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EconAcademics.org

Blog aggregator for economics research

2018-08-20

• Sources of Finance: Internal versus External
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2018-08-20 12:13:28 UTC

  In the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, debt has taken center stage. When borrowing is either high or growing quickly, people see it as a danger sign. When individuals, firms or governments are heavily indebted, they have less flexibility in responding to unfortunate events. And, when borrowers default, lenders suffer as well. We should, therefore, anticipate that high debt can be a drag on growth . So, it ought not be surprising that borrowing can be difficult. In good times, households usually can obtain financing to purchase a house or car. But these loans are secured with collatera [...]

• Sam Watson’s journal round-up for Monday 20th August 2018
  by Sam Watson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2018-08-20 12:00:54 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . A Randomized Trial of Epinephrine in Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest . New England Journal of Medicine. Published July 2018. Adrenaline (epinephrine) is often administered to patients in cardiac arrest in order t [...]

• 316 – Resources for agri-environmental schemes
  by David Pannell in Pannell Discussions, 2018-08-20 04:00:57 UTC

  I’ve been asked to present a talk in Ireland in two weeks, on the topic “The Design of Effective Agri-Environment Schemes”. In putting the talk together, it struck me that I (with help from colleagues) have developed quite a few resources in this space, so I’ve collected them on a new web site to make them easily accessible. Agri-environmental schemes (or programs or policies) aim to reduce the adverse impacts of agriculture on the environment. There are many such schemes around the world, but often they are not very efficient or effective. We could often do a lot better if we did a smarter jo [...]

2018-08-18

• Euro Area unemployment insurance at the time of zero nominal interest rates
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2018-08-18 00:56:45 UTC

  By Guillaume Claveres and Jan Stráský http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:1498-en&r=dge The discussion about a fiscal stabilisation capacity as a way of providing more fiscal integration in the euro area has strengthened in the aftermath of the European sovereign debt crisis. Among the instruments that can be used for temporary macroeconomic stabilisation in the presence of both asymmetric and area-wide shocks, a euro area unemployment insurance scheme has attracted increased attention. We build a two-region DSGE model with supply, demand and labour market frictions and introduce in it an [...]

2018-08-16

• A ciascun debito la sua ristrutturazione
  by Silvia Marchesi e Tania Masi in La Voce, 2018-08-16 08:20:06 UTC

  Il nuovo piano concordato tra i governi dell’Eurozona prevede l’allungamento delle scadenze del debito greco ed esclude per ora riduzioni del suo valore nominale. Ma ogni rinegoziazione di debito sovrano ha caratteristiche specifiche, di cui tener conto. Il nuovo accordo con la Grecia Il 22 giugno, i governi europei hanno rinegoziato un accordo che prevede l’allungamento delle scadenze del debito greco e la concessione di nuove risorse finanziarie, ma esclude la riduzione del valore nominale del debito a scadenza. Christine Lagarde, direttore operativo del Fondo monetario internazionale, ha a [...]

2018-08-15

• Interest rate vs fiscal policy stabilisation
  by Mainly Macro in Mainly Macro, 2018-08-15 08:47:00 UTC

  One divide between mainstream and many heterodox economists is on whether monetary or fiscal policy should be used for macroeconomic stabilisation (controlling demand to influence inflation and output). What makes a good instrument in this context? As I have argued before , a key difference between the mainstream and MMT involves different answers to this question. I think the following issues are critical. How quickly do changes in the instrument (e.g. increases in interest rates) influence demand? How quickly can the instrument be changed? Are there limits to how far it can be changed? [...]

2018-08-14

• Protectionism for Liberals
  by Robert Skidelsky in Project Syndicate, 2018-08-14 10:20:17 UTC

  LONDON – Liberal revulsion at US President Donald Trump’s mendacious and uncouth politics has spilled over into a rigid defense of market-led globalization. To the liberal, free trade in goods and services and free movement of capital and labor are integrally linked to liberal politics. Trump’s “America First” protectionism is inseparable from his diseased politics. But this is a dangerous misconception. In fact, nothing is more likely to destroy liberal politics than inflexible hostility to trade protection. The upsurge of “ illiberal democracy ” in the West is, after all, the direct result o [...]

2018-08-09

• Cosa sappiamo del moltiplicatore keynesiano
  by keynesblog in Keynes Blog, 2018-08-09 14:35:26 UTC

  Riportiamo due ottimi articoli recenti di Francesco Saraceno sul dibattito relativo ai moltiplicatori fiscali. Il primo, tratto da LuissOpen, analizza la letteratura recente relativa all’entità dei moltiplicatori fiscali. Il secondo, tratta dal sito della Rivista “Il Mulino” è una critica ad un recente articolo di Cottarelli e Galli pubblicato dal Corriere della Sera. Che cosa ci dice il dibattito tra economisti sull’impatto di un piano di investimenti pubblici da LuissOpen   Una prima riflessione di Francesco Saraceno, autore di “La scienza inutile” (LUISS University Press 2018), sul piano [...]

• MMT is just plain old bad economics – Part 1
  by bill in Bill Mitchell - billy blog, 2018-08-09 08:48:15 UTC

  On August 6, 2018, British tax expert Richard Murphy who is becoming increasingly sympathetic to the principles of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) published a blog post , which recorded an exchange with one James Meadway, who is the economics advisor to the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell in Britain. The exchange took place on the social media page of a Labour Party insider who has long advocated a Land Tax, which McDonnell is on the public record as saying will “raise the funds we need” to help local government. He called it a “radical solution” ( Source ). An aside, but not an irrelevant one. [...]

