nonmonetary effects of the financial crisis in propagation of the great depression this paper examines the effects of the financial crisis of the 1930s onthe path of aggregate output during that period our approach is complementary to that of friedman and schwartz who emphasized the monetary impact of the bank failures we focus on non monetary primarily credit related aspects of the financial sector output link and consider the problems of debtors as well as those of the banking system we argue that the financial disruptions of 1930 33 reduced the efficiency of the credit allocation process and that the resulting higher cost and reduced availability of credit acted to depress aggregate demand evidence suggests that effects of this type can help explain the unusual length and depth of the great depression this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

finance and the sources of growth at various stages of economic development this article studies the effects of financial development on the sources of growth in different groups of countries recent theoretical work shows that financial development may affect productivity and capital accumulation in different ways in industrial versus developing countries this hypothesis is tested with panel data from 74 countries using gmm dynamic panel techniques results are consistent with the hypothesis finance has a strong positive influence on productivity growth primarily in more developed economies in less developed economies the effect of finance on output growth occurs primarily through capital accumulation jel o4 g1

the effects of human resource management practices on productivity a study of steel finishing lines the authors investigate the productivity effects of innovative employment practices using data from a sample of thirty six homogeneous steel production lines owned by seventeen companies the productivity regressions demonstrate that lines using a set of innovative work practices which include incentive pay teams flexible job assignments employment security and training achieve substantially higher levels of productivity than do lines with the more traditional approach which includes narrow job definitions strict work rules and hourly pay with close supervision their results are consistent with recent theoretical models which stress the importance of complementarities among work practices

neighbors networks and the development of transport systems explaining the diffusion of turnpike trusts in eighteenth century england abstract turnpike trusts were widely employed organizations that improved and maintained toll roads in eighteenth century england they were created by acts of parliament and were promoted by local landowners and merchants the first turnpike was established in 1663 but they were not widespread until 1770 this paper uses survival analysis to show that network effects and inter city competition greatly influenced the diffusion of turnpikes the results show that cities were more likely to adopt turnpikes if other turnpikes were adopted along their route to london and cities were less likely to adopt when their close competitors adopted more generally the findings illustrate the importance of interaction effects under decentralization

building synergies between climate change mitigation and energy poverty alleviation abstract even though energy poverty alleviation and climate change mitigation are inextricably linked policy goals they have remained as relatively disconnected fields of research inquiry and policy development acknowledging this gap this paper explores the mainstream academic and policy literatures to provide a taxonomy of interactions and identify synergies and trade offs between them the most important trade off identified is the potential increase in energy poverty levels as a result of strong climate change action if the internalisation of the external costs of carbon emissions is not offset by efficiency gains the most significant synergy was found in deep energy efficiency in buildings the paper argues that neither of the two problems deep reductions in ghg emissions by mid century and energy poverty eradication is likely to be solved fully on their own merit while joining the two policy goals may provide a very solid case for deep efficiency improvements thus the paper calls for a strong integration of these two policy goals plus other key related benefits like energy security or employment in order to provide sufficient policy motivation to mobilise a wide scale implementation of deep energy efficiency standards

the real costs of credit access evidence from the payday lending market using geographic differences in the availability of payday loans i estimate the real effects of credit access among low income households payday loans are small high interest rate loans that constitute the marginal source of credit for many high risk borrowers i find no evidence that payday loans alleviate economic hardship to the contrary loan access leads to increased difficulty paying mortgage rent and utilities bills the empirical design isolates variation in loan access that is uninfluenced by lenders location decisions and state regulatory decisions two factors that might otherwise correlate with economic hardship measures further analysis of differences in loan availability over time and across income groups rules out a number of alternative explanations for the estimated effects counter to the view that improving credit access facilitates important expenditures the results suggest that for some low income households the debt service burden imposed by borrowing inhibits their ability to pay important bills copyright 2011 oxford university press

the effect of information technology on it facilitated coordination it facilitated autonomy and decision makings at the individual level abstractthe effect of information technology it has been a central concern to economics of it ever since it has been viewed as an important resource to improve firm productivity although significant research progress has been made on the impacts of it use at the individual level the mechanism of how it use increases individual performance at work has not been fully explored in an attempt to examine the it effects on performance we focus on individual work productivity gained from it use following the discussion of previous works we develop a research model describing that the ubiquitous it transforms the way individual employers work in organizations and facilitates working processes and practices that may affect the decision making of individual performance as a result of testing the research model we found not only that it use does have a direct effect on the quality of decision making in organizations but that this effect is partially mediated by the extent of it facilitated autonomy and o

basic concepts for designing renewable electricity support aiming at a full scale transition by 2050 abstract renewable electricity supply is a crucial factor in the realization of a low carbon energy economy the understanding is growing that a full turn over of the electricity sectors by 2050 is an elementary condition for avoiding global average temperature increase beyond 2 c this article adopts such full transition as europe s target when designing renewable energy policy an immediate corollary is that phasing in unprecedented energy efficiency and renewable generation must be paralleled by phasing out non sustainable fossil fuel and nuclear power technologies the double phasing programme assigns novel meaning to nearby target settings for renewable power as share of total power consumption it requires organizing in the medium term eu wide markets for green power a highly demanding task in the present context of poorly functional markets in brown power the eu commission s 2007 2008 proposals of expanding tradable certificates markets were not based on solid analysis of past experiences and future necessities the keystone of sound policies on renewable electricity development is a detailed scientific differentiation and qualification of renewable electricity sources and technologies for measuring the huge diversity in the field we provide but structuring concepts about such qualification because implementation requires extensive research resources support for renewable electricity development is organized via feed in prices or premiums and via quota obligations connected to tradable green certificates green certificates are dependent on physical generated renewable power but separable and no joint products contrary to conventional wisdom we argue their separation in cost analysis but firm linking during trade a few graphs illustrate the importance of assigning qualities to different renewable power sources technologies feed in systems based on an acceptable qualification perform generally better than certificate markets imposing uniform approaches on a very diverse reality for a similar reason uniform and undifferentiated taxation of non sustainable energy sources cannot replace renewable energy support schemes capable of differentiation

the permanent effects of innovation on financial depth abstract this paper examines links between innovation in the us intermediating sector and financial deepening from 1872 1929 technical progress is modeled in a credit rationing framework with limited liability as an enhanced ability of intermediaries to monitor loan recipients this allows an innovating lender to earn temporary rents by lowering loan rates and inducing firms with higher repayment prospects to apply rents persist until others adopt the improvement and competition for loanable funds raises the deposit rate subsequent deposits ensure that more funds are channeled to projects of higher average quality the link between the loan deposit spread and financial deepening implied by the model is then examined in an unobservable components framework the finding that permanent reductions of 1 in the spread of new york banks are associated with increases in financial depth that range from 1 7 to nearly 4 is consistent with a role for efficiency improvements in the rapid financial deepening that characterized the pre 1930 us economy

the rationale for energy efficiency policy assessing the recognition of the multiple benefits of energy efficiency retrofit policy the rationale for energy efficiency policy can be framed in terms of a variety of different benefits this paper considers how different benefits have been used within the overall rationale for energy efficient retrofit policy in different contexts we posit that different rationales may be used for the same policy response and that the form of rationale used may affect the design delivery or the level of policy support with different rationales making it easier to account for different results considering retrofit policy in the contexts of the uk germany new zealand and ireland we characterise policy rationale in each case assessing what the key perceived benefits have been and whether they have changed over time the analysis identifies some marked differences between cases with the recognition of benefits and the ensuing policy rationale resulting from a complex mix of political social and economic influences we find that recognition of multiple benefits may not equate with multiplied policy support and instead it is more likely that different rationales will have relevance at different times for different audiences the findings highlight that alongside evidence for policy it is important to also consider how the overall rationale for policy is eventually framed

