political influence motives and the choice between tariffs and quotas abstract tariffs and quotas are not symmetric under a variety of circumstances this paper pursues the implications of one such circumstance domestic market power for the political choice of protectionist instrument in the context of a political support maximization model tariffs dominate quotas in the political model in the absence of revenue seeking motives in the presence of revenue seeking ambiguity arises but limits can be placed on the range of tariff or quota levels also some welfare implications emerge

interpreting the great moderation changes in the volatility of economic activity at the macro and micro levels most advanced economies have experienced a striking decline in the volatility of aggregate economic activity since the early 1980s volatility reductions are evident for output and employment at the aggregate level and across most industrial sectors and expenditure categories inflation and inflation volatility have also declined dramatically previous studies offer several potential explanations for this great moderation we review evidence on the great moderation in conjunction with evidence about volatility trends at the micro level we combine the two types of evidence to develop a tentative story for important components of the aggregate volatility decline and its consequences the key ingredients are declines in firm level volatility and aggregate volatility most dramatically in the durable goods sector surprisingly this has occurred without a decline in household consumption volatility and individual earnings uncertainty our explanation for the aggregate volatility decline stresses improved supply chain management particularly in the durable goods sector and less important a shift in production and employment from goods to services we provide evidence that better inventory control made a substantial contribution to declines in firm level and aggregate volatility consistent with this view if we look past the turbulent 1970s and early 1980s much of the moderation reflects a decline in high frequency short term fluctuations while these developments represent efficiency gains they do not imply nor is there evidence for a reduction in economic uncertainty faced by individuals and households

import penetration and the politics of trade protection abstract in this paper we reconsider a key empirical prediction generated by an important class of political economy models of trade policy namely that trade protection should be higher in sectors characterized by lower import penetration we call this the standard prediction the existing empirical evidence offers little support for this prediction in this paper we argue that the standard prediction depends critically on the assumptions that trade taxes are the only policy instruments and that the government has access to non distortionary taxation we analyze a model in which the government can use quotas and vers in addition to trade taxes and raising public funds may be costly under a simple sufficient condition our model predicts that the protection level increases with import penetration both in sectors that are protected with tariffs and in sectors that are protected with quantitative restrictions

the political economy of international factor mobility we model the endogenous determination of policy towards international factor mobility in a common agency setting domestic interest groups bid for protection from the government and the incumbent politicians maximize a welfare function that depends both on domestic voters welfare and contributions collected we characterize equilibrium policies in the price space and show how the degree of complementarity among inputs determines the outcome we establish a similar result for quotas allowing for partial rent capturing for the strategic environment under consideration we also establish a general equivalence result between tariffs and quotas if capturing is complete d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

exchange rates inflation and the sterilization problem germany 1975 1981 when the goals of internal and external macroeconomic equilibrium are in conflict sterilized intervention in the foreign exchange market may provide an independent policy instrument through which the central bank can resolve its dilemma in the short run this paper is concerned with the west german bundesbank s use of sterilization during the recent years of exchange rate flexibility the paper asks whether the bundesbank pursued sterilization during the years 1995 1981 and whether sterilized foreign exchange intervention exerts a significant influence on the exchange rate in the german case estimation of a stylized bundesbank reaction function suggests an affirmative answer to the first of these questions to assess the efficacy of sterilized intervention a structural portfolio balance model of german asset markets and prices is estimated dynamic perfect foresight simulations of the empirical model are used to ascertain whether imperfect substitutability between foreign and domestic bonds is sufficient to allow the bundesbank to attain independent internal and external goals over the short run of about a month the model s verdict is that the bundesbank has little if any power to influence the exchange rate over that time span without altering current or expected future money market conditions this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

intervention and sterilisation under floating exchange rates the uk 1973 1983 in this paper a small portfolio balance model in the spirit of obstfeld 1983 is estimated for the sterling pound us dollar exchange rate over the period 1973 quarter 2 to 1983 quarter 4 it is demonstrated inter alia that pure or sterilised foreign exchange market intervention can be effective even when agents form expectations rationally

relationships among exchange rates intervention and interest rates an empirical investigation abstract this study uses herefore unavailable daily data on official intervention to test the joint hypotheses of perfect asset substitutability and exchange market efficiency this joint hypothesis is generally soundly rejected for six exchange rates over various sample periods in contrast to evidence elsewhere from weekly or monthly data lagged intervention is a significant determinant of realized profits in about half the cases this evidence is consistent with existence of a portfolio balance channel at least in the short run other evidence indicates that coordinated intervention sometimes may have an impact significantly different from intervention by one central bank alone

identification of interest rates and international capital flows the conventional paradigm that capital movements respond to differences in interest rates between countries and simultaneously reduce interest rate differentials has been difficult to demonstrate empirically this paper argues that such a demonstrati on may be feasible if a simultaneous model is specified that describe s the dynamics of adjustment and if a data interval is chosen that re veals the dynamics examination of u s and canadian data from the 19 60s supports the argument with monthly observations that paradigm is strongly supported with quarterly observations capital flows and i nterest rates are not significantly related copyright 1988 by mit press

