地方政府债务空间与空间债务——基于地根经济的区位黏性视角

本文从人口流动的区位黏性这一全新视角，将地方政府性债务的李嘉图等价命题纳入新经济地理研究框架进行理论分析。为了进一步揭示理论模型的政策含义，采用空间计量方法验证沿海地区地方政府性债务的局部正相关特征。最优的债务政策取决于经济系统的初始条件，在非对称经济结构已经存在的情况下，单纯建设本地区的基础设施只会降低区域内的交易成本，这对于那些仅着眼于投巨资用于城市“硬件”建设的地方政府来说显然是一叶障目。建议依靠基础设施网络提高区域协同创新能力，培育规模报酬递增的专业化产业集群。     

Sibling gender and wage differences

Family influences on economic performance are investigated. In particular, sibship sex composition is related to hourly wages using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. The wages of men are increasing in the proportion of siblings who are brothers, but the wages of women are insensitive to sibling gender. Nonwage outcomes are generally unaffected. Contrasts by age structure and demographic group are also presented. The analysis addresses econometric challenges like the endogeneity of fertility and selection into the workforce. In addition, mechanisms such as labour market interactions, human capital investment and role model effects are documented. A questionnaire on job search indicates a same-gender bias in the use of brothers and sisters in obtaining employment. Developmental and psychological assessments suggest that brothers may be associated with worse childhood home environments and more traditional family attitudes among women. The findings are policy relevant and contribute to an understanding of gender differences and earnings inequality.     

Identifying Price Reviews by Firms: An Econometric Approach

Price reviews are a potentially costly activity. A significant fraction of unchanged prices may stem from firms not reviewing prices, rather than from obstacles to changing prices per se, such as menu costs. In this paper, we disentangle these two causes of price stickiness by estimating an inflated ordered probit model on a panel of French manufacturing firms. The results point to a low frequency of price reviews, suggestive of the relevance of information costs as a determinant of the observed price stickiness. In view of the “inattentive producers” literature, pointing that the source of price rigidity matters, this is suggestive of a large real effect of monetary policy.     

The Role of Inflation Target Adjustment in Stabilization Policy

How and under what circumstances can adjusting the inflation target serve as a stabilization-policy tool and contribute to welfare improvement? We answer these questions quantitatively with a standard New Keynesian model that includes cost-push-type shocks. Our proposed inflation target rule calls for the target to be adjusted in a persistent manner and in the opposite direction to the realization of a cost-push shock, which is essentially a makeup strategy. The inflation target rule, combined with a Taylor-type rule, significantly reduces inflation fluctuations originating from cost-push shocks and mitigates the stabilization trade-off, resulting in a similar level of welfare to that associated with the Ramsey optimal policy.     

Operating cash flow asymmetric timeliness in Australia

Operating cash flow (CFO) asymmetric timeliness occurs when CFO reflects bad news more quickly than good news. We examine the presence and determinants of CFO asymmetric timeliness in Australia, where substantial differences in reporting requirements of cash flow components, in characteristics of listed companies and in the degree of conservative financial reporting produce contrasting findings to those in the United States. We find supportive evidence for the novel ‘sticky cost behaviour’ explanation and also the product-pricing strategy, but not the life cycle hypothesis. These findings are useful for investors and analysts concerned with forecasting the future values of companies.     

Sticky Price Models,Durable Goods,and Real Wage Rigidities

The standard two‐sector New Keynesian model with durable goods is at odds with conventional wisdom and vector autoregression (VAR) evidence: Following a monetary shock, the model generates (i) either negative or no comovement across sectoral outputs and (ii) aggregate neutrality of money when durable goods' prices are flexible. We reconcile theory with evidence by incorporating real wage rigidities into the standard model: As long as durable goods' prices are more flexible than nondurable goods' prices, we obtain positive sectoral comovement and, thus, aggregate nonneutrality of money.     

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.     

Public pollution abatement and wage inequality

This paper constructs three-sector general equilibrium models to investigate how public pollution abatement affects the skilled–unskilled wage inequality. In the basic model with full employment, we find that a higher degree of public pollution abatement will decrease the wage inequality if the intensity of skilled labor in the urban skilled sector is sufficiently large and expand or narrow down the wage gap if this intensity is sufficiently small. In the extended models, we consider other four cases, and obtain the results similar or dissimilar to that of the basic model.     

Gender wage gaps and economic crisis in Greece

ABSTRACT

We examine gender wage gap (GWG) in Greece for 2013, by using a survey data set. Our findings show first, that the unadjusted GWG is 15.3%, while European Commission reports a value of 15%. Secondly, we derive the ‘adjusted’ GWG, using the Oaxaca and Ransom (OR) and the Juhn, Murphy and Pierce (JMP) methods to be ranging from 10% to 13.6%. Thirdly, looking into the behaviour of the full population, we find a decreasing trend for the discrimination effects, an increasing trend for the residuals effects and a ‘random’ endowments effects while moving to higher deciles. These three effects are associated to the economic crisis 2008–2015. Fourthly, our findings do not show evidence of either a ‘glass ceiling’ effect or a ‘sticky floor’ effect. Finally, that there is strong evidence that investing in higher education reduces the wage discrimination between sexes.     

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.