The Emergence of Money in Commodity Exchange,or Money as Monopolist of the Ability to Buy

Abstract

Money's emergence in commodity exchange remains an unresolved issue within economic theory. Current general equilibrium models offer an explanation that rests on the economic advantages of a universally accepted means of exchange that is partly established through social custom. These models neither fully explain money's unique ability to buy, nor theorise the customary practices required for money's emergence. They are dominated by Menger's earlier analysis of money's emergence, which pays more attention to the social foundations of money but is still hampered by Austrian individualism. An alternative explanation is given here, drawing on Marx's theory of value but involving a thorough reworking of it. An analytical process is established through which money finally emerges as monopolist of the ability to buy. Particular social custom, whose determinants are consistent with the social underpinnings of commodity exchange, plays a vital role in money's emergence.     

¿Predice la producción el desempleo? Una estimación de la ley de Okun para Grecia

Estimando una especificación dinámica de la ley de Okun, se examina la relación entre desempleo y producción en Grecia de 2000 a 2012. Estimada la prueba de Granger, el producto real resulta importante para comprender el comportamiento del desempleo y la razón de Okun es de tres a uno (un aumento de un 1 por ciento del desempleo está asociado a una caída de un 3 por ciento del producto real durante el periodo estudiado). El análisis de asimetría muestra que la respuesta del desempleo al producto real es más fuerte durante las contracciones que durante las expansiones de la actividad económica.     

The dynamics of wage determination in Romania

This article examines wage developments in Romania over the last 20 years, discusses the evolving role of government wage policy and structural labour market changes, and analyses the dynamics of the wage determination process. It finds that government wage policy has had a significant demonstration effect on private sector wages, driven mainly by policy decisions over the past few years. The article also finds strong causality from private sector wages to wages in state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) and government. No causality was found for changes in government wages to wages in SOEs or from SOE wages to private sector wages.     

Identifying the Factors that Affect Interest‐Rate Swap Spreads: Some Evidence from the United States and the United Kingdom

We assess the ability of the factors proposed in previous research to account for the stochastic evolution of the term structure of the U.S. and U.K. swap spreads. Using as factor proxies the level, volatility, and slope of the zero‐coupon government yield curve as well as the Treasury‐bill—London Interbank Offer Rate (LIBOR) spread and the corporate bond spread, we identify a procyclical behavior for the short‐maturity U.S. swap spreads and a countercyclical behavior for longer maturity U.S. swap spreads. Liquidity and corporate bond spreads are also significant, but their importance varies with maturity. The liquidity premium is more important for short‐maturity swap spreads, although the corporate bond spread affects long‐maturity swap spreads. For the United Kingdom, swap spreads are countercyclical across maturities. In addition, we find that shocks to the liquidity premium are more significant for long‐maturity swaps and that the links between corporate bond markets and swap markets are much stronger than in the United States. When we look at the links between U.S. and U.K. swap markets, we identify a significant influence of the U.S. factors on the U.K. swap spreads across maturities. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 21:737–768, 2001     

The Role of Political Instability in Stock Market Development and Economic Growth: The Case of Greece

This article examines empirically the relationship between stock market development, political instability and economic growth in Greece. We measure socio-political instability by constructing an index which captures the occurrence of various phenomena of political violence using time-series data. The main advantages of analysing political instability in a case study framework using time-series, in contrast with the widely used cross-country empirical studies, are: (a) a more careful and in-depth examination of institutional and historical characteristics of a particular country; (b) the use of a data set comprised of the most appropriate and highest quality measures; and (c) a more detailed exposition of the dynamic evolution of the economy. The empirical results indicate the existence of a strong negative relationship between uncertain socio-political conditions and the general index of the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE) and support the theoretical hypothesis that uncertain socio-political conditions affect economic growth negatively, is true for the Greek case.
(J.E.L.: G10, G14, O40, C32)     

Nonlinear dynamics in economics and finance and unit root testing

The recent financial crisis exposed the inability of traditional theoretical and empirical models to parsimoniously capture the rich dynamics of the economic environment. This has stimulated the interest of both academics and practitioners in the development and application of more sophisticated models. By allowing for the presence of nonlinearities, complex dynamics, multiple equilibria, structural breaks and spurious trends, these latter models resemble more closely the properties of economic and financial time series. In this article, we illustrate the flexibility of a family of econometric models, namely the exponential smooth transition autoregressive (ESTAR), to encompass several of the above characteristics. We then re-assess the power of the ESTAR unit root test developed by Kapetanios, Shin and Snell ((2003) Kapetanios, G., Shin, Y. and Snell, A. 2003. Testing for a unit root in the nonlinear STAR framework. Journal of Econometrics, 112(2): 359–79. (doi:10.1016/S0304-4076(02)00202-6)[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) in the presence of nuisance parameters typically encountered in the literature and compare its performance with that of the augmented Dickey-Fuller and the Enders and Granger ((1998) Enders, W. and Granger, C. W.J. 1998. Unit-root tests and asymmetric adjustment with an example using the term structure of interest rates. Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, 16(3): 304–11. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) tests. Our results show the lack of dominance of any particular test and that the power is not independent to priors about the nuisance parameters. Finally, we examine several asset price deviations from fundamentals and one hyper-inflation series and find contradictory results between the nonlinear fitted models and unit root tests. The findings highlight that new testing procedures with higher power are desirable in order to shed light on the behavior of financial and economic series.     

Growth, distance to frontier and composition of human capital

We examine the contribution of human capital to economy-wide technological improvements through the two channels of innovation and imitation. We develop a theoretical model showing that skilled labor has a higher growth-enhancing effect closer to the technological frontier under the reasonable assumption that innovation is a relatively more skill-intensive activity than imitation. Also, we provide evidence in favor of this prediction using a panel dataset covering 19 OECD countries between 1960 and 2000 and explain why previous empirical research had found no positive relationship between initial schooling level and subsequent growth in rich countries.     

Analysis and modeling of recent business failures in Greece

This paper provides an analysis of recent business failures in Greece and presents models for detecting financially distressed firms. Logit, probit, linear probability model, and linear discriminant analysis are used for developing these models. Potential users of the models include the banking system, corporate creditors, regulatory agencies, and investors in Greece, the European Economic Community, the USA, and other countries. These models expand the tools used by international and domestic investors to measure Greek firms' risk of insolvency.