R&D SUBSIDIES AND FIRM-LEVEL PRODUCTIVITY: EVIDENCE FROM FRANCE

This paper attempts to provide a new insight into the relationship between R&D subsidies and firm-level productivity. The empirical analysis evaluates the productivity of firms involved in a European program of public R&D grants called Eureka. The findings suggest that the Eureka firms on average experience productivity gains towards the end of the 3-years grant period. However, the average increase in productivity hides substantial firm heterogeneity. Namely it hides that low productive firms gain more from an R&D subsidy than high productive firms. The empirical analysis is conducted by using propensity score matching and a difference-in-differences estimation method to control for potential endogeneity issues.R&D subsidies, Collaborative Research, Total Factors Productivity and Firm Heterogeneity

Working Paper 19-08 - Quantifying environmental leakage for Belgium

This paper illustrates the deficiency of the production approach as a tool to measure a country's responsibility for international environmental impacts. A use approach is presented as a more suitable tool. The difference between the two approaches is determined by a better grasp of international trade, which can lead to environmental leakage when a country specialises in the production of environmentally friendly products and has the environmentally unfriendly products which it consumes produced abroad. We show that in the period 1995-2002 Belgium was on average a provider of air emission intensive products for the rest of the world. Environmental leakage was mostly negative. However, the evolution of the Belgian environmental terms of trade shows that by 2002 its imports had become considerably more air emission intensive with respect to its exports than in 1995. There are indications that this evolution is due to a considerable increase of extra-EU imports of air emission intensive products. This in turn could point to environmentally inspired offshoring. However, the currently available data do not allow us to test this hypothesis.Environmental leakage, Environmental terms of trade, Input-output analysis

An idealized view of financial intermediation

We consider an environment where the general equilibrium assumption that every agent buys and sells simultaneously is relaxed. We show that fiat money can implement a Pareto optimal allocation only if taxes are type-specific. We then consider intermediated money by assuming that financial intermediaries whose liabilities circulate as money have an important identifying characteristic: they are widely viewed as default-free. The paper demonstrates that default-free intermediaries who issue deposit accounts with credit lines to consumers can resolve the monetary problem and make it possible for the economy to reach a Pareto optimum

The nature of money in a convertible currency world

In a world where the means of exchange is convertible into the numeraire consumption good at a fixed rate, no one wants to hold money over time – and due to convertibility there is no means by which the Friedman rule can generate deflation. This is the environment we study in this paper in order to demonstrate that there is still a way to reach the first-best: institutionalize the naked shorting of the unit of account, or in other words establish a banking system.To motivate the benefits of a banking system, the environment has real productivity shocks that are constantly changing the optimal level of economic activity, so the optimal quantity of money is inherently stochastic. Efficiency in such an environment requires the capacity to expand the money supply on an “as needed” basis. We show how a debt-based payments system that relies on banks to certify the individual debtors’ IOUs addresses the monetary problem.This model explains (i) central bank monetary policy as a means of stabilizing the banking system and (ii) usury laws as means of promoting equilibria that favor non-banks over those that favor banks. Furthermore, by modeling a commercial bank-based monetary system as an efficient solution to a payments problem this paper develops a theoretic framework that may be used to evaluate central bank digital currency proposals

Working Paper 13-09 - Qualitative Employment Multipliers for the Belgian Environmental Industry

The present paper computes cumulative employment generated by the Belgian environmental industry. Relying on Belgian input-output tables for the year 2000 and on detailed employment data (SAM sub]matrix), we investigate the patterns of the employment in the environmental industry, by considering the worker types differentiated by gender, educational attainment or a combination of these characteristics. The employment multiplier analysis of environmental employment reveals some interesting differences between employment of the overall economy and environmental employment for the level of education as well as for the gender type.

Septal Infusions of the H-Channel Blocker ZD7288 Impair Spontaneous Alternation but not Inhibitory Avoidance

It is well established that the septo-hippocampal system is involved in memory. The medial septum is connected to the hippocampus via the fimbria fornix, which consists mostly of acetylcholine and ã-aminobutyric acid (GABA) projection neurons. The contributions of the cholinergic projection to memory have been studied extensively; whereas, the role of the GABAergic projection is not well characterized. The present experiment tested whether septal infusions of the selective H-channel blocker ZD7288 would impair spontaneous alternation (SA) and continuous multiple inhibitory avoidance (CMIA). Fifteen minutes prior to assessing SA or CMIA, different groups of male Sprague-Dawley rats were given septal infusions of saline or ZD7288 (0.2, 0.6 or 1.5 nmol / 0.5ìl). Our results indicate that septal infusions of ZD7288 impaired SA in a dose-dependent manner; the same infusions did not affect CMIA. This is the first demonstration that H-channels on septo-hippocampal GABAergic projection neurons are involved in memory

Impact of FDI on economic development: A causality analysis for Singapore ; 1976 - 2002

This study examines the relationship between economic growth as measured by GDP per capita and foreign direct investment for Singapore, using the methodology of Granger causality and vector auto regression (VAR). Evidence shows that there is a unidirectional Granger causation from foreign direct investment to economic growth