an econometric analysis of u s foreign direct investment this paper constructs a theoretical model of foreign direct investment and examines the extent to which the model can explain the level of outward direct investment by u s companies over the last two decades the authors find that market size and factor costs both labor and capital are important factors in the investment decision instrumental variable estimation is used to demonstrate that the expectation of short run fluctuations in the dollar also influences the timing of investment copyright 1996 by mit press

is firm specific innovation associated with greater value appropriation the roles of environmental dynamism and technological diversity abstract this paper extends the resource based theory of the firm to examine the contingencies that either intensify or reduce the relationship between firm specific innovation and value appropriation based on a large scale analysis of a sample of us manufacturing firms we found that greater innovation rents appropriation is associated with an increase in firm specificity of its innovative knowledge but the positive relationship between firm specific innovations and firm value appropriation tends to decrease when the product or technology market is highly dynamic further under high environmental dynamism firms should increase the diversity in their knowledge composition in order to mitigate the risk of value erosion associated with firm specific innovations

determinants of u s direct investment in the e e c revisited abstract this paper expands upon an earlier work in this review concerning the specification of a model to identify the determinants of u s direct foreign investment dfi in the e e c compared to earlier studies a longer data series is used an improved tariff discrimination proxy is employed and predicted sales are estimated and used as the output variable in the empirical work a variable to capture the effect of the u s capital control programs is also included the findings reaffirm the importance of market size especially in the plant and equipment equations as being an important determinant of dfi strong support was also found for the growth hypothesis consistent statistical support was found for the tariff discrimination hypothesis in addition the findings imply that a variable to capture the effects of fluctuating exchange rates should be included in future studies

education and propaganda tradeoffs to public education provision in nondemocracies abstract nondemocratic regimes face a tradeoff when investing in public education education promotes human capital acquisition expanding the tax base yet it also enhances political sophistication and participation at a cost to nondemocratic regimes to relax this tradeoff a regime can disseminate propaganda through its education system i show that even bayesian citizens can be influenced by propaganda by deterring political opposition propaganda can induce nondemocracies to invest in education when they otherwise would not improving social welfare when propaganda is too strong however it can generate a backlash using cross country and survey data i find evidence consistent with the predictions

real rigidities and the non neutrality of money rigidities in real prices are not sufficient to create rigidities in nominal prices and real effects of nominal shocks and by themselves small frictions in nominal adjustment such as costs of changing prices create only small non neutralities but this paper shows that substantial nominal rigidity can arise from a combination of real rigidities and small nominal frictions the paper shows the connection between real and nominal rigidity given the presence of nominal frictions both in general and for two specific sources of real rigidity one arising from goods market imperfections and the other from labour market imperfections

democratic processes political risk and foreign exchange markets 3i6 foreign exchange markets are among the deepest and widest financial markets in the world technological innovations and market liberal ization have made currency markets enormous by 1992 the vol ume of transactions topped over 1 trillion each day moreover economic agents can trade currencies with shocking speed during the september 1992 e m s crisis british monetary authorities expended over two billion dollars to support the pegged value of the pound in only a few hours the behavior of these currency markets can affect not only trade flows and in ternational investment key determinants of economic performance but also political outcomes consequently exchange rates have become a highly salient issue both at the domestic and international levels indeed some political economists assert that rapidly adjusting international markets may overwhelm the ability of policymakers to control policy and according to the most extreme view thwart any meaningful democracy understanding how currency markets behave therefore is fundamental step to assess accu rately how the internationalization of economic activity influences demo cratic politics we investigate how democratic political events affect currency markets by focusing on the relationship between the spot and forward exchange rate markets the efficient markets hypothesis implies that the forward ex change rate the price of the currency deliverable thirty days in the fu ture should be an unbiased predictor of the future spot exchange rate that is today s thirty day forward rate should on average accurately pre dict the spot exchange rate one month from today empirical studies how ever conclude that the forward rate is often a biased predictor of future ex change rate changes many economic models attribute this bias to a risk premium where currency traders demand a higher return for holding the currency

measuring the impacts of teachers ii teacher value added and student outcomes in adulthood abstract are teachers impacts on students test scores value added a good measure of their quality this question has sparked debate partly because of a lack of evidence on whether high value ad

the locational determinants of direct investments among industrialized countries abstract market size and growth rate as well as tariff barriers have already been shown to influence u s direct investments in the eec the present paper enlarges the field of observation to all bilateral flows of direct investments among six industrialized countries the united states germany france the united kingdom the netherlands and belgium over the years 1969 1982 it also tests the impact of two other would be locational determinants of foreign direct investments namely unit labour costs and export flows moreover a new and alternative specification is put forward and tested which assumes that in the investment decision process foreign locations are in competition not only with each other but also with the home country of the investor

macroeconomic policy transmission and international interdependence a svar application to brazil and us economic policy transmission between trade partners has been analyzed over different contexts in the literature depending on real or nominal frictions the results indicate possible beggar thy neighbor effects for policies given international trade and need for coordinating policies the baseline model is corsetti and pesenti 2001 of macroeconomic interdependence the theoretical proposition suggests that a no anticipated economic policy of exchange rate depreciation creates a beggar thyself effect yet many economies have engaged in this policy to enhance exports and improve welfare here fiscal policy transmissions over brazilian economic aggregates are investigated considering brazil as home and us as foreign country the problem is specified in a structural var vector autoregression model taking granger causality tests and impulse response analysis as econometric applications the results indicate that expansionary fiscal policy in us has a beggar thy neighbor effect for the brazilian economy in the long run the policy transmission mechanism relies on the terms of trade in addition real money balances are affected by foreign fiscal policy affecting the efficiency of domestic monetary policy 2013 national association of postgraduate centers in economics anpec production and hosting by elsevier b v all rights reserved jel classification f41 f42

types and patterns an experimental east west german comparison of cooperation and solidarity abstract in a study of public good and solidarity experiments conducted in eastern and western germany we found in both games that eastern subjects behave in a significantly more selfish manner than do western subjects besides that we found that many qualitative results of both data sets are similar since our experiments were conducted in two parts of one nation we present an unusually well controlled cross cultural study by avoiding difficulties that usually arise in multinational settings we conclude that cooperation and solidarity behavior seem to depend strongly on different culture specific norms resulting from opposing economic and social histories in the two parts of germany