political economy of the u s mexican tomato trade agreement we develop a political economy model to analyse the us mexican tomato trade agreement by treating the minimum import price as a negotiated settlement we incorporate the special characteristics of the us mexican tomato dispute namely trade among large countries the role of competing fresh and processed tomato lobbies quota revenues accruing to mexican producers bargaining for a minimum import price rather than a tariff and the role of the canadian tomato market we show the importance of the size of the lobby group s supply the weight elected officials place on national welfare and the elasticities of export supply and import demand in determining the optimal price wedge for the united states larger fresh tomato or cherry grape tomato supply intensifies the degree of protection awarded to us growers while us processors work to mitigate this effect from mexico s perspective larger mexican fresh or cherry grape output induces a push towards free trade due to the agreement s depressing effect on mexican prices while mexican processors and quota revenues exacerbate the price wedge

lobbying counterlobbying and the structure of tariff protection in poor and rich countries a political economy model of protection is used to determine endogenously the intersectoral patterns of protection three propositions are derived that are consistent with the stylized patterns of tariff protection in rich and poor countries nominal protection rates escalate with the degree of processing protection is higher on average in poor countries and rich countries protect agriculture relatively more than they protect manufacturing whereas poor countries do the reverse numerical simulations for archetypal rich and poor economies confirm that the endogenously determined structure of protection is broadly consistent with observed patterns of protection

exchange rates and industry demands for trade protection the recent confrontation between china and the united states over currency policy illustrates a broader phenomenon exchange rate misalignments tend to spill over into trade policy although previous studies have shown that aggregate protectionist activity is positively related to the level of the real effective exchange rate we explore this relationship at the industry level several industry specific characteristics determine the protectionist response to exchange rate changes including the degree of exchange rate pass through the level of import penetration and the share of imported intermediate inputs in total industry inputs we find that the marginal effect of currency appreciation on the number of industry level antidumping petitions is positive and significant only for industries with high pass through therefore exchange rates appear to induce demands for trade barriers only in industries where competitiveness is directly harmed by currency appreciation

fiscal policy and the exchange rate in the big seven abstract we isolate the aggregate demand effects of u s government spending from its asset supply effects working through increased deficits and examine the former with the help of a two country rational expectations model of the united states versus the rest of the world the simulation results suggest that even in the absence of asset supply effects the consequences of a government spending cut in the united states can be substantial a depreciation of the effective dollar rate of 4 percent and a fall in long term bond rates at home and abroad of 180 basis points in response to a sustained 50 billion cut 1982 dollars provided that the cuts are permanent and are perceived to be so by the public some multi country simulations suggest that u s fiscal shocks are not likely to cause strains within the ems if there is consistency in member countries monetary policies

what happened to long term employment the role of worker power and environmental turbulence in explaining declines in worker tenure recent declines in the average length of time that u s workers spend with a given employer represent an important change in the nature of the employment relationship yet it is one whose causes are poorly understood i explore those causes using current population survey data on the tenure of men aged 30 65 from the years 1979 2008 i argue that long term employment relationships primarily occur when workers pressure employers to close off employment from market competition reducing the attractiveness of external mobility relative to internal opportunities and increasing employment security i then explore how two changes in organizations environments a decline in union strength and increased turbulence from changes in technology and globalization might have affected workers ability to secure such closed employment relationships over the last 30 years my results support the argument that declines in tenure reflect the reduced power of workers to secure closed employment relationships recent declines in tenure have been concentrated in large organizations and many of those declines are explained by controlling for the changing levels of industry unionization i find little evidence that foreign competition or technological change affected mobility the results are robust to measures of changing industry growth rates and within industry reorganization supplementary analyses suggest that layoffs are associated with different industry pressures than tenure and that voluntary mobility may have played an important role in declines in tenure

the cyclicality of separation and job finding rates this paper uses cps gross flow data to analyze the business cycle dynamics of separation and job finding rates and to quantify their contributions to overall unemployment variability cyclical changes in the separation rate are negatively correlated with changes in productivity and move contemporaneously with them while the job finding rate is positively correlated with and tends to lag productivity contemporaneous fluctuations in the separation rate explain between 40 and 50 percent of fluctuations in unemployment depending on how the data are detrended this figure becomes larger when dynamic interactions between the separation and job finding rates are considered

a note on exchange rate expectations and nominal interest differentials a test of the fisher hypothesis this note tests the hypothesis that nominal interest differentials between similar assets denominated in different currencies can be explained entirely by the expected change in the exchange rate over the holding period this proposition often called the fisher open hypothesis or the hypothesis of perfect asset substitutability has been a major component of recent theories of exchange rate determination and has important implications for monetary policy 1 the fisher hypothesis differs from the covered interest parity theorem enunciated by keynes 11 while covered interest parity equates the nominal interest differential between financial centers to a known premium or discount on forward foreign exchange and is thus in principle riskless fisher parity involves risk in an essential way the two conditions are equivalent only when forward exchange rates equal expected future spot rates recent theoretical work for example that of grauer litzenberger and stehle 8 kouri 12 and frankel 6 shows that this need not be the case when market participants are risk averse thus while covered interest parity must always hold exactly in an informationally efficient asset market with no transactions costs fisher parity need not nominal interest differentials may reflect risk premia in addition to expected exchange rate movements 2 it should be emphasized at the outset that the tests conducted in this paper are really joint tests of the fisher hypothesis and a weak form of foreign exchange market informational efficiency levich 14 has argued that tests of market efficiency are always joint tests involving some hypothesized structure of normal equilibrium returns below we assume informational efficiency and instead test fisher s hypothesized arbitrage condition that nominal interest differentials equal expected percentage changes in exchange rates

