Economic slowdowns,hazard rates and foreign ownership

This paper evaluates the link between foreign ownership and firm exit during crises, using a longitudinal micro dataset over an 18-year period. We address two main questions: first, if foreign affiliates have different failure rates than domestic firms during economic downturns, and second if the foreignness effect differs between two different economic downturns. The results partially confirm the liability of foreignness argument, suggesting that when the crisis was more pronounced at home than abroad, the differences in hazard rates between foreign and domestic firms reduce. The footloose argument is also only partially confirmed. For policy makers, our results on survival dynamics during crises are not against policies stimulating inward investment. There is no need to fear that foreign firms destabilize more than usual the host economy during economic slowdowns by immediately closing down operations.     

The effect of cell phones on international motor vehicle fatality rates: A panel-data analysis

This paper analyzes the effects of cell phone usage and economic freedom on motor vehicle death rates by estimating regression models on data for three years across 38 countries. The models incorporate a representative set of motor vehicle fatality determinants. Results indicate that cell phone use has a statistically significant nonlinear impact on highway death rates and that economic freedom does not appear to have an effect.     

Political uncertainty,risk of Frexit and European sovereign spreads

Using data from a prediction market (crowd-based forecasts), we build a daily measure capturing the risk of Frexit related to the 2017 French presidential elections. We study how unexpected changes in this new measure of political uncertainty in France affect European sovereign spreads vis-à-vis Germany. We show that our uncertainty proxy drives not only the French sovereign spread but also the spreads of those EU countries deemed the most vulnerable to the risk of desegregation of the Euro Zone. These results suggest that specific political uncertainty affects short-term investor’s expectations and may outweigh other economic determinants of sovereign spreads shortly prior to high stake elections     

Global value chains,large-scale farming,and poverty: Long-term effects in Senegal

This paper presents panel data evidence on the impact of expansion of global value chains and large-scale export-oriented farms in developing countries over almost a decade. We estimate the income effects of wage employment on large-scale farms in the horticultural export sector in Senegal, using data from two survey rounds covering a seven-years period of rapid expansion of the sector. We estimate average income effects as well as heterogeneous income effects, using fixed effects and quantile fixed effects regressions. We find that poverty and inequality reduced much faster in the research area than elsewhere in Senegal. Employment in the horticultural export sector is associated with higher household income and the income effect is strongest for the poorest households. Expansion of the horticultural export sector in Senegal has been particularly pro-poor through creating employment that is accessible and creates substantial income gains for the poorest half of the rural population. These pro-poor employment effects contrast with insights in the literature on increased inequality from rural wage employment.     

住房自有率与城市蔓延：理论与实证

通过构建一个包含住房租赁市场的封闭、单中心城市一般均衡模型，模型化了住房自有率与城市蔓延之间的关系，理论模型结论显示：首先，与自有住房者相比，租房者倾向于居住在离市中心较近的地方；其次，住房自有率的提高会使城市空间面积扩大，加剧城市蔓延。进一步，利用地级市数据分别对理论命题结论进行了检验，在比较充分地控制内生性问题后，实证结果证实了高住房自有率会加剧城市蔓延。因此，长期以来我国不断升高的住房自有率也是加剧我国城市蔓延的重要原因。     

The impact of macroeconomic factors on income inequality: Evidence from the BRICS

In this paper we investigate how the evolution of income growth, real interest rates, and inflation have driven income inequality across a variety of countries with particular focus on the BRICS economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) during the period 2001 to 2015. Our work suggests that, when central banks of the BRICS economies use monetary policy for macroeconomic stabilization, they need to consider the impact monetary policy changes have on the distribution of income in their nations. Our estimates reveal that the unintended consequence of policies that induce economic growth and higher prices is higher income inequality. We find that the positive relationship between the three macroeconomic variables and income inequality for the BRICS economies is stronger during the post-2008 period.     

Time-frequency co-movements between oil prices and interest rates: Evidence from a wavelet-based approach

This paper investigates time–frequency co-movements between crude oil prices and interest rates. To test this relationship, the study applied a continuous wavelet and cross wavelet approaches to data from West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil prices and interest rates in the United States (U.S.). Results from the sample period revealed significant relationships, in the intermediate term, between WTI crude oil prices and U.S. interest rates. Moreover, co-movements between oil price and interest rate variables were especially sensitive during abnormal political events and periods of financial ‘meltdown’. We further use Partial Wavelet Coherence (PWC) and Multiple Wavelet Coherence (MWC) methods to investigate the impacts of five major control variables namely GDP growth, unemployment, three-month Treasury bill, CPI index and industrial production index. The results show a powerful impact of control variables on oil-interest rates co-movements under different frequencies. Finally, we show evidence of co-integrating long run relationship between oil markets and control variables. These results have important implications for energy investors and policy makers.     

A new multiscale decomposition ensemble approach for forecasting exchange rates

Due to the high complexity and strong nonlinearity nature of foreign exchange rates, how to forecast foreign exchange rate accurately is regarded as a challenging research topic. Therefore, developing highly accurate forecasting method is of great significance to investors and policy makers. A new multiscale decomposition ensemble approach to forecast foreign exchange rates is proposed in this paper. In the approach, the variational mode decomposition (VMD) method is utilized to divide foreign exchange rates into a finite number of subcomponents; the support vector neural network (SVNN) technique is used to model and forecast each subcomponent respectively; another SVNN technique is utilized to integrate the forecasting results of each subcomponent to generate the final forecast results. To verify the superiority of the proposed approach, four major exchange rates were chosen for model comparison and evaluation. The experimental results indicate that our proposed VMD-SVNN-SVNN multiscale decomposition ensemble approach outperforms some other benchmarks in terms of forecasting accuracy and statistical tests. This demonstrates that our proposed VMD-SVNN-SVNN multiscale decomposition ensemble approach is promising for forecasting foreign exchange rates.     

Informal Employment and the Structure of Wages in India: A Review of Trends

The “alternative”, “atypical” or “informal” workforce has grown in developed and developing countries alike. One of the more recent evolutions of informal employment has been of informal employment within formal enterprises. In the interest of flexibility and cost‐reduction, many formal firms increasingly resort to hiring workers on a temporary or informal basis. Alongside, and perhaps, as a result of the persistence and pervasiveness of informal employment, issues relating to inequality have come to the fore. This paper is motivated by these two intertwining aspects of Indian labor market—informality and wage inequality. Using nationally representative sample data, the paper examines trends in wage inequality among various forms of informal workers, overlaying these findings with broader trends in inequality. Using a regression based inequality decomposition, the paper compares the sources of wage inequality across different employment groups and the reasons for differences in wage inequality.     

The Importance of Tax Adjustments When Evaluating Wage Expectations*

Using elicited expectations of future gross salaries, we evaluate characteristics causing German students to make larger or smaller estimation errors. While students seem to underestimate actual salaries by 18 percent, we show that these errors are highly attributable to misconceptions of the progressive income tax. Developing a suitable adjustment procedure, we correct students’ estimates and find that errors decline by 12 percentage points. Conducting regression analyses, we reveal strong connections with students’ age, gender, work experience, secondary school track, and knowledge about student loans. These results change notably if not controlling for students’ misconceptions of the tax system.