• Labour’s fiscal rule is progressive
  by Mainly Macro in Mainly Macro, 2018-08-09 08:43:00 UTC

  I have seen a lot of things said about Labour’s fiscal credibility rule in the last few days which are simply wrong. I think the heart of the problem is that many heterodox economists do not believe in what I call the conventional or consensus assignment outwith the lower bound for interest rates. That conventional or consensus assignment [1] is that interest rates should be used to stabilise the economy rather than fiscal policy. The whole idea of independent central banks setting interest rates is predicated on this assignment. The assignment will not work when interest rates hit a lower bou [...]

2018-08-08

• Jane Jacobs: Libertarian?
  by Jason Barr in Building the skyline, 2018-08-08 12:43:24 UTC

  Jason M. Barr       August 9, 2018 [Author’s note: This is the first of at least two blog posts on Jane Jacobs and her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities , published in 1961.]   With the resurgence of large cities like New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago, it’s hard to imagine that not too long ago America’s cities were falling apart at the seams. In 1961, Jane Jacobs published her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities , as an attempt to diagnose the problems and offer solutions. Today, Jacobs is revered among urbanists. She was a visionary—able to see—what o [...]

2018-08-07

• Ownership in question
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2018-08-07 12:39:06 UTC

  What is the right form of ownership of a company? This is the question raised by Stan Kroenke’s proposal to buy all the remaining shares in Arsenal – a move described by the Arsenal Supporters Trust as “dreadful”. Viewed through the lens of some conventional economics, the AST’s objections seem misplaced because there are big pitfalls with dispersed ownership which can be solved by concentrating ownership into fewer hands. One of these is a lack of incentives. If a firm has many shareholders, it accounts for only a small fraction of the wealth of each owner. No owner therefore has a strong inc [...]

• Jak chronić pracowników bez wprowadzania ceł
  by Katarzyna Mokrzycka in Obserwator Finansowy, 2018-08-07 01:00:06 UTC

  To dobra wiadomość, że większość Amerykanów sprzeciwia się prezydentowi w tej kluczowej kwestii. Zagadką jest, dlaczego nawet 39 proc. badanych popiera taką politykę. Od czasu Wielkiego Kryzysu i II wojny światowej, a także Układu ogólnego w sprawie taryf celnych i handlu z 1947 r. Stany Zjednoczone – zarówno rząd, jak i obywatele – popierały wolny handel. Adam Smith , w książce z 1776 r. zatytułowanej „Bogactwo narodów” , przedstawił elokwentną i przekonującą argumentację za wolnym handlem, zamiast handlu zniekształconego przez cła. Dzięki wolnemu handlowi gospodarka kwitnie, ponieważ towary [...]

2018-08-06

• Is there a skills gap in the South? : Mapping education and unemployment across the U.S.
  by ? in FRED blog, 2018-08-06 13:00:08 UTC

  View on GeoFRED ® Much research has been published on the labor market transition from low-skill and routine jobs to high-skill and non-routine jobs at both a national and a local level. But is this job polarization occurring to the same degree across the country? A recent report co-sponsored by the St. Louis Fed looks at the issue of workforce development in light of this changing economy, especially in southern regions of the U.S. that typically rely more on a low-skilled and low-wage labor force. These GeoFRED maps show that the southern states typically have lower levels of educational att [...]

• Trump v. Fed
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2018-08-06 11:39:43 UTC

  “ Well, it's staying at zero because she's [former Fed Chair Janet Yellen] obviously political and doing what Obama wants her to do. […] I used to hope the Fed was independent. And the Fed is obviously not independent. It’s obviously not even close to being independent." Candidate Donald Trump, CNBC , September 12, 2016. “I put a very good man in the Fed. I don’t necessarily agree with it because he’s raising interest rates [...] I don't like all this work that we are putting in to the economy and then I see rates going up…. President Donald Trump, CNBC , July 19, 2018. “China, the European Un [...]

• Simon McNamara’s journal round-up for 6th August 2018
  by sjmcnamara1 in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2018-08-06 11:00:29 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . Euthanasia, religiosity and the valuation of health states: results from an Irish EQ5D5L valuation study and their implications for anchor values . Health and Quality of Life Outcomes [ PubMed ] Published 31st [...]

2018-08-03

• The Aggregate Consequences of Tax Evasion
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2018-08-03 16:23:38 UTC

  By Alessandro Di Nola, Georgi Kocharkov, Almuth Scholl and Anna-Mariia Tkhir http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:knz:dpteco:1806&r=dge There is a sizable overall tax gap in the U.S., albeit tax non-compliance differs sharply across income types. While only small percentages of wages and salaries are underreported, the estimated misreporting rate of self-employment business income is substantial. This paper studies how tax evasion in the self-employment sector affects aggregate outcomes and welfare. We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model with incomplete markets in which heterogeneous agents [...]

2018-08-02

• 2 julio 2018: el día en el que se destruyeron 504.630 afiliados y se crearon 519.126
  by J. Ignacio Conde-Ruiz in Nada Es Gratis, 2018-08-02 11:15:14 UTC

  de J. Ignacio Conde-Ruiz, Manu García, Luis Puch y Jesús Ruiz. ( Nota de los editores : A pesar de la "parada biológica", colaboradores y editores de NeG siguen atentos a la realidad. Y, a veces, ocurren cosas extraordinarias que, aunque bien conocidas, requieren ser puestas de relieve. Hoy se han publicado los datos de afiliación a la Seguridad Social del mes de julio pasado. Y nuestros colaboradores expertos en los efectos calendario de la dinámica laboral han encontrado un registro histórico. Un hecho extraordinario merece una entrada extraordinaria). Se acaban de publicar los datos de afil [...]