international investment positions a cross sectional analysis abstract we explore some empirical properties of the level and composition of gross international investment positions in a cross section of countries we find that more open countries with larger domestic financial markets tend to hold greater quantities of foreign assets and liabilities there is some evidence that cross holdings are positively correlated with inflation volatility but negatively correlated with terms of trade volatility

causes of capital flows in developing countries abstract this paper investigates the causes of capital flows in four developing countries mexico chile korea and malaysia using structural decomposition analysis it finds that the recent resurgence in capital movements is largely due to external reasons such as decreases in the world interest rate or recession in industrial countries domestic factors including country specific productivity shocks and demand shocks are relatively less important another interesting finding is that the fundamental causes of capital flows differ little across the countries under study these results suggest that developing countries need to pay attention to the financial arrangements associated with capital flows and to exchange rate policy as well as macroeconomic fundamentals to avoid financial crises in a world of increased capital mobility

consumption smoothing and the current account evidence for france 1970 1996 abstract this paper estimates a simple consumption smoothing model of the french current account and examines its capacity to predict recent developments in france s external performance the model views the current account as a buffer through which private agents can smooth consumption over time in response to temporary disturbances to output investment and government expenditure the empirical results indicate that the model performs well overall and predicts correctly the sharp turnaround in france s external accounts observed in the past 3 years a feature of the data that conventional models of trade flows based on income and relative price variables appear unable to explain

tacitness learning and international expansion a study of foreign direct investment in a knowledge intensive industry this paper examines the impact of knowledge tacitness on a firm s propensity to establish plants in foreign rather than domestic locations our predictions build on knowledge based internalization and evolutionary theories of foreign direct investment we argue that the tacitness of technology has an inverted u effect on the propensity to undertake foreign investment we also expect that as a firm learns about a technology it will become more likely to make foreign investments we examine two forms of learning that which accumulates as a function of the number of plants previously built by the firm transfer based learning and that which accumulates as a function of time since the firm started using a technology time based learning we investigate empirical effects in a sample of investments in the memory segment of the semiconductor industry our predictions about the curvilinear effect of tacitness are supported the results also suggest that learning is a matter of taking time to become acquainted with the use of the technology and of gaining experience through successive foreign plant investments the study adds to the understanding of the effects of knowledge on corporate expansion

the politics of speculative attacks in industrial democracies recent models of speculative currency crises contend that market expectations of policy behavior can trigger a speculative attack we argue that political processes and partisan objectives inform expectations about the government s commitment to the exchange rate first market actors anticipate periods when the partisan identity of a government may change through an election or a cabinet collapse second party labels provide information to currency traders about the policy objectives of a potential government consequently we contend that the probability of a speculative attack will be higher when markets expect the cabinet to end and when the cabinet dissolution is likely to produce a leftward shift in policy a discrete timesurvival model is used to estimate the probability that a cabinet will dissolve in any given month for sixteen parliamentary democracies from 1970 to 1995 the predicted values are then used as a proxy for market expectations in a model of speculative currency crises

staunching emigration from east germany age and the determinants of migration following the unification of germany in 1990 eastern wages and unemployment both rose rapidly i demonstrate that rising wages reduced eastern emigration greatly while rising unemployment had little effect this reflects the behavior of the young who are very sensitive to source region wages and relatively insensitive to source unemployment i show that most of the effect of source unemployment comes from the contemporaneous effect on those laid off who are more likely to be older i find that compared to stayers young emigrants are much more skilled older emigrants are slightly more skilled and commuters are not more skilled as measured by education and pre move wages my conclusions are based on a comparison of results from aggregate inter state migration data and individual data from the eastern sample of the german socio economic panel for 1990 2000 jel j61 p23

international capital mobility what do national saving investment dynamics tell us abstract we interpret the relationship between national saving and investment in the long run as reflecting a solvency constraint and interpret the ease with which a country can run current account imbalances in the short run before it has to ultimately reverse the transaction at some future date to satisfy the solvency constraint as being positively related to the degree of international capital mobility we apply panel error correction techniques to data for 20 oecd countries from 1960 to 1999 we find that saving and investment display a long run cointegration relationship that is consistent with the interpretation that a long run solvency constraint is binding for each country over time however deviations from this long run equilibrium relation have become more persistent which suggests that capital mobility has increased

capital flight in the presence of domestic borrowing evidence from eastern european economies summary we estimate capital flight from 10 central and eastern european countries for the period 1996 2009 capital flight from the transition economies is mainly an economic phenomenon driven by differences in interest rates and investors perceptions of economic conditions in their countries as well as by the ease with which they are able to obtain funds that can be transferred overseas through domestic loans and capital inflows domestic credit expansion is an important source of financing for capital flight paradoxically financial liberalization has fueled rather than reduced capital flight by reducing its costs and increasing the funds that can be moved abroad

beggar thy neighbour exchange rate regime misadvice from misapplications of mundell 1961 and the remedy economists invoke mundell 1961 in arguing for the general policy of a flexible exchange rate regime as a means of restoring equilibria after shocks but there is a discrepancy between the intent of the general policy and attempts at its implementation as identified by specific changes in exchange rates when we assemble the set of specific changes called for by distinct economists operating as advocates for individual countries these are uniformly in the form of beggar thy neighbour advice i e travesties of objectively identifying disequilibria and a menace to international cooperation and peace this paper traces the unintended travesties to problems of complexity and uncertainty problems that implicitly are assumed absent in mundell 1961 rendering the situation so simple that equilibria are transparent the problems remained essentially unaddressed when economists extended mundell 1961 via expected utility theory since this theory also ignores the impossibility of maximising and the complexities of central bankers private firms and others in doing the evaluation stage in reaching decisions the problems can be overcome by modelling within skat the stages of knowledge ahead theory this paper points to experimental evidence in support of the view that under all sorts of disequilibrating shocks currency unions outperform flexible currencies by eliminating the inefficiencies generated by exchange rate uncertainty

