capital inflows financial structure and housing booms we use a panel var to study the effect of shocks to capital inflows which are identified using sign restrictions on the housing market in oecd countries to explore how effects of these shocks change with the structure of the mortgage market and the degree of mortgage securitization we allow the var coefficients to vary with mortgage market characteristics our results indicate that capital inflow shocks have a significant and positive effect on real house prices real credit available to the private sector and real residential investment the responses of these variables are stronger in countries with more developed mortgage markets and in countries where securitization is allowed

finance and growth in a bank based economy is it quantity or quality that matters abstract most finance growth studies approximate the size of financial systems rather than the quality of intermediation to explain economic growth differentials furthermore the neglect of systematic differences in cross country studies could drive the result that finance matters we suggest a measure of bank s intermediation quality using bank specific efficiency estimates and focus on the regions of one economy only germany this quality measure has a significantly positive effect on growth this result is robust to the exclusion of banks operating in multiple regions controlling for the proximity of financial markets when distinguishing different banking sectors active in germany and when excluding the structurally weaker east from the sample

to float or to fix evidence on the impact of exchange rate regimes on growth we study the relationship between exchange rate regimes and economic growth for a sample of 183 countries over the post bretton woods period using a new de facto classification of regimes based on the actual behavior of the relevant macroeconomic variables in contrast with previous studies we find that for developing countries less flexible exchange rate regimes are associated with slower growth as well as with greater output volatility for industrial countries regimes do not appear to have any significant impact on growth the results are robust to endogeneity corrections and a number of alternative specifications borrowed from the growth literature

why are small firms different managers views do incentives differ between large and small organizations results from a representative survey of compensation managers are used to shed light on the issues i find that i small establishments rely less on pecuniary incentives and have a significantly more hostile attitude towards incentive schemes based on competition and relative rewards ii large units are more vulnerable to mechanisms of efficiency wages effects that remain even after controlling for differences in monitoring ability iii large units are more prone to indicate that negative reciprocity is important and that their employees care about relative pay i argue that these findings fit with behavioral stories of incentives and motivation in particular those stressing group interaction effects inequity aversion and gift exchange

firm size and efficiency in the german mechanical engineering industry research usually finds a positive size efficiency relationship but few studies focus on sectors dominated by small and medium sized firms smes this paper fills this gap by analyzing this relationship in the german mechanical engineering industry sector which is both successful and increasingly dominated by smes the analysis using a large and representative dataset finds that small and large firms are on average the most efficient ones while medium sized firms have on average the greatest inefficiencies thus the size efficiency relationship is u shaped rather than monotonically increasing additionally the analysis finds that companies with active owner s are significantly more efficient and that capital firms are less efficient than firms with personally liable owners being located in either east or west germany has no effect

can appreciation be expansionary evidence from the euro area summarywe identify exogenous effects of shifts in effective exchange rates for euro area ea countries between 1999 and 2016 the identification strategy is based on an external instrument built on the assumption that movements in the euro nominal effective exchange rate are largely exogenous for individual ea countries once we control for ea aggregates we find that a real appreciation creates a trade off between expenditure switching contractionary and terms of trade expansionary effects with the latter prevailing in most countries we also find some heterogeneity in the way movements in the euro exchange rate are transmitted within the ea in particular between core and peripheral countries although differences are mostly not statistically significant

are small firms less efficient this paper compares the technical efficiency of small and medium sized enterprises smes with that of large firms and studies the factors influencing technical efficiency for taiwan s electronics industry unlike conventional studies we use two alternative approaches to control for the influence of size effect one is the two stage switching regression to correct for endogenous size effect on technical efficiency and the other is a metafrontier production function for firms in different groups the main results are as follows first the average technical efficiency for large firms is higher than that of smes without considering the size effect and lower when considering the endogenous choice on firm size this study cannot therefore conclude that there is a negative size technical efficiency relationship it however sheds light on the importance of size effect on the size technical efficiency nexus second the estimates on the determinants of technical efficiency show that being a subcontractor has a statistically significant positive influence on smes technical efficiency but the effect decreases with firm size