a portfolio balance rational expectations model of the dollar mark exchange rate abstract a model is developed in which current account imbalances can be financed through transfers of bonds denominated in either currency the reduced form links the current spot rate to the expected future spot rate via a risk premium which depends on the global currency mix of outside assets that governments impose on private portfolios through budget deficits and interventions and on the global distribution of private wealth among regions with different portfolio preferences an iterative procedure generates rational expectations forecasts of the dollar mark rate which perform somewhat better than forward rates in predicting monthly changes in the spot rate

why does trend growth affect equilibrium employment a new explanation of an old puzzle that the employment rate appears to respond to changes in trend growth is an enduring macroeconomic puzzle this paper shows that in the presence of a return to experience a slowdown in productivity growth raises reservation wages thereby lowering aggregate employment the paper develops new evidence that shows this mechanism is important for ex

peeling away the layers impacts of durable tariff elimination abstract we demonstrate that durable mfn tariff elimination affects trade patterns through several layers and magnitudes of effects are sizable the wto information technology agreement s ita unique setting allows us to overcome the challenges associated with identifying effects of non discriminatory trade policies due to two reasons i ita constitutes a quasi natural experiment of several passive signatories joining the agreement as an unavoidable part of pursuing a larger policy objective and ii ita s partial coverage of the it sector provides a natural control group for identification based on cross product variation our analysis finds novel nonlinear impacts of tariff liberalization complete tariff elimination results in large additional trade gains over and above tariff reductions especially for intermediate goods the commitment to durable tariff elimination through wto bindings adds another two layers boosting both imports and exports more than equivalent unilateral reforms this commitment spurned development of a downstream it export sector in passive signatories

technology shocks and job flows we consider a version of the solow growth model where technological progress can be investment specific or investment neutral the labour market is subject to search frictions and the existing productive units may fail to adopt the most recent technological advances technological progress can lead to the destruction of technologically obsolete jobs and cause unemployment we calibrate the model to replicate the high persistence that characterizes the dynamics of firms neutral technology and the frequency of firms capital adjustment we find that neutral technological advances increase job destruction and job reallocation and reduce aggregate employment investment specific technological advances reduce job destruction have mild effects on job creation and are expansionary hence neutral technological progress prompts schumpeterian creative destruction while investment specific technological progress operates essentially as in the standard neoclassical growth model using structural var models we provide support to the key dynamic implications of the model copyright 2007 wiley blackwell

the risk and cost of job loss in canada 1978 2008 we assess the risk and cost of worker displacement in canada over the last three decades we show that neither the risk of job loss nor the short term earnings losses of displaced workers trended upwards during that period however short term earnings losses of workers displaced from manufacturing increased in recent years as a smaller proportion found a post displacement job in that sector in line with stevens 1997 and couch and placzek 2010 we find that high seniority workers and individuals with stable labour market attachment experienced five years after displacement earnings losses that ranged between 10 and 18 le risque et le cout d une perte d emploi au canada 1978 2008 on evalue le risque et le cout d un deplacement de travailleur au canada au cours des trois dernieres decennies on montre que ni le risque d une perte d emploi ni les gains perdus a court terme par les travailleurs deplaces n ont eu une tendance a la hausse au cours de cette periode cependant les pertes de gains a court terme des travailleurs deplaces dans le secteur manufacturier ont augmente au cours des annees recentes alors qu une proportion plus faible de ces deplaces ont retrouve un emploi dans ce secteur en coherence avec les resultats de stevens 1997 et de couch et placzek 2010 on decouvre que les travailleurs avec beaucoup de seniorite et les personnes avec un attachement stable au marche du travail ont enregistre cinq ans apres un deplacement des pertes de gains de l ordre de 10 a 18

commercial policy with altruistic voters in public discussions of policy evidence that import competing sectors earn low or falling incomes is often used to argue for protection this paper rationalizes the apparent effectiveness of this argument in both direct and indirect democracies in direct democracies a small degree of voter altruism leads to protection in the specific factors model when the import competing sector earns little similarly voter altruism creates an incentive in representative democracies for self interested parties to present evidence to legislators on the income of import competing factors this leads to a theory in which campaign contributions buy access to legislators rather than buy votes

protection for sale an empirical investigation comment do contributions levels matter for endogenous protection or is the existence of a lobby sufficient are lobbies net benefits from protection identical to their contribution levels or does the level of protection simply reflect contribution levels of supporters and opponents we estimate the influence driven grossman and helpman 1994 and the tariff function findlay and wellisz 1982 models within a unified theoretical framework to examine the contrasting implications derived from these two prominent tariff formation models we find strong evidence that protection is indeed for sale the important new result is however that not only the existence of lobbies matters but also the relative size of the sectoral pro and anti protection contributions using j tests to compare the power of the models directly we cannot reject the null of correct specification of the influence driven model and find evidence of some misspecification in the tariff function model

on the driving forces behind cyclical movements in employment and job reallocation theory restricts short run job creation and destruction responses and cumulative employment and job reallocation responses to allocative and aggregate shocks we formulate these restrictions and implement them for postwar data on u s manufacturing allocative shocks are the main driving force behind cyclical movements in job reallocation but their contribution to employment fluctuations varies greatly across alternative identification assumptions also the data compel one or both of the following inferences aggregate shocks greatly alter the shape and not just the mean of the cross sectional density of employment growth rates allocative shocks cause short run reductions in aggregate employment