characterizing environmental variation a hypothesized relationship between environmental variation and organizational actions is central to organization theory this study shows that conventional summary measures of instability do not capture all dimensions of environmental variation this problem is addressed with frequency amplitude and predictability measures that characterize the pattern of environmental variation the hypothesis that there is a relationship between longitudinal environmental variation and organizational structures actions and outcomes is common to most of the major perspectives of organization theory child 1972 hannan freeman 1977 pfeffer salancik 1978 thompson 1967 although there has been little agreement across theories about the causal mechanisms linking environmental variation with organizational characteristics organizational theorists have generally agreed that there is some relationship between longitudinal environmental change and organizing problems as a result environmental variability is a central independent construct in models of processes as disparate as strategic choice firm failure and executive turnover organizations experience longitudinal environmental variation as variation in the availability of the resources required for organizational survival dess beard 1984 52 these resources include sales and knowledge about product design and manufacturing processes in private enterprises budget allocations in the public sector personnel and other production factors researchers have typically characterized variation in the availability of such resources over time with measures of volatility dynamism or instability that attempt to capture total environmental variation with a single dimension we propose a characterization of the pattern of longitudinal environ

financial interdependence and the state international monetary relations at century s end as the twentieth century draws to a close one can find sharply contrasting views among leading scholars on almost every key issue in positive international political economy how strong are international as opposed to domestic influences on policy how important are issues of national security high politics versus economic considerations low politics what role do institutions international and domestic play in influencing and constraining the behavior of governments why is international cooperation rare but not unheard of the list goes on and on

why are prices sticky preliminary results from an interview study this paper reports preliminary results from a large research project on business pricing which is currently underway the idea is to use interviews with actual price setters to assess the validity of a dozen theories of price stickiness the rather unorthodox for economists methodology is defended the research design is described briefly and a few results based on the first 72 interviews out of a projected 200 are presented this sample suggests that the median firm changes its price annually and that price adjustments typically lag 3 4 months behind shocks to demand or cost this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy linking an econometric model with theory in this paper the authors outline a method termed theoretical reconstruction which allows the system properties of any econometric macromodel to be related to a simpler theoretical model first elements of the econometric model which involve significant additional theoretical complexity compared to the theory model are removed this process continues until the properties of the deconstructed econometric model match those of the reference theory second the econometric model is gradually reconstructed noting at each point how each element of additional complexity influences the model properties the technique is illustrated using fiscal policy changes and the u k econometric model compact coauthors are julia darby jonathan ireland and ottavio ricchi

good bye lenin or not the effect of communism on people s preferences preferences for redistribution as well as the generosities of welfare states differ significantly across countries in this paper we test whether there exists a feedback process of the economic regime on individual preferences we exploit the experiment of german separation and reunification to establish exogeneity of the economic system from 1945 to 1990 east germans lived under a communist regime with heavy state intervention and extensive redistribution we find that after german reunification east germans are more in favor of redistribution and state intervention than west germans even after controlling for economic incentives this effect is especially strong for older cohorts who lived under communism for a longer time period we further find that east germans preferences converge towards those of west germans we calculate that it will take one to two generations for preferences to converge completely

capital flows to developing countries this article focuses on the determinants of the large portfolio flows from the united states to latin american and asian countries during 1988 92 cointegration techniques reveal that both domestic and global factors explain bond and equity flows to developing countries and represent significant long run determinants of portfolio flows the article also investigates the dynamics of portfolio flows by estimating seemingly unrelated error correction models global and country specific factors are equally important in determining the long run movements in equity flows for both asian and latin american countries while global factors are much more important than domestic factors in explaining the dynamics of bond flows u s interest rates are a particularly important determinant of the short run dynamics of portfolio especially bond flows to developing countries

the eclectic paradigm of international production a restatement and some possible extensions this article reviews some of the criticisms directed towards the eclectic paradigm of international production over the past decade and restates its main tenets the second part of the article considers a number of possible extensions of the paradigm and concludes by asserting that it remains a robust general framework for explaining and analysing not only the economic rationale of economic production but many organisational and impact issues in relation to mne activity as well

does equity ownership matter for corporate social responsibility a literature review of theories and recent empirical findings based on the concept of shareholder primacy many scholars have argued that it is more important for businesses to earn profits for their shareholders than to provide benefits to society at large corporate social responsibility csr is often regarded as an investment that comes at the expense of shareholders in contrast research analyzing the connections between the equity ownership structure of a company and its level of csr engagement suggests that csr offers benefits to shareholders that go beyond direct financial returns from investments this study provides a comprehensive review and systematic assessment of theoretical considerations and approaches regarding different forms of equity ownership and their relationships to csr and it discusses the relevant benefits and motivations of shareholders the perceived value of these csr benefits varies among different types of shareholders as they assign unequal values to short term financial or to rather long term csr benefits based on a literature sample of 146 publications this review demonstrates central problems inherent in previous analyses given the ambiguous and partially contradictory findings of prior research this study identifies potential moderating influences that help clarify empirical evidence a contingency approach is suggested in future research as this can help resolve the problem of contradictory empirical findings and theoretical arguments

gaining and losing erm credibility the case of the united kingdom the model of this paper highlights two aspects of credibility signaling the type of government which is assumed not to be known and for any type the likelihood that if circumstances are sufficiently unfavorable a devaluation will be impossible to avoid since not to do so would go against the government s interests these two factors have opposite implications for the link between unemployment and interest differentials high unemployment signals a tough government but also makes it less likely that even a tough government will maintain an existing parity copyright 1995 by royal economic society

managing foreign subsidiaries agents of headquarters or an interdependent network in this study two different theoretical perspectives are used to develop sets of hypotheses regarding the mechanisms used to manage foreign subsidiaries of multinational corporations first agency theory serves as the basis for a model that predicts the use of monitoring mechanisms and incentive compensation then it is argued that these mechanisms are insufficient for managing subsidiaries characterized by high levels of intra firm international interdependence the management of which is critical to many of today s complex global firms a second set of hypotheses is argued linking international interdependence to several social control mechanisms primary and secondary data from u s based multinational corporations were used to test both sets of hypotheses the results indicate that agency theory although a useful foundation for studies of control within mncs is limited in its ability to explain fully the phenomenon of foreign subsidiary control however the model based on intra firm interdependence had much greater predictive ability copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

