Privatization and business groups: Evidence from the Chicago Boys in Chile

Business groups are the predominant organizational structure in modern Chile. This article tests the long-standing hypothesis that the privatization reform implemented by the “Chicago Boys” during the Pinochet regime facilitated the creation of new groups and hence the renovation of the country’s elites. Using new data we find that firms sold during this privatization later became part of new business groups, process aided by an economic crisis that debilitated traditional elites. Moreover, some firms were bought by Pinochet’s allies and were later used as providers of capital within groups. We conclude that privatizations can empower outsiders to replace business elites.     

Testing Macro Models by Indirect Inference: A Survey for Users

With Monte Carlo experiments on models in widespread use we examine the performance of indirect inference (II) tests of DSGE models in small samples. We compare these tests with ones based on direct inference (using the Likelihood Ratio, LR). We find that both tests have power so that a substantially false model will tend to be rejected by both; but that the power of the II test is substantially greater, both because the LR is applied after re-estimation of the model error processes and because the II test uses the false model’s own restricted distribution for the auxiliary model’s coefficients. This greater power allows users to focus this test more narrowly on features of interest, trading off power against tractability.     

Exploring the effects of capital mobility on the saving–investment nexus: evidence from Icelandic historical data

We explore the effects of capital mobility on the relationship between saving and investment using historical data for Iceland. First, we analyse the saving–investment (S-I) correlation for the period of restricted capital mobility using data from 1960 and 1994. We then add a period of free capital mobility between 1994 and 2008 and estimate the correlation for the period 1960–2008. Finally, we extend our analysis to the 2008 to 2016 period, when capital controls were imposed in response to the crisis. Institutions matter: We find institutional changes, in particular, Iceland’s entry into the European Single Market in 1994, coincided with a fall in the long-run correlation between saving and investment. However, the correlation weakens further when we include the post-crisis regime of capital controls, suggesting a weaker relationship between savings and investment in this regime. We discuss the possible reasons for this pattern and also the implications of our findings for post-crisis policy in small open economies.     

The Cuban revolution and infant mortality: A synthetic control approach

The Cuban government often boasts that the country’s infant mortality rate has been low and falling since Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959. However, because many Latin American countries have experienced similar decreases, and because Cuba historically enjoyed lower infant mortality rates than the rest of Latin America, it is unclear whether the government should get credit. We use the fact that Cuba underwent momentous and unique political changes to consider the effect of Castro’s regime on infant mortality. We employ a synthetic control method to ascertain how much of the reduction, if any, can be attributed to the regime. We find that in the first decade of the regime, infant mortality increased relative to the counterfactual, but that—after the introduction of Soviet subsidies—infant mortality partially reverted to trend. To measure the effect of the subsidies, we run a second synthetic control test concerning the collapse of the Soviet Union and the accompanying end of the subsidies. This control suggests that the subsidies played no important role.     

Cross-border mergers with flexible policy regime: The role of efficiency and market size

This study provides a theoretical and empirical framework for understanding the determinants of cross-border mergers. Past literature has focused on the effect of trade liberalization as the key factor triggering international mergers. We introduce the idea of flexible policy regime in which optimal policies are sensitive to whether a cross-border acquisition has taken place or not. In a free-trade model given asymmetries in marginal cost, we find that optimal subsidies decline when firms acquire inefficient foreign firms while optimal subsidies increase when firms acquire efficient firms. We also find that as the efficiency of the acquirer increases, the profitability of the acquisition and hence the likelihood that it takes place also increases. We find that the role of market size in triggering cross-border acquisitions may be limited even with free trade.     

Impact of Auditor Report Changes on Financial Reporting Quality and Audit Costs: Evidence from the United Kingdom

While substantial revisions to auditor reporting requirements are being implemented internationally, the impact of these reforms on financial reporting quality is unknown. We exploit the United Kingdom's recent auditor reporting changes and find that the United Kingdom's new reporting regime is associated with an improvement in financial reporting quality as proxied by significant decreases in absolute abnormal accruals and the propensity to just meet or beat analyst forecasts, and a significant increase in earnings response coefficients. As for audit costs, we do not find a significant change in audit fees or audit delay surrounding the implementation of the new reporting regime. Taken together, the results of this study suggest that new auditor reporting requirements are associated with a significant improvement in financial reporting quality without detecting a significant increase in audit costs.     

The effect of inheritance receipt on individual labor supply: Evidence from Japanese microdata

This paper examines the effects of wealth on individual labor supply by considering inheritance receipts as an exogenous change in household wealth. Using Japanese microdata consisting of individuals aged 26–51, we find that (i) while men’s probability of working does not respond to inheritance receipt, women’s probability of working decreases; and (ii) in the case of most respondents the receipt of an inheritance seems to be unanticipated. We also test the unitary household model using information on respondents’ spouses. The results indicate that who received an inheritance influences the labor supply decision of each household member, meaning that we find no support for the unitary model.     

