financial crises and economic recovery cross country heterogeneity and cross sectional dependence abstract this paper estimates the impulse responses of output to financial crises using a local projections panel estimator that accounts for cross country heterogeneity and cross sectional dependence using a long span of data 1870 2016 for a group of 17 advanced economies we show that once we control for unobserved common factors and parameter heterogeneity in the panel there is strong evidence of economic recovery within the first 10 years after a financial crisis

is there a glass ceiling in sweden using 1998 data we show that the gender log wage gap in sweden increases throughout the wage distribution and accelerates in the upper tail we interpret this as a strong glass ceiling effect we use quantile regression decompositions to examine whether this pattern can be ascribed primarily to gender differences in labor market characteristics or in the rewards to those characteristics even after extensive controls for gender differences in age education both level and field sector industry and occupation we find that the glass ceiling effect we see in the raw data persists to a considerable extent

do financial crises erode potential output evidence from oecd inflation responses this paper presents evidence from a panel investigation of oecd countries that inflationary pressures tend to be stronger during recovery from financial crises compared to recovery from non crisis economic downturns indicating impairment in productive potential

does marriage really make men more productive this paper presents new descriptive evidence regarding marital pay premiums earned by white males longitudinal data indicate that wages rise after marriage and that cross sectional marriage premiums appear to result from a steepening of the earnings profile data from a company personnelfile that includes information on job grades and supervisor performance ratings reveal large marital status pay differences within a narrow range of occupations managers and professionals and environments a single firm married workers tend to be located in higher paying job grades there are very small pay differentials within grades married men receive higher performance ratings than single men as a result they are much more likely to be promoted controlling for rated performance however eliminates the promotion differential sanders korenman is an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at princeton university and is a faculty associate of the office of population research at princeton university and a research affiliate of the national bureau of economic research nber david neumark is an assistant professor of economics at the university of pennsylvania and a research affiliate of the nber korenman wishes to acknowledge the hewlett foundation and the harvard university center for population studies for financial support the authors are grateful to james medofffor making available an extract from the company personnelfile questions regarding data availability should be directed to professor james

gender differences in rent sharing and its implications for the gender wage gap evidence from sweden abstract this study using matched employer employee data analyses gender differences in rent sharing results indicate significantly smaller remuneration from firm profits for women a difference that increases along the wage distribution gender differences in rent sharing explain less than 2 of mean gender wage differentials as differences are found in remuneration from firm profit and not in the mean profit levels of employing firms

estimating the financial crisis impact on potential output abstract i use a multivariate blanchard quah decomposition to investigate the financial crisis impact on potential output in the euro area the us japan and the uk i detect an impact for all countries which is especially severe for the uk

is there a glass ceiling over europe exploring the gender pay gap across the wages distribution using harmonised data from the european union household panel we analyse gender pay gaps by sector across the wages distribution for ten countries we find that the mean gender pay gap in the raw data typically hides large variations in the gap across the wages distribution we use quantile regression qr techniques to control for the effects of individual and job characteristics at different points of the distribution and calculate the part of the gap attributable to differing returns between men and women we find that first gender pay gaps are typically bigger at the top of the wage distribution a finding that is consistent with the existence of glass ceilings for some countries gender pay gaps are also bigger at the bottom of the wage distribution a finding that is consistent with sticky floors third the gender pay gap is typically higher at the top than the bottom end of the wage distribution suggesting that glass ceilings are more prevalent than sticky floors and that these prevail in the majority of our countries fourth the gender pay gap differs significantly across the public and the private sector wages distribution for each of our eu countries

swimming upstream floating downstream comparing women s relative wage progress in the united states and denmark applying a new decomposition method to u s psid and danish longitudinal sample data the authors compare how u s and danish gender wage gaps developed between 1983 and 1995 in denmark they find the wage gap widened because the worsening in women s relative returns to observable human capital attributes as well as in their ranking relative to men in unobserv able productive attributes more than offset their wage gains from improved observable qualifications relative to men s in the united states in contrast the gender convergence in qualifications offset adverse influences including in creasing wage dispersion throughout the labor market to result in a narrowing of the gap the largest increase in the gap in denmark was experienced by women in the top earnings decile and the largest decline in the gap in the united states affected those at the top and in the middle of the distribution