european monetary upheavals the european monetary system was thrown into disarray by the speculative crises from september 1992 to august 1993 the consequent widening of the permitted bands of fluctuation from 2 25 to 15 has added to the uncertainty in the european economic environment and cast doubt on the strategy for monetary unification set out in the maastricht treaty this book provides a response to the new situation from a variety of economic perspectives it includes analyses of the upheavals themselves separate chapters on monetary policy in france germany and the uk and discussions of implications for the future the papers are written by academic contributors from the usa and europe as well as the uk the book also includes a panel discussion in which economists from national and international institutions debate the future of european monetary integration

endogenous indoctrination occupational choices the evolution of beliefs and the political economy of reforms i analyse a model where workers self select in the educational occupation in a way which is correlated with their beliefs about the working of the market economy teachers have a disproportionate effect on the transmission of beliefs therefore they generate a bias which makes it harder for the population to learn the true parameters of the economy if these are favourable to the market economy two parameters determine this bias social entropy defines how predictable one s occupation is as a function of one s beliefs heritability is the weight of the family s beliefs in the determination of the priors of a new generation both heritability and social entropy reduce the bias and make it easier to learn that the market economy is good under the assumption that it is

on the effectiveness of capital controls the experience of colombia during the 1990s abstract this paper analyzes the effectiveness of capital controls in colombia the evidence presented points towards a relative inability of the measures adopted to reduce the level of capital inflows nonetheless the evidence suggests that non remunerated deposits have been successful in inducing a recomposition of foreign liabilities in favor of long term maturities it is likely that this is a positive result as it has made the country less vulnerable to a reversal in capital flows in this sense controls may be viewed as an effective way of internalizing the negative externality imposed by short term maturities

understanding interdependence the macroeconomics of the open economy list of figureslist of tablesintroduction1the endogeneity of exchange rate regimes32exchange rate behavior under alternative exchange rate arrangements343panel one money for how many 844exchange rates prices and external adjustment in the united states and japan1075the dynamic optimizing approach to the current account theory and evidence1696international capital mobility in the 1990s2017a retrospective on the debt crisis2628trade liberalization in disinflation2919inflation and growth in an integrated approach31310panel the outlook for stabilization and reform in central and eastern europe36811international cooperation in the making of national macroeconomic policies where do we stand 39112the political economy of monetary union44813what do we need to know about the international monetary system 509conference participants531author index535subject index543

value of human capital in transition to market evidence from slovenia abstract the paper summarizes existing hard evidence concerning the changing value of human capital in slovenia s transition to a market system it investigates changes in patterns of job mobility via estimating multinomial logit and hazard models and changes in the structure of wages via earnings functions associated with education experience gender and ethnicity data are drawn from unusually rich administrative data sets that include personal characteristics work history and earnings for virtually all labor force participants all evidence points to rapidly increasing marginal returns to human capital in transition economies

does medicare save lives health insurance characteristics shift at age 65 as most people become eligible for medicare we measure the impacts of these changes on patients who are admitted to hospitals through emergency departments for conditions with similar admission rates on weekdays and weekends the age profiles of admissions and comorbidities for these patients are smooth at age 65 suggesting that the severity of illness is similar on either side of the medicare threshold in contrast the number of procedures performed in hospitals and total list charges exhibit small but statistically significant discontinuities implying that patients over 65 receive more services we estimate a nearly 1 percentage point drop in 7 day mortality for patients at age 65 equivalent to a 20 reduction in deaths for this severely ill patient group the mortality gap persists for at least 9 months after admission

factor market barriers are trade barriers gains from trade in 1992 abstract this paper argues that some factor market barriers act as trade barriers consequently removal of such barriers can create gains from trade even in countries which already have free trade in goods the basic argument is simple for some types of goods international vertical integration is essential to efficient international trade that is to say for such goods it is cheaper to conduct trade on an intra firm basis rather than an inter firm basis for instance in the u s roughly half of all imports are intra firm in such industries those factor market barriers which raise the cost of foreign control of local assets have the effect of raising the cost of trade consequently removing such barriers can lead to gains from trade

long lasting effects of socialist education abstract political regimes influence the content of education and criteria used to select and evaluate students we study the impact of a socialist education on the likelihood of obtaining a college degree and on several labor market outcomes by exploiting the reorganization of the school system in east germany after reunification our identification strategy uses cutoff birth dates for school enrollment that lead to variation in the length of exposure to the socialist education system within the same birth cohort an additional year of socialist education decreases the probability of obtaining a college degree and affects longer term labor market outcomes for men

does compulsory school attendance affect schooling and earnings we establish that season of birth is related to educational attainment because of school start age policy and compulsory school attendance laws individuals born in the beginning of the year start school at an older age and can therefore drop out after completing less schooling than individuals born near the end of the year roughly 25 percent of potential dropouts remain in school because of compulsory schooling laws we estimate the impact of compulsory schooling on earnings by using quarter of birth as an instrument for education the instrumental variables estimate of the return to education is close to the ordinary least squares estimate suggesting that there is little bias in conventional estimates every developed country in the world has a compulsory schooling requirement yet little is known about the effect these laws have on educational attainment and earnings 1 this paper exploits an unusual natural experiment to estimate the impact of compulsory schooling laws in the united states the experiment stems from the fact that children born in different months of the year start school at different ages while compulsory schooling laws generally require students to remain in school until their sixteenth or seventeenth birthday in effect the interaction of school entry requirements and compulsory schooling laws compel students born

the political economy of educational content and development lessons from history beyond years of schooling educational content can play an important role in the process of economic development individuals choices of educational content are often shaped by the political economy of government policies that determine the incentives to acquire various skills we first present a model in which differences in human capital investments emerge as an equilibrium outcome of private decisions and government policy choices we then illustrate these dynamics in two historical circumstances in medieval europe states and the church found individuals trained in roman law valuable and eventually supported productive investments in this new form of human capital in late 19th century china elites were threatened by the introduction of western science and engineering and continued to select civil servants who enjoyed substantial rents based on their knowledge of the confucian classics as a result investments in productive modern human capital were not made

the long term costs of government surveillance insights from stasi spying in east germany we investigate the long run effects of government surveillance on civic capital and economic performance studying the case of the stasi in east germany exploiting regional variation in the number of spies and administrative features of the system we combine a border discontinuity design with an instrumental variables strategy to estimate the long term post reunification effect of government surveillance we find that a higher spying density led to persistently lower levels of interpersonal and institutional trust in post reunification germany we also find substantial and long lasting economic effects of stasi surveillance resulting in lower income higher exposure to unemployment and lower self employment