equilibrium unemployment job flows and inflation dynamics this paper develops a general equilibrium model to explain a set of facts regarding job flows unemployment and inflation dynamics it integrates a theory of equilibrium unemployment into a monetary model with nominal price rigidities the labor market displays matching frictions and endogenous job destruction the model can explain the cyclical behavior of unemployment job creation job destruction and the joint fluctuations of the labor input along both the extensive and the intensive margin conditional on a shock to monetary policy allowing for variation of the labor input at the extensive margin leads to a significantly lower elasticity of marginal costs with respect to output this helps to explain the sluggishness of inflation and the persistence of output after a monetary policy shock

dynamics of worker flows and vacancies evidence from the sign restriction approach this paper establishes robust dynamic features of the worker reallocation process in the us labor market i use structural vars with sign restrictions which take the form of restricting the short run negative relationship between vacancies and unemployment i e beveridge curve despite the weakness of these restrictions they reveal a clear unambiguous pattern that when unemployment increases and vacancies drop i both the separation rate and gross separations rise quickly and remain persistently high ii the job finding rate and vacancies drop in a hump shaped manner and iii gross hires respond little initially but eventually rise these results point to the importance of job loss in understanding us labor market dynamics this pattern also holds with respect to different kinds of shocks that induce the same beveridge curve relationship this paper also considers the disaggregate model which uses data disaggregated into six demographic groups and incorporates transitions into and out of the labor force i show that the separation rate continues to play a dominant role among prime age male workers while for other groups changes in the job finding rate are more important copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

covered interest arbitrage in the 1970 s abstract this paper provides an empirical overview on covered interest arbitrage during the flexible exchange rate regime of the 1970 s it estimates the cost of transactions in foreign exchange and security markets and shows that these costs account for most of the deviations from parity

job matching and propagation in the u s labor market the vacancy unemployment ratio and employment react sluggishly to productivity shocks we show that the job matching model in its standard form cannot reproduce these patterns due to excessively rapid vacancy responses extending the model to incorporate sunk costs for vacancy creation yields highly realistic dynamics creation costs induce entrant firms to smooth the adjustment of new openings following a shock leading the stock of vacancies to react sluggishly

a transaction cost rationale for private branding and its implications for the choice of domestic vs offshore outsourcing in this study i take a transaction cost approach to explore the coincidence of private branding with offshore outsourcing two retail trends that have attracted substantial attention but have never been analyzed concurrently retailers now play an increased role in marketing a product to shoppers although their marketing efforts are usually specific to the supplier who brands the product this is called brand specificity a special case of asset specificity that drives up the cost of conducting the manufacturer retailer transaction especially when the parties are located in different nations with the right to brand a product being shifted from manufacturers to retailers private branding can eliminate this problem of brand specificity that inflicts a transaction cost penalty on offshore outsourcing which is why the two seemingly unrelated retail trends coexist data obtained from a national chain reveal that the retailer is more likely to brand a product that needs its marketing efforts but less motivated to outsource the product offshore before putting a private brand on it these results establish a transaction cost link between private branding and offshore outsourcing from which important theoretical and practical implications can be drawn

unemployment dynamics across oecd countries abstract the european community and the us have experienced vastly different unemployment dynamics over the last two decades this paper investigates whether these differences are due to exposure to different shocks or reacting differently to the same shocks with the premise of a search theoretic framework and a structural var methodology the paper robustly identifies aggregate versus reallocative shocks with the exception of spain where most of the dynamics seem to be driven by reallocation it is found that most differences in unemployment dynamics arise because of differences in responses to shocks in particular the us labour market is quicker to adjust than the european community this implies that eec economies might be dynamically sclerotic even if the size of the steady state labour market flows give the impression that european labour markets are quite active various identifying assumptions additional labour supply shocks and different variables are used yet the results appear robust

politically realistic objective functions and trade policy profs and tariffs abstract this paper demonstrates a mathematical correspondence between the deus ex machina tariff formation approach and political economy approach the correspondence implies that the tariff chosen by lobbying influenced policy makers will be equivalent to a tariff chosen by a deus ex machina government that gives too much weight to profits this result allows many political economy issues to be addressed in the simple framework of a deus ex machina government which faces a politically realistic objective function prof

