that the liberalisation of foreign direct investment (FDI) tends to make the effect of labour costs on domestic investment and labour demand more negative. Using data from Germany, it then provides evidence that is consistent with this view. First, high unit labour costs increase FDI outflows and lower FDI inflows. Second, the effect of unit labour costs on domestic manufacturing investment was more negative in the high-FDI 1980s than in the low-FDI 1970s, and this change was concentrated in high-FDI industries. The implied effect on long-run labour demand is substantial

Foreign Direct Investment

This paper argues that the liberalisation of foregin direct investment (FDI) has made labour costs more important to domestic investment and long-run labour demand. It provides evidence from British and German data that is consistent with this view. First, high unit labour costs increase FDI outflows and lower FDI inflows. Second, the effect of unit labour costs on domestic manufacturing investment was more negative in the high-FDI 1980s than in the low-FDI 1970s, and this change was concentrated in high-FDI industries. The implied effect on long-run labour demand is substantial.

Price Level Targeting and Risk Management

Many argue that, in the presence of a lower bound on nominal interest rates, central banks should use a risk management approach for setting policy, which implies commit- ting to a more expansionary policy to deal with uncertainty about the economic recovery. Using a standard model for monetary policy analysis, I study the effects of an uncertain future for both price level targeting and nominal GDP level targeting. The results clarify that, during lower bound episodes, the extent to which policy can overcome uncertainty depends crucially on the choice of policy framework

Re-examining the decline in the US saving rate: The impact of mortgage equity withdrawal

In this paper we examine the role of mortgage equity withdrawal in explaining the decline of the US saving rate, since when house prices rise and mortgage rates are low, homeowners have an incentive to withdraw housing equity and this may affect the saving rate. We estimate a Vector Error Correction (VEC) model including the sav- ing rate, asset prices, equity withdrawal and interest rates and find that indeed mortgage equity withdrawal is a key determinant of the observed saving pattern

Dolls/puppets as soulmates – biographical traces of dolls/puppets in art, literature, work and performance

https://dedo.ub.uni-siegen.deDie vorliegende vierte Ausgabe der Zeitschrift denkste: puppe / just a bit of: doll (de:do), ein multidisziplinäres Online-Journal für Mensch-Puppen-Diskurse, greift den Themenschwerpunkt Puppen als Seelenverwandte – biographische Spuren von Puppen in Kunst, Literatur, Werk und Darstellung auf. Es geht um die Frage nach Wirkungen früher Puppenerfahrungen in der späteren künstlerischen Arbeit und damit nach den möglichen (biographischen) Wurzeln und Zusammenhängen von Puppenmotiv und Puppen-Narrativen im künstlerisch-literarischen Werk. Puppenbezüge in Werk- und Schaffensprozessen können frühe Erfahrungen biographischer Brüche und Verletzungen transformieren bzw. sie künstlerisch produktiv integrieren, sie können aber auch Ausdruck für Kontinuität und Intensivierung früher Prägungen und Vorlieben sein. In den vorliegenden Beiträgen geht es um puppenbezogene künstlerische Ausdrucksformen, die als Beiträge hier formal unterschiedlich aufbereitet werden: als wissenschaftsbasierter Text, Selbstbericht, Miszelle, Rezension, Interview und: Kunstwerk. Untersucht und thematisiert werden Puppen-Sammlungen, die Herstellung besonderer Puppen, literarische Puppentexte, Inszenierungen und Bilder. Außerdem wurden weitere Beiträge einbezogen, die Puppen als Varianten „künstlicher Menschen“ in unterschiedlichsten Themenbezügen behandeln. In vielen Beiträgen deutet sich an, dass die Affinität zum „Phänomen Puppe“ in seinen verschiedenen künstlerischen Umsetzungsformen auf biographisch geprägte Spuren verweist: als Ausdrucks- und Darstellungsmittel steht die Puppe somit auch für etwas Besonderes der Menschen, die sich künstlerisch auf sie beziehen und mit ihr interagieren und „spielen“.This fourth issue of denkste: puppe / just a bit of: doll (de:do), a multidisciplinary online journal for human-doll discourses, takes up the thematic focus on dolls/puppets as soulmates – biographical traces of dolls/puppets in art, literature, work and performance. It is about the impact of early doll experiences in later artistic work and thus about the possible (biographical) roots and connections of doll motifs and doll narratives in artistic-literary work. Doll/puppet references in work and creative processes can transform early experiences of biographical breaks and harm or integrate them in an artistically productive way, but they can also be an expression of continuity and intensification of early experience and preferences. The present contributions deal with doll/puppet-related artistic forms of expression, which are formally presented in different ways: as science-based text, self-report, miscellaneous, review, interview and: work of art. Doll/puppet collections, the making of particular puppets, literary puppet texts, performances and images are examined and addressed. In addition, further contributions were included, which deal with dolls as variants of "artificial humans" in the most diverse thematic contexts. Most of the contributions indicate that the affinity to the “phenomenon of the doll” in its various artistic forms of realization refers to biographically shaped traces: as a means of expression and representation the doll thus also stands for something special about the human beings who refer to it artistically and interact and "play" with it

The Empirics of China’s Outward Direct Investment

We investigate the empirical determinants of China's outward direct investment (ODI). It is found that China's investments in developed and developing countries are driven by different sets of factors. Subject to the differences between developed and developing countries, there is evidence that a) both market seeking and resources seeking motives drive China's ODI, b) the Chinese exports to developing countries induce China's ODI, c) China's international reserves promote its ODI, and d) the Chinese capital tends to agglomerate among developed economies but diversify among developing economies. Similar results are obtained using alternative ODI data. We do not find substantial evidence that China invests in African and oil-producing countries mainly for their natural resources