2018-08-01

• On the optimal design of a Financial Stability Fund
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2018-08-01 15:58:27 UTC

  By Arpad Abraham, Eva Carceles-Poveda, Yan Liu and Ramon Marimon http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nys:sunysb:18-06&r=dge A Financial Stability Fund set by a union of sovereign countries can improve countries’ ability to share risks, borrow and lend, with respect to the standard instrument used to smooth fluctuations: sovereign debt financing. Efficiency gains arise from the ability of the fund to offer long-term contingent financial contracts, subject to limited enforcement (LE) and moral hazard (MH) constraints. In contrast, standard sovereign debt contracts are uncontingent and subject to untime [...]

2018-07-31

• Nonlinear household earnings dynamics, self-insurance, and welfare
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2018-07-31 13:51:19 UTC

  By Mariacristina De Nardi, Giulio Fella and Gonzalo Paz-Pardo http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cfm:wpaper:1817&r=dge Earnings dynamics are much richer than typically assumed in macro models with heterogeneous agents. This holds for individual-pre-tax and household-post-tax earnings and across administrative (Social Security Administration) and survey (Panel Study of Income Dynamics) data. We study the implications of two processes for household, post-tax earnings in a standard life-cycle model: a canonical earnings process (that includes a persistent and a transitory shock) and a rich earnings dyn [...]

• The Venality of Evil
  by Ricardo Hausmann in Project Syndicate, 2018-07-31 11:04:39 UTC

  CAMBRIDGE – On July 23, Alejandro Werner, the Director of the International Monetary Fund’s Western Hemisphere Department, announced that the Fund was expecting inflation in Venezuela to reach 1,000,000% by year’s end. In April, the IMF announced that Venezuela’s GDP was expected to be 45% below its 2013 level by the same time. These are mindboggling numbers. How and why could such a thing happen? Science is better at answering “how” questions than “why” questions. Gravity explains how celestial bodies attract each other at a distance, but it does not tell us why. That is a question for metaph [...]

2018-07-30

• Housing Taxation and Financial Intermediation
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2018-07-30 15:56:45 UTC

  BY Hamed Ghiaie and Jean-François Rouillard http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:shr:wpaper:18-01&r=dge Through the lens of a multi-agent dynamic general equilibrium model, we examine the effects of four permanent changes in housing taxes and deductions on macroeconomic aggregates and welfare. Our main result is that the presence of borrowing-constrained bankers dampen the negative consequences of housing taxation on output. The long-run tax multipliers found range from -1.02 to -0.6. The reduction in the deduction of mortgage interest payments delivers the lowest multiplier. We also implement reven [...]

• GDP: One size no longer fits all
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2018-07-30 12:33:44 UTC

  Following Friday’s announcement that real gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 4.1 percent (at a seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the most recent quarter, the business news was filled with stories about how big the number was. Even the most casual reader of financial and economic news knows that the speed of economic growth matters. Businesses―manufacturers, service providers, and retailers, among others―need to know so that they can decide how much to invest in new production facilities, how many people to employ, and what to stock on their shelves. Fiscal policymakers need to know so that [...]

• How radio can help empower women in Niger
  by ? in Forum:Blog, 2018-07-30 10:14:56 UTC

  Niger's prominent radio culture is giving women a platform to speak out against gender inequality. [...]

2018-07-29

• Some General Interest Reading in Climate Change Economics
  by Matthew Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics, 2018-07-29 14:55:00 UTC

  Here are some suggested readings for those who want to learn about climate change economics. I name 3 books and one free article of mine. Here is Nordhaus' book on greenhouse gas mitigation� https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G2C1374/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 Here is my 2010 book on climate change adaptation https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465063837/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i4 Here is Wagner and Weitzman's book on climate change and risk. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0175F6I8U/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 Here is a free paper of mine that offers some key intuit [...]

2018-07-26

• Method of the month: Shared parameter models
  by Sam Watson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2018-07-26 06:00:40 UTC

  Once a month we discuss a particular research method that may be of interest to people working in health economics. We’ll consider widely used key methodologies, as well as more novel approaches. Our reviews are not designed to be comprehensive but provide an introduction to the method, its underlying principles, some applied examples, and where to find out more. If you’d like to write a post for this series, get in touch . This month’s method is shared parameter models . Principles Missing data and data errors are an inevitability rather than a possibility. If these data were missing as a res [...]

2018-07-25

• The “Parabox”: Glass Skyscrapers and the City
  by Jason Barr in Building the skyline, 2018-07-25 12:52:44 UTC

  Jason M. Barr      July 25, 2018 From my eighth-floor office in Newark, New Jersey, I have a view of the Manhattan skyline. On a clear day, I can see One World Trade Center and the Empire State Building. I can also see much of downtown Newark, which, in many respects, is a typical central business district in a mid-size city. A few years ago, Prudential Insurance Company began building a new office building a few blocks from the Rutgers-Newark campus. Prudential has been a vital business to Newark since its founding in 1875. It remained in the city long after other companies fled in the 1960s [...]

2018-07-24

• Migration and Business Cycle Dynamics
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2018-07-24 12:54:28 UTC

  By Christie Smith and Christoph Thoenissen http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:shf:wpaper:2018006&r=dge Shocks to net migration matter for the business cycles. Using an estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of a small open economy and a structural vector autoregression, we find that migration shocks account for a considerable proportion of the variability of per capita GDP. Migration shocks matter for the capital investment and consumption components of per capita GDP, but they are not the most important driver. Migration shocks are also important for residential investment [...]