the saving investment correlation puzzle is still a puzzle abstract a number of simulation studies claim to have solved the feldstein horioka puzzle by demonstrating that a high time series correlation between saving and investment naturally arises from business cycle shocks this paper uses panel data of saving and investment controlled for business cycle shocks to empirically test the significance of cyclical shocks productivity fiscal and the terms of trade shocks in explaining a high saving investment correlation the estimation results reveal that conventional aggregate shocks only partially explain the high saving investment correlation moreover country differences in the size of the gnp and the non traded sector do not significantly affect the saving investment correlation the saving investment correlation puzzle remains a puzzle after all

should central banks target consumer prices or the exchange rate in this article we consider two arguments suggesting that monetary authorities in an open economy should target output price inflation and not consumer price inflation the first suggests that output price inflation corresponds to the distortions caused by price rigidity the second shows how policy rules involving consumer price inflation can induce instability because of the feedback from interest rates to consumer price inflation via the exchange rate we examine both arguments in the context of an open economy which is subject to a range of shocks we show that both arguments remain robust but that there is a case for including a terms of trade or real exchange rate gap term in the authorities welfare function alongside the output gap and output price inflation

differences in income elasticities and trends in real exchange rates abstract one might expect that differences in income elasticities in trade and or differences in growth rates among countries would give rise to strong secular trends in real exchange rates for example fast growing countries might need steady depreciation to get the world to accept their growing exports in fact however income elasticities are systematically related to growth rates by the 45 degree rule under which fast growing countries appear to face high income elasticities of demand for their exports while having low income elasticities of import demand the net effect of this relationship between elasticities and growth rates is that secular trends in real exchange rates are much smaller than one might otherwise have expected relative ppp holds fairly well this paper documents the existence of a 45 degree rule and suggests an explanation in terms of increasing returns and product differentiation

uninsurable shocks and international income convergence the dynamics of production and income growth across countries or across regions within the same country are often thought to give evidence on whether returns to accumulation are increasing constant or decreasing at the local level when poor countries or regions are found to grow no faster than richer ones such lack of convergence is viewed as unfavorable evidence for models in which technology offers high returns to accumulation in relatively capital poor locations see e g paul romer 1987 when population growth saving or investment rates and other determinants of long run income levels in the neoclassical model are controlled for residual income differences across countries and across regions within the same country appear to vanish slowly but significantly over time this suggests that local returns to accumulation are decreasing if the reference theoretical model takes technology to be uniform across locations features unexplained and permanent differences in saving behavior and eliminates or limits capital mobility across locations these assumptions clearly oversimplify reality in various respects and a particular one is considered here 2 the theory that motivates empirical work on income convergence either takes saving propensities as exogenously given or else models them in terms of individual optimization under certainty random variability is essential to every empirical regression equation of course and real data are better represented by a stochastic steady state with ongoing uncertainty than by steady convergence toward steady state uniformity see e g danny quah 1993 to explore the possible role of exogenous and uninsurable income sources in the joint determination of savings behavior and income dynamics here i allow consumption and savings to draw on possibly stochastic location specific income sources which are independent of past accumulation at the local level and which remain relevant as the aggregate economy grows returns to accumulation are assumed to be constant both over time and cross sectionally thus ruling out decreasing returns to accumulation as the driving force of income convergence and ensuring that potential capital mobility need not induce actual capital flows under the common assumption of constant saving propensities this framework predicts that incomes should converge over time if the relative importance of nonaccumulated income is crosssectionally heterogeneous when individuals optimize their savings in light of the size and composition of their accumulated and nonaccumulated income sources consumption smoothing behavior leads to persistent but stationary dynamics for relative incomes and consumption levels the concluding section briefly discusses the extent to which these saving based insights may be applicable to international or interregional income dynamics

determinants of democracy a panel study of over 100 countries from 1960 to 1995 finds that improvements in the standard of living predict increase in democracy as measured by a subjective indicator of electoral rights the propensity for democracy rises with per capita gdp primary schooling and a smaller gap between male and female primary attainment for a given standard of living democaracy tends to fall with urbnization and with a greater reliance on natrual resources democracy has little relation to country size but rises with the middle class share of income the apparently strong relation of democracy to colonial heritage mostly disappears when the economic variables are held constant similarly the allowance for these economic variables weakens the interplay between democracy and religious affiliation however negative effects from muslim and non religious affiliations remain intact

political parties and monetary commitments we argue that political parties will choose monetary institutions in order to help them win elections and retain office increased levels of economic openness in the industrial democracies have complicated the pursuit of office by altering the policy preferences of constituents and decreasing the ability of cabinet ministers to deliver promised economic outcomes we contend that monetary commitments can help political parties manage diverse constituent interests restore policy effectiveness and ultimately maintain their position in office therefore we expect that fixed exchange rates and central bank independence can improve cabinet durability especially under conditions of economic openness in the first section we discuss how fixed exchange rates and central bank independence can insulate cabinets from the political shocks of increased economic openness to determine the political value of these commitments we then test the effect of exchange rate commitments and central bank independence on cabinet durability in the second section in the third section we use the results of our statistical models to generate expected cabinet durability for the countries in our sample under alternative institutional configurations by comparing the expected durabilities we show that most monetary reforms have helped or at least not hurt expected cabinet durability

foreign direct investment in the uk evidence from a disaggregated panel of the uk food sector most empirical studies of foreign direct investment fdi typically use either a cross sectional capturing ownership specific and industry determinants or time series capturing the determinants of fdi over time approach panel data techniques however have the advantage of combining both aspects of the data using disaggregated panel data for the uk food sector a leading recipient of fdi in the uk the results in this paper highlight the predominance of ownership specific and industry characteristics in determining the presence of foreign owned firms in this sector while macro economic factors have a more marginal effect