Monetary Policy and Risk-Based Asset Allocation

This paper focuses on the effects of the Fed’s monetary policy on stock and bond returns co-movement and their implications to risk-based asset allocation. Using a regime-switching model that controls for the economic effects of monetary policy we identify three co-movement regimes. We document that risk-based portfolio strategies poorly perform in the low correlation regime which features inflation shocks. We find outperformance evidence under the negative correlation regime with a high stock market risk and a very accommodating Fed policy. Less effectiveness is demonstrated under the positive correlation regime where bonds are regarded as risky assets and interest rate volatility is fueled by monetary policy.     

上市公司发放现金股利的价值效应——基于委托代理问题视角的实证研究

现金股利发放反映了债权人、股东、管理者之间的利益分配关系,现金股利的价值效应受到委托代理问题的影响。采用2008—2017年沪深A股上市公司作为研究样本,在委托代理理论的分析框架下实证检验我国上市公司发放现金股利的价值效应。研究表明,发放现金股利可能会损害债权人利益,过度债务公司发放现金股利的价值效应较小,而债务不足公司发放现金股利的价值效应较大。基于管理者代理问题视角的研究发现,现金股利可以有效发挥降低管理者代理成本的作用,当管理者代理问题严重时公司发放现金股利的价值效应更大。基于控股股东代理问题视角的实证结果表明,现金股利可以作为替代性的治理机制约束控股股东行为,当控股股东代理问题严重时现金股利具有更高的价值效应。     

The Effects of Norms on Investor Reactions to Derivative Use

Prior research indicates that a firm's use of derivatives to manage business risks is viewed favorably by investors. However, these studies do not consider a potentially key factor in this setting—namely, the typical behavior (or norms) regarding derivatives by other firms in the industry or the firm itself. In this paper, we report the results of multiple experiments that test whether norms are influential in affecting investors’ evaluations of firms’ derivatives choices. Our results show that the generally favorable reactions to derivative use actually reverse and become unfavorable when firms’ derivative decisions are inconsistent with industry or firm norms. Somewhat surprisingly, though, we find that industry and firm norms are not viewed similarly by investors. These results expand our understanding of how investors respond to firm's derivative use decisions and demonstrate the role of norms as factors that influence investors’ judgments in financial reporting settings. Our results have implications for firm managers making decisions about derivative use.     

Land prices and agglomeration: Theory and evidence from the Tokyo metropolitan area

This study investigates how rent sensitivity to population growth affects agglomeration in the Tokyo metropolitan area. In the theoretical part, we investigate the model of a metropolitan area with heterogeneous regions. We find that if the rent is not sensitive to population growth, the population grows more in central regions. In contrast, if the rent is sensitive to population growth, the population grows more in suburban regions. In the empirical part, we test the implications of the model using municipality-level panel data for the Tokyo metropolitan area. We find that the population elasticity of land price was greater than two before the mid-1990s, but was less than two thereafter. We also find that in the Tokyo metropolitan area, the population grew more in suburban regions until the mid-1990s, but grew more in central regions thereafter. These empirical findings are consistent with our theoretical predictions. We confirm that the results are robust even when we change the subsample periods. We also show that essentially the same results hold even when implementing the same experiment for the Osaka metropolitan area, the second largest metropolitan area in Japan.     

Tariff and exchange rate pass-through for Chinese exports: A firm-level analysis across customs regimes

We examine whether a firm's import content share differentially affects the degree of tariff and exchange rate pass-through into its export prices. Our pricing-to-market model suggests that a firm's import content share negatively affects the degree of exchange rate pass-through but does not affect the degree of tariff pass-through. Using firm-level data for Chinese exporting firms during the period 2000–2006, we find evidence of an almost complete exchange rate pass-through. As expected, when we distinguish firms by their trade regime, processing-trade firms, especially pure-assembly firms which tend to have higher import-content share, have a lower exchange rate pass-through than ordinary trade firms. We find no evidence that the tariff pass-through differs across the various trade regimes.     

The Monetary Transmission Mechanism, Non-residential Fixed Investment and Housing

We specify a vector autoregression (VAR) model for the U.S. for 1980–2008 to investigate the statistical causal relationships between private non-residential fixed investment, the effective Federal funds rate, personal consumption expenditures, nonfinancial corporate profits, and the nonfinancial corporate credit market debt to test the validity of macroeconomic relationships in a macro model. The VAR utilizes the Toda-Yamamote procedure to test for Granger causality. Our preliminary results show that the transmission mechanism does not work as expected; we find that fixed investment depends on the level of demand in the economy and profits but not on the interest rate. This casts doubt on the usual assumptions about how the monetary transmission mechanism is expected to work. The second part of the paper investigates the effects of the change in the monetary regime towards low and stable interest rates, a policy pursued by the U.S. Fed since the beginning of the 1990s. We find that the new monetary policy regime has the following effects: (1) our VAR model does not support the hypothesis that low interest rates lead to higher fixed nonresidential investment; (2) low interest rates led to a search for higher yields through increasing risk, and (3) they led to an increase in the demand for securitized assets, especially mortgage-backed securities, which eventually resulted in a housing bubble. The overall results therefore raise doubts about the effectiveness of low interest rates as a policy regime designed as a component of a counter-cyclical policy.     

