Research Papers in Economics
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Dynamics of Output and Employment in the U.S. Economy
This paper investigates the changing relationship between employment and real output in the U.S. economy from 1948 to 2010 both at the aggregate level and at some major industry-grouping levels of disaggregation. Real output is conventionally measured as value added corrected for price inflation, but there are some industries in which no independent measure of value added is possible and existing statistics depend on imputing value added to equal income. Indexes of output that exclude these imputations are closely correlated with employment over the whole period, and remain more closely correlated during the current business cycle. This analysis offers insights into deeper structural changes that have taken place in the U.S. economy over the past few decades in a context marked by the following three factors: (i) the service (especially the financial) sector has grown in importance, (ii) the economy has become more globalized, and (iii) the policy orientation has increasingly become neoliberal. We demonstrate an economically significant reduction in the coefficient relating employment growth to output growth over the business cycles since 1985. Some of this change is due to sectoral shifts toward services, but an important part of it reflects a reduction in the coefficient for the goods and material value-adding sectors.Okun's Law; Kaldor-Verdoorn Eect; Global restructuring; measurement of real output
New Jobs — Cleaner Air: Employment Effects Under Planned Changes to the EPA’s Air Pollution Rules
In this study commissioned by Ceres, James Heintz, Heidi Garrett-Peltier, and Ben Zipperer examine the economic impacts of air pollution regulations forthcoming from the Environmental Protection Agency: the Clean Air Transport Rule governing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions, and the National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for Utility Boilers rule, which will set limits for hazardous air pollutants. Focusing on 36 states, the study assesses the potential employment impacts of the transformation of the nation’s energy generation plants to a cleaner, more efficient fleet, through investments in pollution controls and the retirement of outdated plants.
A closer look at financial development and income distribution
This paper analyzes the under-investigated relationship uniting financial development and income distribution. We use a novel approach taking into account for the first time the specific channels linking banks, capital markets and income inequality, the time-varying nature of the relationship, and reciprocal causality. We construct a set of annual indicators of banking and capital market size, robustness, efficiency and international integration. We then estimate the determinants of income distribution using a panel Bayesian structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model, for a set of 49 countries over the 1994-2002 period. We uncover a significant causality running from financial sector development to income distribution. In addition, the banking sector seems to exert a stronger impact on inequality. Finally, the relationship appears to depend on characteristics of the financial sector, rather than on its size.finance, income distribution, SVAR
How business is done and the'doing business'indicators : the investment climate when firms have climate control
This paper examines de jure and de facto measures of regulations, finding the relationship between them is neither one for one, nor linear."Doing Business"provides indicators of the formal time and costs associated with fully complying with regulations. Enterprise Surveys report the actual experiences of a wide range of firms. First, there are significant variations in reported times to complete the same transaction by firms facing the same formal policy. Second, regulatory compliance appears"under water"as firms report actual times much less than the Doing Business reported days. Third, the data reveal substantial differences between favored and disfavored firms in the same location. Favored firms show minimal variation, so Doing Business has little predictive power for the times they report. For disfavored firms, the variation is greater, although still not significantly correlated with Doing Business. Fourth, where multiple Enterprise Surveys are available, there is little association over time, with reductions in Doing Business days as likely to be accompanied by increases in Enterprise Surveys days. Comparing these two types of measures suggests very different ways of thinking about policy versus policy implementation, what"a climate"for firms in a country might mean, and what the options for"policy reform"really are.E-Business,Microfinance,Access to Finance,Climate Change Economics,Banks&Banking Reform