1,553 research outputs found
The demand for money, financial innovation, and the welfare cost of inflation: an analysis with household data
We use microeconomic data on households to estimate the parameters of the demand for currency derived from a generalized Baumol-Tobin model. Our data set contains information on average currency, deposits, and other interest-bearing assets; the number of trips to the bank; the size of withdrawals; and ownership and use of ATM cards. We model the demand for currency accounting for adoption of new transaction technologies and the decision to hold interest-bearing assets. The interest rate and expenditure flow elasticities of the demand for currency are close to the theoretical values implied by standard inventory models. However, we find significant differences between individuals with an ATM card and those without. The estimates of the demand for currency allow us to calculate a measure of the welfare cost of inflation analogous to Bailey's triangle, but based on a rigorous microeconometric framework. The welfare cost of inflation varies considerably within the population but never turns out to be very large (about 0.1 percent of consumption or less). Our results are robust to various changes in the econometric specification. In addition to the main results based on the average stock of currency, the model receives further support from the analysis of the number of trips to and average withdrawals from the bank and the ATM
Building trust? Conditional cash transfers and social capital
In this paper we propose a measure of social capital based on the behaviour in a public good
game. We play the public good game within 28 groups in two similar neighborhoods in
Cartagena, Colombia, one of which had been targeted for over two years by a conditional cash
transfer program that has an important social component. The level of cooperation we observe in
the ‘treatment’ community is considerably higher than in the ‘control’ community. The two
neighborhoods, however, although similar in many dimensions, turned out to be significantly
different in other observable variables. The result we obtain in terms of cooperation, however, is
robust to controls for these observable differences. In the last part of the paper we also compare
our measure of social capital with other more traditional measures that have been used in the
literature
The demand for money, financial innovation, and the welfare cost of inflation: an analysis with household data
We use microeconomic data on households to estimate the parameters of the demand for currency derived from a generalized Baumol-Tobin model. Our data set contains information on average currency, deposits, and other interest-bearing assets; the number of trips to the bank; the size of withdrawals; and ownership and use of ATM cards. We model the demand for currency accounting for adoption of new transaction technologies and the decision to hold interest-bearing assets. The interest rate and expenditure flow elasticities of the demand for currency are close to the theoretical values implied by standard inventory models. However, we find significant differences between individuals with an ATM card and those without. The estimates of the demand for currency allow us to calculate a measure of the welfare cost of inflation analogous to Bailey's triangle, but based on a rigorous microeconometric framework. The welfare cost of inflation varies considerably within the population but never turns out to be very large (about 0.1 percent of consumption or less). Our results are robust to various changes in the econometric specification. In addition to the main results based on the average stock of currency, the model receives further support from the analysis of the number of trips to and average withdrawals from the bank and the ATM
Saving, growth, and investment: a macroeconomic analysis using a panel of countries
This paper provides a descriptive analysis of the long- and short-run correlations among saving, investment, and growth rates for 123 countries over the period 1961-94. Three results are robust across data sets and estimation methods: i) lagges saving rates are positively related to investment rates; ii) investment rates Granger cause growth rates with a negative sign; iii) growth rates Granger-cause investment with a positive sign
The Demographic Transition in Closed and Open Economies: A Tale of Two Regions
This paper constructs a general equilibrium overlapping generation model to evaluate quantitatively how demographic transition (falling mortality and fertility rates) affects aggregate variables (wages, interest rate, output), and inter-generational welfare in closed and open economies. We perform this analysis for two economies calibrated to resemble the North (US and Europe) and Latin America. Our simulations suggest that the demographic transition could have generated income per capita growth up to 0. 5% per year in excess of steady-state growth in the past 50 years in Latin America and 0. 3% in the North.
Booms and busts: consumption, house prices and expectations
Over much of the past 25 years, the cycles of house price and consumption growth have been closely
synchronised. Three main hypotheses for this co-movement have been proposed in the literature.
First, that an increase in house prices raises households’ wealth, particularly for those in a position to
trade down the housing ladder, which increases their desired level of expenditure. Second, that
house price growth increases the collateral available to homeowners, reducing credit constraints and
thereby facilitating higher consumption. And third, that house prices and consumption have tended
to be influenced by common factors. This paper finds that the relationship between house prices and
consumption is stronger for younger than older households, which appears to contradict the wealth
channel. These findings therefore suggest that common causality has been the most important factor
behind the link between house price and consumption
Superconducting nanowire quantum interference device based on Nb ultrathin films deposited on self-assembled porous Si templates
Magnetoresistance oscillations were observed on networks of superconducting
ultrathin Nb nanowires presenting evidences of either thermal or quantum
activated phase slips. The magnetic transport data, discussed in the framework
of different scenarios, reveal that the system behaves coherently in the
temperature range where the contribution of the fluctuations is important.Comment: accepted for publication on Nanotechnolog
- …