wages profits and capital intensity evidence from matched worker firm data swedish data on workers matched with firms balance sheet reports are used to examine the relation between wages and firms ability to pay results indicate that experienced and highly educated workers are sorted into profitable firms wages are positively correlated with profits and the capital labor ratio after controlling for worker quality degree of effort supervision job characteristics local unemployment firms employment history and employer size lester s range of pay due to rent sharing is around 12 24 of the mean wage in sweden which is close to the estimates for the united states and united kingdom

the creation and capture of rents wages and innovation in a panel of u k companies this paper examines the impact of technological innovation on wages using a panel of british firms a head count measure of major innovations between 1945 and 1983 is combined with share price and accounting information innovating firms are found to have higher average wages but rival innovation tends to depress own wages this appears consistent with a model where wages are partly determined by a sharing in the rents generated by innovation in other words innovation may be a good instrument for proxies for rents such as profitability quasi rents or tobin s average q instrumental variable estimates of the elasticity between wages and quasi rents are about 0 29

incentives and effects of no lose targets to include non annex i countries in global emission reductions we analyze the potential of no lose targets used as an instrument to integrate non annex i countries in global emission reduction efforts we set up a game theoretical model to derive the participation conditions for a non annex i country and evaluate the effect of a no lose target on the reduction of global emissions our analyses show that meaningful contributions from non annex i countries are possible but their contribution to global emission reductions is limited and depends on several factors ambitious targets for the annex i countries are a precondition further determining factors are differences in the abatement potentials between annex i and non annex i countries and market power on the certificate market nonetheless in contrast to other funding mechanisms no lose targets rather than requiring additional funding can actually reduce costs for the annex i countries

wages profits and rent sharing the paper suggests a new test for rent sharing in the u s labor market using an unbalanced panel from the manufacturing sector it shows that a rise in a sector s profitability leads after some years to an increase in the long run level of wages in that sector the paper controls for workers characteristics for industry fixed effects and for unionism lester s range of wages is estimated for rent sharing reasons alone at approximately 24 per cent of the mean wage

rent sharing and wages evidence from company and establishment panels a central question in labor economics and macroeconomics is whether the textbook competitive model provides an adequate representation of the labor market using longitudinal data on companies and establishments this article suggests that it may not as predicted by rent sharing models of the labor market changes in profitability are shown to feed through into long run changes in wages these are not temporary wage effects and are not driven by the unionized workplaces in the data the article s estimates imply that for rent sharing reasons alone lester s range of wages is approximately 16

has monetary policy become more efficient a cross country analysis over the past twenty years macroeconomic performance has improved in industrialized and developing countries alike in a broad cross section of countries inflation volatility has fallen markedly while output variability has either fallen or risen only slightly this increased stability can be attributed to either 1 more efficient policymaking by the monetary authority 2 a reduction in the variability of the aggregate supply shocks or 3 changes in the structure of the economy in this paper we develop a method for measuring changes in performance and allocate the source of performance changes to these two factors our technique involves estimating movements toward an inflation and output variability efficiency frontier and shifts in the frontier itself we study the change from the 1980s to the 1990s in the macroeconomic performance of 24 countries and find that for most of the analyzed countries more efficient policy has been the driving force behind improved macroeconomic performance

spatial wage disparities sorting matters spatial wage disparities can result from spatial differences in the skill composition of the workforce in non human endowments and in local interactions to distinguish between these explanations we estimate a model of wage determination across local labour markets using a very large panel of french workers we control for worker characteristics worker fixed effects industry fixed effects and the characteristics of the local labour market our findings suggest that individual skills account for a large fraction of existing spatial wage disparities with strong evidence of spatial sorting by skills interaction effects are mostly driven by the local density of employment not controlling for worker heterogeneity leads to very biased estimates of interaction effects endowments only appear to play a small role

rent sharing as a driver of the glass ceiling effect in this paper we show that rent sharing plays a role in explaining the glass ceiling effect we make use of a unique employer employee panel database for italy from 1996 to 2003 which allows controlling for observed individual and firm heterogeneity and for collective bargaining moreover by means of iv quantile fixed effects estimates we can cope with unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity a discussion of different explanations is provided

