114 research outputs found
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Estimation of Welfare Change due to the Trade Environment Change in China after Joining the World Trade Organization in 2001
No full textThe measurement of welfare brought about by trade environment change has long been a heated topic in international trade analysis. By utilizing compensating variation (by Grinols and Wong, and Irwin) and equivalent variation methodology, we separately measured not only the directions but also the magnitudes of the welfare changes that occurred after shocks to China in the following period: welfare change between 2001 and 2004 after China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization (WTO). The result shows that China gained up to 4.8% of GDP in welfare after its entrance into the WTO. The original methodology offered by previous studies as well as the EV measurement is also reviewed in this paper
Multi-dimensional skills and matching: implications for international trade and wage inequality
Full text linkWorkers have various kinds of skills and abilities in different amounts and proportions.The technology of firms in an industry is also characterized by a certain skill combination. The combinations of skills supplied by workers are often not the same as those demanded by firms---there can be mismatches between the skills supplied by workers and those demanded by firms. This kind of mismatches can cause both inter- and intra-industry wage inequalities. With two countries that have two industries and different skill distribution, international trade has a portion of the workers to move to a industry with a higher wage income than by remaining in the former industry. However, the moving workers who are matched with less appropriate firms may receive a lower wage income than in autarky
The euro's effect on trade: an analysis of "old" and "new" EMU members
Full text linkThis paper provides new empirical evidence of the ``euro effect" on bilateral trade by allowing for a heterogeneous impact on ``new" and ``old" EMU members. By applying a Poisson estimator and focusing on a sample of 38 countries, our results show a positive but statistically insignificant euro’s effect on bilateral exports. However, disaggregating this effect, we report a relatively large euro’s effect on bilateral trade for the “new” EMU countries. We also find no evidence of trade diversion, thus corroborating existing evidence. These results are robust to a number of sensitivity checks and, especially, to the use of a larger sample of countries. Finally, using country-pair and country-industry-pair data, our results indicate a reduction in export concentration in the bilateral trade of ``old" EMU countries. Instead, we find an increase in concentration in trade between ``new" and ``old" EMU countries
The effect of temporary parental benefit on children’s antibiotics use: Evidence from a natural field experiment
Full text linkPrudent use of antibiotics is important to delay the spread of resistance. This paper analyses the effect on children’s antibiotics use of a reform of the temporary parental benefit in Sweden. The reform increased the maximum compensation for this benefit. The level of compensation for social security may affect the propensity of a patient or parent to push for a prescription for antibiotics, as a less generous compensation makes it more expensive to be absent from work and since there is widespread overconfidence in the effectiveness of antibiotics. Using municipality level data, we show that the reform resulted in a reduction in children’s antibiotics use by about five per cent. The result is fairly robust to alternative empirical strategies, suggesting that welfare policies can have important indirect effects that should be taken into account
Bribes in the Business Cycles
No full textFirms in countries with poor enforcement of property rights are often subject to extortions, which impact the business cycle. Unlike taxes, extortions respond endogenously to exogenous shocks, potentially affecting the volatility of investment, consumption, and GDP. In this study I introduce extortions into a real business cycles framework. The model features an intermediary that demands bribes from firms. In steady state, weak property rights induce higher bribes, lower GDP per capita, and lower investment to GDP ratios. Along the business cycle, they reduce the correlation between investment and output, and amplify the volatility of consumption and investment relative to output. I find this to be in line with the data. My framework accounts for the empirical finding that growth policies are usually more successful in countries with strong enforcement of property rights
Inefficient Growth
Full text linkThe notion that legal institutions matter for growth and development can hardly be disputed in a world of non-zero transaction costs. This research advances the hypothesis that transaction costs explain large and wide-standing cross-country productivity differences. We examine the contribution of transaction costs to total factor productivity for a large panel of countries. We show that transaction costs reflect the policy constraints, country-specific policies, distortions and barriers to entry that discourage the adoption of the efficient use of technology by protecting the vested interests in the existing production process. Our findings suggest that lower costs of contract enforcement, low-cost and efficient insolvency framework and accessible property rights contribute substantially to TFP growth over time while weaker effects are found for lighter business registration and licensing requirements. Our results are stable across a variety of estimation techniques. By exploiting the variation in pre-industrial urbanization rate, disease environment, and latent cultural traits, we show that the negative effect of rising transaction costs on TFP appears to be causal.