poolability and the finance growth nexus a cautionary note abstract the present contribution tests whether countries can be pooled when studying the finance growth nexus overall our results point toward a pragmatic positive answer though considerable heterogeneity is present among developing countries

objective and subjective measures of fuel poverty as energy prices continue to rise to reflect the real cost of carbon the numbers of households in fuel poverty is increasing rapidly this paper uses a unique data set to explore one alternative measure of fuel poverty based on whether consumers feel able to afford their energy similar to one introduced by the government a few years ago we explore the links between an expenditure based and our subjective measure of fuel poverty and compare these differences with those between official measures amongst low income households 28 spent more than a tenth of their income on energy in the home and so would be likely to qualify as fuel poor under the most usual definition but only 16 felt unable to afford sufficient energy to keep their homes warm amongst this group who felt they had difficulty in affording sufficient energy less than half were expenditure fuel poor the paper argues that reintroduction of a self reported measure by the government would be a valuable aid to policy development

the role of social capital in financial development to identify the effect of social capital on financial development we exploit social capital differences within italy in high social capital areas households are more likely to use checks invest less in cash and more in stock have higher access to institutional credit and make less use of informal credit the effect of social capital is stronger where legal enforcement is weaker and among less educated people these results are not driven by omitted environmental variables since we show that the behavior of movers is still affected by the level of social capital of the province where they were born

law finance and firm growth we investigate how differences in legal and financial systems affect firms use of external financing to fund growth we show that in countries whose legal systems score high on an efficiency index a greater proportion of firms use long term external financing an active though not necessarily large stock market and a large banking sector are also associated with externally financed firm growth the increased reliance on external financing occurs in part because established firms in countries with well functioning institutions have lower profit rates government subsidies to industry do not increase the proportion of firms relying on external financing the corporate finance literature suggests that market imperfections caused by conflicts of interest and informational asymmetries between corporate insiders and investors constrain firms in their ability to fund investment projects the magnitude of these imperfections depends in part on the effectiveness of the legal and financial systems because these systems differ across countries the literature implies that there should exist systematic cross country differences in firms ability to obtain external capital to finance investment in this paper we examine whether the underdevelopment of legal and financial systems does prevent firms in some countries from investing in potentially profitable growth opportunities in particular we focus on the use of long term debt or external equity to fund growth see our earlier work demirgut kunt and maksimovic 1996a which compares firms financial structures in developed and developing countries and finds the greatest difference to be in the provision of long term credit we estimate a financial planning model to obtain the maximum growth rate that each firm in our thirty country sample could attain without access to long term financing we then compare these predicted growth rates to growth rates realized by firms in countries with differing degrees of development in their legal and financial systems our approach enables us to identify specific characteristics of the legal and financial systems that are associated with long term financing of firm growth thus we provide a micro level test of the hypoth

renewable energy certificate markets in india a review abstract in india the national action policy on climate change napcc 1 has set a target of 15 of electricity via renewable energy sources by 2020 to reach these ambitious targets in march 2011 the government of india launched the renewable energy certificates rec a market based mechanism to drive renewable energy development and spur further investments however a look into the actual performance of rec market trading during the first year of operation shows that though volume of trading steadily increased the number of accredited certificates issued was less than 2 5 of the technical rec demand potential indicating that the full potential of the rec markets was far from being realized we critically examine the design and implementation of the rec market in india as well as its effectiveness in meeting the desired objectives in the context of international best practices our analysis of rec market best practices reveals that though forward markets banking and price bounds are recommended for stable markets best of class methods for determining the optimal length of banking the level of floor and forbearance prices and the values of credit vintage multipliers are not fully established we then establish that the main issues with the indian rec markets appear to be demand uncertainty resulting from lack of long term targets absence of clarity on compliance and near absence of long term price signals to investors finally we present an analysis of other important features of the indian rec market in the context of well functioning rec markets such as credit multipliers set asides vintage multipliers and voluntary markets 2013 elsevier ltd

what is happening to the impact of financial deepening on economic growth i introduction among the strongest elements of the modern economists canon is that financial sector development has a significant impact on economic growth a generation ago economists like goldsmith 1969 1 and mckinnon 1973 began to draw attention to the benefits of financial structure development and financial liberalization by the early 1990s mckinnon 1991 12 could write with confidence that now however there is widespread agreement that flows of saving and investment should be voluntary and significantly decentralized in an open capital market at close to equilibrium interest rates since the 1990s a burgeoning empirical literature has illustrated the importance of financial sector development for economic growth despite the growing consensus however we find that the link between finance and growth in cross country panel data has weakened considerably over time at the very time that financial sector liberalization spread around the world the influence of financial sector development on economic growth has diminished the seminal empirical work that established the growth finance link is king and levine 1993 which extended the cross country framework introduced in barro 1991 by adding financial variables such as the ratios of liquid liabilities or claims on the private sector to gross domestic product gdp to the standard growth regression they found a robust positive and statistically significant relationship between initial financial conditions and subsequent growth in real per capita incomes for a cross section of about 80 countries in the subsequent decade numerous empirical studies expanded upon this using both cross country and panel data sets for the post 1960 period 2 in this paper we reexamine the core cross country panel result and find that the impact of financial deepening on growth is not as strong with more recent data as it appeared in the original panel studies with data for the period from 1960 to 1989 we consider various explanations for this clear shift first we suggest that financial deepening has a positive effect on growth if not done to excess rapid and excessive deepening as manifested in a credit boom can be problematic even in the most developed markets because it can both weaken the banking system and bring inflationary pressures we test this hypothesis by looking at the finance growth nexus among countries that have or have not experienced financial sector crises we find that once crisis episodes are removed the finance growth relationship remains intact its weakening over time thus seems to be a result of an increased incidence of crises in later years our second and related hypothesis is that the widespread liberalization of financial markets that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s made financial deepening less effective this is reminiscent of robert lucas s 1975 critique of econometric policy evaluation advanced three decades ago policies that have promoted and or forced increases in financial depth over the past two decades may have altered the basic structural relationship between finance and growth this could occur if the observed benefits of financial deepening led many countries to liberalize before the associated legal and regulatory institutions were sufficiently well developed as a consequence the impact of financial deepening on growth would become smaller our evidence does not indicate that recent liberalizations are responsible for the breakdown of the finance growth link however there may be an indirect link as premature financial development can lead to financial crises that have real effects third we examine the role of global equity markets that have grown in importance and prominence in the years over which the finance growth relationship disappeared however we do not find any evidence to suggest that equity market growth has substituted for the role of credit markets and banks in particular

an analysis of the determinants of job satisfaction when individuals baseline satisfaction levels may differ a growing literature seeks to explain differences in individuals self reported satisfaction with their jobs the evidence so far has mainly been based on cross sectional data and when panel data have been used individual unobserved heterogeneity has been modelled as an ordered probit model with random effects this article makes use of longitudinal data for denmark taken from the waves 1995 1999 of the european community household panel and estimates fixed effects ordered logit models using the estimation methods proposed by ferrer i carbonel and frijters 2004 and das and van soest 1999 for comparison and testing purposes a random effects ordered probit is also estimated estimations are carried out separately on the samples of men and women for individuals overall satisfaction with the jobs they hold we find that using the fixed effects approach that clearly rejects the random effects specification considerably reduces the number of key explanatory variables the impact of central economic factors is the same as in previous studies though moreover the determinants of job satisfaction differ considerably between the genders in particular once individual fixed effects are allowed for