The Chinese Phillips curve – inflation dynamics in the presence of structural change

This paper models inflation dynamics in China from 1987 to 2014 using a Phillips curve framework. The Phillips curve is generally estimated under the assumption of linearity and parameter constancy. The existence of structural breaks in China’s inflation dynamics make standard linear models inappropriate tools for analysis however. Our results find that the Chinese Phillips curve is characterised by a non-linear relationship. The inflation/output relationship takes the form of a concave curve. This suggests that changes in the level of output effect inflation in China more strongly in periods when output is operating below its potential but the relationship is weaker when output is operating at or above potential. Based on these findings, the People’s Bank of China (PBC) could consider output cost and policy response on a case-by-case basis depending on the level of output in relation to potential.     

Perverse Incentives? Labor Market Regulation and Performance in the Public Sector

We test the link between labor market regulations and job performance in the public sector using a novel outcome variable, namely, the number of days it takes the postal service to return letters sent to nonexistent foreign addresses, a measure that we argue is an excellent proxy for job performance. We find a positive and statistically significant link between these two variables, regardless of the labor regulation measure employed, changes in specification, and even unlikely endogeneity considerations, which suggest that this finding may be causal.     

金融发展对经济增长的缓释效应及其实现机制

使用系统广义矩估计方法,选取我国省级面板数据,通过实证检验刻画金融发展对经济增长的缓释效应及其实现机制。实证结果表明:在经济政策不确定性条件下,金融发展对经济增长的正向作用形成了独特的缓释效应,选择替代变量进行稳健性检验后依然显著存在。渠道检验显示:缓释效应主要通过金融摩擦渠道和投资渠道进行传导。进一步检验发现:不同经济发展水平和不同产业结构的地区的缓释效应存在差异,在中西部和东北地区的作用效果相对更大,第三产业占比较高的地区影响更强。为此,应重视我国各地区金融发展的积极作用,大力推进金融供给侧结构性改革,在新时代发挥好金融发展对经济增长的缓释功能。     

Exploring the Case for Monetary Integration between the Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong

This paper presents an empirical investigation on an important policy issue, namely, whether there is any evidence supporting monetary integration between the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong. We follow two lines of inquiry. First, we present a series of simple tests to find the extent to which trade and/or financial linkages exist between the two regions. Second, we use simple inflation and output differentials and structural VAR techniques to test for the degree of business cycle synchronization between the two regions. The results indicate that there is evidence supporting the existence of trade linkages and that there is also support for the possible synchronization of business cycles. We discuss the implications of this for monetary integration between Hong Kong and the mainland.     

Reserve Accumulation and Money Supply in China: A Time-Varying Analysis

This study investigates the causal relationship between reserve accumulation and money supply in China over the period of 1999 M1–2015 M6. First, we use a Granger causality test and find that there is a unidirectional relationship from money supply growth to reserve accumulation growth; however, taking structural changes into account, we assess stability of parameters of the estimated vector autoregressive models. We find both the short-run and long-run relationships between money supply growth and reserve accumulation growth estimated using full-sample data are unstable over the sample period. This suggests that full-sample causality tests cannot be relied upon. We turn to propose a time-varying (bootstrap) rolling-window approach to revisit the dynamic causal relationship between the two variables. We find that two variables have causal relationships in some sub-periods. We argue that reserve accumulation growth has put pressure on money supply growth. However, in general, sterilization is effective, but not in few months 2006–2007. And money supply has a positive reserve accumulation from the second half of 2001–2003 because RMB was undervalued under the fixed exchange rate regime. We argue that the improvements of monetary policy and the exchange rate regime are crucial to break the relationship between reserve accumulation growth and the money supply growth.     

The Services Sector as a Driver of Change: Indonesia’s Experience in the ASEAN Context

By various performance indicators, the Indonesian services sector ranks below those of its main ASEAN neighbours. This is concerning for Indonesia, given the the increased attention worldwide on the services sector as a likely source of growth, the contribution of the services sector to the competitiveness of other sectors, and the opportunities available for capturing the gains from innovation and change in services. There is scope, we argue, to increase the number of formal jobs in the sector and to dispel its reputation as the employer of last resort. We find that a restrictive policy regime contributes to the sector’s poor performance, leading to an argument for reform. We discuss a potential strategy for such reform, focusing on four factors: increasing transparency and policy information; capturing the opportunities from international commitments; and exploring the potential of, one, new technology, and, two, urbanisation.     

Predictability,Price Bubbles,and Efficiency in the Indonesian Stock-Market

I examine the return predictability of the Indonesian stock-market during 1984–2016, in rolling windows, using an automatic portmanteau test and an automatic variance ratio. I find that the market’s efficiency and predictability vary over time—consistent with the adaptive market hypothesis—with returns being less predictable in recent periods, a sign of improving efficiency. I also find that a simple buy-and-hold investment strategy outperforms several technical trading rules, even after adjusting for risk. Furthermore, I find evidence of explosive behaviour in Indonesian stock prices and detect multiple bubbles, using sequential right-tailed unit-root tests.