Adoption and impact of improved maize varieties on maize yields: Evidence from central Cameroon

This study uses both the endogenous switching regression and propensity score matching models to analyze the adoption and impact of improved maize varieties on maize yields in central Cameroon. The results show that (i) education level, agricultural training, proximity to an Institute of Agricultural Research for Development branch and farmers’ perceptions of yield and risk of improved maize varieties significantly affect the adoption of improved maize varieties and (ii) the adoption of improved maize varieties enhances maize yields. Therefore, policies designed to stimulate adoption of improved maize varieties should be promoted. Improvement of access to school and agricultural training may serve as good strategies for promoting the adoption of improved maize varieties in Cameroon.     

Drastic Times Call for Drastic Measures: The ECB LTROs and Credit in The Eurozone Before and After December 2011

We study the impact of the European Central Bank Long-term refinancing operations (ECB LTROs) on credit to the non-financial sector, using panel data on twelve countries of the Euro area between December 2008 and July 2014. The tests show that LTROs tested as a dummy have a favorable impact. However, till December 2011, the impact of the amount of LTROs was insignificant or negative. This suggests that full allotment liquidity measures, disclosing interbank markets liquidity needs, could generate adverse collateral effect disturbing the unconventional monetary policies transmission channels, in particular the signaling channel. Moreover, the effectiveness of the signaling channel of liquidity measures would rely on their use as the sole monetary policy tool carrying all the information about the policy stance, while the ECB, whose mandate usually focuses price stability, has twice raised twice its policy rate in 2011.     

On the Economics of Postassessments in Insurance Guaranty Funds: A Stakeholders’ Perspective

This article proposes a model that suggests there are contagion effects among members of an insurance guaranty fund when postassessments are charged to all other insurers upon the failure of a member company. Indeed, these extraordinary payments are shown to increase the default rate of other firms in the industry, ultimately lowering the value of corporate claims as well as government tax claims. The model is also used to examine the efficiency of different recoupment mechanisms (both existing and new) used by regulators and insurers to potentially reduce these contagion effects. Analysis allows us to stipulate the conditions under which a “tax carryforward” provision could be more efficient than the usual recoupment mechanisms known as “premium rate surcharge” and “premium tax credit.”     

Why is money important in Jean-Baptiste Say's analysis?

Jean-Baptiste Say dedicated a significant part of his work to monetary questions, as much to explain the monetary practices of his period and to propose concrete measures to improve certain elements, as to develop theoretical reflections on the role of money in the mechanisms that political economy sheds light upon. His thought for that matter is not always devoid of contradictions when it comes to reconciling the results of observation with certain dimensions of his analysis. The article explains his conception of money. A variation in its quantity has an impact not only on prices, but also on the real economy, favourable when this issue is slow and moderate, but negative, on the other hand, when it is fast and large-scale. This leads to the measures of monetary policy recommended by Say.     

The trade-growth nexus in the developing countries: a quantile regression approach

This paper applies quantile regression techniques to investigate how the impact of trade openness on the growth rate of per capita income varies with the conditional distribution of growth. Using formal robustness analyses, we first identify robust variables affecting economic growth (investment, government balance, terms of trade, inflation, and population growth) which we then use as controls in the quantile regression estimations. Our findings suggest a heterogeneous trade-growth nexus: for both the short and the long run, the effect of openness on growth is higher in countries with low growth rates compared to those with high growth rates.     

Evaluating the Impact of a Working Time Regulation on Capital Operating Time: The French 35‐hour Work Week Experience

In this article, we evaluate the impact of diminishing weekly working hours on capital operating time using the French 35‐hour working week experience. We merge the French survey on Capital Operating Time (COT, Banque de France, Central Bank of France; 1989–2004) and administrative Working Time Reduction agreements files (WTR, DARES, French Ministry of Labour; May 2003). We construct shift‐work‐based capital operating time indicators. Using differences‐in‐differences econometric models, we show that the implementation of the 35‐hour work week did not induce any reduction in COT. Hence, firms increased shift‐work to compensate for the decrease in working hours.     

OPTIMAL INVESTMENT UNDER RELATIVE PERFORMANCE CONCERNS

We consider the problem of optimal investment when agents take into account their relative performance by comparison to their peers. Given N interacting agents, we consider the following optimization problem for agent i, : where is the utility function of agent i, his portfolio, his wealth, the average wealth of his peers, and is the parameter of relative interest for agent i. Together with some mild technical conditions, we assume that the portfolio of each agent i is restricted in some subset . We show existence and uniqueness of a Nash equilibrium in the following situations:

• ‐ unconstrained agents,
• ‐ constrained agents with exponential utilities and Black–Scholes financial market.

We also investigate the limit when the number of agents N goes to infinity. Finally, when the constraints sets are vector spaces, we study the impact of the s on the risk of the market.     

OPTIMAL SELLING RULES FOR MONETARY INVARIANT CRITERIA: TRACKING THE MAXIMUM OF A PORTFOLIO WITH NEGATIVE DRIFT

Considering a positive portfolio diffusion X with negative drift, we investigate optimal stopping problems of the form where f is a nonincreasing function, τ is the next random time where the portfolio X crosses zero and θ is any stopping time smaller than τ. Hereby, our motivation is the obtention of an optimal selling strategy minimizing the relative distance between the liquidation value of the portfolio and its highest possible value before it reaches zero. This paper unifies optimal selling rules observed for the quadratic absolute distance criteria in this stationary framework with bang–bang type ones observed for monetary invariant criteria but in finite horizon. More precisely, we provide a verification result for the general stopping problem of interest and derive the exact solution for two classical criteria f of the literature. For the power utility criterion with , instantaneous selling is always optimal, which is consistent with previous observations for the Black‐Scholes model in finite observation. On the contrary, for a relative quadratic error criterion, , selling is optimal as soon as the process X crosses a specified function φ of its running maximum . These results reinforce the idea that optimal stopping problems of similar type lead easily to selling rules of very different nature. Nevertheless, our numerical experiments suggest that the practical optimal selling rule for the relative quadratic error criterion is in fact very close to immediate selling.