how are stock prices affected by the location of trade abstract we examine pairs of large siamese twin companies whose stocks are traded around the world but have different trading and ownership habitats twins pool their cash flows so with integrated markets twin stocks should move together however the difference between the prices of twin stocks appears to be correlated with the markets on which they are traded most i e a twin s relative price rises when the market on which it is traded relatively intensively rises we examine several explanations of this phenomenon including the discretionary use of dividend income by parent companies differences in parent expenditures voting rights currency fluctuations ex dividend date timing issues and tax induced investor heterogeneity only the last hypothesis can explain some but not all of the empirical facts we conjecture that a country specific sentiment shocks might affect share intensity b investors are rational but markets are segmented by frictions other than international transactions costs such as agency problems

exchange rate undervaluation and economic growth diaz alejandro 1965 revisited abstract to understand the growth effects of currency undervaluation we estimate its impact on the different components of gdp we find that for developing countries undervaluation does not affect the tradable sector but does lead to greater domestic savings and investment as well as employment

the evolution of cost productivity and efficiency among us credit unions abstract advances in information processing technology have eroded the advantages of small scale and proximity to customers that traditionally enabled small lenders to thrive nonetheless the membership and market share of us credit unions have increased though their average size has also risen we investigate changes in the efficiency and productivity of us credit unions during 1989 2006 by benchmarking the performance of individual firms against an estimated order quantile lying near the efficient frontier we construct a cost analog of the malmquist productivity index which we decompose to estimate changes in cost and scale efficiency and changes in technology we find that cost productivity fell on average across all credit unions but especially among smaller credit unions smaller credit unions confronted a shift in technology that increased the minimum cost required to produce given amounts of output all but the largest credit unions also became less scale efficient over time

spatial scale and product mix economies in u s banking with simultaneous spillover regimes the literature on bank scale economies focuses on the familiar type of returns to scale that are internal to the firm using a spatial approach we analyze returns to scale for banks that are made up of external i e spillover economies we extend ray scale economies rse expansion path scale economies epse and expansion path subadditivity epsu to the spatial case this involves introducing direct and composite and decomposed indirect rse epse and epsu these direct and indirect measures relate to the cost implications for a firm from a change in i the firm s output levels that are as is standard under its control and ii the composite decomposed spillover effect on the firm s output levels which is primarily but not entirely outside its control we include an application to u s banks 1998 2015 that allows a bank to simultaneously belong to a number of spatial networks which is typically what we observe for firms for large banks we find constant direct rse and epse and zero composite indirect rse and constant composite indirect epse these composite indirect results do not counteract any policy suggestions from the direct rse and epse concerning the debate on whether there should be size caps on very large u s banks the direct rse and epse for large banks suggest that these banks use society s resources efficiently to provide their services size caps on very large banks would place downward pressure on these direct rse and epse results which could lead to large banks using society s resources inefficiently

are credit unions too small abstract u s credit unions serve 93 million members hold 10 of u s savings deposits and make 13 2 of all nonrevolving consumer loans since 1985 the share of u s depository institution asse

efficiency of american states after implementation of the patient protection and affordable care act ppaca from 2014 to 2017 abstractwe assess the impact of healthcare efficiency among u s states after implementation of the ppaca a malmquist index decomposes productivity changes of state healthcare systems since 2014

x efficiency in banking looking beyond the balance sheet the distribution free and stochastic frontier estimation methods are used to derive bank specific measures of cost and profit xefficiency this is done to investigate the importance of including aggregate measures of off balance sheet obs activities the results indicate that economic cost and production cost x efficiency estimates increase with the inclusion of the obs measure profit xefficiency estimates are largely unaffected further the composition of bankso obs activities appears to help explain interbank differences in cost and profit x efficiency estimates whereas bank size and the mix between on and off balance sheet banking activities are largely uncorrelated with the x efficiency estimates

