Macroeconomic shocks, structural change and real exchange rates: Evidence from historical data

We present empirical evidence on the forces driving real exchange rates in the long-run. Using data from the US, UK and Italy across different exchange rate regimes, we find support for the hypothesis that productivity and fiscal shocks matter. However, in some cases fiscal shocks cause depreciations, likely triggered by the monetary accommodation of fiscal shocks. We also find that the traditional Harrod–Balassa–Samuelson effect of productivity on real exchange rates is reversed in some cases, which confirms the importance of the distributive sector in driving productivity gains.     

Shareholder value efficiency in European banking

This paper advances the studies of [Hughes, J.P., Lang W.W., Mester L.J., Moon C.G., Pagano M.S., 2003. Do bankers sacrifice value to build empires? Managerial incentives, industry consolidation, and financial performance. Journal of Banking and Finance 27, 417–447] by developing a new measure of bank performance which we refer to as “shareholder value efficiency” – a bank producing the maximum possible Economic Value Added (EVA), given particular inputs and outputs, is defined as “shareholder value efficient”. This new efficiency measure is estimated using the stochastic frontier method focussing on the French, German, Italian and UK banking systems over the period 1997–2002 and includes both listed and non-listed banks. We find that European banks are, on average, 36% shareholder value inefficient. Shareholder value efficiency is found to be the most important factor explaining value creation in European banking, whereas cost and profit efficiency only have a marginal influence.     

Criteri di sensitività in problemi di dominanza stocastica

Questo lavoro fornisce condizioni di dominanza stocastica di 1°, 2° e 3° ordine per problemi di decisione in condizioni d'incertezza, quando sia nota la funzione d'utilità solo in un numero finito di punti e quando le funzioni di ripartizione dei guadagni aleatori s'intersecano più d'una volta.     

Optimal demand policies against stagflation

Zusammenfassung Optimale Nachfragepolitik zur Bek?mpfung der Stagflation. — Der Aufsatz besch?ftigt sich mit der Wahl einer optimalen Gesamtnachfrage-Politik als Antwort auf einen inflation?ren Schock — optimal in dem Sinne, da\ die Volkswirtschaft zur Vollbesch?ftigung und Preisstabilit?t auf einen Pfad zurückgeführt wird, der die sozialen Kosten minimiert. Es wird die Ansicht vertreten, da\ die Kosten eines gegebenen Stabilisierungspfades proportional sind zu den über die Zeit aufsummierten Abweichungen der Inflationsrate und der Arbeitslosenquote von den langfristigen Zielwerten. Auf der Grundlage einer sehr allgemeinen Formulierung der Phillips-Kurve wird die optimale wirtschaftspolitische Antwort auf einen Inflationsschock analysiert und gezeigt, da\ sie gew?hnliche ?Turnpike?-Eigenschaften besitzt. Dieser Ansatz wird veranschaulicht, indem er auf die USA für den Zeitraum 1971–1975 angewandt wird, wobei die Sensitivit?t des optimalen Pfades in bezug auf alternative Wohlfahrts-Bewertungen und Ansichten hinsichtlich der Natur des Trade-off untersucht wird.

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Résumé Les politiques de demande optimum contre la stagflation. — Cet article a pour sujet la selection d’une politique de demande agrégée optimum en réponse à un choc — optimum de manière qu’elle reconduit l’économie au plein emploi et à la stabilité de prix le long d’un sentier d’inflation-ch?mage minimisant des frais sociaux de ?welfare?. Nous arguons que les frais du chaque sentier donné de stabilisation peuvent être pris comme proportioneis à l’excès d’inflation et de ch?mage au-dessus du but à long terme, cumulé sur le sentier. En se fiant à une expression très générale de la ?courbe de Phillips? l’article analyse et démontre la réponse de politique optimum à un choc inflationniste pour exhiber des simples ?barrières? propriétés. L’approche est illustrée par l’application sur les E. U. pour la période de 1971 à 1975. Elle explore la sensibilité du sentier optimum aux évaluations alternatives de ?welfare? et aux vues de la nature du ?trade-off?.