finance and the sources of growth the authors evaluate whether the level of development in the banking sector exerts a causal impact on economic growth and its sources total factor productivity growth physical capital accumulation and private saving they use 1 a pure cross country instrumental variable estimator to extract the exogenous component of banking development and 2 a new panel technique that controls for country specific effects and endogeneity they find that banks do exert a large causal impact on total factor productivity growth which feeds through to overall gdp gross domestic product growth the long run links between banking development and both capital growth and private savings are more tenuous

what makes workers happy this article answers the question what makes workers happy it does so by combining insights from micro economics sociology and psychology basis is the standard utility function of a worker that includes income and hours of work and is elaborated with job characteristics in this way it is possible to answer whether part time workers are happier than full time workers the utility function is estimated on basis of the european social survey 2004 which contains all necessary information the results show that workers optimize income and hours of work as predicted by micro economics but also that part time workers are happier than full time workers challenging work with a high level of autonomy makes the workers happy work pressure makes workers unhappy higher educated workers are unhappier than lower educated workers we find a negative effect of education but this is compensated by the type of jobs these higher educated hold

banking development socioeconomic structure and income inequality abstract using rich unique data from the italian local credit markets provinces this paper investigates the impact of local banking development on income inequality and the role of the socioeconomic structure in this link exploiting the italian historical banking regulation to instrument for the local presence of bank branches we find that local banking development mitigates income inequality however the finance inequality nexus manifests itself only in relatively advanced areas when we study the structural channels of influence we uncover evidence that banking development can reduce inequality by affecting geographical mobility and urbanization while it has modest effects through the development of material infrastructures and human capital

financial intermediation and endogenous growth an endogenous growth model with multiple assets is developed agents who face random future liquidity needs accumulate capital and a liquid but unproductive asset the effects of introducing financial intermediation into this environment are considered conditions are provided under which the introduction of intermediaries shifts the composition of savings toward capital causing intermediation to be growth promoting in addition intermediaries generally reduce socially unnecessary capital liquidation again tending to promote growth

local financial development and household welfare in vietnam evidence from a panel survey we examine the impact of local financial development on household welfare in vietnam we employ household level panel data for the periods 2007 2008 2010 and 2013 covering three provinces and mea

the solow productivity paradox what do computers do to productivity 1 you don t see computers everywhere in a meaningful economic sense computers and information processing equipment are a relatively small share of gdp and of the capital stock 2 you only thinkyou see computers everywhere government hedonic price indexes for computers fall too fast according to this position and therefore measured real computer output growth is also too fast 3 you may not see computers everywhere but in the industrial sectors where you most see them output is poorly measured examples are finance and insurance which are heavy users of information technology and where even the concept of output is poorly specified 4 whether or not you see computers everywhere some of what they do is not counted in economic statistics examples are consumption on the job convenience better user interface and so forth 5 you don t see computers in the productivity statistics yet but wait a bit and you will this is the analogy with the diffusion of electricity the idea that the productivity implications of a new technology are only visible witlh a long lag 6 you see computers everywhere but in the productivity statistics because computers are not as productive as you think here there are many anecdotes such as failed computer system design projects but there are also assertions from computer science that computer and software design has taken a wrong turn 7 there is no paradox some economists are counting innovations and new products on an arithmetic scale when they should count on a logarithmic scale

financial development and pathways of growth state branching and deposit insurance laws in the united states 1900 1940 abstract this paper studies the effect of state level banking regulation on financial development and on components of state level growth in the united states from 1900 to 1940 we use these banking laws to assess the findings of a large recent literature that has argued that financial development contributes to economic growth we contend that the institutional mechanism leading to financial development is important in determining its consequences and that some types of financial development can even retard economic growth for the united states from 1900 to 1940 we argue that the financial expansion induced by expanded bank branching accelerated the mechanization of agriculture and spurred growth in manufacturing in contrast financial expansions induced by state deposit insurance had negative consequences for both the agricultural and manufacturing sectors

strategic and user driven transition scenarios toward a low carbon society encompassing the issues of sustainability and societal equity in japan abstract this study investigates the sustainability and social equity impacts of the ongoing transition toward a low carbon society in japan to assess the merits of top down and bottom up approaches the research uses mixed methods incorporating householder and energy expert surveys scenario design utilizing the japanese markal times framework and sustainability and social equity evaluation surveys identify householder energy system and participation preferences alongside energy expert input on social equity and policy design scenario building is undertaken to compare energy system outcomes between the strategic japanese policy approach and a user driven approach to energy transition both cognizant of 2050 environmental goals both scenarios are comparatively assessed using a holistic sustainability evaluation process conclusions identify the impact of liberalization and subsequent householder participation in the energy system in japan when compared to a strategic policy driven approach both approaches have positive ramifications on social equity and policy burden distribution outcomes however the household participation scenario delivers a more equitable outcome distributing energy policy burdens in a fairer manner through the realization of an energy system which is safe stable and affordable the findings have practical applications in participatory policy design and the development of energy policy which can achieve transition goals while being sensitive to householder preferences and social equity concerns

optimal taxation when people do not maximize well being abstract i derive the optimal nonlinear income tax when individuals do not necessarily maximize their own well being this generates a corrective argument for taxation optimal marginal taxes are higher lower if individuals work too much too little from a well being point of view i allow for multidimensional heterogeneity and derive the optimal tax schedule in terms of measurable sufficient statistics one of these statistics measures the degree to which individuals fail to optimize their labor supply i empirically estimate this by using british life satisfaction data as a measure of well being i find that low income workers tend to work too little and high income workers too much providing a motive for lower marginal tax rates at the bottom and higher marginal tax rates at the top of the income distribution

income happiness and the disutility of labor abstract we re examine the claim that the income effect on happiness is downward biased because higher income demands more work effort we find no evidence of an underestimation because the impact of working hours on happiness is rather small and hill shaped

the provision of incentives in firms i ncentives are the essence of economics despite many wide ranging claims about their supposed importance there has been little empirical assessment of incentive provision for workers the purpose of this paper is to critically overview existing work on the provision of incentives since the interests of workers and their employers are not always aligned a large theoretical literature has emphasized how firms design compensation contracts to induce employees to operate in the firm s interest this literature has reached into many areas of compensation and has pointed to a multitude of different mechanisms that can be used to induce workers to act in the interests of their employers these include piece rates options discretionary bonuses promotions profit sharing efficiency wages deferred compensation and so on my objective here is to evaluate this literature in the light of a growing empirical literature on compensation where possible i will address the literature from two perspectives first an underlying assumption of this literature is that individuals respond to contracts that reward performance accordingly i consider whether agents behave in this way and whether these responses are always in the firm s interest second i address whether firms write contracts with these responses in mind in other words do contracts look like the predictions of the theory incentives are provided to workers

from targeting to implementation the role of identification of fuel poor households this paper proposes to evaluate the efficiency of fuel poverty policies by looking at them as a three step process these steps are policy targeting identification of households and implementation of measures each of these steps are costly and can face feasibility problems this is particularly true in the case of fuel poverty policies because of the multidimensional aspect of fuel poverty therefore public policies in that field are necessarily imperfect and this should be taken into account in the analysis of policies this three step framework is applied to the french fuel poverty policy which has been developed in 2010 as its practical modalities of implementation are still under discussion we mainly discuss the choices made in terms of targeting and highlight the role of identification of fuel poor households as a key factor for the success of that policy the general idea behind this discussion is that the efficiency of such policies has to be viewed in a comprehensive way which includes the three policy steps

