1,721,128 research outputs found
Thinking Outside the Box: Giancarlo Marini, A Rigorous Eclectic Economist
Get PDFIn the current age of hyper-specialisation in the economic profession, the range of interests of Giancarlo Marini stands out for their breadth and originality. Marini gave significant contributions to monetary and fiscal policy and their interactions, public finance, international finance and currency crises, public and environmental economics, price formation and inflation, and the economic consequences of the introduction of the euro. This chapter summarises some of his main contributions including his forays into areas outside the conventional realms of economics, such as the nexus between leisure activities and social attitudes and the social importance of his beloved game of bridge
Unknown talents and the brain drain: the informational fole of migration
Get PDFThis paper shows that the migration of educated workers abroad can convey a positive signal about the ability of native talents. When there is uncertainty about the distribution of talents in the donor country and/or about the effectiveness of its education system, migrants may reveal information about their talents. This may enhance the reputation of the workforce both in the host country and in the donor country. The brain drain can thus act as an information device. The main possible consequences of the brain drain are: (i) higher investment in human capital by the younger generations; and (ii) higher investment in the domestic economy. The out-migration of talented people could be an essential condition for long-run growth in the donor econom
Internal Migration and Vulnerability to Poverty in Tanzania
Get PDFThis paper investigates whether migration reduced household vulnerability to poverty for a panel of households from the Kagera region in Tanzania over the period 2004-2010. The potential endogeneity of migration is controlled by both matching methods and an exogenous variation: a severe drought in 2008-09 affected the areas of the country with a bimodal rain season, but not those with a unimodal rain season. Migration reduced vulnerability to basic needs and to food consumption poverty for families which experienced migration to unimodal regions. The evidence supports the view that migration served as an effective risk management strategy for households
The Product Space Revisited: China's Trade Profile
Get PDFThe concept of product space has encountered broad interest within the development community, as an analytical tool against which to assess countries' potential to diversify their production and export structures. It has received far less attention in the economics literature, and its assumptions and building blocks have not been put to scrutiny. In an attempt to fill this gap, this paper assesses whether exclusive reliance on export data in product space analysis may limit its value as a tool assessing country capabilities. It shows that reliance on net trade flows—to account for horizontal intra-industry trade—and on unit values—to capture within-product differentiation—changes the features of the product space and provides deeper insights with regard to countries' occupancy of it. Based on a highly detailed data set of both trade value and volume and spanning over 144 countries, the amended product space put forth in this paper shows that China has indeed expanded its trade profile to now occupy also product areas that are typically associated with higher-income countries, as the original product space analysis would suggest. However, China's remarkable success in expanding horizontally within the product space is strongly qualified by the introduction of the vertical dimension, which shows the country to be occupying mostly the low-unit value segment of product categories, more akin to the typical trade profile of a developing country
Nudging and corporate environmental responsibility: A natural field experiment
Get PDFWe devise a “nudging” natural field experiment to test the impact of a simple form of advertising on environmentally responsible products with/without the increase of the responsible product price. We find that the simple use of a small shelf poster explaining the importance of buying a green product (with/without a concurring price increase) generates significant changes in market shares for some of the product classes for both food and non-food products. Part of the effect is generated by the reduced price elasticity of consumers to the poster-plus-price-increase treatment
- …