• “Eliminating Uncertainty in Market Access: The Impact of New Bridges in Rural Nicaragua,” W. Brooks & K. Donovan (2018)
  by afinetheorem in A Fine Theorem, 2018-07-24 07:46:30 UTC

  It’s NBER Summer Institute season, when every bar and restaurant in East Cambridge, from Helmand to Lord Hobo, is filled with our tribe. The air hums with discussions of Lagrangians and HANKs and robust estimators. And the number of great papers presented, discussed, or otherwise floating around inspires. The paper we’re discussing today, by Wyatt Brooks at Notre Dame and Kevin Donovan at Yale SOM, uses a great combination of dynamic general equilibrium theory and a totally insane quasi-randomized experiment to help answer an old question: how beneficial is it for villages to be connected t [...]

2018-07-23

• Bank Capital and Stress Tests: The Foundation of a Thriving Economy
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2018-07-23 11:26:07 UTC

  We submitted this statement to the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit of the Committee on Financial Services of the U.S. House of Representatives for its hearing on July 17, 2018. We appreciate the opportunity to submit the following statement on the occasion of the hearing entitled “Examining Capital Regimes for Financial Institutions.” We welcome the Subcommittee’s further examination of the existing regulatory approach for prudentially regulated financial institutions. We are academic experts in financial regulation with extensive knowledge of the financial industry. [...]

2018-07-20

• Capitalism as a fetter
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2018-07-20 12:30:34 UTC

  I was a little disappointed to see Tony Yates’ reaction to Aaron Bastani: Can we ditch 6th form debates and have someone arguing for evidenced based improvements to our policy portfolio please? My disappointment is the failure to see that there is, if you like, a third way between utopian communism on the one hand and technocratic tweaks on the other. It begins from the idea that ten years of stagnant productivity might mean we are now at the phase of capitalism that Marx foresaw : At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the exist [...]

2018-07-19

• Thesis Thursday: Thomas Hoe
  by Chris Sampson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2018-07-19 06:00:52 UTC

  On the third Thursday of every month, we speak to a recent graduate about their thesis and their studies. This month’s guest is Dr Thomas Hoe who has a PhD from University College London . If you would like to suggest a candidate for an upcoming Thesis Thursday, get in touch . Title Essays on the economics of health care provision Supervisors Richard Blundell , Orazio Attanasio Repository link http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10048627/ What data do you use in your analyses and what are your main analytical methods? I use data from the English National Health Service (NHS). One of the great features [...]

2018-07-18

• Nuances about Using the Supply and Demand Model in Urban Economics
  by Matthew Kahn in Environmental and Urban Economics, 2018-07-18 16:10:00 UTC

  The economist's model of supply and demand is pretty straightforward but in this brief post I would like to highlight a few twists that urban economics offers.� These twists make urban economics a really interesting (and challenging) field.� �Economists are a type of detective. We observe market prices and quantities and how they change over time.� Like a detective, we want to know why prices and quantities have changed. We have two "prime suspects" called supply and demand. In housing economics, the price is monthly rent and the quantity is the number of units of housing.� Building on the inf [...]

• On justifying policies
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2018-07-18 13:24:12 UTC

  Much as I like Ash Sarker, I’m not happy with this recent thread of hers: Lots of people have asked what I mean when I say I’m a communist. What I mean is that in the next 15 years, 1 in 5 jobs in the UK will be automated (1 in 3 in the North, and 40% in Hayes & Harlington). What does that mean for workers? it means that *either* 1 in 5 people are excluded from the means of survival, are consigned to the scrapheap and increasingly authoritarian and violent means are employed by the state to manage surplus populations. Or... we find a means to distribute the abundance generated by fixed capita [...]

2018-07-17

• How to Protect Workers Without Trade Tariffs
  by Robert J. Shiller in Project Syndicate, 2018-07-17 15:24:22 UTC

  NEW HAVEN – According to a Washington Post/Schar School poll of Americans published on July 11, only 39% of respondents approved of US President Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs on foreign countries, while 56% were opposed. But, while it’s good news that a majority of Americans oppose their president on this key issue, Trump is plunging ahead, apparently thinking the public will like the tariffs better when they are in place. It is a puzzle why even 39% support these policies. Ever since the Great Depression and World War II, and the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the United [...]

2018-07-16

• Why Women Volunteer for Tasks That Don’t Lead to Promotions
  by Linda Babcock in HBR Blog Network, 2018-07-16 13:21:13 UTC

  Helen King/Getty Images Here’s a work scenario many of us know too well: You are in a meeting and your manager brings up a project that needs to be assigned. It’s not particularly challenging work, but it’s time-consuming, unlikely to drive revenue, and probably won’t be recognized or included in your performance evaluation. As your manager describes the project and asks for a volunteer, you and your colleagues become silent and uneasy, everyone hoping that someone else will raise their hand. The wait becomes increasingly uncomfortable. Then, finally, someone speaks up: “Okay, I’ll do it.” [...]

• Cyber Instability
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2018-07-16 12:36:25 UTC

  “[W ]e should see the global payment system for what it really is: an essential global public good whose integrity is increasingly being challenged by malicious cyberattacks and fraud attempts....” Benoît Cœuré, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, Speech , 26 June 2018 “I rob banks because that’s where the money is.” Attributed to Willie Sutton . When terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, they also attacked the U.S. financial system. In addition to destroying critical financial infrastructure, the collapse of the twin towers closed the New York Stock Exchange [...]

• Harold Hastings’s journal round-up for 16th July 2018
  by hmhastings in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2018-07-16 11:00:51 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . Legal origins and female HIV . American Economic Review [ RePEc ] Published 13th June 2018 I made this somewhat unusual choice because the author Siwan Anderson draws an important connection between the economic [...]