macro determinants of fdi inflows to japan an analysis of source country characteristics this paper examines the source country determinants of fdi into japan the paper highlights certain methodological and theoretical weaknesses in the previous literature and offers some explanations for hitherto ambiguous results specifically the paper highlights the importance of panel data analysis and the identification of fixed effects in the analysis rather than simply pooling the data indeed we argue that many of the results reported elsewhere are a feature of this mis specification to this end pooled fixed effects and random effects estimates are compared the results suggest that fdi into japan is inversely related to trade flows such that trade and fdi are substitutes moreover the results also suggest that fdi increases with home country political and economic stability the paper also shows that previously reported results regarding the importance of exchange rates relative borrowing costs and labour costs in explaining fdi flows are sensitive to the econometric specification and estimation approach the paper also discusses the importance of these results within a policy context in recent years japan has sought to attract fdi though many firms still complain of barriers to inward investment penetration in japan the results show that cultural and geographic distance are only of marginal importance in explaining fdi and that the results are consistent with the market seeking explanation of fdi as such the attitude to risk in the source country is strongly related to the size of fdi flows to japan 2007 the authors journal compilation 2007 blackwell publishing ltd

life cycle effects of age at school start in sweden children typically start school the year they turn seven we combine this school entry cutoff with individuals birthdates to estimate effects of school starting age ssa on educational attainment and long run labour market outcomes we find that school entry age raises educational attainment and show that postponing tracking until age 16 reduces the effect of ssa on educational attainment on average ssa only affects the allocation of labour supply over the life cycle and leaves prime age earnings unaffected but for individuals with low educated parents we find that prime age earnings increase in response to age at school start

what makes and what does not make a real option a study of equity shares in international joint ventures this paper examines the boundaries of real options logic with an application to joint ventures jvs we distinguish between forms of uncertainty that are resolved endogenously and those that are resolved exogenously and theorize that only exogenous uncertainty will have the impact predicted by real options theory on a foreign investor s choice of how large an equity share to take in a jv we theorize that macroeconomic and institutional variables generate exogenous uncertainty whereas by contrast cultural distance and choices pertaining to corporate scope and product or process development activities involve endogenous sources of uncertainty that investors can both assess and act upon without having to wait and see using a sample of 6472 sino foreign jvs we find support for our predictions we discuss and implement proper methods to test for the existence of null effects as is relevant to establish the boundaries of a theory such as real options theory we draw implications for research and practice on jvs specifically equity share decisions which deserve more attention and real options including suitable uses and desirable extensions of the concept

the persistence of early childhood maturity international evidence of long run age effects a continuum of ages exists within each starting class due to the use of a single school cut off date making the oldest children approximately twenty percent older than the youngest children at school entry we provide substantial evidence that these initial maturity differences have long lasting effects on student performance across oecd countries in particular the youngest members of each cohort score 4 12 percentiles lower than the oldest members in grade four and 2 9 percentiles lower in grade eight depending upon the country in fact data from canada and the united states shows that the youngest members of a cohort are even less likely to enroll in pre university academic track courses and high end academic universities taken together these findings point to important early relative maturity effects that propagate themselves into adulthood through the structure of education systems

which countries have state religions among 188 countries 72 had no state religion in 2000 1970 and 1900 58 had a state religion throughout and 58 had 1 or 2 transitions we use a hotelling spatial competition model to analyze the likelihood that the religion market would be monopolized similar forces influence a government s decision to establish a state religion consistent with the model the probability of state religion in 1970 and 2000 is increasing with the adherence rate to the main religion has a nonlinear relation with population and has little relation with per capita gdp the probability of state religion decreases sharply under communism but lagged communism has only a weak effect with costly adjustment for institutions the probability of state religion in 1970 or 2000 depends substantially on the status in 1900 this persistence is much stronger for countries with no major regime change than for countries with such a change

targeting nominal income an appraisal the practice of setting target growth rates for a year or more ahead for some measure of the mofiey supply is now followed by many industrialised countries however it has been suggested by a number of authors e g meade i978 in his nobel prize lecture tobin i980 in his retrospective on stabilisation policy brittan i98i that it would be more sensible to pursue targets for nominal income rather than the money supply meade for instance argues that controlling nominal income is in any case the ultimate goal of those who favour fixed monetary targets and that an excessive concentration on the means rather than the end is confusing to private agents and can lead to undesirable fluctuations in the demand for output when velocity shifts he goes on to advocate that nominal income targets should be linked to the development of wage fixing institutions designed to mimic competitive behaviour in this paper we examine the implications of such a proposal for the performance of the economy in the context of a simple stochastic macroeconomic model under rational expectations a contracting framework is adopted in which the wage is fixed in a state of uncertainty about future levels of demand and productivity the objective of the authorities is to minimise the divergence of output from its full information equilibrium level if labour supply is inelastic then it turns out that maintaining the level of nominal income is actually the optimal policy if labour supply is elastic nominal income targetry provides an optimal response to demand is lm shocks but a suboptimal response to productivity shocks however a sufficient condition for a nominal income target to be preferable to a fixed money supply target is that the price elasticity of aggregate demand be less than unity the paper concludes by examining the implications of pursuing target growth rates rather than levels it should be conceded at the outset that there are several pertinent issues not addressed such as the greater comprehensibility of nominal income targets to private agents or the possibility that nominal income targets may leave the authorities with too much discretion e g poole i980 the issue of labour market reform is also ignored this is an enormous subject which it would be impossible to do justice to here see for instance meade s own analysis of the problem in meade i982 such reforms might be expected to affect the parameters of the model nevertheless since changes in labour market practices are neither a precondition for nor a logical consequence of nominal income targets an independent analysis of the macrceconomic implications of the latter is still highly relevant

internationalization and changes in tax policy in oecd countries the importance of domestic veto players this article examines the role that economic and political factors played in tax reform in organization for economic cooperation and development oecd countries from 1986 to 1990 some writers argue that economic integration forced states to reform their tax systems the authors findings indicate that economic openness had an indirect effect on the level of change in marginal tax rates the institutional structure of a country was most important countries that had only one veto player or only one institution or party whose approval was necessary for a bill to become law enacted more sweeping reform than states that had more than one veto player these results suggest that even when international or domestic economic factors might dictate a change in policy reform will not be as sweeping in countries in which agreement among several institutions and or parties is necessary

industrial output and factor input determination in an econometric model of a small open economy abstract a correct approach to the modelling of the supply structure of the manufacturing sector of a small open economy soe represents the single most important aspect of any economy model to date much of the empirical modelling of output and factor inputs in soes has been ad hoc and a serious source of model instability we comment on how these issues have been treated in regional and soe models we outline a general production function framework for the analysis of capacity output and long run factor demands in a world consisting of soes in the special case where the factors of production of each country are homothetic in world output and weakly separable from the factors in all other countries then the complex general formulation can be decomposed into a series of simpler ones such restrictions are not unrealistic we show how this approach can be implemented in practice empirical results for the irish economy are presented

