Trade costs,quality and the skill premium

We develop a monopolistic competition model with non‐homothetic factor input bundles where increasing quality requires increasing use of skilled workers. As a result more skill abundant countries export higher quality, higher priced goods. Using a multi‐country dataset, we test and confirm the findings in Schott ( 2004 ) of a positive effect of skill abundance on unit values identified with US data. We extend the core model with per unit trade costs leading to the Washington apples effect that goods shipped over larger distance are of higher quality. The combination of high‐quality goods being relatively skill intensive with the Washington apples effect implies that countries at a larger distance from their trading partners display a higher skill premium. Simulating our model, we find that a doubling of distance of a country relative to all its trading partners raises the skill premium in a country by about 1.6%.     

Military spending and the black market premium in developing countries

Researchers who have been concerned with the economic implications of military spending have mostly concentrated on its impact on economic growth, corruption, real exchange rate and inflation. In this paper we investigate the impact of military spending on black market premium, an area that has not been tackled so far. After adding a measure of military spending to a well established model of black market premium form the literature, we estimate the model by pooling annual data over the 1985 – 1998 period across 61 developing countries. Results from five panel specifications provide considerable evidence that higher military spending leads to higher black market premium.     

The Private Benefits of Corporate Control:Evidence from China

By analyzing block share transfers in China during 1999-2006,this study provides estimates of the private benefits of corporate control in China.We find that those controlling blocks are usually priced at a significant positive premium compared to those comparable non-controlling blocks.The benefits of corporate control vary with shareholders structure,firm characteristics and institutional variables.In particular,targets with a high intangible asset ratio have less benefits of control,cross-listing in B or H shares curbs the extract of private benefits and companies acquired by private firms are associated with higher private benefits.Moreover,it is found that benefits of control are negatively associated with market economy and factor market development index.We argue that firms with higher private benefits experience more tunneling activities by their controlling shareholders.     

Predictor imperfection: international evidence

Pástor and Stambaugh (2009) demonstrate that the relationship between predictors and equity premium is imperfect in US market using a new model named predictive system. This article extends their study by providing international evidence of predictor imperfection using samples from G7 countries. Our results show that predictor imperfection is ubiquitous in all G7 countries and that investors’ prior beliefs about the relationship between predictors and equity premium play a significant role in predictor’s explanatory power.     

Time-varying global and local sources of market and currency risks in Russian stock market

In this paper we study international asset pricing models and the pricing of global and local market risks as well as currency risk in the Russian stock market from an international investors' point of view using weekly data from 1999 to 2009. In our empirical specification, we utilize the multivariate GARCH-M framework of De Santis and Gérard (1998). We find currency risk to be priced in the Russian market. The price of currency risk is found to be time-varying and affected for example by the price of oil. Moreover, our results suggest that the Russian market is partially segmented and the local market risk is priced in the market. Our model implies in-sample risk premium for the Russian equity market that is, on average, almost ten times higher than that of the US and that the Russian risk premium is on average caused mostly by the local and currency risk components.     

Uncovered interest parity and risk premium convergence in Central and Eastern European countries

This study applies non-linear threshold unit-root test to investigate the non-stationary properties of the uncovered interest parity (UIP) with risk premium for ten Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. We find that non-linear threshold unit-root test has higher power than linear method suggested by Caner and Hansen (2001) if the true data generating process of risk premium convergence is in fact a stationary non-liner process. We examine the validity of UIP from the non-linear point of view and provide robust evidence clearly indicating that UIP holds true for seven countries. Our findings point out that capital mobility and exchange market efficiency are in these CEE countries with non-linear way.     

Understanding the Solar Home price premium: Electricity generation and “Green” social status

This study uses a large sample of homes in the San Diego area and Sacramento, California area to provide some of the first capitalization estimates of the sales value of homes with solar panels relative to comparable homes without solar panels. Although the residential solar home market continues to grow, there is little direct evidence on the market capitalization effect. Using both hedonics and a repeat sales index approach we find that solar panels are capitalized at roughly a 3.5% premium. This premium is larger in communities with a greater share of college graduates and of registered Prius hybrid vehicles.     

