Local Sunspot Equilibria Reconsidered

We generalize the usual notion of local sunspot equilibria. We say such equilibria exist around a steady state of an OLG economy whenever stationary sunspot equilibria of arbitrarily close economies exist within any neighborhood of the steady state. Unlike the usual notion, this generalization allows to address the following identification problem: Can an analyst distinguish empirically small fluctuations due to small shocks to the fundamentals from pure expectations-driven fluctuations? We study conditions under which these generalized local sunspot equilibria exist in OLG economies, and show that they may exist around not only indeterminate but also determinate steady states.     

Sunspot cycles

Summary. This paper shows new properties about the equilibria of a stationary OG economy by establishing a connection between its stationary equilibria and those of a finite economy, with and without extrinsic uncertainty. Specifically, it shows the countability and local uniqueness with respect to the sup metric of the so-called sunspot cycles introduced here, that encompass both the deterministic cycles and the usual finite Markovian stationary sunspot equilibria. These sunspot cycles are, moreover, able to generate, at a lower cost in terms of assumptions than other sunspot equilibria, time series with the recurrent but irregular fluctuations typical of economic time series. Received: July 26, 2001; revised version: March 5, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" I want to thank an anonymous referee for comments that have helped greatly to improve this paper, as well as the comments about its contents received from several audiences in different seminars and conferences (the Economic Theory seminar of the University of Pennsylvania, the 2001 Meeting of the Econometric Society held at New Orleans, the 2000 Econometric Society World Congress, the 2000 Society for Economic Design Conference) and from comments to a previous paper, Dávila [10], specially from Jim Peck at the 1997 Workshop on General Equilibrium held at the University of Venice, that eventually lead to this one.     

Time and Uncertainty in Overlapping Generations Economies

This paper shows the general reversibility of every perfect foresight equilibrium of an overlapping generations economy. It then shows and characterizes the existence of reversible sunspot equilibria in these economies as well, which seems to be at odds with our intuition about the irreversibility of a tree of events. Although the paper establishes also that such reversible stochastic equilibria constitute a negligible subset of all the equilibria of their class, their mere existence may be considered somewhat puzzling for this intuition. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D50, D80, D90.     

FINANCIAL FRAGILITY AND FINANCIAL CRISIS IN MEXICO

The objective of this paper is to show how Mexico’s strategy of financial deregulation and liberalization set the stage for the crisis that the country suffered in December 1994. The theoretical underpinning is Post‐Keynesian, and more precisely, a Minsky‐inspired analytical perspective extended to the open economy. In the first section the authors carry out a theoretical discussion dealing with some Post‐Keynesian theories of the business cycle. A second section is devoted to examining and identifying the stylized facts in the evolution of the Mexican economy, with special emphasis on the interaction between the financial and real variables. In the last section the authors propose a simplified model which shows how and why a strategy of financial deregulation and liberalization may lead to financial fragility and to a crisis.     

International Control of Subsidies and Countervailing Duties

The range and number of cases of administered protection inthe 1980s suggests that it has begun to play an important rolein shaping international trade flows. As most of such casesare brought by the United States against developing countryexporters, they are also a matter of concern for developingcountries in the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations. The internationallynegotiated code on subsidies and countervailing duties is ambiguousin its definition of "legal" subsidies, and thus in the appropriateuse of countervailing duties. Because the code is applied atthe national level, there is considerable pressure by domesticproducers on administering agents to increase the use of suchprotective measures through the adoption of provisional measureswhile the investigation is being conducted, and through theinterpretation of criteria for coverage. Given that the mostsuccessful developing countries have been those which adoptthe most neutral policies toward imported and domestic goods,and between sectors domestically, the very biased applicationof the subsidies and the trade policy distortions common inthe countries examined, together with the frequency of countervailingactions against the subsidies, suggest that developing countrieswould benefit from abandonment of the subsidies.     

Determinants of a sustainable innovation system

This study seeks to identify and define the determinants of the sustainable innovation system (SIS). To achieve the objective, a qualitative approach was used through a systematic literature review using data from Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus. Two search equations were used to extract the data. In the first search equation, 69 documents were analyzed, and for the second, 102 documents were analyzed. Multiple definitions were found regarding SIS, it is worth highlighting in the findings the evolutionary process that these systems follow. As a contribution to the study, 79 determinants of an SIS are presented derived from the classic functions of an innovation system.     

Does Family Control Shape Corporate Capital Structure? An Empirical Analysis of Eurozone Firms

This study investigates the relationship between family control and corporate capital structure considering the dynamic nature of the debt policy and the ownership structure of family firms. Our results show that the sensitivity of debt to fluctuations in cash flow is less pronounced in family firms and highlight that family control increases the speed of adjustment toward target debt. Four dimensions of the family business model explain these results: deviations of voting from cash flow rights, the presence of a second blockholder in the company, involvement of family members in management, and the generation in charge of the business. The weaker negative impact of cash flow on debt is driven by family firms with no control‐enhancing mechanisms, companies with active family participation in management and family businesses that are still controlled by the first generation. By contrast, the more severe agency conflicts between owners and creditors in family firms with a second blockholder lead to more pronounced pecking order behaviour. Furthermore, the higher flexibility in corporate decision‐making of family firms managed by the family and under the influence of the first generation explains why family companies are able to rebalance their capital structure faster.     

Contraste de la ley de Gibrat en la banca comercial brasileña

In recent years Brazil has been one of the countries with major changes in the banking sector. The deregulation process that has taken place since 2002 has brought an increased presence of foreign banks and higher competition, among other aspects. In this context, the objective of this study is to analyze Gibrat's law on Brazilian commercial banks over the period 2002-2013 with the aim of providing evidence for the construction of a banking growth model which guide the country's financial policy. To that end, we employ a methodology based on quartile regressions as a contribution to previous literature. Our overall results reveal the existence of a non-lineal relationship between growth and banks size with an inverted U-shape. These findings allow us to affirm that the relative dispersion of banks size, as well as the sector's concentration, will be reduce in the future years.