the assessment macroeconomic policy after emu in this paper we discuss the emergence of the new european macroeconomic structure within emu we focus on three important elements the wage fixing authorities in each country the fiscal authorities in each country and the single european central bank ecb we identify serious problems which might arise in coordinating both the wage setters and the fiscal authorities and argue that these problems could be exacerbated if the ecb conducts monetary policy inappropriately in the light of this we provide recommendations for the conduct of monetary policy by the ecb the paper also briefly discusses financial stability issues and the interaction between the countries in emu and the rest of the world copyright 1998 by oxford university press

real exchange rate risk expectations and the level of direct investment four models of direct investment are analyzed assuming various relationships between foreign and domestic production the direct effect of risk adjusted expected real foreign currency appreciation is to lower foreign capital cost thus stimulating direct investment however when costs of other inputs are also affected induced productivity changes or output price changes may offset the direct effect reducing direct investment pooled estimation results for u s annual bilateral direct investment flows to five industrialized countries show significant reductions associated with expected appreciation of real foreign currency and significant increases associated with risk these results are consistent with the model where in response to risk the multinational firm reduces exports to the foreign country but offsets this somewhat by increasing foreign capital input and production

social network effects on the extent of innovation diffusion a computer simulation of innovation diffusion no longer focus exclusively on explaining the rate at which innovations diffuse or the sequence in which they are adopted they also focus on explaining why certain innovations diffuse extensively be coming de facto standards whereas others do so partially or not at all many of these theories specify a bandwagon process a positive feedback loop in which increases in the number of adopters create stronger bandwagon pressures and stronger bandwagon pressures in turn cause increases in the number of adopters factors affecting if and how many times this feedback loop cycles explain if and how many potential adopters jump on a bandwagon we argue that one important factor has not yet been incorporated into theories explaining bandwagons extent the structure of social net works through which potential adopters of innovations find out information about these innovations which can cause them to adopt these innovations we advance a theory of how the structure of social networks affects bandwagons extent we propose that both the number of network links as well as small seemingly insignificant idiosyncracies of their structures can have very large effects on the extent of an innovation s diffusion among members of a social network

the new open economy macroeconomics a survey since the 1995 publication of obsteld and rogoff s redux model there has been an outpouring of research on open economy dynamic general equilibrium models that incorporate imperfect competition and nominal rigidities this paper offers an interim survey of this recent literature 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

capital flows to developing countries long and short term determinants this article focuses on the determinants of the large portfolio flows from the united states to latin american and asian countries during 1988 92 cointegration techniques reveal that both domestic and global factors explain bond and equity flows to developing countries and represent significant long run determinants of portfolio flows the article also investigates the dynamics of portfolio flows by estimating seemingly unrelated error correction models global and country specific factors are equally important in determining the long run movements in equity flows for both asian and latin american countries while global factors are much more important than domestic factors in explaining the dynamics of bond flows u s interest rates are a particularly important determinant of the short run dynamics of portfolio especially bond flows to developing countries copyright 1997 by oxford university press

general education versus vocational training evidence from an economy in transition abstract this paper examines the relative benefits of general education and vocational training during romania s transition to a market economy we examine a 1973 educational reform that shifted a large proportion of students from vocational training to general education using census and household survey data we analyze the effect of this policy with a regression discontinuity design we find that men affected by the policy are significantly less likely to work in manual or craft related occupations but have similar levels of labor market participation and earnings compared to their counterparts unaffected by the policy we conclude that differences in labor market returns between graduates of vocational and general schools are largely driven by selection

zero returns to compulsory schooling in germany evidence and interpretation abstract we estimate the impact of compulsory schooling on earnings using changes in compulsory schooling laws in west germany after world war ii most estimates in the literature indicate returns in the range of 10 to 15 while our research design is very similar to studies for various other countries we find a zero return we find no evidence that this is due to labor market institutions or the apprenticeship training system in germany the result might be due to the fact that the basic skills most relevant for the labor market are learned earlier in germany than in other countries

the effect of education on crime evidence from prison inmates arrests and self reports we estimate the effect of high school graduation on participation in criminal activity accounting for endogeneity of schooling we begin by analyzing the effect of high school graduation on incarceration using census data instrumental variable estimates using changes in state compulsory attendance laws as an instrument for high school graduation uncover a significant reduction in incarceration for both blacks and whites when estimating the impact of high school graduation only ols and iv estimators estimate different weighted sums of the impact of each schooling progression on the probability of incarceration we clarify the relationship between ols and iv estimates and show that the weights placed on the impact of each schooling progression can explain differences in the estimates overall the estimates suggest that completing high school reduces the probability of incarceration by about 76 percentage points for whites and 3 4 percentage points for blacks we corroborate these findings using fbi data on arrests that distinguish among different types of crimes the biggest impacts of graduation are associated with murder assault and motor vehicle theft we also examine the effect of drop out on self reported crime in the nlsy and find that our estimates for imprisonment and arrest are caused by changes in criminal behavior and not educational differences in the probability of arrest or incarceration conditional on crime we estimate that the externality of education is about 14 26 of the private return to schooling suggesting that a significant part of the social return to education comes in the form of externalities from crime reduction

the current impasse in research on optimum currency areas abstract the only visible advance in the theory of the optimum currency area oca since mundell wrote in 1961 is the proposal of new criteria for determining the optimal size of a currency area the paper first tries to substantiate this general assessment and then argues that the fault lies in the profession s unwillingness to adopt a formal analysis of the subject divorced from the policy aspects we could make considerable progress in analysing the oca by merely following our usual procedure of defining a general welfare function to be compared if not maximised under different well specified conditions furthermore any move in this direction would take us far beyond the current enumeration of criteria for an oca

central bank independence and monetary control ing from details these conclusions imply that inflation is lower the higher is cbi and that given independence countries that pre announce monetary policy have even lower rates of inflation furthermore there is no evidence that cbi retards growth or investment as a matter of fact for ldcs the evidence points in the opposite direction low independence is associated with lower growth and investment some economists feel that excessive independence may interfere with the potential stabilisatory function of monetary policy since fluctuations in the growth rate of the economy are found to be unrelated to cbi this does not appear to be the case iii commitment via central bank independence and