does decreasing working time reduce environmental pressures new evidence based on dynamic panel approach abstract there is a growing interest in the correlation between working time and environmental pressures but prior empirical studies were mostly focused on static methods within limited country groups to fill the gap this study aims to stimulate the discussion by distinguishing between different time periods for developed and developing country groups respectively in particular we contribute to a further understanding of the environmental effects of working time reduction policies by comparing the differences under the dynamic framework of system generalized method of moments we applied this dynamic panel regression approach for 55 countries worldwide over the period 1980 2010 and employing carbon emissions per capita as the environmental indicator in general results confirmed the significant relationship between hours of work and environmental impacts in developed economies although this is not the case for the developing counterparts interestingly the significant correlations for the developed country group turned from positive during the first sub period 1980 2000 to negative during the second sub period 2001 2010 connecting these results with previous literature we proposed the reasons of rebound energy use derived from certain leisure activities which were more energy intensive if excessive non working time provided

household inequality entrepreneurial dynamism and corporate financing economic theories provide conflicting hypotheses on how wealth inequality affects entrepreneurial dynamism to empirically investigate its impact we construct local measures of household wealth inequality based on financial rents home equity and 1880 farmland we identify its effects on entrepreneurship by instrumenting it with land distribution under the 1862 homestead act or us states removal of death taxes wealth inequality decreases firm entry and exit and the proportion of high tech businesses across metropolitan statistical areas there is also less redistribution into public goods supportive of entrepreneurship such as schooling and the judiciary income per capita consequently grows more slowly

does local financial development matter we study the effects of differences in local financial development within an integrated financial market we construct a new indicator of financial development by estimating a regional effect on the probability that ceteris paribus a household is shut off from the credit market by using this indicator we find that financial development enhances the probability an individual starts his own business favors entry of new firms increases competition and promotes growth as predicted by theory these effects are weaker for larger firms which can more easily raise funds outside of the local area these effects are present even when we instrument our indicator with the structure of the local banking markets in 1936 which because of regulatory reasons affected the supply of credit in the following 50 years overall the results suggest local financial development is an important determinant of the economic success of an area even in an environment where there are no frictions to capital movements

financial development and economic growth views and agenda this critique argues that the preponderance of theoretical reasoning and empirical evidence suggests a positive first order relationship between financial development and economic growth the body of work would push even most skeptics toward the belief that the development of financial markets and institutions is a critical and inextricable part of the growth process and away from the view that the financial system is an inconsequential sideshow responding passively to economic growth many gaps remain however and the paper highlights areas in acute need of additional research

investment cash flow sensitivities credit rationing and financing constraints in small and medium sized firms the controversy on whether investment cash flow sensitivity is a good indicator of financing constraints is still unsolved we apply a comprehensive approach by cross validating our analysis with both balance sheet and qualitative data on self declared credit rationing and financing constraints on a sample of mainly small and medium sized firms our qualitative information shows that self declared credit rationing is weakly related to both traditional a priori factors such as firm size age and location and lenders rational decisions taken on the basis of their credit risk models we use the qualitative information on firms which were denied additional credit to provide evidence relevant to the investment cash flow sensitivity debate the evidence shows that self declared credit rationing significantly discriminates between firms which possess or not such sensitivity while a priori criteria do not the same result does not apply when we consider the wider group of financially constrained firms which do not seem to have a higher investment cash flow sensitivity supporting the more recent empirical evidence in this direction

engendering an inclusive low carbon energy transition in japan considering the perspectives and awareness of the energy poor abstract engendering a low carbon energy transition is necessary to limit climate change impacts and temperature rises ideally this transition would be inclusive incorporating all stakeholders however the issue of energy or fuel poverty is a major obstacle to this goal this research investigates energy poverty in japan using a subjective multidimensional energy poverty measure clarifying the linkages between energy poverty and an inclusive just transition in terms of energy system and policy awareness behavior and preferences through the analysis of an original survey we uncover that there is a marked difference between low income and energy poverty households environmental awareness and their subsequent attitude toward the low carbon energy transition currently the energy poor have a negative attitude toward the low carbon energy transition in japan causing a lack of self reported engagement which will not engender an inclusive just transition our findings suggest that if the japanese low carbon energy transition were to be inclusive a further 5 percent of households could participate in the low carbon energy transition through access to solar or renewable energy capital findings identify the need for policies targeted at the energy poor specifically promoting access to solar capital and low carbon technologies in addition to existing policies targeted at low income households

the wage effects of high performance work organization in manufacturing an unresolved question about now widespread innovative work systems such as teams and quality programs is whether they influence wage determination this study examines that possible association in manufacturing the author uses data from the 1997 national establishment survey that allow examination of how new work systems affected not only employees who were directly involved in them but other workers as well the key finding is that for core blue collar manufacturing employees higher wages were associated with high performance work organization hpwo systems while higher skill levels and computer based technologies were associated with higher wages the key mechanism appears to have been productivity gains independent of skill and technology that were shared via various across the board wage payment systems hpwo systems appear to have increased managers wages as well although through different channels the author finds no evidence that hpwo related wage gains led to greater wage inequality amon

fuel poverty in the uk is there a difference between rural and urban areas abstract fuel poverty is a significant policy issue an argument often made is that rural households are more likely to be fuel poor due to the nature of rural housing stock and the more limited choice of energy sources in rural areas this paper uses panel data to compare the level and dynamics of fuel poverty in rural and urban areas of the uk in addition to descriptive analysis discrete hazard models of fuel poverty exit and re entry are estimated and used to assess the influence of housing and personal characteristics on the time spent in fuel poverty the results indicate that on average the experience of fuel poverty in urban areas is longer with a higher probability of fuel poverty persistence however on average the rural fuel poor appear more vulnerable to energy price increases while living in private accommodation or a flat increases their probability of remaining fuel poor relative to their urban counterparts these results indicate policy effectiveness may differ across rural and urban space however they also emphasise the limits of spatial targeting monitoring the dynamics of fuel poverty is important for ensuring that policy targets are effective and reaching those most in need

income working hours and happiness abstract in empirical analyses the effect of income on happiness tends to be underestimated by ignoring the fact that income has to be earned using the german socio economic panel our analysis confirms this tendency for men the underestimation amounts to 25

regional growth and finance in europe is there a quality effect of bank efficiency abstract in this study we test whether regional growth in 11 european countries depends on financial development and suggest the use of cost and profit efficiency estimates as quality measures of financial institutions contrary to the usual quantitative proxies of financial development the quality of financial institutions is measured in this study as the relative ability of banks to intermediate funds an improvement in bank efficiency spurs five times more regional growth then an identical increase in credit does more credit provided by efficient banks exerts an independent growth effect in addition to direct quantity and quality channel effects

energy poverty policies in the eu a critical perspective abstract once confined to the uk context where it was struggling to receive political recognition for years the concept of energy or fuel poverty is slowly entering the eu s agenda where it has crept into a number of regulatory documents and policy proposals using evidence gathered from an international workshop and semi structured interviews with decision makers experts and advocacy activists in brussels and sofia this paper explores the adoption of policies aimed at addressing energy poverty within i the organisational context of the eu and ii national state institutions in bulgaria a member state facing considerable problems at the energy affordability social inequality nexus while the former are largely nascent and poorly co ordinated the latter have already been implemented de jure to a significant extent however many unresolved issues surrounding their de facto implementation remain at the same time national policy makers remain largely unaware of the existence of direct energy poverty related initiatives at the eu level