unprotective tariffs ineffective liberalization and other mysteries an investigation of the endogenous dimensions of trade policy formation in australia 1 introductionsince its formation as a federation in 1901 australia embraced a fairly comprehensive tariff schedule in relation to imported manufactures 1 tariff rates fluctuated considerably over the years however over the course of the century they remained sufficiently high to earn australian manufacturing the reputation of one of the most heavily protected manufacturing sectors in the industrialized world 2 in recent years a number of liberalization waves have surfaced the most notable of these took place in 1973 1977 1988 1991 and most recently in 1994 with the signing of the uruguay round of the gatt agreement still tariffs remain a principal actor in australia s menu of industrial policies in a recent edition of the annual report of the productivity commission 3 published in november 1999 it is noted that although tariffs have dropped considerably since 1994 they remain an important form of assistance tariff assistance still accounts for around 90 of measured effective assistance to the manufacturing sector 4 p 52 given the pervasiveness of australian tariff policy the significant welfare implications of changes in that policy and the particular importance of international trade for this country ensuing from its idiomorphic cultural resource endowment and geographic characteristics 5 considerable research effort has been invested in the examination of various dimensions of this issue at the forefront of pertinent empirical research two items have attracted considerable interest 1 the host of determinants of the highly dispersed tariff concessions and 2 the impact of liberalization on imports research that falls in the category that examines the former including anderson 1980 conybeare 1984 aislabie 1988 and feaver and wilson 1998 is consistent at varying degrees with the theory of endogenous trade policy formation 6 according to the foundations of this theory tariff concessions may be viewed as public outcomes that facilitate a political equilibrium the mechanics are rather elementary when the profit loss that arises from import competition exceeds the transaction cost of a successful lobbying campaign for protection private interests will undertake such lobbying activities the higher the loss from foreign competition the more fervent the lobbying effort hence an increase in import penetration is likely to trigger greater protection7 trefler 1993 p 139 unlike this line of inquiry the critical causal relationship of interest to studies that fall in the category that investigates item 2 including simmons and smith 1994 relates to the effects of tariff changes on imports rather than the reverse the causal directions of the nature examined by studies that investigate issues 1 and 2 are of course not mutually exclusive higher import penetration increases tariffs and higher tariffs in turn decrease import penetration however despite the simultaneity of these variables studies of australia s trade policies associated with research lines 1 and 2 followed separate paths by only considering unidirectional causal relationships and yet these paths do converge the meeting point perplexing results on the one hand studies of endogenous protection such as anderson 1980 and aislabie 1988 have consistently failed to establish the expected result that an increase in import penetration will lead to higher tariffs on the other studies of trade liberalization often find that tariff reduction shave asurprisingly small effect on imports with a study by simmons and smith 1994 concluding that at least in relation to the examined industry removal of the tariff would have no effect on the level of imports p 57 it is important to note that analogous and equally puzzling findings pertaining to improbably smalle ffect so fliberalization on imports have been identified in the caseofothercountries suchastheunitedstates byanumberofauthors

lobbying and international cooperation in tariff setting abstract this paper develops a theory of tariff protection that incorporates cooperative behavior and lobbying governments use import tariffs or subsidies to maximize a weighted sum of lobbying contributions and general welfare governments do not use export taxes or subsidies and thus balance the interests of export and import competing lobbies in setting tariff levels in a symmetric model cooperation between governments is sustained by threats of punishment in future periods unless governments place too much weight on the future the result is a cooperative tariff otherwise the result is a reciprocal import subsidy

domestic politics foreign interests and international trade policy reply this paper incorporates the foreign interest in the determination of a country s international trade policy into a model of political competition between candidates contesting elective office we envisage foreign and domestic producer interests as expressing political support for a candidate via campaign contributions and candidates as making trade policy pronouncements to maximize political support from producer interests tariffs are divisive but vers are consistent with conciliatory policy positions yielding mutual gain to foreign and domestic interests no candidate has an interest in formulating a trade policy position using a tariff if a ver is a policy option protection in the developed countries has in recent years often taken the form of bilaterally negotiated voluntary export restraints vers rather than the more traditional unilaterally imposed import restrictions the use of voluntary export restraints has been paralleled by interest in the theoretical literature the effects of vers have been compared with tariffs and quotas and vers have been examined in a political economy framework with a view to identifying the gainers and losers from this form of restric

the role of importers and exporters in the determination of the u s tariff preferences granted to latin america abstract this paper investigates the role played by domestic importers and foreign exporters in improving preferential access to the domestic market to this end the framework used in this paper extends the protection for sale analysis to explicitly model the role of domestic importers and foreign exporters in the determination of preferential trade treatment the predictions of the model are tested using data on preferential trade between the united states and latin american countries the results suggest that latin american exporters and us importers lobbying efforts have a significant and important role in determining the extent of preferential access granted by the united states more interestingly these findings also show that u s importers capture a very substantial share of the rents generated by tariff preferences these results therefore shed a pessimistic view on preferential trade schemes as a reliable source of gains for developing countries

what caused the early millennium slowdown evidence based on vector autoregressions this paper uses a simple var for the usa and euro area to analyse the underlying shocks of the early millennium slowdown i e supply demand monetary policy and oil price shocks the results of two identification strategies are compared one is based on traditional zero restrictions and as an alternative an identification scheme based on more recent sign restrictions is proposed the main conclusion is that the recent slowdown is caused by a combination of several shocks negative aggregate supply and aggregate spending shocks the increase of oil prices in 1999 and restrictive monetary policy in 2000 these shocks are more pronounced in the usa than the euro area the results are somewhat different depending on the identification strategy it is illustrated that traditional zero restrictions can have an influence on the estimated impact of certain shocks copyright 2005 john wiley sons ltd

an examination of the objectives of monetary policy in four developing economies abstract this paper presents a model of monetary policy in developing economies which is estimated for mexico korea india and zambia the model is designed to identify both the goals and patterns of policy in these economies the results demonstrate that the authorities in these economies respond to foreign reserve flows partially sterilizing their impact in three countries they also respond to domestic variables accomodating seasonal variation and growth or price changes

international asset pricing with time varying risk premia abstract recent empirical evidence that forward exchange rates are biased predictors of future spot rates can also be interpreted as evidence against the hypothesis of a constant risk premium consequently reconciliation of this evidence with efficient international capital markets requires the existence of time varying risk premia this paper modifies kouri s 1977 asset pricing model to allow time varying exected returns on assets eliminates the assumption of a risk free real asset and derives the characteristics of the risk premia in the forward market as well as the equilibrium yield relationships among the equities and riskless nominal bonds of all countries

