The Output Effects of Money Growth Uncertainty: Evidence from a Multivariate GARCH-in-Mean VAR

In this paper we extend the work in Serletis and Shahmoradi (Macroecon Dyn 10:652–666, 2006) by investigating the effects of money growth uncertainty on real economic activity, in the context of a multivariate framework in which a structural vector autoregression is modified to accommodate multivariate GARCH-in-Mean errors, as in Elder (J Money, Credit Bank 36:912–928, 2004). The model uses a recursive identification scheme, takes into account the possible interaction between conditional means and variances, isolates the effects of money growth volatility on output growth, and is able to explicitly model heteroskedasticity. We use quarterly data for the United States over the period from 1959:1 to 2005:4, provide a comparison among simple-sum, Divisia, and currency equivalent monetary aggregation procedures at each of the four levels of monetary aggregation—M1, M2, M3, and MZM—and find evidence that money growth volatility has significant negative effects on output growth. Issues of structural stability are addressed and sub-sample analysis is performed. Moreover, the robustness of the results to alternative identification schemes, alternative measures of the level of economic activity, and to the use of monthly observations is also investigated.     

The changing nature of minority business: A comparative analysis of asian,nonminority, and black-owned businesses

This study compares the performance of small businesses formed between 1976 and 1982 by three groups: 1) Asian males, 2) black males, and 3) nonminority males. Self-employed Asians are outperforming nonminorities and blacks. A subset of black-owned firms—small scale ghetto-oriented operations—is shown to be laggard. Weak internal markets, commercial bank redlining, and loss of entrepreneurial talent are factors in undermining the inner city black business community. Successful black-owned firms are increasingly removed from the ghetto and from serving a minority clientele.     

The Lack of International Consumption Risk Sharing: Can Inflation Differentials and Trading Costs Help Explain the Puzzle?

The bulk of evidence on the lack of international risk sharing is based on regressions of idiosyncratic consumption growth on idiosyncratic output growth. This paper argues that the results from such regressions obtained from international data are, however, not directly comparable to those based on regional data: the standard practice of running such regressions on international data fails to account for persistent international differentials in consumer prices, whereas—implicitly—most of the literature based on regional data has accounted for these differences. When risk sharing regressions are set up in conceptually the same way in international and regional data sets, the estimated coefficients are also very similar. To explore this result further, we adapt the variance decomposition of Asdrubali et al. (Q J Econ 111:1081–1110, 1996) to allow for deviations from purchasing power parity across countries. While quantity (income and credit) flows are the dominant channel of risk sharing among regions, relative consumption and output price (internal terms of trade) fluctuations account for the bulk of the deviation from the complete markets outcome in international data. To the extent that persistent differences in consumer prices are an indication of goods market segmentation, our findings provide empirical evidence for the proposition by Obstfeld and Rogoff (NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2000, 2000) that segmented international goods markets rather than asset market incompleteness may account for the (apparent) lack of risk sharing between countries.

The mortality consequences of distinctively black names

Race-specific given names have been linked to a range of negative outcomes in contemporary studies, but little is known about their long-term consequences. Building on recent research which documents the existence of a national naming pattern for African American males in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Cook, Logan and Parman, 2014), we analyze long-term consequences of distinctively racialized names. Using over 3 million death certificates from Alabama, Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina from 1802 to 1970, we find a robust within-race mortality difference for African American men who had distinctively black names. Having an African American name added more than 1 year of life relative to other African American males. The result is robust to controlling for the age pattern of mortality over time and environmental factors which could drive the mortality relationship. The result is not consistently present for infant and child mortality, however. As much as 10% of the historical between-race mortality gap would have been closed if every black man was given a black name. Suggestive evidence implies that cultural factors not captured by socioeconomic or human capital measures may be related to the mortality differential.     

Can the European Community Afford to Neglect the Need for More Accountable Safety-Net Management?

