Why has economic growth slowed down in Indonesia? An investigation into the Indonesian business cycle using an estimated DSGE model

Economic growth in Indonesia has been trending down from about 6.5% in 2010 to less than 5% recently. Calibrating and estimating a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of Indonesia, we show that most of Indonesia’s growth over the last decade has been driven by supply factors, especially rising multi-factor productivity (MFP) as Indonesia reaped the benefits of post-Asian-crisis structural reforms. The pace of multi-factor productivity growth has slowed since 2010, however, a decelerating trend reinforced by slower world growth. A series of interest rate cuts has successfully managed to offset some of those headwinds. However, absent further structural reforms to revive productivity growth, supportive monetary policy will not be sufficient to sustain long-term growth and poses inflation risks.     

Devaluation and Marx's Law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit

Marx's law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit predicts that the rate of profit will decline over the long term as the forces of production develop, and move cyclically in a way that explains crises and economic recoveries. This interpretation is substantiated with textual evidence, and with a method for measuring the dynamic of devaluation and revaluation which Marx uses to explain the profit rate cycle. This method is shown to be consistent with temporalism, meaning it avoids the transformation problem created by dual system interpretations, and the problem of the Okishio Theorem created by simultaneist interpretations. The article also includes a temporalist way to estimate the Monetary Expression of Labour Time, and empirical results for the effect of devaluation on the stock of fixed assets in the United States since 1930.     

Monetary Policy,the Composition of GDP and Crisis Duration in Europe

This paper analyzes the effects of changes in interest rates on the composition of production in 10 European countries during the boom period of the 2000s. We find that output elasticity differs across industries and across countries for similar industries. The paper suggests that in the run-up to the 2008 crisis, the European Central Bank's low interest rate policy affected the allocation of resources across industries. This may explain the sluggish overall recovery from the crisis in Europe.     

Gender and central banking

Female Central Bank chairs represent but a tiny minority. To understand why, this article analyzes socio-economic and socio-political characteristics of the countries where women have chaired Central Banks. Then, it suggests that gender differences in preferences as regards monetary policy goals may have some influence. This hypothesis is based on an empirical analysis showing that female Central Bank chairs focus more than their male counterparts on achieving the price stability goal. This means, then, that women are more resistant than men to political pressures. Finally, it concludes that gender differences in degree of conservatism may be an explanatory factor in female underrepresentation in the Central Bank chairs.     

Monetary or nonmonetary compensation for service failure? A study of customer preferences under various loci of causality

When service failures occur, hotels adopt various strategies to compensate guests in order to maintain their satisfaction. This study examines the effectiveness of different post-failure compensation strategies in scenarios presenting various loci of causality. The results indicate that across all scenarios, strategies combining monetary and nonmonetary compensation result in higher customer satisfaction than those which offer one or the other. In addition, nonmonetary compensation results in higher satisfaction than monetary redress when the service failure has been caused by the hotel. The study also identified a partial mediation of the interaction effect of service failure causality and compensation type on customer satisfaction by three kinds of justice.     

Great recession,slow recovery and muted fiscal policies in the US

This paper reconsiders the role of macroeconomic shocks and policies in determining the Great Recession and the subsequent recovery in the US. The Great Recession was mainly caused by a large demand shock and by the ZLB on the interest rate policy. In contrast with previous findings, the subsequent jobless recovery is explained by the ZLB effect. We estimate a fraction of Non-Ricardian households which is close to 50%, and obtain comparatively large fiscal multipliers. However we cannot detect a significant contribution of fiscal policies in stabilizing the US economy. For instance, the 2007–2009 large increase in expenditure-to-GDP ratios was apparently determined by the adverse non-policy shocks that caused the recession.     

A regime-switching approach to estimating the nonlinear quantity-based monetary policy rule in China

This article focuses on the quantity-based monetary policy rule in China. The article applies a Markov regime-switching approach to estimate the nonlinear policy rule using quarterly data from 1997Q1 to 2015Q2. Overall, the performance of the estimated two-state rule is significantly better than the performance of the linear rule. The regime-switching estimation suggests that the quantity-based policy tool displays a countercyclical response to the inflation gap but a pro-cyclical response to the output gap during recessions. In addition, this article provides notable evidence of the fact that China’s central bank has been targeting inflation over the gradual course of financial liberalization.     

Finance-neutral potential output: An evaluation in an emerging market monetary policy context

In this paper, output gaps that include financial cycle information are evaluated against policy analysis models used by the Colombian central bank. This is an important feature, since policy-related models are the only relevant yardstick and emerging economies (such as Colombia) have been historically more vulnerable to financial imbalances. Unlike previous works, finance-neutral gaps were evaluated in a monetary policy context exactly as it is routinely performed by a central bank. The distribution of output gap revisions is analyzed and a metric to compare real-time robustness across models is developed. This metric constitutes a novel way to summarize the distribution of real-time uncertainty around output gaps, and policymakers should employ it for comparison purposes. Also, the real-time policy performance of finance-neutral gaps is studied, separating suggested ex post from operational ex ante usefulness. The results suggest that finance-neutral gaps are neither more robust in real time nor more operationally useful than the benchmark estimates. These results have important implications for policymakers and for the relevant literature.     

Financial frictions and optimal stabilization policy in a monetary union

Financial frictions differ across countries and thus cause international differences in the transmission of shocks. This paper shows how the optimal mix of monetary and fiscal policy depends on these country-specific financial frictions. To this end, we build a two-country DSGE-model of a monetary union. Financial frictions are captured by the cost channel approach. We show that the traditional solution to the assignment problem – the common central bank stabilizes the inflation rate at the union level and the national fiscal authorities stabilize the national economies – does not hold in a world with financial frictions. The cost channel decreases the efficiency of monetary policy and increases the need for fiscal stabilization even at the union level. Moreover, the more heterogeneous the union, the more important is fiscal policy in stabilizing shocks. Finally, we evaluate the scenarios in terms of welfare of the representative household.     

How much informal credit lending responded to monetary policy in China? The case of Wenzhou

This study investigates empirically what the major factors are which have driven Wenzhou's informal credit market and how much that market is responsive to monetary policies and the formal banking conditions nationwide. A number of relatively stable factors have been identified from this volatile market through a careful exploration of a monthly survey data set for the period of 2003–2011. The main findings are: (i) Wenzhou's informal credit lending rates are highly receptive to monetary policies; (ii) Wenzhou's market is dominantly demand driven; (iii) Wenzhou's informal lending is substitutive to bank savings in the short run but complementary to banking lending in the long run; and (iv) Wenzhou's market is complementary to excessive investments in the local real estate market.