Offshoring and Reshoring: The Roles of Incomplete Contracts and Relative Bargaining Power

This paper demonstrates that an increase in bargaining power of Northern firms relative to that of their Southern contractors can trigger reshoring if the North-South wage differential is moderate, such that only industries with a high share of unskilled labor find outsourcing profitable. However, such an increase in Northern bargaining power can increase offshoring if the wage differential is so high that even industries with a low share of unskilled labor also offshore.     

Monetary policy,asset prices and consumption in China

This paper studies the wealth channel in China. Although the wealth channel has been found to be functioning in many advanced countries, its existence is yet to be explored in most emerging economies, also in China. In order to illuminate dynamics between monetary policy, asset prices and consumption, we use the structural vector autoregression method. The findings support the view that a loosening of China's monetary policy does indeed lead to higher asset prices. Furthermore, a positive shock to residential prices increases household consumption, while the role of stock prices seems to be small from the households’ point of view. Finally, we test the existence of the wealth channel more formally to find out whether those changes in asset prices that are caused by monetary policy are significant enough to increase consumption. In summary, the wealth channel remains weak but there are some signs of it via residential prices. The results are not that different from those attained for the advanced economies, where the size of the wealth channel has been found to be limited.     

PUNISHING THE POOR: A CRITIQUE OF MEANS-TESTED RETIREMENT BENEFITS

Means-tested retirement benefits create strong disincentives to work and to save prior to retirement. This article outlines the structure of means-tested benefits in the UK and the USA, and reviews the theoretical and empirical evidence of their incentive effects.     

Non‐wage benefits,costs of turnover and labour attachment

Like firms in established market economies, many Russian firms provide non‐wage benefits to their workers, such as housing, medical care or day care. This article explains the provision of benefits as a strategic choice for firms in the presence of labour and service market imperfections. Analysing unique survey data for 404 industrial establishments from 40 Russian regions, the authors provide strong evidence that non‐wage benefits are used by firms to attach workers and thereby reduce the costs of labour turnover in the face of tight labour markets. It is also shown that this attachment strategy works due to imperfections in the regional markets for social services.     

Equilibrium exchange rates in oil-exporting countries

We assess the determinants of equilibrium real exchange rates in a sample of oil-dependent countries. Our data cover OPEC countries from 1975 to 2005. Utilising pooled mean group and mean group estimators, we find that the price of oil has a clear, statistically significant effect on real exchange rates in our group of oil-producing countries. Higher oil price lead to appreciation of the real exchange rate. Elasticity of the real exchange rate with respect to the oil price is typically between 0.4 and 0.5, but may be even larger depending on the specification. Real per capita GDP, on the other hand, does not appear to have a clear effect on real exchange rate. This latter result contrasts starkly with many earlier papers on real exchange rate determination, emphasising the unique position of oil-dependent countries.

Optimal taxation and public provision for poverty reduction

The existing literature on optimal taxation typically assumes there exists a capacity to implement complex tax schemes, which is not necessarily the case for many developing countries. We examine the determinants of optimal redistributive policies in the context of a developing country that can only implement linear tax policies due to administrative reasons. Further, the reduction of poverty is typically the expressed goal of such countries, and this feature is also taken into account in our model. We derive the optimality conditions for linear income taxation, commodity taxation, and public provision of private and public goods for the poverty minimization case and compare the results to those derived under a general welfarist objective function. We also study the implications of informality on optimal redistributive policies for such countries. The exercise reveals non-trivial differences in optimal tax rules under the different assumptions.     

PENSIONS, FERTILITY AND FAMILIES

Public pay-as-you-go pension systems induce low fertility rates, which in turn contribute to the insolvency of those very systems. They have replaced the old-age security motive for having children, which is a major factor behind fertility in their absence. They also penalise fertility by externalising the contributions of children while leaving the costs of child-bearing unaffected. Fertility rates could be raised by moving towards personal savings schemes or re-linking pension benefits to fertility.