the enactment of socio technical transition pathways a reformulated typology and a comparative multi level analysis of the german and uk low carbon electricity transitions 1990 2014 abstract this paper aims to make two contributions to the sustainability transitions literature in particular the geels and schot 2007 res policy 36 3 399 transition pathways typology first it reformulates and differentiates the typology through the lens of endogenous enactment identifying the main patterns for actors formal institutions and technologies second it suggests that transitions may shift between pathways depending on struggles over technology deployment and institutions both contributions are demonstrated with a comparative analysis of unfolding low carbon electricity transitions in germany and the uk between 1990 2014 the analysis shows that germany is on a substitution pathway enacted by new entrants deploying small scale renewable electricity technologies rets while the uk is on a transformation pathway enacted by incumbent actors deploying large scale rets further analysis shows that the german transition has recently shifted from a stretch and transform substitution pathway to a fit and conform pathway because of a fightback from utilities and altered institutions it also shows that the uk transition moved from moderate to substantial incumbent reorientation as government policies became stronger recent policy changes however substantially downscaled uk renewables support which is likely to shift the transition back to weaker reorientation

three decades of italian comparative advantages he structure of italian exports its characteristics its changes over time its causes and implications in terms of income and growth employment and fragility with respect to domestic and international shocks has been the issue around which at least three generations of italian economists have discussed and disagreed over the last 30 years if one has to attribute to one single cause the origin of this multi faceted debate that very cause would be the perplexity associated with the evidence of italy being on the one hand a large industrialised country with per capita income comparable to the top high income oecd members world bank 2004 and on the other hand being characterised by an export composition where traditional low skilled labour intensive sectors oecd 2001 and peneder 2003 such as textiles wearing apparel leather products furniture and footwear still play a relevant role this anomaly in the italian trade structure with respect to one of its fellow members of the g7 and its high level of persistence is what makes of italy a case in the international trading system this paper describes the primary feature giving rise to this debate the italian export composition and its evolution over time the analysis makes use of the revealed comparative advantage rca index associated with the name of bela balassa and through non parametric statistical techniques estimates the empirical the author is very grateful to miur prin pie 2003 and jetro for the financial support and to giancarlo spagnolo for his encouragement discussions with matteo bugamelli giuliano conti davide castellani sergio de nardis paolo guerrieri fabrizio onida and lucia tajoli are gratefully acknowledged the author thanks riccardo faini for sharing his work on the topic and lucia piscitello for making her districts taxonomy available he also benefited from the comments of two anonymous referees that largely influenced the restructuring of the paper many of the arguments of this paper come from the inspiring discussions the author had over the years with massimo tamberi all remaining errors and omissions are the author s own responsibility the data sets and the rscript used in the paper can be downloaded from the webpage http www economiamc org debenedictis

measuring energy poverty in japan 2004 2013 abstract this paper first examines energy or fuel poverty in japan from 2004 to 2013 especially around the time of the 2011 great east japan earthquake geje to analyze the issue the paper employs various poverty and vulnerability measures with the assistance of our unique dataset the results indicate the aggravation of energy poverty among lower income and vulnerable households during the past decade resulting from both the escalation of energy prices and lowering of income the analysis also employs a new decomposition technique and identifies the explanatory factors associated with the increase in energy poverty these results suggest there were major changes in the forces driving the increase in energy poverty before and after the geje after 2011 income alleviates energy poverty in japan with energy prices becoming the main driving factor

the impact of regional financial depth on outbound cross border mergers and acquisitions abstract drawing on china s experience this study examines the role of source province credit conditions and its interplay with host country financial openness in determining the intensity of cross border mergers and acquisitions m as we first show that improved credit conditions in source provinces of china measured by the number of newly established bank branches boost the volume and frequency of their firms cross border m as the effect is stronger for deals where cash is mainly used as the payment method then we identify a complementary effect between the financial openness in host countries and the improved financial depth in source regions more importantly by defining the members of china s the belt and road initiative as countries with higher political openness to china we find that acquirers in china especially the firms affiliated to central government are more political oriented than market oriented when choosing target countries additionally we show that acquirers facing lower political uncertainty from source province benefit more from the enhanced bank access

financial development by learning abstract this paper analyzes financial development driven by accumulation of information through learning by doing financial intermediaries discover good investment opportunities by making loans to industrial projects they thereby accumulate information that improves the allocation of savings an initial equilibrium with poor information and thus no industrial investment may trap the economy in financial underdevelopment such a trap is informational and can be overcome by the remedies that resolve informational externality

an economic model of welfare stigma perhaps the most basic assumption of the economic theory of consumer demand is that more is better than less virtually all of the major propositions of consumer theory can in a certain sense be derived from the assumption that goods are good interestingly however this tenet seems to be violated by the behavior of many individuals in the low income population for many turn out to be eligible for a positive welfare benefit but do not in fact join the welfare rolls for example it has been estimated that in 1970 only about 69 percent of the families eligible for afdc aid to families with dependent children participated in the program see richard michel 1980 the corresponding percentage for afdc u the program for which families with an unemployed male are eligible was only 43 percent and the participation rate in the food stamp program was only 38 percent see maurice mcdonald 1977 this phenomenon has puzzled many investigators because such individuals do not locate on the boundaries of their budget sets consequently most investigators ignore the problem when studying the effects of welfare programs on behavior in this paper this seemingly irrational rejection of an increase in income is modeled as resulting from welfare stigma that is from disutility arising from participation in a welfare program per se 1 the existence of stigma has been amply documented in the sociological literature patrick horan and patricia austin 1974 lee rainwater 1979 where interviews of recipients have often uncovered feelings of lack of self respect and negative self characterizations from participation in welfare nevertheless this phenomenon has not been modeled and many questions consequently remain when is the disutility of participation strong enough to prevent participation shouldn t we expect individuals to weigh the disutility of participation against the potential benefit in their decisions what is the elasticity of participation with respect to the potential benefit also in a slightly different vein how are the work disincentives of welfare affected by stigma these questions have been given scant attention by economists yet they are crucial for our ability to predict the impact of various welfare programs on the lowincome population here these questions are addressed by modeling nonparticipation as a utility maximizing decision the model is developed and estimated for the afdc program 2 the model posits an individual utility function containing not just disposable income but

how energy technology innovation affects transition of coal resource based economy in china abstract the aim of this research paper is to investigate factors and mechanisms that may facilitate the transition from coal resource based economy to sustainability based on the energy technology innovation theory factors that may influence the transition of coal resource based economy were categorized into four types including innovation policy innovation input innovation ability and innovation organization hypotheses were proposed regarding the mechanisms of these factors data were collected from surveys administered to 314 chinese energy firms and a structural equation model sem was employed to test the hypotheses ten of fifteen hypotheses were retained based on the reliability tests validity tests and sem the results show that the four proposed factors are crucial in transforming the coal resource based economy and the effects become statistically significant through three intermediate variables namely transition of energy consumption structure correction of resource wealth investment and improvement of transition environment

infrastructure finance and industrial takeoff in england that financial matters did not constrain industrial takeoff in the uk is generally accepted in the historical literature in contrast contemporary empirical analyses have found evidence that financial development can be a causal determinant of economic growth we look to reconcile these findings by concentrating on a particular aspect of industrializing uk where inefficiencies in finance could have had bite the finance of physical infrastructures we document the historical record and develop the importance of spatial disaggregation and spillovers in both technological and financial development we develop a simple model that captures the nature of infrastructure finance within a theory of endogenous growth where financial costs are endogenous we argue that the conception of the finance growth nexus as a largely static aggregative phenomenon misses out a good deal of complexity and we relate that complexity to a number of implications for regulation of both financial systems and the emergence of infrastructures

