Real Exchange Rate and International Reserves in the Era of Growing Financial and Trade Integration

This paper evaluates the impact of international reserves, terms of trade shocks and capital flows on the real exchange rate (REER). We observe that international reserves cushions the impact of TOT shocks on the REER, and that this effect is important for developing but not for industrial countries. This buffer effect is especially significant for Asian countries, and for countries exporting natural resources. Financial depth reduces the buffer role of IR in developing countries. Developing countries REER seem to be more sensitive to changes in reserve assets; whereas industrial countries display a significant relationship between hot money and REER.

Real exchange rate volatility, economic growth and the euro

This paper studies the impact of real effective exchange rate volatility on economic growth as well as the euro’s impact on real effective exchange rate volatility. We first show that after a plausible endogeneity correction, real effective exchange rate volatility is negatively associated with growth in a 1980~2011 panel of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries. A one standard deviation volatility decrease is associated with a two percentage points growth increase. Second, we find that the euro adoption was associated with a decline of 0.4 standard deviations in long-run real effective exchange rate volatility before the Great Recession in 2008~2009. Moreover, while the Great Recession increased real effective exchange rate volatility by 38~189% of the sample mean for the countries outside the eurozone, the real effective exchange rate of the euro adopters were almost completely insulated. We conclude that real effective exchange rate stability may be growth-enhancing in the OECD countries and that the euro have played a growth-enhancing role at least before the recent eurozone debt crisis

Price discrimination and competition in two-sided markets: Evidence from the Spanish local TV industry

In this paper, we empirically test the relation between price discrimination and product market competition in a two-sided market setting using a new data set of Spanish local TV stations that provides information on subscription and advertising prices per station for 1996, 1999 and 2002. During these years, changes in regulation in this sector had a deep impact on the degree of local market competition. We use differences in market structure across markets and across years to study the relation between competition and price discrimination in this setting. Our findings suggest that stations in more competitive markets are less likely to use price discrimination. We also find evidence that stations price discriminating in a market are also more likely to price discriminate on the other market. Finally, cable subscription fees and advertising prices are higher in more competitive markets which suggests that tougher competition may increase market segmentation through station differentiation, driving stations to charge higher uniform prices to more loyal customers. This may indicate that less price discrimination may be associated with lower consumer surplus in all markets.Price discrimination; market competition; Local TV Industry; product; subscription; advertising;

Non-linear effects of tax changes on output: The role of the initial level of taxation

We estimate the effect of worldwide tax changes on output following the narrative approach developed for the United States by Romer and Romer (2010). We use a novel dataset on value-added taxes for 51 countries (21 industrial and 30 developing) for the period 1970–2014 to identify 96 tax changes. We then use contemporaneous economic records to classify such changes as endogenous or exogenous to current (or prospective) economic conditions. In line with theoretical distortionary and disincentive-based arguments – and using exogenous tax changes – we find that the effect of tax changes on output is highly non-linear. The tax multiplier is essentially zero under relatively low initial tax rate levels and more negative as the initial tax rate increases. Based on a global sample, these novel non-linear findings suggest that the recent consensus pointing to large negative tax multipliers in industrial countries, particularly in industrial Europe (e.g., Alesina, Favero, and Giavazzi, 2015) may represent a special case driven by high initial tax rates in these countries

As Seen on TV: Price Discrimination and Competition in Television Advertising

In this paper we examine the empirical relationship between price discrimination and competition in television advertising. While most empirical papers on the topic document a positive relationship, we find that price discrimination is negatively related to competition (as measured by the number of competing firms), a result that is consistent with conventional wisdom. Our results also show that only incumbent stations (unlike entrants) respond by engaging less in price discrimination when faced with a more competitive environment. Our evidence suggests that incumbents may use price discrimination as a strategic tool to accommodate entry - a strategy that has received scant attention in the existing entry literature

As Seen on TV: Price Discrimination and Competition in Television Advertising

In this paper we examine the empirical relationship between price discrimination and competition in television advertising. While most empirical papers on the topic document a positive relationship, we find that price discrimination is negatively related to competition (as measured by the number of competing firms), a result that is consistent with conventional wisdom. Our results also show that only incumbent stations (unlike entrants) respond by engaging less in price discrimination when faced with a more competitive environment. Our evidence suggests that incumbents may use price discrimination as a strategic tool to accommodate entry - a strategy that has received scant attention in the existing entry literature

Fooled by the cycle: Permanent versus cyclical improvements in social indicators

This paper studies the time series behavior of a set of widely-used social indicators and uncovers two important stylized facts. First, not all social indicators are created equal in terms of the importance of cyclical fluctuations. While some social indicators such as the unemployment rate and monetary poverty show large cyclical fluctuations, other social measures such as the Human Development Index are, by construction, dominated by long-run trends. Second, interestingly, yet not surprisingly, a large part of the cyclical fluctuations in social indicators can be explained by cyclical changes in income (proxied by real GDP per capita). For this reason, countries with large cyclical income volatility exhibit, in turn, large cyclical changes in some of these social indicators (particularly in those indicators that are more prone to cyclical fluctuations). Since cyclical income volatility is much larger in the developing world, these two critical stylized facts raise fundamental issues regarding the duration of improvements in social indicators (like the ones observed in many developing countries during the last commodity super-cycle). After a detailed conceptual and methodological discussion of these issues, and relying on a global sample of industrial and developing countries, we dig deeper into the importance of cyclical versus permanent components by extending the seminal contribution of Datt and Ravallion (1992). In particular, we show that more than 40 percent of the fall in monetary poverty observed in Latin America and the Caribbean during the so-called Golden Decade can be attributed to cyclical changes in income. While in principle universal, our concerns are particularly relevant in the developing world where, compared to developed countries, output volatility is larger and driven, to a large extent, by external factors (such as commodity prices)

Macroeconomic effects of fiscal adjustment: A tale of two approaches

We investigate the short-term effects of fiscal adjustment on economic activity in 20 OECD countries from 1970 to 2009. We compare two approaches: the traditional approach based on changes in cyclically adjusted primary balance (CAPB) and the narrative approach based on historical records. Proponents of the latter argue that it captures discretionary fiscal adjustment more accurately than the traditional approach. We propose a new definition of CAPB that takes account of fluctuations in asset prices and reflects idiosyncratic features of fiscal policy in individual countries. Using this new definition, we find that fiscal adjustments always have contractionary effects on economic activity in the short term; we find no evidence of expansionary (non-Keynesian) fiscal adjustments. Spending-based fiscal adjustments lead to smaller output losses than tax-based fiscal adjustment. These results are in line with the literature using the narrative approach, suggesting that the CAPB, when correctly specified, can be used as a measure of fiscal adjustments

Erratum to: 36th International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s13054-016-1208-6.]