Exporting and Economic Performance: Firm‐level Evidence of Spanish Manufacturing

In a previous paper, Delgado, Fariñas and Ruano (2002) report TFP differences between exporters and non‐exporters on the basis of a sample of Spanish manufacturing firms. In this paper, we extend the previous analysis in three directions using a similar data set. First, we investigate additional economic performance differences between exporters and non‐exporters. Second, we measure TFP differences estimating production functions that control for unobserved heterogeneity and simultaneity bias. Third, we explore the self‐selection and learning‐by‐exporting hypothesis as explanations for the greater performance of exporters. With respect to the results, we confirm that many indicators of economic performance such as productivity, size, wages and innovation are greater in exporting firms. Furthermore, TFP differences between exporters and non‐exporters estimated with parametric methods are remarkably similar to those estimated using index numbers. Finally, performance differences and transition patterns between the export market and the domestic market indicate higher performance for entering exporters with respect to non‐exporters at the moment of entry. We find evidence of selection in the entry and the exit side of the export market. One of the basic results that we obtain indicates that after controlling for self‐selection, the productivity growth of entering exporters does not significantly change with respect to non‐exporters. As the evidence we find indicates no systematic changes in performance between non‐exporters and exporters after entry takes place, we do not confirm the learning‐by‐exporting hypothesis.     

第三产业对GDP增长的贡献分析--以广东省为例

由广东省第三产业对全省GDP增长的贡献及第三产业各主要行业对GDP增长贡献大小可以看出,随着工业化的发展,第三产业将成为国民经济的主要推动力。本文认为,第三产业对国民经济的贡献份额与经济增长水平高度相关,第三产业中年均增速快的行业对国民经济的推动力也大,加快第三产业发展是国民经济发展的客观要求;要加快广东国民经济的发展,必须加快第三产业的发展,而在第三产业内部,应着重发展交通邮电、批发零售、房地产、社会服务、金融保险等对国民经济推动力大的行业。     

Evaluation of the Spanish flat rate for young self-employed workers

The dramatic growth of unemployment figures in Spain during the economic downturn has increased policies fostering entrepreneurship, particularly among the youth. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of a Spanish programme fostering self-employment among unemployed youth workers. We use an administrative dataset (the Continuous Working Lives Sample) to study the survival of subsidized start-ups compared to those not subsidized. Using a differences-in-differences approach, our results suggest that the programme has no effect in terms of survival rates.     

Housing demand in Mexico

This paper analyzes the components of housing demand in Mexico in the context of developing and developed nations. The case of Mexico is particularly interesting given that population and income dynamics, as well as current housing shortages, suggest that the demand for housing will significantly increase in the near future. We use micro-level data from market-based mortgages that originated during the period of 2002 to 2004 for 21 metropolitan areas in Mexico. We find the price elasticity of housing demand to be ?0.3, lower than previous studies for developed countries and within the range for developing countries. Permanent income is a major component of housing demand, with an elasticity of 0.8. In contrast, temporary income has a very low elasticity of 0.04. The mortgage rate elasticity for 25-year mortgages is ?0.39. We believe these results provide important information to policy makers and practitioners in Mexico and other developing nations.     

The impact of Nepal's earthquake on the health status of rural children

We study the impact of Nepal's 2015 earthquake on the health status of children aged 0–5 years. Using a difference-in-differences approach we find that the earthquake decreased height-for-age z-scores (HAZ) and that this effect is largely driven by females, who experienced an average decline of −0.763 standard deviations in their HAZ. Further, we find that females in the 0–3 years age group and in the least wealthy households are the most vulnerable. This is particularly unfortunate, as the first 3 years of life can impact long-term health and well-being, and female undernutrition contributes to the intergenerational transmission of poverty and ill health.     

Existence of equilibria in economies with externalities and non-convexities in an infinite-dimensional commodity space

We prove an equilibrium existence theorem for economies with externalities, general types of non-convexities in the production sector, and infinitely many commodities. The consumption sets, the preferences of the consumers, and the production possibilities are represented by set-valued mappings to take into account the external effects. The firms set their prices according to general pricing rules which are supposed to have bounded losses and may depend upon the actions of the other economic agents. The commodity space is L_∞(M,M,μ), the space of all μ-essentially bounded M-measurable functions on M.As for our existence result, we consider the framework of Bewley (1972). However, there are four major problems in using this technique. To overcome two of these difficulties, we impose strong lower hemi-continuity assumptions upon the economies. The remaining problems are removed when the finite economies are large enough.Our model encompasses previous works on the existence of general equilibria when there are externalities and non-convexities but the commodity space is finite dimensional and those on general equilibria in non-convex economies with infinitely many commodities when no external effect is taken into account.     

On Hypothesis about the Second Eigenvalue of the Leontief Matrix

If an arbitrarily positive eigenvector is repeatedly premultiplied by a positive matrix, then the result tends towards a unique, positive (Frobenius) eigenvector. Brady has demonstrated that the expected absolute magnitude of the estimate of the second largest eigenvalue of a positive random matrix (with identically and independently distributed entries) declines monotonically with the increasing size of the matrix. Hence, the larger the system is, the faster is the convergence. Molnár and Simonovits examined Brady's conjecture in the case where entries of a stochastic matrix are close to 1/n. We prove this hypothesis for any stochastic and positive matrix.     

The Return Performance of Cubic Market Model: An Application to Emerging Markets

This article studies the performance of the high-order moment capital asset pricing model (CAPM) market models in emerging markets. We apply the cubic market model (4-moment CAPM) to 16 emerging market stock indices ranging from January 2010 to September 2015. Performance of the model is evaluated through the Fama and MacBeth’s two-step regression and through different corrections proposed in the literature, as well as generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation. According to Fama–MacBeth’s procedure, CAPM, the quadratic and cubic market models seem to be insignificant for the analyzed sample; however, the GMM estimation shows that quadratic model is valid for Indian, Polish, and Thai country indices, whereas cubic market model is accurate for Indian country index.     

How Do Investment,Fundamentals, and Stock Prices Relate Around the World?

We assemble a novel data set of industry panel data for the corporate sector and the entire economy across a number of countries to explore the connection between investment and stock prices. The link is present in all samples, in both the aggregate and industry dimensions, and increases with stock market development. Fundamentals are less related to prices in underdeveloped markets but are similarly related to investment everywhere. Thus, the active informant interpretation does not seem to be the main force behind the stock market–investment relationship. In addition, industries that are more dependent on equity finance, and where investors are strongest, exhibit higher sensitivity to prices, especially in developed markets.