an assessment of trends in technology use innovative work practices and employees attitudes in europe several studies of innovative work practices show a positive link with firm performance and employees task involvement organizational commitment and citizenship behaviours one of the recent changes faced by firms is the introduction of information and communication technologies icts although several empirical studies analyse the links between ict use innovative work practices and firm performance employee level analyses are scarce using data from the european working condition survey ewcs this article investigates the relationships between use of the internet and computers and positive attitudes among employees social support job satisfaction extra effort in the european context our empirical results are based on data for more than 9500 employees from 16 european countries in 2005 and more than 14 000 in 2010 among the different effects of ict use based on the results for the 2005 2010 and the pooled 2005 2010 sample and in a within cohorts change analysis we find that internet use

bank privatization finance and growth abstract this paper examines whether privatizing state owned banks improves finance and economic growth to do so we exploit regional banking variations in russia induced by the idiosyncratic creation of specialized banks in the last years of the soviet union 1988 91 that were subsequently privatized starting in 1999 private banks including surviving spetsbanks emerged as an important source of external finance for private firms and households we document that the regional concentration of spetsbanks in the early years of the russian federation is orthogonal to economic fundamentals that are related to growth after the emergence of bank finance results indicate that while privatized banking increased lending significantly it did not increase economic growth however privatization did increase growth when banks retained fewer political connections and when regional property rights were better protected highlighting the importance of both factors

the analysis on photovoltaic electricity generation status potential and policies of the leading countries in solar energy abstract energy which is the main agenda of our world is crucially important for the people many countries frequently held meetings and discussions with energy agenda these countries are working to balance the energy demand and supply for finding the solution are researched researches should be attempted to present a more efficient way to use energy as well as renewable energy resources effectively photovoltaic energy power systems take place as the most dominant source among renewable energy technologies the most important reason is that it is unlimited and clean energy of the solar power systems many studies show that photovoltaic power systems will have an important share in the electricity of the future in this study to generate electricity from solar energy using photovoltaic systems have a leading position in some european countries united states of america china and japan s current status and future policies will be analyzed in various comments were made

financial markets and growth the last five years have witnessed a resurgence of interest in the relationship between financial intermediation and economic growth this issue had been extensively studied nearly two decades earlier by goldsmith 1969 mckinnon 1973 shaw 1973 and others who produced considerable evidence that financial development correlates with growth but their work though insightful lacked analytical foundations in traditional growth theory financial intermediation could be related to the level of the capital stock per worker or to the level of productivity but not to their respective growth rates the latter were ascribed to exogenous technical progress the recent revival of interest in the link between financial development and growth stems mainly from the insights and techniques of endogenous growth models which have shown that there can be self sustaining growth without exogenous technical progress and that the growth rate can be related to preferences technology income distribution and institutional arrangements this provides the theoretical underpinning that early contributors lacked tinancial intermediation can be shown to have not only level effects but also growth effects the resulting models have offered important insights into the effect of financial development on growth and vice versa they have also provided new impetus to empirical research on these issues this paper reviews the ground covered so far on the theoretical and empirical front and points to some still unresolved issues

liquidity constraints and labor supply abstract in this paper we shed some light on how restrictions in financial markets the so called liquidity constraints might act in affecting labour supply decisions of italian workers one way to neutralize the existence of binding liquidity constraints is simply by supplying additional labor instead of reducing consumption we estimate whether resorting to additional labor supply as a smoothing consumption device is at work by using the italian survey of households income and wealth shiw the longitudinal dimension of the shiw dataset allows us to control for individual unobserved heterogeneity we also use an iv strategy to address the endogeneity of our measure for credit constraints in labor supply equations due to time varying factors our results show that liquidity constraints increase the intensity in the supply of men s labor constrained men work on average 4 hours more than their unconstrained counterpart self employed workers turn out to be more sensitive to binding liquidity constraints possibly because they are more flexible in adjusting the intensity of their labor supply

the finance growth nexus evidence from bank branch deregulation this paper provides evidence that financial markets can directly affect economic growth by studying the relaxation of bank branch restrictions in the united states we find that the rates of real per capita growth in income and output increase significantly following intrastate branch reform we also argue that the observed changes in growth are the result of changes in the banking system improvements in the quality of bank lending not increased volume of bank lending appear to be responsible for faster growth

financial integration capital mobility and income convergence recent studies have found that capital moves uphill from poor to rich countries and brings little or no growth dividend when it does flow into poor economies we show that europe does not conform to this paradigm in the european experience of financial integration capital has flown from rich to poor countries and such inflows have been associated with significant acceleration of income convergence analysing broader samples of countries we find that downhill capital flows tend to be observed above certain thresholds in institutional quality and financial integration but europe remains different even when allowing for such threshold effects and its experience is similar to that of interstate flows within the united states our findings are consistent with the notion that financial diversification reduces countries incentives to save in order to self insure against specific shocks abdul abiad daniel leigh and ashoka mody

bank mergers and crime the real and social effects of credit market competition using a unique sample of commercial loans and mergers between large banks we provide micro level within county evidence linking credit conditions to economic development and find a spillover effect on crime neighborhoods that experience more bank mergers are subject to higher interest rates diminished local construction lower prices an influx of poorer households and higher property crime in subsequent years the elasticity of property crime with respect to merger induced banking concentration is 0 18 we show that these results are not likely due to reverse causation and confirm the central findings using state branching deregulation to instrument for bank competition we examine the real and social impact of local credit competition by documenting a link between the competitiveness of the local banking market credit conditions urban development and crime several recent studies peek and rosengren 2000 cetorelli and gambera 2001 klein peek and rosengren 2002 and burgess and pande 2003 tie credit market imperfections to diminished real economic activity and growth other studies connect the economic environment to property crime freeman 1999 levitt 2001 raphael and winter ebmer 2001 and nilsson 2004 it is reasonable to hypothesize therefore that reductions in bank competition may lead to economic decline and subsequently increases in property crime we empirically investigate the effects of bank consolidation and increased market power on credit availability and real activity using a unique sample of commercial loans and mergers between large banks in the 1990s we provide micro level evidence that garmaise is from the ucla anderson school and moskowitz is from the graduate school of business university of chicago and nber we have benefited from the suggestions and comments of tony bernardo marianne bertrand phillip bond doug diamond mark duggan eugene fama

initiating a sustained diffusion of wind power the role of public private partnerships in spain the literature on policy approaches for the market support of renewable electricity is dominated by narrow conceptualizations of policy referring mostly to direct instruments for economic feasibility such approaches often led to unsatisfactory explanations of diffusion results this is the case of wind power diffusion in spain the success of which is typically credited to the feed in tariff instrument this paper offers an alternative explanatory account for wind power diffusion in spain it is argued that diffusion can be explained by a less obvious policy of stimulating investments by means of public private partnerships ppps the three legal frameworks for economic feasibility applicable up to 2004 harbored high economic risks although projects could have high profitability because of generous investment subsidies up to mid 1990s most investments were based on ppps to address the risk perceptions of early investors fully private partnerships now dominate investments though ppps have not disappeared next to winning investors confidence the ppp policy led to an investment culture whereby partnership investments dominate by 2000 95 7 of the installed wind capacity was owned by partnerships and only 4 3 by individual companies partnerships invest in larger projects have ambitious investment plans and these lead to a high diffusion tempo

personal bankruptcy and credit supply and demand this paper examines how personal bankruptcy and bankruptcy exemptions affect the supply and demand for credit while generous state level bankruptcy exemptions are probably viewed by most policy makers as benefiting less well off borrowers our results using data from the 1983 survey of consumer finances suggest that they increase the amount of credit held by high asset households and reduce the availability and amount of credit to low asset households conditioning on observable characteristics thus bankruptcy exemptions redistribute credit toward borrowers with high assets interest rates on automobile loans for low asset households also appear to be higher in high exemption states