the determinants of efficiency the case of the spanish industry the aim of this paper is to analyse the factors explaining the technical efficiency of spanish industrial sectors during the period 1991 1994 using the survey of business strategies sbe of the ministry of industry and energy it analyses whether efficiency can be explained by factors external to the firm such as the degree of competition in the markets in which it operates characteristics of the firm size organization advantages of location participation of public capital etc as well as the effects of dynamic disturbances that may affect the degree of utilization of the productive capacity

the relative pricing of high yield debt the case of rjr nabisco holdings capital corporation the authors derive and investigate empirically arbitrage pricing restrictions among three bonds of rjr nabisco holdings capital corporation the three rjr bonds are virtually identical in all respects except for the form in which interest is paid the authors document large and persistent errors in the market pricing of the three bonds over a two year period the cash paying bond was consistently more expensive than either the pay in kind or deferred coupon bonds the magnitude of the pricing errors is too large to be explained by market imperfections copyright 1993 by american economic association

do firms growth rates depend on firm size the empirical literature dealing with corporate growth does not in general give support to gibrat s law stating that the expected increase in firm size is proportionate to its initial size leaving their growth rates independent of size using a relatively large and representative sample of approximately 2 500 danish firms representing all industries we have evaluated the validity of gibrat s law over the period 1990 2004 the present analysis addresses this question by applying econometric methods to test gibrat s law and correcting for problems related to autocorrelation the empirical findings of our study do not generally support gibrat s law but in contrast to the results of earlier studies the analysis reveals that firms growth rates are more likely to be positively related to firm size

the dynamics of financially constrained arbitrage we develop a model of financially constrained arbitrage and use it to study the dynamics of arbitrage capital liquidity and asset prices arbitrageurs exploit price discrepancies between assets traded in segmented markets and in doing so provide liquidity to investors a collateral constraint limits their positions as a function of capital we show that the dynamics of arbitrage activity are self correcting following a shock that depletes arbitrage capital profitability increases and this allows capital to be gradually replenished spreads increase more and recover faster for more volatile trades although arbitrageurs cut their positions in these trades the least when arbitrage capital is more mobile across markets liquidity in each market generally becomes less volatile but the reverse may hold for aggregate liquidity because of mobility induced contagion

is the exchange rate a shock absorber or a source of shocks new empirical evidence this paper analyses the role of the real exchange rate in a structural vector autoregression framework for the united kingdom euro area japan and canada vis a vis the united states a new identification strategy is proposed building on sign restrictions the results are compared to the benchmark conventional approach of clarida and gali 1994 based on longrun zero restrictions although the restrictions are derived from the same theoretical model the results are strikingly different in contrast to the benchmark model an important role for nominal shocks in explaining real exchange rate fluctuations is found hence the exchange rate can rather be considered as a source of shocks instead of a shock absorber

do real exchange rate appreciations matter for growth the impact of exchange rate changes on growth a long standing key issue in international macroeconomics has received renewed attention in recent years owing to weaker growth rates and the debate on currency wars the connection between real exchange rates and growth remains however an unsettled question in the academic literature we fill this gap by providing an empirical assessment based on a broad sample of emerging and advanced economies we assess the impact of appreciations productivity booms and capital inflows surges using a propensity score matching approach to address causality issues appreciations associated with higher productivity have a larger impact on growth than those associated with capital inflows furthermore appreciations per se tend to have a negative impact on growth we provide a simple theoretical model that delivers a contrasted growth appreciation pattern depending on the underlying shock the model also implies adverse effects of shocks to international capital flows so concerns about an appreciation are not inconsistent with concerns about a depreciation while the presence of an externality through firms destruction leads to inefficient allocations addressing the inefficiency does not dampen exchange rate movements

