2,232 research outputs found
Engendering trade
No full textThe authors analyze the interaction between a country's world market integration and its attitude towards gender roles. They discuss both theoretically and empirically how female empowerment is a source of comparative advantage that shapes a country's response to trade opening. Reciprocally, the authors show that as countries integrate into the world economy, the costs and benefits of gender discrimination shift. Their theory goes beyond a potential aggregate wealth effect associated with trade opening, and emphasizes the heterogeneity of impacts. On the one hand, countries in which women are empowered -- measured by fertility rates, female labor force participation or female schooling -- experience an expansion of industries that use female labor relatively more intensively. On the other hand, the gender gap is smaller in countries that export more in relatively female-labor intensive sectors. In an increasingly globalized economy, the road to gender equality is paradoxically very specific to each country’s productive structure and exposure to world markets.Labor Markets,Labor Policies,Gender and Development,Economic Theory&Research,Political Economy
Credit chains and sectoral comovemen t: does the use of trade credit amplify sectoral shocks ?
No full textThis paper provides evidence of the presence and relevance of a credit-chain amplification mechanism by looking at its implications for the correlation of industries. In particular, it tests the hypothesis that an increase in the use of trade-credit along the input-output chain linking two industries results in an increase in their correlation. The analysis uses detailed data on the correlations and input-output relations of 378 manufacturing industry-pairs across 44 countries with different degrees of use of trade credit. The results provide strong support for this hypothesis and indicate that the mechanism is quantitatively relevant.Economic Theory&Research,Access to Finance,Bankruptcy and Resolution of Financial Distress,Investment and Investment Climate,
Local Distributional Effects of Government Cash Transfers in Chile
No full textDespite rapid economic growth and poverty reduction, inequality in Chile has remained high and remarkably constant over the last 20 years, prompting academic and public interest in the subject. Due to data limitations, however, research on inequality in Chile has concentrated on the national and regional levels. The impact of cash subsidies to poor households on local inequality is thus not well understood. Using povertymapping methods to asses this impact, we find heterogeneity in the effectiveness of regional and municipal governments in reducing inequality via poverty-reduction transfers, suggesting that alternative targeting regimes may complement current practice in aiding the poor.Inequality; Poverty Mapping; Subsidies; Targeting; Chile
Essays on macroeconomic volatility
No full textThesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2003.Includes bibliographical references (p. 145-150).This thesis consists of three empirical essays on different aspects of macroeconomic volatility. The first essay provides evidence of a causal and economically important relation between financial development and macroeconomic volatility by looking at the effect of financial development in the volatility of sectors with different liquidity needs. The results show that sectors with high liquidity needs are relatively more volatile in financially underdeveloped countries. These sectoral effects of financial underdevelopment can significantly increase macroeconomic volatility, despite the fact that financial underdevelopment also induces countries to move away from sectors with high liquidity needs. The second essay explores the causes of the decline in U.S. manufacturing volatility during the last two decades. The essay presents and estimates a model that decomposes the changes in the volatilities of manufacturing sectors among the effects of output composition, aggregate shocks, sectoral shocks, and sectoral linkages. The results show that changes in the volatility of aggregate shocks and their impact across sectors account for the most of the decline in U.S. manufacturing volatility. A smaller role is played by changes in the volatility of sectoral shocks and in the intensity of sectoral linkages. The third essay analyzes both the sectoral effects of monetary policy and the role that monetary policy plays in the transmission of sectoral shocks. Our methodology is applied to the case of the U.S., finding considerable differences in the response of different sectors to monetary policy. The results also show that monetary policy is an important source of sectoral transfers: a shock to Equipment-and-Software Investment, naturally identified with the high-tech crises, induces a monetary policy response that generates a temporary boom in Residential Investment and Consumption of Durables, but which has almost no effect on the high-tech sector.by Claudio Enrique Raddatz Kiefer.Ph.D
Local Distributional Effects of Government Cash Transfers in Chile
No full textDespite rapid economic growth and poverty reduction, inequality in Chile has remained high and remarkably constant over the last 20 years,prompting academic and public interest in the subject. Due to data limitations, however, research on inequality in Chile has concentrated on the national and regional levels. The impact of cash subsidies to poor households on local inequality is thus not well understood. Using povertymapping methods to asses this impact, we find heterogeneity in the effectiveness of regional and municipal governments in reducing inequality via poverty-reduction transfers, suggesting that alternative targeting regimes may complement current practice in aiding the poor.Inequality, poverty mapping, government cash transfers, Chile
Postal de Claudio Vivas a Maruja Vieira, junio 23 de 1955
No full textPostal de Claudio Vivas a Maruja Vieira, felicitándola por el reconocimiento que le fue otorgado a la autora de poemasPostcard from Claudio Vivas to Maruja Vieira, congratulating her for the recognition given to the author of poems.Publicación, fondo Maruja Vieira, carpeta 1, folio
Liquidity Needs and Vulnerability to Financial Underdevelopment
No full textThe author provides evidence of a causal