regulation and preemptive technology adoption two rival firms must decide if and when to adopt a new technology knowing how adoption costs decline over time and how profit flows vary with adoption patterns in many cases price and entry regulations beneficially slow technology adoption by making preemption strategies less attractive in some cases these regulations can so discourage a firm from preemption as to change the order in which firms adopt new technologies speeding one firm s adoption date and slowing the other s in the context of a particular scenario for cable and telephone companies adoption of new fiber optic technologies the case for lifting the cross ownership ban depends on the extent to which telephone companies are able to implement a superior technology reregulation of cable companies strengthens this case

counting and multidimensional poverty measurement this paper proposes a new methodology for multidimensional poverty measurement consisting of an identification method k that extends the traditional intersection and union approaches and a class of poverty measures m our identification step employs two forms of cutoff one within each dimension to determine whether a person is deprived in that dimension and a second across dimensions that identifies the poor by counting the dimensions in which a person is deprived the aggregation step employs the fgt measures appropriately adjusted to account for multidimensionality the axioms are presented as joint restrictions on identification and the measures and the methodology satisfies a range of desirable properties including decomposability the identification method is particularly well suited for use with ordinal data as is the first of our measures the adjusted headcount ratio we present some dominance results and an interpretation of the adjusted headcount ratio as a measure of unfreedom examples from the us and indonesia illustrate our methodology

what constrains financial inclusion for women evidence from indian micro data summary the role and relevance of gender in financial inclusion has been an evolving area of research in recent times although there are several cross country studies on this aspect few within country studies have addressed this issue in a comprehensive manner in this context exploiting disaggregated household level data for india we analyze the interface between gender and finance more specifically we examine whether gender matters for financial inclusion and if so what are the possible factors that influence this relationship our findings suggest significant disparity in both the access to as well as the use of finance by gender on average female headed households are 8 less likely to access formal finance and 6 more likely to access informal finance as compared to households that are headed by males after taking into account other relevant household and state level characteristics that are important in explaining financial access by households similar evidence carries over to the use of finance households headed by female use 20 less cash loans as compared to male headed households subsequently we investigate the possible channels which impede financial inclusion for female headed households our analysis highlights that for female headed households education and wages are more relevant in explaining the access to finance whereas political and social factors are much more germane in explaining the use of finance

spatializing energy justice this paper introduces the concept of spatial justice and inequality to understandings of energy poverty and vulnerability by applying an explicitly spatial lens to conceptualize energy poverty as a form of injustice it contributes to debates in the domain of energy justice where previous examinations of energy deprivation through a justice framing have focused on inequalities between social groups and often marginalized questions of spatial difference we start from the premise that geographic disparities in the risk and incidence of domestic energy deprivation are a key component of energy justice an extensive literature review has allowed us to highlight the spatial and temporal variation of cross sectoral and entire energy chain injustices that lead to elevated energy poverty risks these processes contribute to the rise of energy injustices via four mechanisms which we term landscapes of material deprivation geographic underpinnings of energy affordability vicious cycles of vulnerability and spaces of misrecognition operating at a multiplicity of scales while lending some support to area based approaches towards energy poverty alleviation our findings also suggest that such policies alone may marginalize the underlying structural dynamics that re produce spatial inequalities therefore achieving energy justice necessitates broader interventions in the fundamental driving forces of spatial inequality

historical antisemitism ethnic specialization and financial development historically european jews have specialized in financial services while being the victims of antisemitism we find that the present day demand for finance is lower in german counties where historical antisemitism was higher compared to otherwise similar counties households in counties with high historical antisemitism have similar saving rates but invest less in stocks hold lower saving deposits and are less likely to get a mortgage to finance homeownership after controlling for wealth and a rich set of current and historical covariates present day antisemitism and supply side forces do not fully explain the results households in counties where historical antisemitism was higher distrust the financial sector more a potential cultural externality of historical antisemitism that reduces wealth accumulation in the long run

bank competition and firm creation we investigate the effects of competition in the financial sector on the creation of firms in the nonfinancial sector explicitly allowing for heterogeneous effects across borrowers characterized by different degrees of asymmetric information we find evidence of a bell shaped relationship between bank competition and firm creation in addition consistently with theories arguing that competition may reduce the availability of credit to informationally opaque firms we find that bank competition results less favorable to the emergence of new firms in industrial sectors where informational asymmetries are more important

quantifying the prevalence of fuel poverty across the european union abstract the literature and policy base for fuel poverty in the uk and ireland is well established and there is a growing body of single country studies beyond these two eu member states for example brunner et al 2012 dubois 2012 robine et al 2008 however on a european level the last analysis of fuel poverty was conducted in 2004 prior to the enlargement of the eu using survey data this paper presents an updated overview of the prevalence of european fuel poverty in the context of the accession of numerous former social states and rising fuel prices analysis reveals the phenomenon of fuel poverty is occurring across the eu with particularly high levels of fuel poverty found in eastern and southern european states it is argued that there are both eu and national policy frameworks in place that address climate change and these could be used as a starting point for countries to address fuel poverty through improved domestic energy efficiency measures this paper reflects research undertaken in 2011 supported by eaga charitable trust within the umbrella of work examining issues of poverty and social exclusion across the eu which has enabled access to the eu silc dataset

financial development and economic growth the role of stock markets utilizing time series methods and data from five developed economies we examine the relationship between stock market development and economic growth controlling for the effects of the banking system and stock market volatility our results support the view that although both banks and stock markets may be able to promote economic growth the erects of the former are more powerful they also suggest that the contribution of stock markets on economic growth may have been exaggerated by studies that utilize cross country growth regressions

business cycles and the relationship between concentration and price cost margins using a newly constructed panel data base we examine changes in price cost margins in 284 manufacturing industries between 1958 and 1981 a key finding is a dramatic narrowing of the spread between the margins of concentrated and unconcentrated industries over this period we provide evidence that this narrowing is a result of the greater sensitivity of price cost margins in more concentrated industries to demand fluctuations this finding is robust to the inclusion of other industry variables and to measures of import competition the results indicate that cross sectional estimates of the concentration margins relationship are likely to be both biased and misleading

how important are banks for development national banks in the united states 1870 1900 abstract do banks matter for growth and if so how this paper examines the effects of national banks in the united states from 1870 to 1900 i use the discontinuity in entry caused by a large minimum size requirement to identify the effects of banking for the counties on the margin between getting a bank and not gaining a bank increased production per person by 10 national banks in rural areas improved agriculture over manufacturing moving counties toward geographic comparative advantage since these banks made few long term loans the evidence suggests that the provision of working capital and liquidity matters for growth

informed lending and security design we examine the role of security design when lenders make inefficient accept or reject decisions after screening projects lenders may be either too conservative in which case they reject positive npv projects or too aggressive in which case they accept negative npv projects in the first case the uniquely optimal security is debt in the second case it is levered equity in equilibrium profitable projects that are relatively likely to break even are financed with debt while less profitable projects are financed with equity highly profitable projects are financed by uninformed arm slength lenders professional lenders have specialized expertise in screening projects unlike the typical entrepreneur to whom they lend they have been exposed to a wide variety of projects in the past professional lenders have experienced loan officers and analysts who know precisely what information is relevant how to treat soft information such as management quality and how to weigh the various pieces of information in making a forecast of the project s cash flows and default risk this paper examines how securities should be optimally designed when lenders make inefficient accept or reject decisions after screening projects in our model screening generates an informative albeit private signal about the project s profitability high signals indicate a positive net present value npv and low signals indicate a negative npv where the project s npv is increasing

