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.     

Droughts,conflict, and the African slave trade

Historians have frequently suggested that droughts helped facilitate the African slave trade. By introducing a previously unused dataset on 19th century rainfall levels in Africa, I provide the first empirical examination of this hypothesis. I find a strong negative relationship between rainfall shocks and the number of slaves exported from a given region. I also find that extreme temperature shocks in either direction increase slave exports. Building on the detailed qualitative work of Dias (1981), Miller (1982), and others, I provide quantitative evidence for interethnic group conflict and more localized forms of violence being likely mechanisms through which these additional slaves were acquired. These results contribute to our understanding of the underlying economic conditions of the African slave trade.     

Effects of outside directors on firms’ investments and performance: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in Japan

This study presents evidence on the impact of outside directors on firms’ investment behavior and performance with a focus on the recent quasi-natural experiment that rapidly increased the number of outside directors in listed firms. Using a panel of Japanese firms, we compare listed and unlisted firms and conduct instrumental variable estimations to examine causal relationships. The results indicate that the rapid increase in the number of outside directors among listed firms did not promote active investments or risk-taking behavior. In addition, it had no significant impacts on the profitability and productivity of the firms.     

Does violence against civilians depress voter turnout? Evidence from Bosnia and Herzegovina

We investigate the effect of violence against civilians on voting. Using data from elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1990 and 2014 and exploiting variation in war intensity across municipalities, we estimate a negative impact on voter turnout. The effect is stable and persistent over twenty years after the war resolution. Our results are robust to the inclusion of pre- and post-war socioeconomic and political characteristics, to instrumental variable estimations based on terrain ruggedness, and to restricting the sample to voters who were too young to be selectively targeted. Distinguishing between civilian and military victims, we show that violence against civilians drives the negative effect. Next, we examine different mediating mechanisms including forced migration and demographic selection, ethnic composition, physical capital damage, post-conflict reconstruction, and labor market conditions. Our results support the hypothesis that violence affects voting through a “moral” dis-utility from showing allegiance to politics and the society by casting a vote. Using survey data, we show that respondents in more affected municipalities report lower generalized trust, trust in institutions, and voting.     

Do currency undervaluations affect the impact of inflation on growth?

In this paper, we investigate how the level of currency undervaluations affects the effect of inflation on growth in a sample of 62 countries over the 1980–2015 period. While previous studies find a positive effect of an undervalued currency, we show that higher currency undervaluations reinforce the contractionary effect of inflation on growth. As an undervalued currency is associated with supplementary inflation pressures arising from a cost-push inflation phenomenon and economy overheating, growth is thus penalized. This result is shown to be robust to the exclusion of currency crises episodes from our sample, and dependent of the development level of countries. Specifically, it holds in the case of emerging countries, but not for developing economies. Consequently, policies based on undervaluations should not be encouraged for emerging economies as they tend to reinforce the contractionary effect of inflation on growth.     

Tariff Pass-through in Wholesaling: Evidence from Firm-level Data in Japan✰

Tariff pass-through is critical for considering the benefits of trade liberalization, the beneficiaries, and the extent. This study empirically examines the tariff pass-through in wholesaling through the wholesale firm-level data in Japan. In particular, the study focuses on wholesalers’ margin ratio, that is, (sales – procurements) / sales. We address the endogeneity concerns on the measurement errors of the study variables of margin ratio and tariffs. Consequently, the study found that importing wholesalers significantly raised their margin ratio against tariff reduction. On average, a 1 percentage point reduction of tariffs raised the margin ratio by approximately 0.25 percentage point. This rise is equivalent to that of sales prices to procurement prices by about 0.34 %, indicating that Japanese wholesalers capture one-third of the tariff rent. However, the study also found that a tariff reduction lowers the margin ratio of wholesalers who procure their products from domestic producers.     

消费国际化趋势下的中国对策

随着我国经济发展和融入全球化水平提升,国际影响力不断增强,消费升级进程推进,我国消费市场主体、客体和载体的国际化特征渐趋明显。本文基于对消费国际化理论的回顾,对消费国际化的内涵进行了界定,在总结当前我国消费国际化的特征及所面临的问题基础上,提出了丰富中高端商品供给、优化进口商品消费环境、健全免退税服务体系、推动扩大入境旅游等一系列政策建议。本文认为,当前我国消费市场主体、客体和载体等各要素的国内外融合程度仍然有待提升,我们应该顺应消费国际化发展趋势,推动我国消费升级朝着更高层次发展。     

Fixed costs and long-lived investments

Fixed costs models are difficult to analyze because they feature non-degenerate, time-varying distributions of capital across firms. If investments are sufficiently long-lived however then the cross-sectional distribution of capital holdings has virtually no bearing on the equilibrium and the aggregate behavior of fixed-cost models is essentially identical to neoclassical models. The findings are due to a near infinite elasticity of investment timing for long-lived investments – a feature shared by fixed-cost models and neoclassical models. “Irrelevance results” found in numerical studies of fixed-cost models are not parametric special cases but instead are fundamental properties of models with long-lived investment goods.     

To what extent do financing constraints affect Chinese firms' innovation activities?

We investigate the extent to which financing constraints affect the innovation activities of over 120,000 mainly unlisted Chinese firms over the period 2000–2007. Based on a variety of specifications and estimation methods, we document that Chinese firms' innovation activities are constrained by the availability of internal finance. Specifically, private firms suffer the most, followed by foreign firms, while state-owned and collective enterprises are the least constrained. Moreover, the availability of internal finance represents a particularly binding constraint on the innovation activities of small firms, located in the coastal provinces, with low political affiliation, and fewer state shares, as well as for sole proprietorship firms.     

Funding liquidity risk and the low-volatility anomaly: Evidence from the Taiwan stock market

We investigate whether the funding liquidity risk to institutional investors influences the negative relation between expected returns and variance (the ‘‘Low-volatility anomaly’’). With the Taiwan stock market as a setting, we implement a multivariate Markov switching model and use the funding liquidity risk to model the time-varying transition probabilities of the regime-switching process to capture changes in the funding liquidity risk regime. Our evidence documents that the low-volatility anomaly is most pronounced when there is high funding liquidity risk. When there is low funding liquidity risk, however, the low-volatility anomaly has a significant reversal. These results imply that the increased funding liquidity risk due to financial shock transmitted from parent banks is associated with higher selling pressure on institutional investors’ high-volatility stocks, leading to the low-volatility anomaly.