As financial institutions and markets transact more and more cross-border business, gaps and flaws in national safety nets become more consequential. Because citizens of host (home) countries may be made to pay for mistakes made in the home (host) country, Basel's lead-regulator paradigm violates the principle of democratic accountability. Because important differences exist in policymaking authority, instruments, and goals, banking supervisors need to improve their ability to monitor and mitigate the consequences of defects in one another's performance. A straightforward way to enhance both capacities would be to establish opportunities for public trading in debt obligations and reinsurance derivatives issued by country-level deposit-insurance entities.Presidential address presented at the Sixtieth International Atlantic Economic Conference, October 6–9, 2005, New York, New York. This paper extends and refocuses analysis first presented in Kane (2003) and (2005). The author wishes to thank Richard C. Aspinwall, Bill Bergman, and Mark Flannery for helpful criticisms of an earlier draft.     

The black scholar: An endangered species

This article explores black participation in scholarly careers. Relatively few blacks have been pursuing graduate training to complete research doctorates, especially in the disciplines of engineering, mathematics and physical sciences, where a mere 1 percent of the doctorates granted were awarded to blacks. The article also examines a major determinant of this low rate of black participation—losses from the education pipeline. The analysis covers losses after completion of high school. Although large, these losses do not differ substantially between black students and nonblack students, suggesting that the origins of the low participation of blacks are located at the precollege level. The analysis also finds no substantial differences in participation among high-achieving black and nonblack students. The article closes with a discussion of the role the scholarly community can play in recruiting more black talent to scholarly careers.     

Federal government policies and the “housing quotient” of black american families

The “housing quotient"—the condition of and access to housing—is defined for black American families and is examined in conjunction with the major relevant federal policies and programs. Policies considered include fair housing and the national urban policy. Programs examined include public housing and rental assistance. The lack of data constrains the completeness of the analysis, although certain programs seem to enroll blacks in disproportion to the rest of the population. The paper concludes that blacks currently are served by all federal programs, even though many programs historically have failed to live up to their potential to assist blacks.     

Capital issues and the minority-owned business

This article presents some of the results from an unusual survey of small business owners who differ in their ethnicity: Asians, blacks, Hispanics, and nonminorities. Contrary to the prevailing view of black and Hispanic business owners and their firms, the blacks and Hispanics in the data base—in general and on average—had the same human and financial capital as their Asian and nonminority counterparts. As a result, the black-owned and Hispanic-owned firms performed as well as the Asian-owned and nonminority-owned firms. Nevertheless, black business owners had lower success rates than nonminority men in obtaining commercial bank loans, although the terms for loans granted were similar for the two groups. In light of the apparent credit discrimination, U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) loans remain an important source of debt-type capital to black-owned firms.     

Political and Institutional Factors in the Convergence of International Equity Markets: Evidence from the Club Convergence and Clustering Procedure

In this study the new panel convergence methodology developed by Phillips and Sul (2007) is employed to explore the convergence dynamics of international equity markets and determine whether political and institutional factors can explain convergence or divergence patterns across international equity markets. The empirical findings suggest that international equity markets do not form a homogeneous convergence club. Seven specific political and institutional factors are used to explain such divergent behavior. The empirical analysis documented specific factors, i.e. democratization, unemployment benefits, and public expenditure on pensions, which seem capable of explaining such a heterogeneous divergent pattern among the equity markets under study.     

Geography and firm exports: new evidence on the nature of sunk costs

This paper presents an examination of the trading patterns of individual firms, looking at their coverage of export markets and movements into and out of destinations. This analysis is made possible by access to a new survey data set of Irish firms, which includes detailed information on firm characteristics and on the destinations of their exports over a 2-year period. In line with Eaton et al. (Am Econ Rev 94:150–154, 2004), we find that a large number of firms serve only the domestic market and many exporting firms export to a single foreign market. Although there is little movement of firms into and out of exporting, firms’ involvement in individual export markets is much more dynamic. Over one-third of firms change their market coverage, usually by entering or exiting one additional market. This is consistent with an interpretation where the bulk of any sunk cost encountered in exporting is incurred during the initial entry to the export market. Subsequent entry to additional markets may be made easier by prior export experience, which could help reduce the sunk cost of extending market coverage.     