capital structure decisions during a firm s life cycle the study reported here examines the financing choices of small and medium sized firms i e those most vulnerable to information and incentive problems through the lens of the business life cycle we argue that the controversy in the empirical literature regarding the determinants of capital structure decisions is based on a failure to take into account the different degrees of information opacity and consequently firms characteristics and needs at specific stages of their life cycles the results show that in a bank oriented country firms tend to adopt specific financing strategies and a different hierarchy of financial decision making as they progress through the phases of their business life cycle contrary to conventional wisdom debt is shown to be fundamental to business activities in the early stages representing the first choice by contrast in the maturity stage firms re balance their capital structure gradually substituting debt for internal capital and for firms that have consolidated their business the pecking order theory shows a high degree of application this financial life cycle pattern seems to be homogeneous for different industries and consistent over time

access to finance an unfinished agenda recent data compilations show that many poor and non poor people in many developing countries face a high degree of financial exclusion and high barriers in access to finance theory and empirical evidence point to the critical role that improved access to finance has in promoting growth and reducing income inequality an extensive literature shows the channels through which finance promotes enterprise growth and improves aggregate resource allocation there is less evidence at the household level however and on the effectiveness of policies to overcome financial exclusion the article summarizes recent efforts to measure and analyze the impact of access to finance and discusses the unfinished research agenda

is financial inclusion good for bank stability international evidence abstract financial inclusion has become an important public policy priority following the recent global financial crisis yet we know very little of how it impacts soundness of the providers of financial services using an international sample of 2635 banks in 86 countries over the period 2004 12 we find that higher level of financial inclusion contributes to greater bank stability the positive association is particularly pronounced with those banks that have higher customer deposit funding share and lower marginal costs of providing banking services and also with those that operate in countries with stronger institutional quality the results are robust to instrumental variables analysis controlling for bank fixed effects alternative measures of financial inclusion among several other robustness tests our results highlight that the importance of ensuring inclusive financial system is not only a development goal but also an issue that should be prioritised by banks as such a policy drive is good for their stability

mafia and public spending evidence on the fiscal multiplier from a quasi experiment a law issued to combat political corruption and mafia infiltration of city councils in italy has resulted in episodes of large unanticipated temporary contractions in local public spending using these episodes as instruments we estimate the output multiplier of spending cuts at provincial level controlling for national monetary and fiscal policy and holding the tax burden of local residents constant to be 1 5 assuming that lagged spending is exogenous to current output brings the estimate of the overall multiplier up to 1 9 these results suggest that local spending adjustment may be quite consequential for local activity jel d72 e62 h71 k42 the widespread resort to fiscal stimulus at the onset of the global crisis and more recently the emerging need to consolidate deficits in response to rising fiscal imbalances have revitalized the empirical debate on the transmission of fiscal policy the multiplier while the literature has mostly focused on aggregate effects at a national level several recent contributions reviewed below have called attention to the local dimension this shift in focus is motivated by specific policy questions combined with the opportunity to exploit institutional information to address econometric issues in identification 1

long lasting bank relationships and growth of firms a puzzling but consistent result in the empirical literature on banking is that firms with close bank ties do not grow faster than bank independent firms in this paper we reconsider the link between relationship lending and firm growth distinguishing firms by size and expansion contraction conditions the idea is that the beneficial effects of relationship lending on information asymmetries can be compensated by other negative capture risk and externality effects which make relational banks reluctant to support long term growth projects of client firms and that the strength of these compensating effects varies with firm size and health status we explore the influence of long lasting bank relationships on employment and asset growth of a large sample of italian firms the main finding is that relationship lending hampers the efforts of small firms to increase their size while it mitigates the negative growth of troubled medium large enterprises

energy transition to a future low carbon energy society in japan s liberalizing electricity market precedents policies and factors of successful transition abstract this paper investigates the precedents policies and factors relevant to a successful energy regime transition which may be applied in the japanese case through a review of national leaders in renewable energy deployment the examples of germany italy and spain are of particular note for their progress along the transition pathway toward a low carbon energy regime transition theory is used as a framework to enable this assessment and exogenous impacts specific to japan such as recent and ongoing market liberalization and the fukushima nuclear incident are considered as pertinent factors which impact upon the transition landscape through a comparative assessment of policy approaches technologies deployed and social factors impacting upon deployment lessons are drawn for comparison with current japanese transition progress identifying factors critical to the future estimation of the japanese transition pathway future energy transition pathway projections will need to incorporate policy approaches and mechanisms as well as being cognizant of japan s geographic and cost competitive re resource deployment limitations these limitations alongside existing generation assets including nuclear energy are expected to have a significant impact upon japan s transition from the current pre development phase toward take off acceleration and the stabilization of a new low carbon energy regime

does one size fit all a reexamination of the finance and growth relationship abstract recent research has found a strong positive effect of a country s financial development on economic growth we propose that this relationship may vary according to the level of financial development divided in three regions in the low region countries with very low levels of financial development additional improvements in financial markets have an uncertain effect on growth in the intermediate region financial development has a large positive effect on growth finally in the high region the effect is positive but smaller we examine a panel of 74 countries using generalized method of moments gmm dynamic panel techniques and find support for the different regions

geography urbanization and lock in considerations for sustainable transitions to decentralized energy systems the importance of moving towards sustainable energy systems is critical to achieving societal sustainability transitions theory is a useful approach to look at the potential and limitations of systemic transitions and has been applied in a number of alternative contexts in the current study we examine transitions theory and its implications for the progress of decentralized energy systems in japan in the period after the fukushima accident of 2011 empirical data from a targeted nation wide survey is used to examine the progress and change in consumer preference and behavior since the disaster as possible evidence for the potential transition paths likely to be occurring importantly this study utilizes data that examines a spectrum of urban rural and disaster non disaster areas in order to explore whether any differences in response patterns were present results indicate that although the desire of stakeholders has been to change the energy system there are barriers to transformation variation between rural and urban sites and between disaster affected and unaffected areas was examined indicating that at least under the chosen classification there was surprisingly little difference the results have implications for understanding transitions at a much broader level and imply that if the empirical data is a useful indicator japan is within a locked in or reorganization transition in order to move to a more radical conversion type change a new approach is likely to be required to nurture niche innovations effectively

productivity effects of organizational change microeconometric evidence this paper analyzes the relationship between investment in information and communication technologies ict non ict investment labor productivity and workplace reorganization firms are assumed to reorganize workplaces if the productivity gains arising from workplace reorganization exceed the associated reorganization costs two different types of organizational change are considered enhancement group work and flattening of hierarchies empirical evidence is provided for a sample of 411 firms from the german business related services sector we develop and estimate a model for labor productivity and firms decision to reorganize workplaces that allows workplace reorganization to affect any parameter of the labor productivity equation our general and flexible methodology allows us to properly take account of strategic complementarities between the input factors and workplace reorganization the estimation results show that changes in human resources practices do not significantly affect firms output elasticities with respect to ict non ict capital and labor although most of the point estimates of the individual output elasticities and of the control variables for observable firm heterogeneity are larger if workplace reorganization is realized we therefore apply the kernel density estimation technique and demonstrate that for firms with organizational change theentire labor productivity distribution shifts significantly out to the right if workplace reorganization takes place indicating that workplace reorganization induces an increase in labor productivity that is attributable to complementarities between the various input factors and workplace reorganization by contrast firms without organizational change would not have realized significant productivity gains if they had reorganized workplaces