the capitalization of income streams and the effects of open market policy under fixed exchange rates abstract this paper investigates the long and short run neutrality of open market monetary policy in a world of fixed exchange rates and imperfect substitutability between bonds denominated in different currencies using an illustrative portfolio balance model it shows that when the public discounts the future tax liabilities associated with the national debt and the central bank supports the exchange rate by trading non interest bearing foreign assets open market policy has a short run effect but no long run effect on the domestic price level and interest rate when the foreign exchange intervention assets earn interest that is rebated to and capitalized by the public open market policy loses even its short run efficacy the capital account offset to monetary policy is complete

a neoclassical model of the phillips curve relation this paper integrates the modern theory of unemployment with a limited participation model of money and asks whether such a framework can produce correlations like those associated with the phillips curve as well as realistic labor market dynamics the model incorporates both monetary and real shocks the response of the economy to monetary policy shocks is consistent with recent evidence about the impact of these shocks on the economy

sterilization policies in the ems countries an empirical analysis abstract the paper analyses the extent to which fixed exchange rates within the ems have hindered national monetary policies the results show that the german authorities have relatively more freedom in pursuing domestic monetary objectives the others may notwithstanding foreign exchange controls occasionally encounter severe exchange constraints

testing the portfolio balance model a multi lateral approach abstract this paper estimates outside bond demand equations from the portfolio balance model of exchange rate determination for five currencies the approach used in this paper differs from other structural studies of the portfolio balance model in two fundamental ways first while previous studies limit the portfolio choice to domestic assets relative to a composite foreign asset the model analyzed in this paper decomposes the foreign asset by currency second exploiting the cross equation correlation that arises from this decomposition provides more efficient estimates of the asset market parameters

the decline of job loss and why it matters there is considerable evidence that american workers face lower risks of job loss in recent years than 10 20 or 30 years earlier i summarize some of the evidence for this claim and explain why the decline of job loss matters my attention centers on unwelcome job loss employer initiated separations that lead to unemployment temporary or persistent drops in earnings and other significant costs for job losers since there is no fully satisfactory statistic for the incidence of job loss i consider several measures and data sources

estimation of portfolio balance functions that are mean variance optimizing the mark and the dollar abstract this paper offers a way of efficiently estimating the parameters in demand functions for mark and dollar assets the technique imposes the constraint that the parameters rather than being determined arbitrarily are based on investors optimizing behavior regarding expected returns and variances it dominates some previous empirical applications of finance theory in the respect that the expected returns are allowed to vary from period to period which is a necessary feature of any macro model the constraint that the parameters are based on mean variance optimization is also tested and not rejected

declining labor turnover and turbulence abstract the rate of job loss has been on a secular decline for the last four decades or longer changes in demographics or industry composition do not account for the trend this paper seeks to identify the possible sources of the decline using a simple search and matching model with two types of workers experienced and inexperienced where the former type faces a risk of skill loss during unemployment the calibrated model suggests that a higher risk of skill loss during unemployment results in a lower job separation rate because workers accept lower wages in exchange for job security various other potential hypotheses are also examined

what does a technology shock do a var analysis with model based sign restrictions abstract this paper estimates the effects of technology shocks in var models of the u s identified by imposing restrictions on the sign of impulse responses these restrictions are consistent with the implications of a popular class of dsge models with both real and nominal frictions and with sufficiently wide ranges for their parameters this identification strategy thus substitutes theoretically motivated restrictions for the atheoretical assumptions on the time series properties of the data that are key to long run restrictions stochastic technology improvements persistently increase real wages consumption investment and output in the data hours worked are very likely to increase displaying a hump shaped pattern contrary to most of the related var evidence results are not sensitive to a number of specification assumptions including those on the stationarity properties of variables

unemployment and vacancies with sectoral shifts recent analyses of unemployment vacancy series suggest that aggregate shocks rather than sectoral shocks are the primary factors responsible for unemployment fluctuations this inference follows from two widely held beliefs sectoral shocks induce only positive unemployment vacancy comovements while negative comovements are necessarily the result of aggregate demand shocks this paper describes an equilibrium matching model that identifies plausible circumstances in which neither assumption is correct thus suggesting that unemployment vacancy data are inconclusive interestingly this model s novel results are due to standard features in the contracting literature firms experience relative price shocks and negotiate contracts that prescribe temporary layoffs copyright 1994 by american economic association

costly revenue raising and the case for favoring import competing industries abstract a standard finding in the political economy of trade policy literature is that we should expect export oriented industries to attract more assistance than import competing industries in reality however trade policy is heavily biased toward supporting import industries this paper shows how the costliness of raising revenue via taxation makes trade subsidies less desirable and trade taxes more desirable in a standard protection for sale framework the model is then estimated and its predictions tested using u s tariff data an empirical estimate of the costliness of revenue raising is also obtained

protection for sale with imperfect rent capturing we extend the protection for sale framework to non tari barriers introducing partial rent capturing leads to a testable specification that bridges the gap between the grossman and helpman 1994 model and its empirical implementation where coverage ratios have been used to measure protection the econometric analysis supports our augmented specification and leads to more realistic estimates for the structural parameters of the model jel classification f13

the cost of a central bank leaning against a random walk abstract using a stochastic model we show that a central bank is expected to suffer a loss when it temporarily affects the exchange rate by sterilized intervention against a random walk we also demonstrate that the methodology used in several studies of the profitability of official central bank intervention biases their results towards finding positive profits this bias created by only observing periods where cumulative intervention sums to zero accounts for the seemingly contradictory empirical results of several intervention profitability studies