2018-07-13

• How having unemployed parents affects children’s future well-being
  by Milena Nikolova, Boris Nikolaev in Up Front, 2018-07-13 21:35:38 UTC

  By Milena Nikolova, Boris Nikolaev For many people, job loss can be a catastrophe with far-reaching negative psychological and economic consequences. Unemployment leads to lower earnings, worse physical and mental health, and lasting unhappiness for those directly affected. The negative psychological consequences of unemployment can even spill over to spouses and children . In a novel research paper , forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization , we also show that parental unemployment during childhood can have long-term consequences for adult children’s psychological well [...]

2018-07-10

• The Manhattan Skyline during the Roaring Twenties
  by Jason Barr in Building the skyline, 2018-07-10 12:27:50 UTC

  Jason M. Barr        July 10, 2018 Author’s note: The paperback of Building the Skyline: The Birth and Growth of Manhattan’s Skyscrapers was recently released. This blog post has been adapted from Chapter 9 of the book. The Roaring Twenties remains a mythical time in American culture—an age of danger, of heroes, of unrestraint. Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Clandestine speakeasies served bathtub gin to flappers, swinging to the new jazz music. Babe Ruth became the Sultan of Swat. And supertall skyscrapers sprouted upwards like Jack’s beanstalk. Though the skyscraper wa [...]

2018-07-09

• Is college still worth it? : Re-examining the college premium
  by ? in FRED blog, 2018-07-09 13:00:40 UTC

  A recent symposium held by the Center for Household Financial Stability at the St. Louis Fed looks at the question of whether the college premium is still increasing and positive, using new data from the Fed’s  Survey of Consumer Finances . On an absolute level, college graduates earn more than high school graduates, as shown in the graph above. This is consistent with the understanding that the benefits of a college education are greater than the costs. If we look at the college premium, we can see that it has always been positive, indicating that there is a positive benefit of graduating w [...]

• TARGET2 Balances Mask Reduced Financial Fragmentation in the Euro Area
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2018-07-09 12:49:07 UTC

  As we write, the claims of the Bundesbank on the other euro-area national central banks (NCB) through the TARGET2 system are approaching €1 trillion. What do these claims represent? Are they subsidized German loans to other euro-area countries―primarily Italy, Portugal and Spain? Do they signal further financial disintegration in Europe? Or, as large as these numbers are, are they simply a consequence of the complex mechanics related to the construction of the Eurosystem and how it implements monetary operations? The answer is two-fold: for the first few years of the euro-area crisis―when Germ [...]

• Sam Watson’s journal round-up for 9th July 2018
  by Sam Watson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2018-07-09 11:00:47 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . Evaluating the 2014 sugar-sweetened beverage tax in Chile: an observational study in urban areas . PLoS Medicine [ PubMed ]  Published 3rd July 2018 Sugar taxes are one of the public health policy options curren [...]

2018-07-08

• What Southgate teaches us
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2018-07-08 12:29:28 UTC

  Whatever happens next, this has been a great World Cup for Gareth Southgate. What does this tell us? The first thing is that, as William Goldman said, nobody knows anything. When Southgate was appointed, the reaction was underwhelming . Nobody said “this guy will take us to our best World Cup performance since 1990.” This fits a pattern. “Arsene who?” asked the press when Arsenal appointed Wenger; Sir Alex Ferguson was famously one game away from the sack; and Leicester’s hiring of Claudio Ranieri was greeted with scepticism and certainly not with talk he’d win the title. The point generalizes [...]

2018-07-02

• 315 – Shark conservation and demand for tourism in the Maldives
  by David Pannell in Pannell Discussions, 2018-07-02 15:00:55 UTC

  As I’ve noted previously , diving with wild sharks is a growing tourism industry. It has the potential to increase the demand for shark conservation, in order to maintain the economic benefits to tourism operators, and the benefits to tourists. Here we quantify these benefits in the Maldives, as well as the cost of worsening conservation. The Republic of the Maldives is a small island nation in the central Indian Ocean. The country is composed of about 1200 islands of which 200 are inhabited, around 122 are assigned as resort islands, and the remainder are uninhabited. Tourism dominates the na [...]

• Why does cost of living vary so much? : Housing, housing, housing
  by ? in FRED blog, 2018-07-02 13:00:42 UTC

  View on GeoFRED ® If the map above looks familiar, either you’re experiencing déjà vu or you read our post last year about regional price parities (RPPs), which measure cost of living in metropolitan areas. Cost of living is generally persistent over time, which is why our updated map of the 2016 RPPs looks eerily similar to last year’s map. (The data are released on a two-year lag, by the way.) A reminder: The national average cost of living is set equal to 100. So, an RPP above 100 means an area is more expensive than the national average and an RPP below 100 means it’s less expensive than t [...]

• Fiscal Sustainability: A Primer
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2018-07-02 12:02:05 UTC

  “[T ] he principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale….” Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Taylor , 1816 Nobody likes taxes, but the objections to debt-financed government spending usually are less forceful than Jefferson’s was. Consequently, public spending frequently exceeds revenues, leading governments to borrow (remember Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase ?). These budget deficits are a flow that add to the stock of debt. Since the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2009, public debt in a number of advanced economies has [...]

• Chris Sampson’s journal round-up for 2nd July 2018
  by Chris Sampson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2018-07-02 11:00:43 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . Choice in the presence of experts: the role of general practitioners in patients’ hospital choice . Journal of Health Economics [ PubMed ] [ RePEc ] Published 26th June 2018 In the UK, patients are in principle [...]