Black economic well-being since the 1950s

Conclusion Industrial cities like Cleveland and Pittsburgh that once offered manufacturing jobs as a route to economic advancement no longer provide an economic environment conducive to long-run gains in black incomes. Faced with massive losses in blue-collar manufacturing jobs in the 1970s and 1980s — as well as growing local government fiscal difficulties — these cities are changing rapidly in character. Administration and management are more and more the dynamic, expanding sector, and the resultant demands for workers have been concentrated in the white-collar fields. Highly educated blacks benefit from these trends in job availability; the less educated lose ground economically. The swing between widespread progress (as in World War II) and widespread regression in relative economic status (as in the 1930s) was the traditional cyclical fate of the overall urban black population. Today the smaller white-collar group prospers while the larger blue-collar urban black work force is undermined, except in periods of labor shortage.     

The structure of the South African labor market, 1970–83

The structure of the labor market in the Republic of South Africa over 1970–83 is strongly linked to the Natives Land Act of 1913, No. 27, which dispossessed blacks of their legal right to land ownership. One of the intended results of this act was to increase the supply of cheap black labor to South Africa’s predominantly white-owned industry. Thus, over the 1970–83 period, as before, blacks occupied the lowest ends of the educational, occupational, employment, and income distributions among all races in South Africa. On the other hand, the white minority lived at a standard equal to that of Americans and Scandanavians. However, even within these constraints, the demographics of South Africa are such that over the next decade or more, and even in the absence of major political upheaval, blacks may comprise an increasing percentage of the workforce and occupy positions which have been mainly occupied by whites to date.     

Black political power and the decline of black land ownership

Conclusion The absence of a viable equity base has been costly to the black community both economically and politically. Black dependency on white economic support has served to rob the black community of its autonomous decision-making potential. Further, without the advantage of a steady income and personal property in which they can take pride, many povertystricken Blacks have been unable to develop a serious interest in political activity. At the same time, black organizational efforts—both political and economic—have been crippled by the lack of a sufficient equity base to keep them independently viable.     

The influence of race on rezoning decisions: Equality of treatment in black and white census tracts, 1955–1980

As municipal zoning is political in nature, the equality of zoning protection provided among black and white neighborhoods should be expected to be sensitive to changes in relative political power over time. This article examines the rejection rates for rezoning applications over time in predominantly white and predominantly black census tracts in Atlanta, Georgia. It identifies inequality of treatment as between heavily white and heavily black tracts during a period of no black representation among elected city officials and equality of treatment during a later period when blacks were substantially represented in government.     

What do we really know about fiscal sustainability in the EU? A panel data diagnostic

We assess the sustainability of public finances in the EU-15 over the period 1970–2006 using stationarity and cointegration analysis. Specifically, we use panel unit root tests of the first and second generation allowing in some cases for structural breaks. We also apply modern panel cointegration techniques developed by Pedroni (Oxf Bull Econ Stat 61(1):653–670, 1999; Econom Theory 20(3):597–625, 2004), generalized by Banerjee and Carrion-i-Silvestre (Cointegration in panel data with breaks and cross-section dependence, European Central Bank, Working Paper 591, 2006) and Westerlund and Edgerton (Econ Lett 97(3):185–190, 2007), to a structural long-run equation between general government expenditures and revenues. While estimations point to fiscal sustainability being an issue in some countries, fiscal policy was sustainable both for the EU-15 panel set, and within sub-periods (1970–1991 and 1992–2006).     

Attitudes towards race and poverty in the demand for private education: The case of Mississippi

Most studies of the demand for private education have treated “white flight” as a response to the proportion of the population that is black in a particular area. The present article, by contrast, considers the possibility that this flight may be from poverty rather than race. The article develops an aggregate demand function for private education from which individual behavior may be inferred, and then applies the model to data from Mississippi. The results suggest that prejudice is directed against poor blacks rather than against nonpoor blacks or poor whites.     