technical efficiency in the italian performing arts companies this paper evaluates the determinants of firms technical efficiency in the italian performing arts pa sector by estimating a stochastic production frontier for an unbalanced panel of 107 firms over the period 2005 2012 the panel data setting allows us to control for both unobserved and observed heterogeneity of pa firms reaching several interesting and robust findings firstly it finds that the italian pa firms are scale inefficient as they generally operate in either an increasing or decreasing returns to scale landscape this result is reinforced by the fact that the smaller firms 10 49 employees are the most technically efficient firm size class secondly this research proves that the efficiency score is on average 66 demonstrating that pa firms output could be substantially increased without the use of new inputs thirdly it confirms that the quality matters and competences increase the efficiency in the sector finally the environmental factors especially the quality of institutions have a strong impact on technical efficiency of pa firms supporting that regional differences also exist in this sector

the seemingly anomalous price behavior of royal dutch shell and unilever n v plc abstract we examine two anglo dutch groups the shares of whose parents trade on several international exchanges within each group the parents corporate charters mandate the division of cash flows available for distribution this implies a specific ratio for the market prices of their securities we document persistent deviations from these ratios on both the new york and london exchanges the direction and magnitude of the mispricing are common to both pairs of stocks and both markets nevertheless we find no evidence of profitable intra or intermarket trading rules

rational asset pricing bubbles and portfolio constraints this article shows that portfolio constraints can give rise to rational asset pricing bubbles in equilibrium even if there are unconstrained agents in the economy who can benefit from the induced limited arbitrage opportunities furthermore it is shown that bubbles can lead to both multiplicity and real indeterminacy of equilibria the general results are illustrated by two explicitly solved examples where seemingly innocuous portfolio constraints make bubbles a necessary condition for the existence of an equilibrium c 2012 elsevier inc all rights reserved

a system of demand equations satisfying effectively global regularity conditions a parametric specification of an indirect utility function in terms oaf expenditure and two unit cost functions is proposed specification of these unit cost functions in terms of regular functions leads to the notion of an effectively globally regular system of demand equations that is a system of demand equations that is regular over a cone in expenditure price space and for which the regular region includes all points in any given sample and all values of nominal expenditure and prices generating higher values of real expenditure than the sample minimum this general model nests a number of popular demand systems such as the linear expenditure system as special cases an empirical application illustrates some of these ideas copyright 1996 by mit press

are investors rational choices among index funds s p 500 index funds represent one of the simplest vehicles for examining rational behavior they hold virtually the same securities yet their returns differ by more than 2 percent per year although the relative returns of alternative s p 500 funds are easily predictable the relationship between cash flows and performance is weaker than rational behavior would lead us to expect we show that selecting funds based on low expenses or high past returns outperforms the portfolio of index funds selected by investors our results exemplify the fact that in a market where arbitrage is not possible dominated products can prosper

the market valuation of cash dividends abstract this paper re examines the case of citizens utilities a firm with one class of common stock which pays stock dividends and one which pays taxable cash dividends john long s 1978 study of the two shares relative prices suggests that investors may prefer cash dividends to equal sized stock dividends this paper finds that the cash dividend share s ex day price decline is less than their dividend payment stock dividend shares fall by nearly their full dividend the disparity between ex day dividend valuation and the observed prices of the two shares is inconsistent with some explanations of the demand for cash dividends

lost in translation delayed ex dividend price adjustments of hong kong adrs abstract previous research documents that hong kong stocks have a full ex dividend price adjustment consistent with dividends and capital gains being tax free we examine ex dividend price behavior of hong kong adrs to assess the impact of differing tax environments in us and hong kong these adrs typically go ex dividend before their underlying stock they experience significant abnormal returns of 1 16 on their ex day the average ex day price drop is only 30 of the dividend however adr prices drop when the underlying stock goes ex dividend subsequently the cumulative adr price drop is equal to the dividend thus the adr ex dividend adjustment resembles that of the underlying stock consistent with home country tax laws governing adr price behavior neither liquidity nor transaction costs can explain the anomalous delayed ex dividend adjustment of adrs

