1,721,152 research outputs found
Political Contagion in Currency Crises
Get PDFExisting models of contagious currency crises are summarized and surveyed, and it is argued that more weight should be put on political factors. Towards this end, the concept of political contagion introduced, whereby contagion in speculative attacks across currencies arises solely because of political objectives of countries. A specific model of membership' contagion is presented. The desire to be part of a political-economic union, where maintaining a fixed exchange rate is a condition for membership and where the value of membership depends positively on who else is a member, is shown to give rise to potential contagion. We then present evidence suggesting that political contagion may have been important in the 1992-3 EMS crisis.
Political Economy in Macroeconomics. By Allan Drazen. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Pp. xiv, 775. $55.00, 35.00.
No full textThis is a colossal volume it is at once a compendium, a survey, a critical evaluation, and a clear exposition of a burgeoning field. It is a study of macroeconomic policy-making in the presence of heterogeneity across actors. Allan Drazen argues that the sine qua non of politics is the conflict of interests; and the core of political economy is that policies are the outcome of the interaction of competing individuals and groups whose concern is their own welfare and not necessarily that of any other individuals or the society as a whole.
News About News: Information Arrival and Irreversible Investment
Get PDFWe analyze how uncertainty about when information about future returns to a project may be revealed affects investment. While 'good news' about future returns boosts investment, 'good news about news' (that is news that information may arrive sooner) is shown to depress investment. We show that early revelation increases the value of an irreversible investment project to a risk-neutral investor. We relate our results on preference for early revelation to results in non-expected utility theory. Our framework allows us to study irreversible investment projects whose value has a time-variable volatility. We also consider how heterogeneity of revelation information across firms may induce a better-informed firm to share its information with competitors.
Political Budget Cycles in New versus Established Democracies
Get PDFLike other recent studies, we find the existence of a political deficit cycle in a large cross-section of countries. However, we find that this result is driven by the experience of new democracies'. The strong budget cycle in those countries accounts for the finding of a budget cycle in larger samples that include these countries; when these countries are removed from the larger sample, so that only established' democracies remain, the political budget cycle disappears. The political deficit cycle in new democracies accounts for findings in both developed and less developed economies, for the finding that the cycle is stronger in weaker democracies, and for differences in the political cycle across governmental and electoral systems. Our findings may reconcile two contradictory views of pre-electoral manipulation, one arguing it is a useful instrument to gain voter support and a widespread empirical phenomenon, the other arguing that voters punish rather than reward fiscal manipulation.
Tenuous Financial Stability
Get PDFMany countries fix their exchange rate in order to bring financial stability. Usually, inflation declines and output expands but contractual agreements retain their short time frame, investment is sluggish, and economic growth slows down a few years later. This outcome is often attributed to persistent doubts on the part of agents in the commitment and ability of the government to maintain the peg. Yet direct evidence for credibility is difficult to obtain. Unique survey data from Bulgaria reveal that expectations of devaluation were indeed very much present three, four, and five years after that country achieved financial stability under a currency board regime.Credibility, Currency boards, Stabilization programs
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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