Castle,Jennifer, Clements,Mike and Hendry,David: Forecasting: an essential introduction

Journal of Economics -     

Modinomics: Design,Implementation, Outcomes,and Prospects

This paper presents an analysis of the key elements of Modinomics, defined as “everyone's participation, everyone's progress.” It investigates the reasons why Modinomics was necessary, the key elements of Modinomics, and how this policy was implemented. It argues that India's economic policy has had continuity since the economic reform package of 1991, so Modinomics has involved a high component of better implementation. Nevertheless, there have been some major policy changes as well. The paper discusses the deep structural reforms of demonetization and a Goods and Services Tax as well the new Insolvency and Bankruptcy Act. The paper examines the record of economic growth under Modi as well as new welfare and employment programs to make economic growth more inclusive. Finally, the paper examines the medium and long‐term growth prospects for India.     

Dutertenomics: Populism,Progress, and Prospects

In 2016, when Rodrigo Duterte was elected Philippine President the economy was growing robustly. Despite the record growth, his election is considered a populist revolt of the middle‐ and upper‐class Filipinos. Yet, his economic policies – from his initial 10‐point agenda to the laws he approved – are liberal. This paper distinguishes and relates Duterte's authoritarian‐populist political style (“Dutertismo”) and his economic agenda (“Dutertenomics”). The distinction follows from his lack of interest in economic affairs, which he delegated to his team of economic managers. This team ably pushes important economic reforms because of the president's style, which so far has earned him wide public approval. After slowing down during the first half of Duterte's term, growth has recently picked up. To keep the momentum and public attention off human rights violations, Duterte needs to accomplish his economic agenda by mid‐2022. Drawing on his powers and popularity, he may yet be able to elicit the full support of Congress.     

IKEA: Product,pricing, and pass-through

With over 300 stores in 40 countries, IKEA is a major international presence in retail housewares and furnishings. IKEA publishes country-specific catalogs with local-currency prices guaranteed to hold for 1 year. This paper explores a new dataset of IKEA products and catalog prices covering six countries for the time period 1994–2010. The dataset, with over 140,000 observations, is uniquely poised to shed light on the way in which a large multinational retailer operates in a setting characterized by a very large number of identical goods which are priced in local currency in many countries. The goal of this paper is to document the choices made by IKEA in several related decision areas. In doing so, this paper provides evidence against which existing theories can be evaluated and revised in the light of this new information.     

Innis Lecture: Environmental crises: past, present, and future

Abstract .  Environmental crises are distinguished by rapid and largely unexpected changes in environmental quality that are difficult if not impossible to reverse. Examples would be major extinctions and significant degradations of an ecosystem. I argue there are three preconditions for crisis: failures in governance, an ecological system exhibiting a tipping point, and an economy/environment interaction with positive feedbacks. I develop a simple model to illustrate how a crisis may arise, and draw on our knowledge of past and present crises to highlight the mechanisms involved. I then speculate as to whether climate change is indeed a crisis in the making.     

Offshoring,wages, and employment: Theory and evidence

This paper investigates the wage and employment effects of offshoring. I use firm-level data and two events in Mexico as a natural experiment to identify the effects of a fall in the marginal cost of offshoring to Mexico. I find that domestic wages actually rise at US firms likely to take advantage of this new offshoring opportunity. At the same time, domestic wages fall at US firms unlikely to take advantage of this opportunity. Furthermore, I find no evidence of greater domestic job loss at the former compared to the latter firms. These findings are consistent with productivity effects from offshoring. To explain the mechanism, I develop a theoretical framework that combines heterogeneous firms with imperfect labor markets and rent-sharing. Firms likely to take advantage of new offshoring opportunities increase their productivity and profitability at the expense of their competitors. Through rent-sharing, this channel leads to higher domestic wages at the former firms relative to the latter. Further, there is no empirical evidence of greater domestic job loss at the firms likely to expand their offshoring compared to their competitors that are unlikely to increase their offshoring.     

Wedges: Distribution,distortions, and market integration

This paper's model lets an international wedge continuously index a country's capital market integration with the rest of the world, and studies politico-economic determination of a domestic labor wedge that corrects market imperfections and/or redistributes welfare across differently wealthy voters. International integration influences the equilibrium policy, at given country-specific political and structural features, through the strength of factor price effects and through ownership of domestic and foreign capital by the country's citizens. If policy reduces market employment, then it unambiguously does so more strongly when a capital-poor country integrates more tightly with the rest of the world.     

Capitalism Unleashed: Finance,Globalization, and Welfare

Andrew Glyn, who died from a brain tumour in December 2007, aged 64, had been a key figure in socialist political economy since the 1970s. His seminal book with Bob Sutcliffe, British Capitalism, Workers and the Profits Squeeze, published in 1972, inspired a generation of political economists. It offered an arresting empirical analysis of the predicament of British capitalism, and occasioned a fierce and wide-ranging debate among socialist economists over its empirical accuracy, its theoretical approach and its political implications. It was one of the first and most important expressions of Ricardian Marxism in the 1970s, emphasising the importance of distributional struggles for the future economic and political development of capitalism.

He was actively engaged in politics and he was always ready to put his intellectual skills to practical use, as during the British miners' strike in 1984–5, when he provided a detailed critical analysis of the economic case being advanced by the employers and the Government against the union. At the same time he sought to understand the trends that were shaping the development of capitalism, and wrote two very influential books, Capitalism Since World War II: the Making and Breakup of the Great Boom (1984, with Philip Armstrong and John Harrison), and Capital Unleashed (2006), his analysis of the recent neoliberal phase of capitalist development.

He will be remembered for his skills as a teacher, his humane and tolerant approach to intellectual debate, and his lasting contributions to our understanding of contemporary capitalism.     

SMEs,Growth, and Poverty: Cross-Country Evidence

This paper explores the relationship between the relative size of the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector, economic growth, and poverty alleviation using a new database on the share of SME labor in the total manufacturing labor force. Using a sample of 45 countries, we find a strong, positive association between the importance of SMEs and GDP per capita growth. The data do not, however, confidently support the conclusions that SMEs exert a causal impact on growth. Furthermore, we find no evidence that SMEs alleviate poverty or decrease income inequality.