Assessing black progress: employment,occupation, earnings,income, poverty

Farley discusses changes in employment, occupation, earnings, income, and poverty among US blacks. Among black men, there has been a persistent rise in unemployment since 1960. By the early 1980s, 1 black man out of 8 had dropped out of the labor force, compared to 1 in 20 white men. Some contend that many black men lack the skills to be employed or have personal habits and criminal records which make them unacceptable to employers. Others believe that the expansion of federal welfare programs offers attractive alternatives to men who have limited earnings potential. Still others stress that blacks are concentrated within cities, while the growth of employment is occurring in suburbs. Among those blacks over age 54, labor force participation has declined because of improved Social Security benefits, better private pensions, and the greater availability of Supplemental Security Income. The employment of young blacks compared to whites has deteriorated since 1960. For both races, there has been a steady rise in the employment of women. The recent increases, however, have been great for whites. By the early 1980s, white women caught up with black women in terms of employment. Unlike the indicators of employment itself, there is unambiguous evidence that the occupational distribution of employed blacks has been upgraded and is gradually becoming similar to that of whites. Findings from many studies show that blacks once earned much less than similar whites, but this racial difference has declined among men and has nearly disappeared among women. The proportion of blacks impoverished fell sharply in the 1960s, reaching a minimum of 30% in the early 1970s. Since the early 1970s, blacks have made few gains. The proportion impoverished actually increased and the ratio of black-to-white family income declined. The fact that the earnings of black males are no longer rising faster than those of whites and that there is no longer a migration from southern farms to cities plays a role, but changes in family structure are also important. At all dates, poverty rates have been high and income levels low in families headed by women. In 1984, for example, 52% of the black families with a woman as head of household were below the poverty line, compared to 15% of the black married-couple families. While similar trends are occurring in white families, there has been a sharper increase in the proportion of blacks living in these female-maintained families which have high poverty rates.     

Labor market racial discrimination against black women

Conclusion The data we have reviewed describe black women as having achieved parity with white women and indicate that this conclusion is not seriously affected after controlling for the direct and indirect effects of differences in time worked. However, the economic position of black women is not uniform throughout the economy. Black women have advanced primarily in public sector jobs and these advances have been made primarily by the youngest cohorts. Progress in the private sector has been much slower. Claims that a “new labor market” exists for black women ought to be carefully qualified, for their progress is impressive primarily when they are compared to white women—another disadvantaged group. Both groups of women are falling farther behind men in terms of relative earnings.16 Furthermore, it may be quite erroneous to interpret small differences in earnings between black and white women as evidence that black women do not suffer racial discrimination, as the following example illustrates.     

A generalized multi-country endogenous growth model

The transitional dynamics of open-economy endogenous growth models are largely unexplored. The present paper fills this gap in the literature. By applying the familiar Travis–Dixit–Norman (Dixit and Norman, Theory of International Trade, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1980) approach to a general class of growth models, it provides original results on the transitional dynamics of the multi-country open-economy versions of several prominent special cases, including the models of Romer (J Polit Econ, 94:1002–1037, 1986; J Polit Econ 98:S71–S102, 1990), Lucas (J Monet Econ, 22:3–42, 1988), Grossman and Helpman (Innovation and Growth in the Global Economy. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991a, Chaps. 3 and 4; Rev Econ Stud 58:43–61, 1991b), Jones (J Polit Econ, 103:759–784, 1995a), and Segerstrom (Am Econ Rev, 88:1290–1310, 1998). This approach also shows that, in the class of models considered, the question of whether or not international economic integration accelerates growth in the long run is equivalent to the question of whether or not scale effects prevail.      

FDI,Education, and Economic Growth: Quality Matters

In this paper, we revisit the results from the influential study by Borensztein et al. (Journal of International Economics 45:115–135, 1998), which argues that inward foreign direct investment (FDI) promotes the economic growth in a less developed host country only when the host country obtains a threshold level of secondary schooling. Borensztein et al. (Journal of International Economics 45:115–135, 1998) only focus on the quantity of education. We take into consideration both the quantity and the quality of education. We adjust the original schooling data in Borensztein et al. (Journal of International Economics 45:115–135, 1998) by two quality of education indices and re-estimate their model. We find that the complementarity between inward FDI and schooling still exists, but the threshold level of schooling in our study is lower than the threshold calculated in Borensztein et al. (Journal of International Economics 45:115–135, 1998). Our results support the importance of education quality and suggest that with improved quality of education, it does not take as much quantity of schooling, as established in Borensztein et al. (Journal of International Economics 45:115–135, 1998), for inward FDI to have a positive impact on economic growth in the host country.