how could emissions trading benefit developing countries abstract this paper aims to show how an emissions trading system could work if some participating entities are allocated an emissions budget or non binding target this will allow them to sell allowances if their actual emissions are less than their budget but will not obligate them to buy allowances if their emissions exceed their budget different rules aiming at ensuring the environmental integrity of such a system are considered parties to the framework convention on climate change may wish to consider building a regime where developing countries are allocated emissions budgets on some provisions of the kyoto protocol and in full respect with the principles of the convention in any case such system would be complementary to the clean development mechanism the potential benefits would be to provide non annex i developing countries with substantial capital inflows and stimulate their economic growth to allow annex i industrialised countries achieving their kyoto commitments at the lowest possible cost and to achieve global participation towards the objective of the convention while reducing the risk of creating tropical hot air by giving some developing countries more allowances than they need under a business as usual scenario

revisiting the case for intensity targets better incentives and less uncertainty for developing countries abstract in the debate on post kyoto global climate policy intensity targets which set a maximum amount of emissions per gdp figure as prominent alternative to kyoto style absolute emission targets especially for developing countries this paper re examines the case for intensity targets by critically assessing several of its properties namely i reduction of cost uncertainty ii reduction of hot air iii compatibility with international emissions trading iv incentive to decouple carbon emissions and economic output decarbonization and v use as a substitute for banking borrowing relying on simple analytical models it is shown that the effect on cost uncertainty is ambiguous and depends on parameter values and that the same holds for the risk of hot air that the intensity target distorts international emissions trading that despite potential asymmetries in the choice of abatement technology between absolute and intensity target the incentive for a lasting transformation of the energy system is not necessarily stronger under the latter and finally that only a well working intensity target could substitute banking borrowing to some extent but also vice versa overall the results suggest that due to the increased complexity and the potentially only modest benefits of an intensity target absolute targets remain a robust choice for a cautious policy maker

market power and transferable property rights the appeal of using markets as a means of allocating scarce resources stems in large part from the assumption that a market will approximate the competitive ideal when competition is not a foregone conclusion the question naturally arises as to how a firm might manipulate the market to its own advantage this paper analyzes the issue of market power in the context of markets for transferable property rights first a model is developed that explains how a single firm with market power might exercise its influence this is followed by an examination of the model in the context of a particular policy problem the control of particulate sulfates in the los angeles region

does monetary policy lose effectiveness during a credit crunch this article investigates the effectiveness of monetary policy during a credit crunch by estimating a vector autoregression on the us economy we present evidence that interest rate cuts have a diminished impact on growth due to impairment in the relationship between monetary policy and the supply of intermediated credit

rent sharing before and after the wage bill many biases plague the analysis of whether employers share rents with their employees unlike what is predicted by the competitive labour market model using a portuguese matched employer employee panel this article is one of the first to address these biases in three complementary ways 1 controlling directly for the fact that firms that share more rents will ceteris paribus have lower net of wages profits 2 instrumenting profits via interactions between the exchange rate and the share of exports in firm s total sales 3 considering firm or firm worker spell fixed effects and highlighting the role of downward wage rigidity these approaches clarify conflicting findings in the literature and result in our preferred specifications in significant evidence of rent sharing a lester range of pay dispersion of 56 also shown to be robust to a number of competitive interpretations

credit rationing and effective supply failures the topic of this paper is among the oldest and most fundamental in monetary theory how and why does monetary policy affect real economic activity traditional answers hold that the central bank can manipulate aggregate demand by engineering expansions or contractions of the medium of exchange in its monetarist variant this story posits a direct link between something called m and aggregate spending in its keynesian variant the story holds that adjustments in asset prices brought about by a change in m lead to more spending especially on capital goods in either case short run stickiness of prices is needed to translate some of the changes in demand into movements of real output in recent years these conventional stories have become increasingly implausible as stiglitz and i blinder and stiglitz i 983 have argued elsewhere with money becoming more and more difficult to define it is becoming increasingly difficult to believe that the central bank can cause a recession by contriving a shortage of an arbitrary subset of assets called m put differently the point seems both simple and compelling if there are ready substitutes for money control of money will not give the authorities much leverage over the real economy hence this paper develops an explanation for how central bank policy affects