MARKET DISCIPLINING OF THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES' SOVEREIGN GOVERNMENTS

In this article, we contribute to the current literature on market disciplining of the sovereign governments of the developing countries by distinguishing both sides of the market discipline hypothesis by adopting three‐stage least square estimation to incorporate the contemporaneous feedback effects between primary structural budget balances and the country's default‐risk premiums. We provide empirical evidence of a unidirectional causal relationship between a country's default‐risk premium and primary structural budget balances with the direction flowing from primary structural budget balances to country's risk premium in 40 developing countries over the period 1975–2008. We also employ the Arellano‐Bond dynamic panel generalized methods of moments estimation to control for this joint determination of primary structural budget balances and the country's default‐risk premium, and find supportive evidence of undisciplined sovereign governments and of nonlinearly behaving well‐functioning financial markets in the sample countries. (JEL C5, G1, G3)     

Markups of Exporters and Importers: Evidence from Hungary

In this paper, we study the relationship between different proxies of firm‐level markups and trade status, using balance sheet information linked to detailed trade data from Hungary between 1995 and 2003. We find that importing is strongly positively correlated with markup measures, both across and within firms. We argue that this correlation can reflect three channels: self‐selection, higher physical productivity resulting from access to a larger variety of inputs, and quality upgrading based on high‐quality imported intermediate inputs. We present evidence for the relevance of the third channel by showing that importers’ markup premium is higher when inputs arrive from developed countries, and that importing is correlated with higher‐quality (price‐adjusted revenue) exports. We find no robust evidence for exporter premium when controlling for importing. We argue that the non‐existent exporter premium might result from the stronger competition in export markets relative to domestic markets.     

Exchange rate uncertainty and US bilateral fresh fruit and fresh vegetable trade: an application of the gravity model

In order to analyse the effect of exchange rate uncertainty, we apply an empirical gravity equation to two sets of US bilateral trade data: fresh fruit over the period 1976–1999 for a panel of 26 countries; and fresh vegetables over the period 1976–2006 for a panel of nine countries. Based on panel estimation methods, and using both a moving SD measure and the Perée and Steinherr (1989) measure of exchange rate uncertainty, the results show that US bilateral fresh fruit trade has been negatively affected by exchange rate uncertainty. We also find some evidence that the exchange rate between the US dollar and the currencies of Latin American trading partners accounts for most of the negative impact of exchange rate uncertainty on bilateral trade flows in fresh fruit. In contrast, when using panel estimation methods and both measures of exchange rate uncertainty, we find no statistically significant evidence for any negative effect of exchange rate uncertainty on US bilateral fresh vegetable trade. However, we do find a statistically significant negative effect for exchange rate uncertainty when we estimate a US export gravity equation for fresh vegetables using the same panel of countries.     

Equality of interest rates revisited: the multi‐country evidence

One influential aspect of international integration of financial markets is the possibility of reducing divergences between domestic interest rates and foreign interest rates or increasing the degree to which yields in different financial markets move together over time. In this study, we investigate the convergence of the real interest rates using the Kalman filter. Applying the modified Hall et al. () approach, we model the risk premium and convergence of real interest rates using the time‐varying parameter estimation techniques. We present evidence of risk premium and convergence for two blocks of countries—The Asian‐Pacific countries including the US, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea and the US‐European group including France, the UK, Germany and the US.     

Capital-skill complementarity and biased technical change across US sectors

The goal of this paper is two-fold. First, we reexamine the evidence for the capital-skill complementarity (CSC) and the skill-biased technological change (SBTC) hypotheses at the sectoral level in the US economy for the period 1970–2005. Second, we quantify their effect on the evolution of the wage skill premium. To do so, we estimate a translog model with three production factors (skilled labor, unskilled labor, and capital) for different sets of industry aggregates suggested by the literature. At the aggregated level, we find that both CSC and SBTC explain a substantial part of the observed change in the skill premium. The CSC hypothesis also receives support across sectors, although SBTC often explains a larger part of the premium change. We also find that the relevance of CSC increases with the level of aggregation of the data. Besides, when we disaggregate capital into ICT and non-ICT, our results suggest that often ICT capital is not the primary source of CSC. However, ICT-CSC is the most important driver of the skill premium in specific sectors, such as financial and business services.     

Employer size–wage effects: evidence from matched employer–employee survey data in the UK

This paper employs a random sample of matched employer–employee data from the UK to test seven possible explanations for the positive relationship between employer size and pay. Individual wage equations show a large employer size–wage premium. We then control for a range of establishment-level variables, based on seven hypotheses typically advanced to explain this premium. Each establishment-level factor reduces the wage premium, but a sizeable premium nonetheless remains. In adjudicating on these hypotheses, we find a strong association between the internal labour market and the employer size–wage premium. This finding supports the theory that the employer size–wage effect may be due to the higher costs of turnover or monitoring in larger firms. However, we find contrasting effects for public versus private sector establishments.     