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Resumen Políticas óptimas de demanda contra la estagflación. — Este artículo se ocupa de la selección de una política de demanda agregada óptima en respuesta a un ?shock? óptimo inflacionario en el sentido que devuelve el pleno empleo y la estabilidad de precios a la economía a través de una trayectoria de inflación-desempleo minimizando los costos sociales de bienestar. Se argumenta que el costo de cualquier trayectoria de estabilización dada puede tomarse como proporcional al exceso de inflación y desempleo por sobre la meta de largo plazo, acumulado a través de la trayectoria. Basándose sobre una formulación muy general de la ?curva de Phillips? se analiza la respuesta de política óptima a un ?shock? inflacionario y se muestra que exhibe propiedades simples de Camino de portazgo. El enfoque se ilustra aplicándolo a los EEUU para el período 1971–75, investigando la sensibilidad de la trayectoria óptima con respecto a evaluaciones de bienestar alternativas y apreciaciones sobre la naturaleza del ?trade-off?.

     

Influence of web portals on management support and university performance: an information quality perspective

Quality & Quantity - The objective of this study is to determine the influence of web portals utilization on management support and performance in universities, considering the information...     

Does the position in the inter-sectoral knowledge space affect the international competitiveness of industries?

ABSTRACT

This paper empirically investigates how the inter-sectoral knowledge flows affect the international competitiveness of industries, once controlling for both cost and other technological factors. Using patent data on 14 manufacturing industries in 16 OECD countries over the period 1995–2009, we apply a network-based approach to capture the effect of industries' position in the flows of technical knowledge across industries, which we label inter-sectoral knowledge space. We find that (i) centrality and local clustering in the inter-sectoral knowledge space positively affect the export market shares of an industry, (ii) such two effects are rather redundant and (iii) national-level knowledge flows' impacts on international competitiveness are way stronger than international ones. Network measures of position in the knowledge space are found to be more relevant than standard technological indicators such as patent counts. Our results point to the importance of industries being well located in the stream of knowledge flows, rather than being innovative per se, and offer a novel yet robust proxy to measure technological factors affecting trade performances. In addition, we find evidence of geographical boundaries of knowledge flows.     

Exchange Rate,External Orientation of Firms and Wage Adjustment

We estimate the effect of exchange rate movements on firm‐level wages, using a representative panel of Italian manufacturing firms. We show that the direction and size of wage adjustment is shaped by the international exposure of each firm on both the sale and cost side of the balance sheet, similar to the response of employment documented in (Nucci and Pozzolo, Journal of International Economics 2010; 82 : 112.). Through the revenue side, wages tend to rise after a currency depreciation and the effect is more pronounced the higher is the firm's exposure to sales from exports. Through the expenditure side, a depreciation induces a cut in the firm's wages, and the effect is larger the higher is the incidence of imported inputs in total production costs. For a given degree of external orientation, both these effects are larger for firms with a lower market power. Moreover, we document that the effect of exchange rates on wages is shaped by the extent of sectoral import penetration in the domestic market.     

Regression with imputed covariates: A generalized missing-indicator approach

A common problem in applied regression analysis is that covariate values may be missing for some observations but imputed values may be available. This situation generates a trade-off between bias and precision: the complete cases are often disarmingly few, but replacing the missing observations with the imputed values to gain precision may lead to bias. In this paper, we formalize this trade-off by showing that one can augment the regression model with a set of auxiliary variables so as to obtain, under weak assumptions about the imputations, the same unbiased estimator of the parameters of interest as complete-case analysis. Given this augmented model, the bias-precision trade-off may then be tackled by either model reduction procedures or model averaging methods. We illustrate our approach by considering the problem of estimating the relation between income and the body mass index (BMI) using survey data affected by item non-response, where the missing values on the main covariates are filled in by imputations.     

Exploring factors affecting international technological specialization: the role of knowledge flows and the structure of innovative activity

Journal of Evolutionary Economics - We define international technological specialisation (ITS) as the technological performance of a country in a specific technology relative to its overall...     

Scelta tra alternative incerte con informazioni parziali sulle funzioni di utilità

In questo lavoro si considera la classe dei decisori avversi al rischio e per questa classe viene proposto un metodo per verificare la dominanza stocastica tra due possibilità in alternativa quando la funzione d'utilità sia nota soltanto in un numero finito di punti.

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This paper deals with the set of adverse to risk decision-makers. For this set a method to check stochastic dominance is proposed. The method works when utility function value is known only on a finite set of points.