money velocity in an endogenous growth business cycle with credit shocks the explanation of velocity has been based in substitution and income effects since keynes s 1923 interest rate explanation and friedman s 1956 application of the permanent income hypothesis to money demand modern real business cycle theory relies on a goods productivity shocks to mimic the data s procyclic velocity feature as in friedman s explanation while finding money shocks unimportant and not integrating financial innovation explanations this paper sets the model within endogenous growth and adds credit shocks it models velocity more closely with significant roles for money shocks and credit shocks along with the goods productivity shocks endogenous growth is key to the construction of the money and credit shocks since they have similar effects on velocity through substitution effects from changes in the nominal interest rate and in the cost of financial intermediation but opposite effects upon growth through permanent income effects that are absent with exogenous growth

exchange rate regimes in the modern era fixed floating and flaky this paper provides a selective survey of the incidence causes and consequences of a country s choice of its exchange rate regime i begin with a critical review of michael klein and jay c shambaugh s 2010 book exchange rate regimes in the modern era and then proceed to provide an alternative overview of what the economics profession knows and needs to know about exchange rate regimes while a fixed exchange rate with capital mobility is a well defined monetary regime floating is not thus it is unclear whether it is theoretically sensible to compare countries across exchange rate regimes this comparison is quite difficult to make empirically it is often hard to figure out what the exchange rate regime of a country is in practice since there are multiple conflicting regime classifications more importantly similar countries choose radically different exchange rate regimes without substantive consequences for macroeconomic outcomes like output growth and inflation that is the profession knows surprisingly little about either the causes or consequences of national choices of exchange rate regimes but since the consequences of these choices are small understanding their causes is of only academic interest jel e52 f33

a case study of short sale constraints and limits to arbitrage this paper uses a unique data set of trades in a unique pair of securities that enables the precise identification of individual broker activity and the trade direction of that activity we find direct evidence that the imposition removal of short sale constraints limits generates trading activity consistent with brokers exploiting apparent mispricing

downsizing in the german chemical manufacturing industry during the 1990s why is small beautiful the german chemical manufacturing industry experienced major downsizing between 1992 and 2004 with the average size of firms shrinking by nearly half during this period this study uses modern frontier efficiency analysis to investigate the determinants of this downsizing based on reliable census data the results of this analysis suggest that firms were not primarily concerned with improving technical efficiency but with establishing an optimal scale of production the proportion of scale efficient firms has been persistently increasing and downsizing is found to be a rational conduct because all scale inefficient firms have continually operated under the decreasing returns portion of technology

nonparametric analysis of returns to scale in the us hospital industry this paper presents new estimates of scale economies for us hospitals we show that the common translog specification of hospital costs is a misspecification and employ nonparametric local linear estimation with both continuous and discrete covariates a bootstrap method is used to provide inferences regarding ray scale economies and expansion path scale economies for a large sample of hospitals covering 1984 1996 we find evidence of changes in the structure of hospital costs over the sample period as well as evidence of locally optimal hospital sizes copyright 2004 john wiley sons ltd

natural resource abundance and healthcare efficiency in appalachia a robust conditional approach abstract this study investigates the role of natural resource abundance on healthcare efficiency in appalachia unconditional efficiency measures are calculated from a production process where health inputs are turned into health outcomes we utilize a non parametric robust order m estimator where we condition our efficiency measures on secondary environmental variables that do not directly impact health in a production process unlike the unconditional estimation procedure which impacts the shape of the production frontier as well as the distance to the frontier the secondary environmental variables alter the location of the production frontier with corresponding effects on efficiency we find that taking into account the relatively worse socioeconomic and healthcare conditions in appalachia improves healthcare efficiency by 1 6 and 1 9 percentage points respectively the presence of natural resource extraction measured by oil natural gas or coal production worsens healthcare efficiency by 0 14 percentage points another vehicle of the resource curse regressing the conditional efficiency estimates on secondary environmental variables shows that counties with natural resource production are further from the production frontier and therefore more inefficient findings suggest that policymakers can improve health efficiency by incentivizing positive health behaviors such as reduced obesity and smoking rates which would mimic health improving inputs in a production process