Investment barriers and premiums on closed-end country funds

We investigate the cross-sectional relation between investment barriers and premiums on closed-end country funds (CECFs) traded in U.S. markets over the period from 1995 to 2004. We find that funds investing in markets with higher indirect investment barriers as measured by market turnover and country risk have higher premiums. We also document that the relation between the country risk and CECF premium is much stronger after the stock market liberalization. Since investors prefer to invest in emerging markets with high indirect barriers through country funds, they increase the premiums of the funds targeting those countries. In addition, we find that direct investment barriers as measured by the investable weight factor do not explain the large variation in the CECF premiums.     

Does mixed-frequency investor sentiment impact stock returns? Based on the empirical study of MIDAS regression model

We examine whether mixed-frequency investor sentiment affects stock returns. In line with recent evidence from China, we find that the aggregate effect and the individual effect of mixed-frequency investor sentiment are statistically significant, and mixed-frequency investor sentiment is more important than the low-frequency one. Moreover, mixed-frequency investor sentiment, which is mixed by high-frequency data, can be more important than the market premium.     

中国股市“规模效应”和“时间效应”的实证分析——以上海股票市场为例

本文以沪市为对象考察了我国股市的“规模效应”和“时间效应”。作者通过实证研究发现 :中国股票市场并不存在西方国家股市普遍出现的“小公司 1月份效应”。但小公司“规模效应”表现显著 ,其中小公司股票在 3月份和 8月份的相对收益率明显强于市场指数 ,而剔除风险因素以后 ,统计数据显示小公司效应几乎在全年大部分月份都有较显著表现。分析上述“异象” ,我们认为 ,中国股市复杂的市场结构和制度背景所导致的小公司股票独特的流动性问题 ,是小公司股价存在持续超额收益率的内在原因     

Nominal term structure and term premia: evidence from Chile

The downwards trend exhibited in Chile’s nominal term structure since 2003 has been a common pattern shared by other developed and developing economies. To understand the behaviour of the nominal yield curve in Chile, we rely on an affine dynamic term structure model which allows the term structure to decompose into the expected short-term interest rate (related to the monetary policy expectation) and the term premium. We show that most of the fall of long-term interest rates as well as its dynamics are related to the term premium rather than the expected short-term interest rate. Moreover, we find evidence that term premium is driven primarily by the US term premium and domestic nominal uncertainty derived from expected inflation.     

WHY FOREIGN OWNERSHIP MAY BE GOOD FOR YOU*

We develop a two‐country model with heterogeneous producers and rent‐sharing at the firm level. We identify two sources of a multinational wage premium: A composition effect because multinational firms are more productive, make higher profits, and pay higher wages, and a firm‐level wage effect, because a firm makes higher global profits and thus pays higher wages in its home market when becoming multinational. With two identical countries, the wage premium is fully explained by firm characteristics. Allowing for technology differences between countries, a residual wage premium exists in the technologically backward country but not in the advanced country.     

The consequences of labor market flexibility: Panel evidence based on survey data

We introduce a new data set on hiring and firing restrictions for 21 OECD countries for the period 1984-1990. The data are based on surveys of business people in the countries covered, so the indices we use are subjective in nature. Controlling for country and time fixed effects, and using dynamic panel data techniques, we find evidence that increasing the flexibility of the labor market increases both the employment rate and the rate of participation in the labor force. A conservative estimate suggests that if France were to make its labor markets as flexible as those in the US, its employment rate would increase 1.6 percentage points, or 14% of the employment gap between the two countries. The estimated effects are larger in the female than in the male labor market, although both groups seem to have similar long-run coefficients. There is also some evidence that more flexibility leads to lower unemployment rates and to lower rates of long-term unemployment. We also find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that inflexible labor markets produce “jobless recoveries” and introduce more unemployment persistence.     

The pricing of foreign exchange risk: Evidence from ADRS

This study investigates whether U.S. investors, in pursuing of international diversification, are exposed to foreign exchange risk through the ownership of American depository receipts (ADRs) and if so, whether such risk is systematic. We find that returns of ADRs from countries such as the United Kingdom, Japan, and South Africa are sensitive to their corresponding foreign exchange rate fluctuations. Using a technique developed by Sweeney and Warga (1986), we estimate the risk premium associated with foreign exchange risk. The results suggest that the total foreign exchange risk is priced at equilibrium. However, the incremental foreign exchange risk that is not imbedded in the market returns does not command a risk premium. The evidence indicates that the incremental foreign exchange risk is diversifiable or can be effectively hedged.