The Impact of Firing Costs on Turnover and Unemployment: Evidence from the Colombian Labour Market Reform

Reductions in firing costs are often advocated as a way of increasing the dynamism of labour markets in both developed and less developed countries. Evidence from Europe and the U.S. on the impact of firing costs has, however, been mixed. Moreover, legislative changes both in Europe and the U.S. have been limited. This paper, instead, examines the impact of the Colombian Labour Market Reform of 1990, which substantially reduced dismissal costs. I estimate the incidence of a reduction in firing costs on worker turnover by exploiting the temporal change in the Colombian labour legislation as well as the variability in coverage between formal and informal sector workers. Using a grouping estimator to control for common aggregate shocks and selection, I find that the exit hazard rates into and out of unemployment increased after the reform by over 1\% for formal workers (covered by the legislation) relative to informal workers (uncovered). The increase of the hazards implies a net decrease in unemployment of a third of a percentage point, which accounts for about one quarter of the fall in unemployment during the period of study.     

Tax Coordination and Unemployment

This paper analyses the implications of unemployment for fiscal competition and tax coordination among small open economies. Unemployment is modeled as resulting from wage bargaining. The analysis focuses on the effect of labour and capital tax coordination on welfare. We show that, while coordinated capital and labour tax increases unambiguously raise welfare if labour markets are competitive, different results emerge if labour markets are unionised. It turns out that coordinated capital and labour tax increases may reduce welfare. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Office Capitalization Rates: Real Estate and Capital Market Influences

Focusing on the office capitalization rate, the central objective of this article is to shed light on two sets of issues that have not yet been fully researched. The first involves the importance of local-fixed and time-variant components of the office capitalization rate, and the significance of persistence in its time trends. The second centers on the relative importance of local office markets and the national capital market in shaping the various components of the office capitalization rate. Extensive econometric analysis of capitalization-rate series employed to address these issues highlights the existence of both local fixed and time-variant effects, while indicating differential persistence of time trends across markets. Moreover, such analysis uncovers the pivotal role of specific local office-market traits and the lesser role of national capital-market features in determining office capitalization-rate variations. Such findings on the role of local influences may provide a richer foundation for asset valuation and investment practices.     

Pricing Options under Stochastic Interest Rates: A New Approach

We will generalize the Black-Scholes option pricing formula by incorporating stochastic interest rates. Although the existing literature has obtained some formulae for stock options under stochastic interest rates, the closed-form solutions have been known only under the Gaussian (Merton type) interest rate processes. We will show that an explicit solution, which is an extended Black-Scholes formula under stochastic interest rates in certain asymptotic sense, can be obtained by extending the asymptotic expansion approach when the interest rate volatility is small. This method, called the small-disturbance asymptotics for Itô processes, has recently been developed by Kunitomo and Takahashi (1995, 1998) and Takahashi (1997). We found that the extended Black-Scholes formula is decomposed into the original Black-Scholes formula under the deterministic interest rates and the adjustment term driven by the volatility of interest rates. We will illustrate the numerical accuracy of our new formula by using the Cox–Ingersoll–Ross model for the interest rates.     

我国国债利率期限结构研究

本文简要地阐述了利率期限结构理论,并对国内外的有关利率期限结构的模型进行了评述。在国内的国债利率期限结构模型的基础上,根据现有的数据,分析了我国国债利率期限结构曲线的变动趋势并提出了预测模型。     

How to Understand High Food Prices

Agricultural price booms are better explained by common factors than by market‐specific factors such as supply shocks. A capital asset pricing model‐type model shows why one should expect this and Granger causality analysis establishes the role of demand growth, monetary expansion and exchange rate movements in explaining price movements over the period since 1971. The demand for grains and oilseeds as biofuel feedstocks has been cited as the main cause of the price rise, but there is little direct evidence for this contention. Instead, index‐based investment in agricultural futures markets is seen as the major channel through which macroeconomic and monetary factors generated the 2007–2008 food price rises.     

中国银行业竞争与非金融企业影子银行化

本文结合非金融企业影子银行化的形成机制以及中国金融市场发展的特征事实,从“供给侧”和“需求侧”双重视角探究银行竞争如何抑制非金融企业影子银行化。以2003—2019年中国非金融上市企业为研究样本,分析发现,银行竞争能够显著降低非金融企业影子银行化。进一步以放松中小商业银行分支机构市场准入为标志事件构造准自然实验,基于双重差分法的计量结果为识别银行竞争对非金融企业影子银行化的抑制效应提供了稳健的经验证据。机制分析发现,银行业竞争通过弱化“信贷扭曲”和“监管套利”两个维度的作用机制抑制非金融企业影子银行化。异质性分析表明,银行竞争对非金融企业影子银行化的抑制作用在融资约束较高和投资机会较少的样本中尤为明显。     

Hicksian Income in the Conceptual Framework

In seeking to replace accounting conventions by concepts in the pursuit of principles‐based standards, the FASB/IASB joint project on the conceptual framework has grounded its approach on a well‐known definition of income by Hicks. We welcome the use of theories by accounting standard setters and practitioners, if theories are considered in their entirety. Cherry‐picking parts of a theory to serve the immediate aims of standard setters risks distortion. Misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the selected elements of a theory increase the distortion even more. We argue that the Boards have selectively picked from, misquoted, misunderstood and misapplied Hicksian concepts of income. We explore some alternative approaches to income suggested by Hicks and by other writers, and their relevance to current debates over the Boards' conceptual framework and standards. Our conclusions about how accounting concepts and conventions should be related differ from those of the Boards. Executive stock options (ESOs) provide an illustrative case study.     

The Role of Real Wage Rigidity and Labor Market Frictions for Inflation Persistence

We analyze the transmission mechanism of wages to inflation within a New Keynesian business cycle model with wage rigidities and labor market frictions. Our main focus is on the channel of real wage rigidities on inflation persistence for which we find the specification of the wage bargaining process to be of crucial importance. Under the standard efficient Nash bargaining, the feedback of wage rigidities on inflation is ambiguous and depends on other labor market variables. However, under the alternative right‐to‐manage bargaining we find that more rigid wages translate directly into more persistent movements of aggregate inflation.