intervention in the mark dollar market the authorities reaction function abstract this paper investigates the intervention behavior of the deutsche bundesbank in the dollar dm market over the period 1974 to 1981 an intervention reaction model is developed which stresses the conditioning role of perceived exchange rate uncertainty the most important findings from non linear estimates are i an increase in perceived exchange rate risk shifts the bundesbank s trade off between money and exchange rate control in favor of the former aim probably due to risk aversion of the managers of the foreign department ii the bank tries to counter exchange speculation by compressing the expected risk premium and iii the bank does not completely sterilize

on the denomination of government debt a critique of the portfolio balance approach abstract we show that some classes of sterilized interventions have no effect on equilibrium prices and quantities the proof does not require complete markets ricardian equivalence monetary neutrality or the law of one price moreover regressions of exchange rates or interest differentials on variables measuring debt s currency composition contain no information about the affectiveness of such interventions other interventions require changes in monetary and fiscal policy their effects depend generally on the influence of these changes on the economy and not on the intervention alone in short sterilized intervention is not as the portfolio balance approach indicates an extra policy instrument

costly distribution and the non equivalence of tariffs and quotas when governments impose a quota or tariff on imports it is well known that the resulting rents and revenues trigger costly rent seeking and revenue seeking activities which are welfare reducing and may be economically more significant than the efficiency losses resulting from the protectionist induced resource misallocation repeated interaction among firms can eliminate wasteful rent and revenue seeking expenditures through cooperation we show that while aggregate outcomes are equivalent under tariffs and quotas if cooperation arises the conditions under which cooperation arises differ by policy this difference arises because a firm must incur additional cost to physically import and distribute the goods associated with additional quota licenses whereas there is no such cost when it comes to consuming additional tariff revenue thus quotas and tariffs are non equivalent we provide a simple sufficient condition under which cooperative elimination of rent seeking under quotas is easier than cooperative elimination of revenue seeking under tariffs and therefore a quota is the preferred policy whenever the policy admits cooperation

the unemployment volatility puzzle is wage stickiness the answer i discuss the failure of the canonical search and matching model to match the cyclical volatility in the job finding rate i show that job creation in the model is influenced by wages in new matches i summarize microeconometric evidence and find that wages in new matches are volatile and consistent with the model s key predictions therefore explanations of the unemployment volatility puzzle have to preserve the cyclical volatility of wages i discuss a modification of the model based on fixed matching costs that can increase cyclical unemployment volatility and is consistent with wage flexibility in new matches

u s labor market dynamics revisited the picture of u s labor market dynamics is opaque empirical studies have yielded contradictory findings and debates have emerged regarding their implications this paper aims at clarifying the picture which is important for the understanding of the operation of the labor market for the study of business cycles for the explanation of wage behavior and for the formulation of policy the paper determines what facts can be established what are their implications and what remains to be further investigated the main contributions made here are i listing of data facts that can be agreed upon these indicate that there is considerable cyclicality and volatility of both accessions to employment and separations from it hence both are important for the understanding of the business cycle ii presenting the business cycle facts of key series iii pointing to specific gaps in the data picture disparities in the measurement of the sizeable flows between employment and the pool of workers out of the labor force disagreements about the relative volatility of job finding and separation rates across data sets and the fact that the fit of the gross flows data with net employment growth data differs across studies and is not high the definite characterization of labor market dynamics depends upon the closing of these data gaps

the forward exchange rate and macroeconomics abstract this paper discusses the conditions under which a risk premium is incorporated in the forward exchange rate a new condition for the existence of a risk premium is proposed we show that earlier models of the risk premium which emphasize either the role of net foreign investment or of the relative supplies of outside assets are not suited for assessing the effects of changes in macroeconomic policy

on the timing and efficiency of creative destruction we analyze the timing pace and efficiency of ongoing job reallocation that results from product and process innovation there are strong reasons why an efficient economy ought to concentrate both job creation and destruction during recessions when the opportunity cost of reallocation is lowest incomplete contracting between labor and capital can disrupt this synchronized pattern and decouple creation and destruction transactional difficulties also lead to technological sclerosis characterized by excessively slow renovation government incentives to production may alleviate high unemployment but exacerbate sclerosis in contrast creation incentives increase the pace of reallocation an optimal combination of both policies restores economic efficiency

inflation and monetary policy in selected west and central african countries abstract this paper studies the conduct and performance of monetary policy in five west and central african countries cameroon cote d ivoire gabon ghana and nigeria the first three are members of the cfa zone and maintain a fixed peg vis a vis the french franc the other two have recently opted for a more flexible exchange rate regime no general conclusion can be drawn on the monetary policy exchange rate policy nexus estimates of the offset coefficient are significantly different from negative one but var estimation results on the ability of the monetary authority to pursue an independent inflation target are mixed the monetary authorities of ghana and nigeria sterilize the accumulation of net foreign assets to a limited degree no such evidence exists for cfa zone members

on the effects of sterilized intervention an analysis of weekly data abstract as the recent empirical studies surveyed here illustrate it is very difficult to demonstrate that the exchange rate risk premium depends through a portfolio balance channel on the currency composition of outside assets the existence of a portfolio balance effect is a necessary condition for sterilized intervention to be a genuinely independent tool of monetary policy this paper studies u s canadian data and attempts to improve on earlier studies by using higher frequency weekly data and by implementing an appropriate instrumental variables technique 2s2sls however we still fail to detect evidence of a portfolio balance effect

