1,721,031 research outputs found
Money and finance: the heterodox views of R. Clower, A. Leijonhufvud and H. Minsky
Full text linkThe heterodoxy of Robert Clower, Axel Leijonhufvud and Hyman Minsky consisted in dispensing with the dominant assumption according to which the system spontaneously tends to a situation of full coordination. In analysing the effective disequilibrium behaviour of the system, all three came to the conclusion that monetary and financial forces have a crucial importance for coordination and that their role can be highly destabilising. Contrary to the dominant theory, all three offer useful insights to understand what is happening today.
Organizational capital and firm performance. Empirical evidence for European firms
Full text linkThe paper assesses the impact of Organizational Capital (OC) on firm perfor- mance for a sample of European firms. OC is proxied by capitalizing an income statement item (SGA expenses). A rationale for this methodology is provided. Results are robust and show the strong effect of OC on firm performance.Intangibles, Knowledge-based resources, Organizational capital,R&D capital stock, Translog production function
Has food price volatility risen?
Full text linkThe high food prices experienced over recent years have led to the widespread view that food price volatility has increased. However, volatility has generally been lower over the two most recent decades than previously. Variability over the most recent period has been high but, with the important exception of rice, not out of line with historical experience. There is weak evidence that the volatility of grains and vegetable oils prices may be increasing but it is too early to make a definite statement. Important open issues remain with respect to biofuels, climate change and the possible effects of the financialization of agricultural food markets
Anomalies in Economics and Finance
Full text linkThe term “anomaly” played a crucial role in Thomas Kuhn’s characterization of scientific progress. For Kuhn, an anomaly is a puzzle which challenges an accepted paradigm. Puzzles only achieve anomalous status once an alternative paradigm becomes available which allows explanation of the puzzle. Anomalies were introduced into the finance literature by Michael Jensen but more as resolvable puzzles than Kuhnian anomalies. They entered economics via Richard Thaler who saw behavioural economics as the alternative to the neoclassical paradigm. Both authors use the term anomaly in a deliberately Kuhnian manner. Kuhn formulated his ideas by looking back across the history of physics. By contrast, behavioural economists use Kuhn’s concepts in a forward-looking manner as a marketing tool for their ideas.anomaly, behavioural, effects.
Measuring industrial agglomeration with inhomogeneous K-function: the case of ICT firms in Milan (Italy)
Full text linkWhy do industrial clusters occur in space? Is it because industries need to stay close together to interact or, conversely, because they concentrate in certain portions of space to exploit favourable conditions like public incentives, proximity to communication networks, to big population concentrations or to reduce transport costs? This is a fundamental question and the attempt to answer to it using empirical data is a challenging statistical task. In economic geography scientists refer to this dichotomy using the two categories of spatial interaction and spatial reaction to common factors. In economics we can refer to a distinction between exogenous causes and endogenous effects. In spatial econometrics and statistics we use the terms of spatial dependence and spatial heterogeneity. A series of recent papers introduced explorative methods to analyses the spatial patterns of firms using micro data and characterizing each firm by its spatial coordinates. In such a setting a spatial distribution of firms is seen as a point pattern and an industrial cluster as the phenomenon of extra-concentration of one industry with respect to the concentration of a benchmarking spatial distribution. Often the benchmarking distribution is that of the whole economy on the ground that exogenous factors affect in the same way all branches. Using such an approach a positive (or negative) spatial dependence between firms is detected when the pattern of a specific sector is more aggregated (or more dispersed) than the one of the whole economy. In this paper we suggest a parametric approach to the analysis of spatial heterogeneity, based on the socalled inhomogeneous K-function (Baddeley et al., 2000). We present an empirical application of the method to the spatial distribution of high-tech industries in Milan (Italy) in 2001. We consider the economic space to be non homogenous, we estimate the pattern of inhomogeneity and we use it to separate spatial heterogeneity from spatial dependence.
Intermediaries in International Trade: direct versus indirect modes of export
Full text linkThis paper contributes to the relatively new literature on the role of intermediaries in international trade. Using Italian firm-level data, we document significant differences between exporters of different types and highlight the role of country-specific fixed cost in the choice of direct versus indirect modes of export. Recent theoretical work suggests that intermediaries are typically providing solutions to country-specific fixed costs. Our empirical results largely confirm this relationship. Measures of country fixed costs are positively associated with intermediary exports both in the aggregate and within firms. In contrast, proxies for variable trade costs are largely not correlated with differences between direct and indirect exports.heterogeneous firms, international trade, intermediation, wholesalers
Production and financial linkages in inter-firm networks: structural variety, risk-sharing and resilience
Full text linkThe paper analyzes how (production and financial) inter-firm networks can affect firms’ default probabilities and observed default rates: an issue the recent crisis has brought to the front of the debate. A simple theoretical model of shock transfer is built up to investigate some stylized facts on how firm-idiosyncratic shocks tend to be allocated in the network, and how this allocation changes firms’ default probability. The model shows that the network works as a perfect “risk-pooling” mechanism, when it is both strongly connected and symmetric. But the resort to “risk-sharing” does not necessarily reduce default rates in the network, unless the shock they face is lower on average than their financial capacity. Conceived as cases of symmetric inter-firm networks, industrial districts might have a comparative disadvantage in front of “heavy” financial crises such as the current one.Firm clusters, industrial districts, interlinking transactions,resilience, systemic risk
An agent-based “proof of principle” for Walrasian macroeconomic theory
No full textMacroeconomic models are typically solved through the imposition of a top-down general equilibrium solution constraining agents’ rational behavior. This is customarily obtained by recurring, explicitly or not, to the Walrasian auctioneer artifice. In this paper we aim at contributing to the small but burgeoning literature that deals with the consequences of removing it from the start by means of agent-based techniques. We let the textbook full-employment neoclassical macroeconomic model be populated by a large number of bounded-rational, autonomous agents, who are repeatedly engaged in decentralized transactions in interrelated markets. We set up a computational laboratory to perform several experiments, whose designs differ as regards the way we treat learning on the one side, and the institutional arrangement determining who—between firms and workers—is bound to bear the risk associated to incomplete markets on the other one. We show that our fully decentralized multi-market system admits the possibility to attain the Walrasian full-employment solution, but also that serious coordination failures emerge endogenously as learning mechanisms and institutional settings are varied
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