1,721,124 research outputs found
Service Offshoring and Labor Demand in Europe
No full textThis chapter aims to shed new light on the labor-market implications of service offshoring by providing novel and extensive empirical evidence on how it affects the demand for labor in Western European countries. It studies two main channels through which service offshoring may affect labor demand. First, service offshoring may induce a parallel shift in the demand schedule. Second, it may change, and possibly increase, its slope (wage elasticity). These two channels may offer complementary explanations for why concerns about service offshoring are mounting in Western Europe. The chapter is organized as follows: Section 3 describes the data set and provides stylized facts on service offshoring and labor demand in Western Europe; section 4 introduces the empirical models; section 5 presents and discusses the results; and finally, section 6 briefly concludes
Towards An Understanding of the Real Effects and Costs of Inflation
Get PDFThe organization of the paper is simple. We start by examining the real effects of anticipated inflation in an economy that has fully adapted to inflation. In particular, in this economy: (i) public institutions are fully attuned to inflation (or inflation proof), (ii) the same is true of private institutions, (iii) current and future inflation is fully reflected in inherited contracts, and (iv) future inflation is fully reflected in contracts for the future. After we have discussed the effects of anticipated inflation in this environment, we examine the real effects of inflation that arise as the assumptions (i) to (iv) are dropped one after the other. The effects cumulate in the sense that those present in the economy that has fully adapted to inflation are also present in economies with non-inflation proof institutions, and so on.
Recommended from our members
Essays on the Municipal Bond Market
Get PDFThe municipal bond market is a financial market that does not draw much attention from academics, researchers, the government or practitioners. However, that changed recently when the largest recession since the Great Depression impacted the U.S. economy. Now everyone is struggling to understand two major questions: 1) How do we mark to market bonds in illiquid markets? and 2) Why are 50% of new issues insured in a market that has the lowest default rate of any bond market other than the treasury market? This dissertation examines those questions in three parts.The first part, The Effect of Insurance on Municipal Bond Yields, studies the difference between insured and uninsured municipal bond yields. I find that although some of that difference is attributable to the effect of insurance, another channel comes from self selection to insure -- municipalities that choose to insure differ significantly from municipalities who choose not to insure. Without accounting for the latter self selection the insurance benefit appears undervalued. By focusing on municipalities with both outstanding insured and uninsured bonds (mixed municipalities), I identify that in the pre-crisis period insurance for such municipalities reduces municipal bond yields by 8 basis points. But analysis of homogeneous municipalities reveals the self selection effect raises yields by 6 basis points. However, during the recent financial crisis, insurance continued to lower yields by 8 bps, whereas the self selection effect increased yields by 18 basis points. Thus, my work explains the recent initially puzzling phenomenon when insured yields rose above uninsured yields. The second part, The Effect of Insurance on Liqudity, examines liquidity in the municipal bond market during the recent financial crisis. I analyze the effects of insurance on liquidity for municipal bonds and estimate how the effects of insurance change when the insurers face a loss of capital and rating downgrades. I measure liquidity in the three ways most suited for illiquid markets: the Amihud measure, Roll's bid-ask measure, and turnover. By all three measures, both before and after the financial crisis, bonds with insurance are less liquid than bonds without insurance. I also find that the liquidity of bonds with insurance decreases over the financial crisis. These findings indicate that insurance does not improve liquidity.The third part, A Municipal Bond Market Index Based on a Repeat Sales Methodology, introduces a repeat sales methodology to create an index for the municipal bond market based on transactional prices, because the current indices are based on estimated bond prices. The repeat sales methodology can calculate an index for any municipal bond characteristic. I create and analyze indices for the municipal bond market and separate indices by rating, maturity, and characteristics such as insurance and bond type (i.e. General Obligation or Revenue). Repeat sales methodology is based on the assumption that characteristics of the bond do not change over time which means the movements in bond prices are due to evolving market conditions. I compare the repeat sales indices with the existing municipal bond indices and find the repeat sales indices highly correlated with the current indices with a correlation of .8
The Future of the Government Sponsored Enterprises: The Role for Government in the U.S. Mortgage Market
Get PDFThis paper analyzes options for reforming the U.S. housing finance system in view of the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as government sponsored enterprises (GSEs). The options considered include GSE reform, a range of possible new governmental mortgage guarantee plans, and greater reliance on private mortgage markets. The analysis also considers the likely consequences of adopting alternative roles for government in the U.S. housing and mortgage markets. We start by reviewing the history of the GSEs and their contributions to the operation of U.S. housing and mortgage markets, including the actions that led to their failure in conjunction with the recent mortgage market crisis. The reform options we consider include those proposed in a 2011 U.S. Treasury White Paper, plans for new government mortgage guarantees from various researchers and organizations, and the evidence from Western European countries for the efficacy of private mortgages markets.
The Impact of Overseas R&D on Domestic R&D Employment
No full textThis chapter uses surveys of Finnish firms to test three hypotheses regarding the offshoring of R&D: (1) relocated R&D replaces domestic R&D; (2) the relation between R&D offshoring and employment varies by offshoring channel; and (3) the relation between R&D offshoring and domestic R&D employment varies by industry. Section 2 starts by briefly reviewing the literature on which the hypotheses are based. Section 3 describes the survey data and lists the sample properties. Section 4 describes the methodology. Section 5 presents the econometric results and section 6 concludes
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
- …