business cycles and labor market search the quantitative implications of labor market search for economic fluctuations are evaluated in the context of a real business cycle model incorporating labor market search into the model is found to improve its empirical performance along several dimensions in particular hours now fluctuate substantially more than wages and the contemporaneous correlation between hours and productivity falls in addition the model replicates the observation that output growth displays positive autocorrelation at short horizons overall the empirical results suggest that the labor market search environment embodies a quantitatively important propagation mechanism copyright 1996 by american economic association

the currency composition of international reserves demand for international reserves and global safe assets abstract this paper examines determinants of the international reserves ir currency composition before and after the global financial crisis gfc applying the annual data of 58 countries we confirm that countries that trade more with the us euro zone uk and japan and issue more debt denominated in the big four currencies us dollar euro pound and yen hoard more ir in these currencies we find scale effects in which countries tend to diversify from the big four currencies as they increase their ir gdp and that a growing shortage of global safe assets gsas induces countries to hold more big four currencies countries hold less big four currencies as ir after the 2008 gfc while they hold more of such currencies since the tapering of the fed s quantitative easing qe the 2008 gfc and qe tapering weakened and sometimes reversed the effect of several economic factors we also find that target2 balances matter for the currency composition of ir in the euro zone commodity exporting countries tend to diversify their ir from the big four currencies when their terms of trade improve and that the valuation effects induced by euro usd exchange rate changes diminish the significance of the gfc in explaining the currency composition of ir

information transmission and inefficient lobbying abstract in a seminal paper grossman and helpman 1994 introduced a framework to understand how lobbying influences the choice of import export tariffs in this paper we extend their analysis and assume that lobbies have private information to analyze the effects of information transmission in a grossman and helpman lobby game information transmission leads to two agency costs one refers to the cost of signaling and the other to the cost of screening the lobby s competitiveness the signaling cost reduces distortions resulting from the screening cost on the other hand distortions from the screening cost enhance the signaling cost the two combined effects generate more distortions in the political game than each effect separately tariff protection and lobbies rents are lower than those found in grossman and helpman s truthful equilibrium therefore information transmission may improve welfare through the reduction of rent seeking activities

the influence of income on international capital movements abstract changes in income via their influence on asset demands affect portfolio allocation and potentially international capital movements this hypothesis derives empirical support albeit limited and correspondingly tenuous from the identification of a consistently significant influence of income on non official australian portfolio investment abroad

endogenous choice of trade policy instruments abstract recently developed theories of endogenous trade policy formation have attempted to explain tariffs as the result of economic interest seeking by individuals or groups this note demonstrates that tariffs will not emerge as a policy choice if income is redistributed solely through trade policy induced factor price changes a production tax cum subsidy will be adopted as both gainers and losers are better off than with a tariff

negotiated trade restrictions with private political pressure we consider a home government with political pressure to restrict trade the foreign country is compensated with a portion of the tariff revenues or quota rents but cannot directly observe the political pressure abroad in this setting the two countries negotiate over the volume of trade and transfer of rents depending on the level of political pressure we determine globally optimal incentive compatible trade policies in which the home government has no incentive to overstate or understate the pressure for protection

the political economy of international trade and factor mobility abstract free trade in goods and factors is efficient when we move away from economic theory and consider the policies actually followed by governments we observe distortions being implemented both on goods and factors trades it is natural then to question the relative merits of the two types of intervention and the normative literature has provided only partial answers we ask then why is the international flow of goods and factors not free and the political economy literature has looked at the two issues only separately in studying the determination of trade policy a theoretical paradigm has emerged focusing on the role of influence driven contributions this approach has also found strong empirical support the literature on the political economy of factor mobility on the other hand is fragmented distortions in labor and capital flows are typically the subject of different studies and only recently a unified framework has been proposed more work has to be done in this area as well as in integrating the political economy of trade and factor movements

the cleansing effect of recessions the authors investigate industry response to cyclical variations in demand production units that embody the newest process and product innovations are continuously being created and outdated units are being destroyed although outdated units are the most likely to turn unprofitable and be scrapped in a recession they can be insulated from the fall in demand by a reduction in creation the structure of adjustment costs plays a determinant role in the responsiveness of those two margins the calibrated model matches the relative volatilities of the observed manufacturing job creation and destruction series and their asymmetries over the cycle copyright 1994 by american economic association

employment efficiency and sticky wages evidence from flows in the labor market i consider three views of the labor market in the first wages are flexible and employment follows the principle of bilateral efficiency workers never lose their jobs because of sticky wages in the second wages are sticky and inefficient layoffs do occur in the third wages are also sticky but employment governance is efficient i show that the behavior of flows in the labor market strongly favors the third view in the modern u s economy recessions do not begin with a burst of layoffs unemployment rises because jobs are hard to find not because an unusual number of people are thrown into unemployment

voluntary export restraints antidumping procedure and domestic politics a voluntary export restraint ver is preferred to a tariff by a government concerned about electoral returns when the influence of industry profits is large relative to the losses to consumers from higher prices if the foreign firm is uncertain of these pressures the antidumping code facilitates the complete transfer of the relevant information and generates a ver rather than a tariff in equilibrium the choice across instruments is determined by the political attributes domestic and foreign profits rise with the antidumping generated ver and the ver lowers the volume of trade by more than the expected duty copyright 1996 by american economic association