and economically important effect of financial development
on volatility. In contrast to the existing literature, the
identification strategy is based on the differences in
sensitivities to financial conditions across industries. The
results show that sectors with larger liquidity needs are
more volatile and experience deeper crises in financially
underdeveloped countries. At the macroeconomic level, the
results suggest that changes in financial development can
generate important differences in aggregate volatility. The
author also finds that financially underdeveloped countries
partially protect themselves from volatility by
concentrating less output in sectors with large liquidity
needs. Nevertheless, this insulation mechanism seems to be
insufficient to reverse the effects of financial
underdevelopment on within-sector volatility. Finally, the
author provides new evidence that: 1) Financial development
affects volatility mainly through the intensive margin
(output per firm). 2) Both the quality of information
generated by firms, and the development of financial
intermediaries have independent effects on sectoral
volatility. 3) The development of financial intermediaries
is more important than the development of equity markets for
the reduction of volatility
The Structural Determinants of External Vulnerability
No full textThe Structural Determinants of External Vulnerability Norman V. Loayza and Claudio Raddatz This article examines empirically how domestic structural characteristics related to openness and product- and factor-market flexibility influence the impact of terms of trade shocks on aggregate output. Applying semistructural vector autoregressions to a panel of 88 countries with annual observations for the period 1974 2000, the analysis isolates and standardizes the shocks, estimates their impact on GDP, and examines how this impact depends on the domestic conditions outlined above. This article takes a different approach and directly estimates the output impact of external shocks using semistructural vector autoregression analysis, as applied to panel data (cross-country, time-series) of aggregate variables. Controlling for the size of the shock, the analysis accounts for its interaction with the set of country characteristics under analysis and estimates its conditional output impact. The Chinn Ito index corresponds to the first principal components of the following four binary variables reported in the International Monetary Fund's Annual Report on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Restrictions (various issues): existence of multiple exchange rates, restrictions on current account, capital account transactions, and the existence of requirements to surrender export proceedings. Robustness This section examines the robustness of the basic results to changes in measurement of the terms of trade shock, in the sample of countries, the application of a longer lag structure in the estimated vector autoregressions, the inclusion of the exchange rate regime as a country characteristic, and implementation of an alternative method of estimating the effects of structural characteristics. This result is only tentative, however, as a complete analysis of the role of the exchange rate regime requires treatment of measurement issues that is outside the scope of this article. In contrast to the basic case, the interactions model indicates a relevant though nuanced role for financial depth in affecting the impact of external shocks: deepening domestic financial markets can reduce the impact of external shocks when international trade and financial markets are open. These results are robust to checking for mechanical interpretations of the trade-related results, placing stricter restrictions to guarantee shock exogeneity, concentrating exclusively on developing countries, using a longer lag structure for the vector autoregressions, controlling in addition for the exchange rate regime and allowing full heterogeneity in the estimation of country impulse responses. Similarly, the findings indicate that greater financial openness in an environment of underdeveloped local financial markets may result in an increase in the impact of external shocks
How do governments respond after catastrophes ? natural-disaster shocks and the fiscal stance
No full textNatural disasters could constitute a major shock to public finances and debt sustainability because of their impact on output and the need for reconstruction and relief expenses. This paper uses a panel vector autoregressive model to systematically estimate the impact of geological, climatic, and other types of natural disasters on government expenditures and revenues using annual data for high and middle-income countries over 1975-2008. The authors find that, on average budget, deficits increase only after climatic disasters, but for lower-middle-income countries, the increase in deficits is widespread across all events. Disasters do not lead to larger deficit increases or larger output declines in countries with higher initial government debt. Countries with higher financial development suffer smaller real consequences from disasters, but deficits expand further in these countries. Disasters in countries with high insurance penetration also have smaller real consequences but do not result in deficit expansions. From an ex-post perspective, the availability of insurance offers the best mitigation approach against real and fiscal consequences of disasters.Debt Markets,Natural Disasters,Economic Theory&Research,Disaster Management,Access to Finance
“Dialogue between Translators and Authors. The Example of Claudio Magris”
No full textThe paper focuses on the forms of cooperation between authors and their translator(s) in all cases in which the two operate simultaneously. This issue is explored on the example of the Trieste-born author Claudio Magris, who cultivates a very close relationship with most of his translators.
Writing and translation have been coexisting in this author throughout his career and have resulted in the heightened sensitivity of Magris the author with regards to translation, as the first part of the analysis shows. The second part describes the dialogue between Magris and the translators of his works, and ends with the more general question of the significance and role of such a form of exchange
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