determinants of exchange rate practices some empirical evidence from thailand although thailand has achieved a spectacular average annual growth rate of 8 in the past two decades due largely to the opening of the economy to international trade there is not yet a consensus on the exchange rate regime that is most suited to the restoration of sustained growth in thailand this study empirically investigates the predictors of exchange rate regimes in thailand using quarterly data spanning the period 1990 1 and 2002 3 results indicate that the government is likely to choose a pegged exchange rate regime in periods of monetary shocks and unsustainable public finance whereas an open economy with a degree of economic development and foreign reserves will encourage the government to opt for a flexible exchange regime in thailand

non separable time preferences novelty consumption and body weight theory and evidence from the east german transition to capitalism abstract this paper develops a dynamic model to illustrate how diet and body weight change when novel food products become available to consumers we propose a microfounded test to empirically discriminate between habit and taste formation in intertemporal preferences moreover we show that novelty consumption and endogenous preferences can explain the persistent correlation between economic development and obesity by empirically studying the german reunification we find that east germans consumed more novel western food and gained more weight than west germans when a larger variety of food products became readily accessible after the fall of the wall the observed consumption patterns suggest that food consumption features habit formation

the lifetime of a unilateral target zone some extended results abstract in dumas and svensson journal of international economics 36 1994 467 the lifetime of a krugman quarterly journal of economics 106 1991 669 682 type target zone model is found to be extremely long this paper shows that the lifetime of the identical target zone regime can be much lower when real disturbances occur in particular the mean lifetime is found to be very low when real disturbances occur and the real exchange rate elasticity of the demand for domestic goods is very low it is also shown that allowing for monetary disturbances to have real effects has very little effect on the lifetime the results indicate the conditions under which real disturbances might trigger currency crises

on inflation and output with costly price changes a simple unifying result this paper determines the real effects of credible disinflation when price setting is staggered the results are surprising a fairly quick disinflation causes a boom this finding suggests that nominal price rigidity alone does not explain why disinflation is costly in actual economies this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

competitiveness through disinflation an assessment of the french macroeconomic strategy france olivier jean blanchard and pierre alain muet over most of the last decade france has followed increasingly rigorous policies the hard franc approach has meant that external competitiveness is no longer sought through devaluation instead the new policy is to achieve a lower inflation rate than abroad in principle the competitiveness through disinflation approach should work and eventually bring down the unemployment rate which has remained broadly unchanged at a high level for many years while maintaining external balance this article investigates whether the policy is working inflation is lower than in germany profits have steadily increased and trade balance has been reestablished but unemployment is higher than in 1983 the policy has been more successful at bringing down inflation than at returning the economy to lower unemployment the adjustment process has been protracted credibility effects have not been fulfilled but nor however have fears that the drastic change of policy might prove unusually disruptive it simply turns out that the policy is working very slowly it would take an improbable 30 accumulated competitiveness gain to bring unemployment down by 3 which does not seem acceptable to france s trading partners

returns to human capital under the communist wage grid and during the transition to a market economy we estimate returns to human capital during communism and the transition using data on 2 284 men in the czech republic we show a extremely low and constant rates of return to education under the communist wage grid and dramatic increases in transition which do not differ by firm ownership b radical changes in returns to several fields of study and sheepskin effects in both regimes c identical wage experience profile in both regimes d similar 1996 returns to human capital obtained in communism and in transition and e changes in the interindustry wage structure a decomposition of the variance of wages finds individuals unobservable effects from communism to persist into transition but most of the variance is due to unobservable effects introduced in the transition

multinational enterprises and wage costs vertical fdi revisited abstract this study explores how wage costs for high skilled and less skilled labor in host countries affect the level of affiliate activities conducted by foreign mnes we find support for vertical fdi in the sense that more fdi is conducted in countries where less skilled labor is relatively cheap in addition we find that skilled wage cost premia also affect fdi activities previously associated with horizontal fdi i e local affiliate sales consequently the potential effects of relative wage costs on mne activities are large rough calculations suggest that more than 20 percent of us affiliate sales in 1998 can be attributed to skilled wage cost premia

stationary time varying risk premia in forward foreign exchange rates abstract there is mounting evidence that forward foreign exchange rates contain time varying risk premia however this evidence is from tests for which statistical inference is based on asymptotic distribution theory furthermore it is uncertain whether risk premia evolve as stationary or nonstationary processes this paper applies two exact small sample pointwise most powerful invariant statistical tests to determine 1 whether forward exchange rates contain time varying risk premia and 2 whether the time varying risk premia are stationary or nonstationary these tests finds strong evidence that forward exchange rates contain stationary time varying risk premia during the recent float evidence from the interwar float is mixed

learning to compete in a transition economy experience environment and performance does organizational learning as measured by experience in a host country affect international expansion performance if so does such a relationship between experience and performance hold over time how do the environmental forces in the host country affect such a relationship focusing on organizational learning by multinational enterprises mnes operating in a transition economy this study answers these three critical questions by exploring the relationships among experience environment and performance at the subsidiary level based on a recent survey of 108 mne subunits operating in china we find that the intensity and diversity of host country experience is an important predictor of subunit performance while the positive effect of the intensity of experience on performance diminishes over time the impact of the diversity of experience on performance remains unchanged moreover for mnes experiencing greater environmental dynamism complexity and hostility there is a stronger positive relationship between experience and performance

training wages and sample selection estimating sharp bounds on treatment effects this paper empirically assesses the wage effects of the job corps program one of the largest federally funded job training programs in the u s even with the aid of a randomized experiment the impact of a training program on wages is difficult to study because of sample selection a pervasive problem in applied microeconometric research wage rates are only observed for those who are employed and employment status itself may be affected by the training program this paper develops an intuitive trimming procedure for bounding average treatment effects in the presence of sample selection in contrast to existing methods the procedure requires neither exclusion restrictions nor a bounded support for the outcome of interest identification results estimators and their asymptotic distribution are presented the bounds suggest that the program raised wages consistent with the notion that the job corps raises earnings by increasing human capital rather than solely through encouraging work the estimator is generally applicable to typical treatment evaluation problems in which there is nonrandom sample selection attrition copyright wiley blackwell