1,721,185 research outputs found
The Stability and Growth Pact - Not the best but better than nothing. Reviewing the debate on fiscal policy in Europe's Monetary Union
Get PDFThis paper aims to review the economic literature on the Maastricht deficit rule and the Stability and Growth Pact. The author tries to expose the contradictions and inconclusiveness of the debate, highlighting both the criticism and the defense of the fiscal policy regime in EMU. The paper is non-technical and seeks to provide an overview for a readership outside the economics profession. The concluding judgment is that the pact can be criticized on a number of grounds, but that the lack of a politically feasible alternative makes it a second best solution that should not be undermined in the present crisis. -- Dieses Papier ist eine summarische Auswertung der wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Fachliteratur zur Defizitregel des Maastrichter Vertrages und dem Europäischen Stabilitäts- und Wachstumspakt. Der Autor versucht, Widersprüche und fehlenden Konsens der Debatte darzustellen, indem die Argumente für und gegen das fiskalpolitische Regime der Währungsunion einander gegenübergestellt werden. Der Aufsatz ist nicht technisch und dient dem Zugang einer an der Materie interessierten, aber wirtschaftstheoretisch nicht vorgebildeten Leserschaft. Das abschließende Urteil sieht den Pakt als in einer Reihe von Punkten kritikwürdiges Provisorium an, das jedoch mangels einer realisierbaren Alternative nicht ausgehebelt werden sollte.
Fiscal policy effectiveness and neutrality results in a non-Ricardian world
Get PDFThe paper introduces monetary and fiscal regimes into a Blanchard-Weil overlapping generations model. Contrary to intuition, it is shown that fiscal policy becomes more effective, the less the central bank monetises government debt. Furthermore, there is a degree of debt monetisation at which Ricardian equivalence seems to hold in this 'non-Ricardian' model, as fiscal policy is neutral with respect to agent's net wealth. At the origin of these results are the opposite intergenerational wealth effects of money and debt financing. Since, on average, central bank independence increased through EMU, the analysis suggests that fiscal policy might have become a more powerful instrument for euro-area countries. It is further argued that given the Stability and Growth Pact, governments will find it wise to run budget positions 'close to balance or in surplus' in order to maintain the increased fiscal policy effectiveness. JEL Classification: E63fiscal policy effectiveness
Notional defined contribution in Italy - Unsatisfactory present, uncertain future
No full textLo studio esamina i principali effetti (immediati e di lungo periodo) derivanti dalla riforma pensionistica del 1995, con la quale è stato introdotto il sistema denominato "notional defined contribution". Lo studio prosegue individuando i principali problemi ancora da risolvere. Tra i risultati positivi emerge un notevole miglioramento nella struttura degli incentivi rilevanti al fine della decisione di ritardare l'abbandono dell'attività lavorativa. Tra i problemi, emerge l'eccessiva lentezza della transizione dal vecchio al nuovo sistema e la mancanza di adeguati meccanismi di riequilibrio nel caso di mutamenti demografici
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
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
The dog that would never bite? The past and future of the Stability and Growth Pact
Get PDFThis paper analyses the underlying reasons for the creation of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) and its subsequent development in recent years. The paper examines the economic and political factors behind it, including the role of economic ideas, experts, politicians, institutional arrangements in the Maastricht Treaty, domestic politics, and the exceptional position of Germany in the realm of monetary integration in the EU. It concludes that a set of commonly held beliefs together with a corresponding power-political constellation explain the creation of the SGP. -- Das Papier analysiert die grundlegenden Bedingungen für das Zustandekommen des Stabilitäts- und Wachstumspakts (SGP) und seiner Entwicklung in den Folgejahren. Es werden ökonomische und politische Faktoren untersucht, insbesondere die Rolle wirtschaftspolitischer Vorstellungen und den Einfluss von Experten, Politikern, institutioneller Regelungen im Maastricht Vertrag, innenpolitischer Vorgänge und die Sonderstellung Deutschlands im Bereich der Europäischen Währungsunion. Die gemeinschaftlichen wirtschaftspolitischen Vorstellungen werden als notwendige Bedingung für die Schaffung des Paktes aufgefasst, und ihr Zusammentreffen mit einer entsprechenden machtpolitischen Spielkonstellation wird als dessen hinreichende Erklärung verstanden.
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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