the real exchange rate and economic growth revisiting the case using external instruments abstract we investigate the impact of movements in the real exchange rate on economic growth based on five year average data for a panel of over 150 countries in the post bretton woods period unlike previous literature we use external instruments to deal with possible reverse causality from growth to the real exchange rate our country specific instruments are i global capital flows interacted with individual countries financial openness and ii the growth rate of official reserves we find that a real appreciation depreciation reduces raises significantly annual real gdp growth more than in previous estimates in the literature however our results confirm this effect only for developing countries and for pegs

surprising similarities recent monetary regimes of small economies in contrast to earlier recessions the monetary regimes of many small economies have not changed in the aftermath of the global financial crisis this is due in part to the fact that many small economies continue to use hard exchange rate fixes a reasonably durable regime however most of the new stability is due to countries that float with an inflation target though a few have left to join the eurozone no country has yet abandoned an inflation targeting regime under duress inflation targeting now represents a serious alternative to a hard exchange rate fix for small economies seeking monetary stability are there important differences between the economic outcomes of the two stable regimes i examine a panel of annual data from more than 170 countries from 2007 through 2012 and find that the macroeconomic and financial consequences of regime choice are surprisingly small consistent with the literature business cycles capital flows and other phenomena for hard fixers have been similar to those for inflation targeters during the global financial crisis and its aftermath

a nonparametric approach for assessing productivity dynamics of large u s banks the 1980s marked an era of substantial change for the us commercial banking industry an issue of considerable interest to banking analysts and economists alike is whether the intensified competitive pressure generated by deregulation and notable financial innovations enhanced productivity to investigate the response to these changes the non parametric malmquist index is used to evaluate productivity dynamics a statistically significant productivity surge found between 1983 and 1984 is followed by productivity regress the next period post 1985 sustained productivity progress is observed for the remainder of the decade productivity movements are primarily attributable to technological changes rather than scale changes or convergence to the production frontier

market orientation for sustainable performance and the inverted u moderation of firm size evidence from the greek shipping industry abstract sustainability despite being a major concern for companies has not been studied from a market orientation perspective market oriented companies can integrate sustainability activities into their business strategies but there is a gap in our knowledge to what extend this affects firm performance this paper analyses the sustainable performance differences and provides confirmation of the market orientation to performance relationship within the transportation shipping sector in an attempt to fill the literature gap we examined by employing stochastic dea and hierarchical regression analysis the moderating effects of firm size on the relationship as well as the efficiency levels of the organizations to support the sustainable use of resources we conducted a large scale survey of the greek shipping industry which directly or indirectly controls 15 42 of the total world fleet we surveyed the total population of 2150 shipping firms of all types ship owning ship management charterers etc and received 703 responses from managers of 397 shipping firms which corresponds to an 18 5 response rate the findings show the effects of market orientation upon firm performance for shipping companies by disaggregating mo to its constituting factors those of responsiveness intelligence generation and dissemination further we uncover the differences in the size of shipping companies on the mo performance p link findings indicate that there is an inverted u shape effect of size on firm mo performance and identify where improvements are required