Investing in Innovation and Skills: Thriving through Global Value Chains
Full text linkThis paper investigates empirically the interplay between participation and positioning in global value chains (GVCs), employment demand and supply and workforce’s skills endowment. Results touch upon the way innovation, technology and participation in GVCs shape employment in routine intensive and non-routine jobs; the relationship between participation in GVCs and polarisation of employment; the way the skill composition of a country’s workforce – both the type of skills and their distribution – shapes specialisation and positioning along GVCs; and the complementarities emerging between GVC participation and investment in knowledge-based capital, especially organisational capital and ICT
The Impact of Citation Timing: A Framework and Examples
Full text linkThe literature on research evaluation has noted important differences in citation time patterns between disciplines, high and low ranked journals and types of publications. Delays in the receipt of citations suggest that the diffusion of knowledge following discovery is slower and given the passage of time the research contribution may be less valuable. This paper provides a framework for the comparison of different citation time patterns. Using principles drawn from the literature on stochastic dominance we show that comparisons of time patterns can be based on very general characteristics of cost of delay functions. When a particular function is used to represent the cost of delay, the magnitude of the impact of differences in citation time patterns can be assessed using simple exponential discounting. We demonstrate the application of this framework in assessing different citation time patterns by applying it to comparisons of 10-year citation records for: leading journals in economics, different business subject areas, journals in economics compared with those in neuroscience and the research output of individual economists.
Changing Sexual Regulations in the U.S. from 1990 to 2010: Spatial Panel Data Analysis
Full text linkUnderstanding legal regulation on sexual practices is a field in its infancy. In this paper we analyze the factors driving these sexual regulations using a novel dataset for the U.S. for the years 1990 to 2010. We first introduce the index of sexual regulation (ISR) and then using a spatial lag fixed effects estimator that accounts for spillover effects from neighboring states, we find that citizen’s ideology, population density, household income and median age are associated with a weaker sexual regulation while government ideology has a slight positive association with the overall sexual regulation. We also examine two dimensions of sexual practice regulation looking at the index of marriage practice regulation (IMPR) and sex crime regulation (ISCR). In the case of IMPR, our findings indicate that a more liberal government ideology, a higher share of population with the college degree and a higher median age are associated with a more liberal index of marriage practice regulation
Diversity and Social Capital in the U.S: A Tale of Conflict, Contact or Total Mistrust?∗
Full text linkThis paper explores the relationship between ethnic fractionalization and social capital. First, using data from 1990, 1997 and 2005 we test for time differences in the impact of ethnic fractionalization on social capital. Subsequently, we examine U.S. data for evidence consistent with the pro- posed outcomes in the conflict, contact, or hunker-down theses discussed in Putnam (2007). Putnam (2007) examines what happens to “trust” or “social capital” when individuals of different ethnicity are introduced into social, political and/or economic groups over time. Using an instru- mental variable (IV) estimator, we find little evidence of heterogeneity in the impact of ethnic fractionalization on social capital over our period of analysis. In addition, using both fixed effect and IV estimators, we reject the contact hypothesis, but find evidence consistent with the outcomes predicted in both conflict hypothesis and Putnam’s hunker-down hypoth- esis in inter-ethnic relations. Due to data limitations, we are unable to test directly which of these two thesis are more relevant for the U.S ex- perience. However, we provide suggestive evidence in support of conflict hypothesis over the hunker-down hypothesis. Our results suggest that as communities become more diverse, there is a tendency for social capital to decline