2018-06-27

• What I did today: a little community-based research (warning: self-promotion ahead)
  by John Whitehead in Environmental Economics, 2018-06-27 09:06:42 UTC

  Here is an idea for your time when the hard, gemlike flame  threatens to flicker ( BS&G ride director happy with 2018 event ):  Blood, Sweat and Gears Ride Director Scott Nelson felt the 2018 edition of the event went as well as it could. The event, which took place June 23, starting and ending at Valle Crucis Elementary School, hosted 966 riders split between riding the 100-mile and the 50-mile courses. ... The event raised $103,000 for a variety of causes. Nelson said organizers gave away $50,000 to different organizations, including $20,000 to the Western Youth Network, $10,000 to the Hung [...]

• Mujeres en Economía: dónde están, cómo les va y qué prefieren (II)
  by Javier Ferri in Nada Es Gratis, 2018-06-27 05:07:58 UTC

  Por Pilar Beneito, José E. Boscá, Javier Ferri y Manu García En la primera entrega  de esta entrada, contando un trabajo recién salido del horno , ofrecíamos evidencia de que las mujeres se distribuyen en mayor medida que los hombres por las áreas relacionadas con la microeconomía. Además, encontrábamos que las chicas, mientras están estudiando, muestran una ventaja comparativa en las notas que obtienen en las asignaturas de corte micro, pero les va peor que a los chicos en las notas de macro. Las diferencias se acusan en el último cuartil de la distribución de notas, de donde probablemente sa [...]

2018-06-26

• Mujeres en Economía: dónde están, cómo les va y qué prefieren (I)
  by Javier Ferri in Nada Es Gratis, 2018-06-26 05:00:48 UTC

  Por Pilar Beneito, José E. Boscá, Javier Ferri y Manu García Hace más de dos décadas, Marianne A. Ferber, en su crítica feminista publicada por la American Economic Association, relacionaba la baja representación de las mujeres entre los estudiantes de economía con el sesgo masculino en los libros de texto, el reducido número de profesoras, y la aproximación excesivamente estrecha, racional y optimizadora del enfoque ortodoxo, capaz de ahuyentar a muchas jóvenes mujeres. Ferber concluía, no obstante, con una invitación al optimismo: “hay razones para creer que en economía, como en muchas otra [...]

2018-06-25

• Sudden Stops: A Primer on Balance-of-Payments Crises
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2018-06-25 11:59:25 UTC

  “It is not speed that kills, it is the sudden stop.” Bankers’ adage cited by Dornbusch, Goldfajn and Valdés . After years of relative calm, in recent months several emerging economies have found the cost of attracting foreign funding is going up. Faced with a halt of external financing, Argentina obtained a three-year financing deal worth $50 billion from the IMF , while funds also appear to be flowing out of Brazil, Turkey, and elsewhere. And, recent bond market turbulence in Italy suggests the possibility that political risks are triggering outflows there. In this post, we explain balance-of [...]

• Sam Watson’s journal round-up for 25th June 2018
  by Sam Watson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2018-06-25 11:00:28 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . The efficiency of slacking off: evidence from the emergency department . Econometrica [ RePEc ] Published May 2018 Scheduling workers is a complex task, especially in large organisations such as hospitals. Not o [...]

2018-06-21

• Thesis Thursday: Wenjia Zhu
  by Chris Sampson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2018-06-21 06:00:42 UTC

  On the third Thursday of every month, we speak to a recent graduate about their thesis and their studies. This month’s guest is Dr Wenjia Zhu who has a PhD from  Boston University . If you would like to suggest a candidate for an upcoming Thesis Thursday, get in touch . Title Health plan innovations and health care costs in the commercial health insurance market Supervisors Randall P. Ellis , Thomas G. McGuire , Keith M. Ericson Repository link https://hdl.handle.net/2144/27355 What kinds of ‘innovations’ did you want to look at in your research, and why? My dissertation investigated health pl [...]

2018-06-20

• Debt, Asset Prices, and Financial Crises
  by thebusinesscycleblog in The business cycle blog, 2018-06-20 18:36:52 UTC

  How tightly are debt, asset prices, and financial crises linked?  The results in my recent research may surprise you. [...]

• sfc models — New working paper
  by contrarianmedia@hotmail.com (Mike Norman) in Mike Norman Economics, 2018-06-20 13:55:00 UTC

  Modeling economic forces, power relations, and stock-flow consistency: a general constrained dynamics approach by Oliver Richters and Erhard Gloetzl Abstract: In monetary Stock-Flow Consistent (SFC) models, accounting identities reduce the number of behavioral functions to avoid an overdetermined system of equations. We relax this restriction using a differential algebraic equation framework of constrained dynamics. Agents exert forces on the variables according to their desire, for instance to gradually improve their utility. The parameter ‘economic power’ corresponds to their ability to asse [...]

2018-06-19

• What Does "Serious" Mean?
  by Stephen Williamson in Stephen Williamson: New Monetarist Economics, 2018-06-19 21:40:00 UTC

  A week ago I wrote this in a tweet: I'm puzzled by the infatuation with NGDP targeting. We have good reasons to care about the path for the price level and the path for real GDP. Idea seems to be that if you smooth Py that you get optimal paths for P and y. That's hardly obvious, and doesn't fall out of any serious theory I'm aware of. The proximate cause of that outburst was this blog post by David Beckworth who, as you might know, is a proponent of nominal GDP (NGDP) targeting. I've written before about NGDP targeting - for example I found this post from six years ago. It turns out that not [...]