technical efficiency of spanish manufacturing firms a panel data approach this paper estimates the levels of technical efficiency reached by spanish manufacturing firms through an econometric estimation of frontier production functions for fifteen sectors of activity and also obtains other relevant technological measurements of these productive processes such as the scale and the technical progress parameters the methodology used is the panel data methods schmidt and sickles 1984 the statistical source is provided by the survey on business strategies encuesta sobre estrategias empresariales a panel of data covering 855 spanish manufacturing firms observed over the period 1990 1994 our econometric results confirm the great heterogeneity in the firms efficiency the predominance of constant returns to scale and the great rate of technological progress

the more we know about the fundamental the less we agree on the price i allow trading horizon heterogeneity across groups in a standard differential information model of a financial market this approach can explain the well established phenomenon that after a public announcement trading volume increases more private information is incorporated into prices and volatility increases in such environments public information has the important secondary role of helping agents learn about the information of other agents therefore whenever the correlation between the private information of different groups is sufficiently low a public announcement increases disagreement among short horizon traders regarding the expected selling price even as it decreases disagreement about the fundamental value of the asset additional testable implications are also suggested

robust nonparametric quantile estimation of efficiency and productivity change in u s commercial banking 1985 2004 this article uses a new nonparametric unconditional hyperbolic order quantile estimator to construct a hyperbolic version of the malmquist index unlike traditional nonparametric efficiency estimators the new estimator is both robust to data outliers and has a root n convergence rate we use this estimator to examine changes in the efficiency and productivity of u s banks between 1985 and 2004 we find that larger banks experienced larger efficiency and productivity gains than small banks consistent with the presumption that recent changes in regulation and information technology have favored larger banks

energy regulation in china objective selection potential assessment and responsibility sharing by partial frontier analysis to cope with the excessive growth of energy consumption the chinese government has been trying to strengthen the energy regulation system by introducing new initiatives that aim at controlling the total amount of energy consumption a partial frontier analysis is performed in this paper to make a comparative assessment of the combinations of possible energy conservation objectives new constraints and regulation strategies according to the characteristics of the coordination of existing regulation structure and the optimality of regulation strategy four scenarios are constructed and regional responsibilities are reasonably divided by fully considering the production technology in the economy the relative importance of output objectives and the total amount controlling is compared and the impacts on the regional economy caused by the changes of regulation strategy are also evaluated for updating regulation policy

quadratic engel curves and consumer demand this paper presents a model of consumer demand that is consistent with the observed expenditure patterns of individual consumers in a long time series of expenditure surveys and is also able to provide a detailed welfare analysis of shifts in relative prices a nonparametric analysis of consumer expenditure patterns suggests that engel curves require quadratic terms in the logarithm of expenditure while popular models of demand such as the translog or the almost ideal demand systems do allow flexible price responses within a theoretically coherent structure they have expenditure share engel curves that are linear in the logarithm of total expenditure we derive the complete class of integrable quadratic logarithmic expenditure share systems a specification from this class is estimated on a large pooled data set of u k households models that fail to account for engel curvature are found ro generate important distortions in the patterns of welfare losses associated with a tax increase

the modern history of exchange rate arrangements a reinterpretation we develop a novel system of reclassifying historical exchange rate regimes one key difference between our study and previous classifications is that we employ monthly data on market determined parallel exchange rates going back to 1946 for 153 countries our approach differs from the imf official classification which we show to be only a little better than random it also differs radically from all previous attempts at historical reclassification our classification points to a rethinking of economic performance under alternative exchange rate regimes indeed the breakup of bretton woods had less impact on exchange rate regimes than is popularly believed

international currency exposures valuation effects and the global financial crisis abstract we examine the evolution of international currency exposures with a particular focus on the 2002 12 period during the run up to the global financial crisis there was a widespread shift towards positive net foreign currency positions such that relatively few countries exhibited the archetypal emerging market short foreign currency position on the eve of the global financial crisis during the crisis the upheaval in currency markets generated substantial currency generated valuation effects much of which were not reversed there is some evidence that the distribution of valuation effects was stabilizing in the sense of showing a negative covariation pattern with pre crisis net foreign asset positions