1,720,973 research outputs found
Potential ECB reaction functions with time-varying parameters: an assessment
No full textThis paper analyses the behaviour of the European Central Bank over the period 1999–2014 through the estimation of monetary policy reaction functions with time-varying coefficients and heteroskedastic error terms. This allows to evaluate whether relevant shifts in the conduct of monetary policy occurred and whether the current financial crisis had an influence on that. The paper considers two different specifications, one with contemporaneous regressors and one with regressors from surveys. The Taylor rule is then enriched with a set of macroeconomic and financial variables with the aim of testing their significance. Results show that forward-looking variables have a better explanatory power over interest rate policy. All the coefficients are found to be stable along the sample so that no shift in the reaction function can be identified and the financial crisis is found to only lead to a change in the size of the shock. Finally, we also provide evidence about the fact that the ECB has been actually constrained by the zero lower bound during the recent crisis
If the Fed sneezes, who catches a cold?
No full textThis paper studies the international spillovers of US monetary policy shocks on a number of macroeconomic and financial variables in 36 advanced and emerging economies. In most countries, a surprise US monetary tightening leads to depreciation against the dollar; industrial production and real GDP fall, unemployment rises. Inflation declines especially in advanced economies. At the same time, there is significant heterogeneity across countries in the response of asset prices, and portfolio and banking cross-border flows. However, no clear-cut systematic relation emerges between country responses and likely relevant country characteristics, such as their income level, dollar exchange rate flexibility, financial openness, trade openness vs. the US, dollar exposure in foreign assets and liabilities, and incidence of commodity exports
The Estimation of Reaction Functions under Tax Competition
No full textMost of the empirical literature on tax competition has been using panel models in which each country's tax rate responds to a weighted average of other countries' tax rates, where weights are given. This approach imposes the reaction functions to be such that all tax rates are either strategic complements or strategic substitutes for all the countries. Moreover, it also requires that the intensity of the reactions of the countries to be proportional to the same set of given weights. Since no theoretical model relies on such restrictive assumptions, we regain flexibility in the empirical analysis by using Vector Autoregressive (VAR) models, where the sign and intensity of countries' reactions may be heterogeneous. Using a Monte Carlo exercise, we show that if the objects of interest are the reactions to shocks in the tax rates of the other countries and there is no a priori knowledge of the structure of the economy, it can be convenient to opt for a VAR rather than a panel setup. A Bayesian VAR model on real data shows that strategic complementarity between some countries may co-exist with strategic substitutability between other countries, a finding with potential policy implications on the debate on tax competition
The Estimation of Reaction Functions under Tax Competition
No full textTax competition has long been studied using panel models. According to this approach, each country’s tax rate is assumed to depend on a weighted average of the tax rates applied in the rest of the world, where weights are exogenous. As a consequence, the estimated reaction functions of countries throughout the world have the same sign. This means that all tax rates are either strategic complements or strategic substitutes. Moreover, the intensity of a country’s reaction depends on certain exogenous weights, with a unique proportional factor common across all countries. Our article departs from this standard approach and proposes a VAR model as an alternative estimation strategy. Accordingly, weights are no longer determined exogenously but rather endogenously. As such, we compare and explore the implications of the panel versus the VAR model in terms of structural contemporaneous parameters and impulse response functions. We show that results obtained with a VAR model differ from those obtained from a panel approach. In particular, we find that strategic complementarity between certain countries (with a positive slope of reaction functions) may co-exist with strategic substitutability between other countries (negative slope). Given these results, we can say that a standard panel approach is relatively restrictive and therefore can lead to unreliable estimates, and fail to provide helpful policy recommendations
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Full text link“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
Full text linkWe 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
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe 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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