• A Dragan
  by Alberto Bagnai in Goofynomics, 2018-06-19 21:34:00 UTC

  Questa sera ero a cena con un amico che mi somiglia molto: perfezionista, narcisista, populista, ma ha anche dei difetti. Mi trovava ringiovanito, come mi hanno trovato ringiovanito iMercati, che sono venuti a trovarmi a Palazzo Madama (di passaggio da New York verso Milano), e spiegavo, al mio amico (ma anche a iMercati) che sì, può darsi che sembri rasserenato, perché ora dormo. "E perché non dormivi?" Perché, come vi ho detto tante e tante volte, non era bello andare in giro a spiegare a sale piene di gente che sì, eravamo in trappola, una trappola che peraltro era nota a tutti, inclusi que [...]

• Pension Policies in a Model with Endogenous Fertility
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2018-06-19 21:01:30 UTC

  By Giam Pietro Cipriani and Francesco Pascucci http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11511&r=dge We set up an overlapping generations model with endogenous fertility to study pensions policies in an ageing economy. We show that an increasing life expectancy may not be detrimental for the economy or the pension system itself. On the other hand, conventional policy measures, such as increasing the retirement age or changing the social security contribution rate could have undesired general equilibrium effects. In particular, both policies decrease capital per worker and might have negative e [...]

2018-06-18

• Monetary Policy and Inequality under Labor Market Frictions and Capital-Skill Complementarity
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2018-06-18 14:23:25 UTC

  By Juan Dolado, Gergö Motyovszki and Evi Pappa http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11494&r=dge In order to improve our understanding of the channels through which monetary policy has distributional consequences, we build a New Keynesian model with incomplete asset markets, asymmetric search and matching (SAM) frictions across skilled and unskilled workers and, foremost, capital-skill complementarity (CSC) in the production function. Our main finding is that an unexpected monetary easing increases labor income inequality between high and low-skilled workers, and that the interaction betwe [...]

• Inflation Policy
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2018-06-18 12:36:54 UTC

  “[T]he concept of monetary policy in the United States at its core involves crucial elements of risk management.” Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Remarks at Jackson Hole, August 29, 2003. Inflation in the United States remains at levels that most people don’t really notice. Overall, the consumer price index rose by 2.8 percent from May 2017 to May 2018 . And, when you look at core measures , the trend is still below 2 percent. With inflation and inflation expectations still so benign, it is no wonder that despite solid economic growth and the lowest unemployment rate in 50 year [...]

• Zoned Out: Building Regulations and Housing Affordability
  by Jason Barr in Building the skyline, 2018-06-18 12:34:50 UTC

  Jason M. Barr    June 18, 2018 Have you heard the old joke about gravity—it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law! Ignore the law—say by jumping off a cliff in an attempt to fly—and suffer the consequences.  The same can be said about supply and demand in economics—supply is not just a good idea, it’s the law. Evidently, when it comes to housing affordability, cities and nations world over are trying to ignore it at their own peril. Today, there is a giant disconnect between the sentiments of economists and the residents of cities. There is near universal agreement among those in the economics [...]

• Rita Faria’s journal round-up for 18th June 2018
  by Rita Faria in The Academic Health Economists' Blog, 2018-06-18 11:00:47 UTC

  Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot . If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch . Objectives, budgets, thresholds, and opportunity costs—a health economics approach: an ISPOR Special Task Force report . Value in Health [ PubMed ]  Published 21st February 2018 The economic evaluation world has [...]

2018-06-16

• Jobless Recovery, Liquidity Trap, Tight Monetary Policy and the Cost Channel
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2018-06-16 17:52:46 UTC

  By Lasitha R.C. Pathberiya http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qld:uq2004:591&r=dge In this study, I examine the robustness of an unconventional monetary policy in a cost channel economy. The unconventional monetary policy proposed by Schmitt-Grohé and Uribe (2017, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, SGU henceforth), recommends a tight monetary policy during a liquidity-trapped recession to stimulate the economy and to avoid jobless recovery. The results of my study show that the existence of the cost channel implies that the SGU policy induces sharp initial contractions in the employment rate [...]

2018-06-15

• Capital Income Taxation, Economic Growth, and the Politics of Public Education
  by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog, 2018-06-15 11:57:20 UTC

  By Tetsuo Ono and Yuki Uchida http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osk:wpaper:1805&r=dge This study considers the politics of public education and its impacts on economic growth and welfare across generations. Public education is funded by taxing the labor income of the working generation and capital income of the retired. We employ probabilistic voting to demonstrate the politics of taxes and expenditure and show that aging results in a shift of the tax burden from the old to the young and a slowdown of economic growth. We then consider three alternative constraints that limit the choice of taxes and [...]

2018-06-11

• 314 – ADOPT goes online
  by David Pannell in Pannell Discussions, 2018-06-11 15:10:59 UTC

  ADOPT is the Adoption and Diffusion Outcome Prediction Tool. It is now available as an online version, replacing the spreadsheet that has over 1000 users. I’ve previous talked about how agricultural scientists, extension agents, policy makers and suppliers need to be able to predict how farmers will respond to a new practice or technology ( PD203 ). How many farmers will adopt the new practice, and how quickly will they do so? This knowledge can influence research priorities, reserach funding decisions, the design and emphasis of extension campaigns, and the effectiveness of agricultural polic [...]

• Banks and Money, Or Watch out What You Wish For
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2018-06-11 12:43:55 UTC

  “[S]overeign money is an unnecessary and dangerous experiment, which would inflict great damage on our country." Thomas Jordan, Chairman, Swiss National Bank,  Speech  at the Swiss Institute of Banking and Finance, 3 May 2018 On 10 June 2008, Switzerland held a vote on the proposal that all commercial bank demand deposits be held at the central bank. It failed by a 76% to 24% vote. This Vollgeld referendum was another incarnation of the justifiable public revulsion to financial crises and the bailouts that inevitably accompany them. Vollgeld proponents claimed that a system in which the centra [...]

2018-06-10

• Sankey Diagram for the 2018 FIFA World Cup Forecast
  by Achim Zeileis in R-bloggers, 2018-06-10 22:00:00 UTC

  (This article was first published on Achim Zeileis , and kindly contributed to R-bloggers) The probabilistic forecast from the bookmaker consensus model for the 2018 FIFA World Cup is visualized in an interactive Sankey diagram, highlighting the teams’ most likely progress through the tournament. Bookmaker consensus model Two weeks ago we published our Probabilistic Forecast for the 2018 FIFA World Cup : By adjusting quoted bookmakers’ odds for the profit margins of the bookmakers (also known as overrounds), transforming and averaging them, a predicted winning probability for each [...]

2018-06-08

• Should peer to peer lenders exist in theory?
  by bankunderground in Bank Underground, 2018-06-08 08:00:21 UTC

  John Lewis Walter Heller famously said that an economist is someone who sees something in practice and wonders if it would work in theory.  Economic theory says banks exist because they channel loanable funds more efficiently than individual savers and investors pairing up bilaterally.  Those informational, diversification and maturity transformation considerations imply that banks should be able to out-compete peer to peer (P2P) lenders .  The stylised fact that few P2P platforms have made a profit to date is in line with this theory.  If so, then P2P lenders face a difficult future and they [...]

2018-06-05

• Evaluating the Distinctive Economic Impact of Historical Female Migration in the United States
  by Fernando Arteaga in NEP-HIS blog, 2018-06-05 03:00:31 UTC

  A Woman’s Touch? Female Migration and Economic Development in the United States By Viola von Berlepsch ( London School of Economics ), Andrés Rodríguez-Pose ( London School of Economics ) and Neil Lee ( London School of Economics ), Abstract :  Does the economic effect of immigrant women differ from that of immigrants in general? This paper examines if gender has influenced the short- and long-term economic impact of mass migration to the US, using Census microdata from 1880 and 1910. By means of ordinary least squares and instrumental variable estimations, the analysis shows that a greater co [...]

2018-06-04

• Italeave: Mother of all financial crises
  by Steve Cecchetti and Kim Schoenholtz in Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 2018-06-04 11:55:24 UTC

  Nearly a decade ago, Barry Eichengreen conjured a prescient scenario for the exit of Italy from the euro: “ Households and firms anticipating that domestic deposits would be redenominated into lira, which would then lose value against the euro, would shift their deposits to other euro area banks. In the worst case, a system-wide bank run could follow. Investors anticipating that their claims on the Italian government would be redenominated into lira would presumably shift into claims on other euro area governments, leading to a bond market crisis. If the precipitating factor was parliamentary [...]

2018-06-01

• Some Fairly Recent Must- and Should-Reads About Globalization
  by ? in Grasping Reality with the Invisible Hand, 2018-06-01 21:01:49 UTC

  Ken Schultz: "I’m not an IPE expert, but it seems like you must be doing tariffs wrong if they aren’t even supported by the labor union in the protected industry..." Paul Krugman: Oh, What a Stupid Trade War: "Even if tariffs were expansionary, that w [...]

• Protecting Customers’ Privacy Requires More than Anonymizing Their Data
  by Sachin Gupta in HBR Blog Network, 2018-06-01 14:00:49 UTC

  Becky Hayes/EyeEm/Getty Images Today, good marketing relies on having detailed and accurate customer data. And companies, not surprisingly, are eager to collect vast troves of it. For instance, Amazon continuously tracks the behaviors of its 100 million Prime members , an example of “first-party” data. And many companies have found that sharing their own customer information with other companies creates synergies for both parties, especially with the increasing availability of “internet of things” data (GPS sensors, smart utility meters, fitness devices, etc.). These are examples of “secon [...]

• Why the MPC needs experts
  by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling, 2018-06-01 13:33:58 UTC

  There’s no doubt that Jonathan Haskel is an excellent appointment to the MPC. What we should be asking is rather: isn’t he over-qualified? What I mean is that not much hangs upon interest rate decisions. The Bank’s own work estimates that a quarter-point rise reduces output only by around 0.15%. Granted, it’s possible that the economy might now be more sensitive than this to rate changes now. But even so, the cost of interest rate mistakes are small. Put it this way. For a monetary policy error to have had the same cost as fiscal austerity or Brexit, interest rates would have had to rise to we [...]

• Suggested Reading for June
  by Dave Giles in Econometrics Beat: Dave Giles' Blog, 2018-06-01 12:49:00 UTC

  Colussi, T. , 2018. Social ties in academia: A friend is a treasure. Review of Economics and Statistics , 100, 45-50. Dette, H., K. Möllenhoff, S. Volgushev, & F. Bretz , 2018. Equivalence of regression curves. Journal of the American Statistical Association , online. Kumbhaker, S. C., C. F. Parmeter, & V. Zelenyuk , 2018. Stochastic frontier analysis: Foundations and advances. Working paper No. WP02/2018, Centre for Efficiency and productivity Analysis, School of Economics, University of Queensland. Morshed, A. A., E. Andreou, & O. Boldea , 2018. Structural break tests robust to regression mi [...]

• Statistics: Brazil will play Germany in the FIFA World Cup final
  by ? in Brinkwire, 2018-06-01 08:16:59 UTC

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