Social Security and the increasing longevity gap

Growth in overall life expectancy is straining the Social Security budget, and the gap in life expectancy between the rich and poor is widening. Motivated by these facts, this paper does four things. First, we develop a simple way to summarize the degree of progressivity in a Social Security system. Second, we show that growth in the life expectancy gap over the last few decades unwinds three-quarters of the progressivity of the Social Security system. Third, we develop simple reforms to Social Security that maintain the progressivity of the system and restore fiscal solvency. Fourth, we estimate the welfare effects of these potential reforms.     

Impact on Firm Liquidity Arising from Outsourcing Decisions as Evidenced by Off-Balance-Sheet Disclosures

International Advances in Economic Research - Based on transaction-cost and resource-based theories (and other approaches), there is an extensive literature on the range of factors that are viewed...     

Preventing motor vehicle crash injuries and deaths: science vs. folklore lessons from history

Abstract

Not long after the beginnings of motorization in the early 1900s, deaths and injuries from motor vehicle crashes became a problem in a number of high-income-countries (HIC)s, especially the United States. With the biggest problem the US led early efforts to address this issue, and for six decades these efforts were based on folklore (ie a body of widely held but false or unsubstantiated beliefs). They were not evaluated, but clearly were unsuccessful as crash deaths and injuries continued to rise. It was not until the 1970s that a broader range of countermeasures began to be adopted and was scientifically evaluated, and as a result, crash deaths and injuries declined. This history has important lessons today for many low-and-middle-income countries that have growing numbers of motor vehicle crash deaths and injuries, many of which are pedestrians and motorcyclists. This is because there continue to be advocates for many of the failed approaches (especially educational) that dominated the early efforts in HICs.     

From private label to co-branded credit card: an assessment of the impact of a change in value proposition over customer value perception and company value capture

Journal of Financial Services Marketing - Purpose: The aim of this paper is to evaluate the success of a value proposition over time, considering two aspects: customer’s perceived value and...     

Monetary Policy Implementation: Making Better and More Consistent Use of the Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet

Since December 2015, the Federal Reserve has operated a new “floor system” in which it brings about desired changes in its targeted federal funds rate by managing the interest rate it pays on bank reserves and other short‐term liabilities. The design of this new system reflects the tendency of Fed officials to view monetary policy as affecting the economy through Keynesian” interest rate channels. From this Keynesian perspective, policy actions that change the size of the balance sheet are seen as tools for influencing credit market conditions that operate in addition to and independently of the Fed's monetary policy stance. The alternative monetarist framework proposed by the author views monetary policy and its effects as operating through the interaction between money supply and demand. Use of this framework makes clear that, even under a floor system, monetary policy actions designed to affect the aggregate price level and the rate of inflation must be accompanied sooner or later by traditional open market operations that have implications for the size and composition of the Fed's balance sheet. Use of the monetarist framework also underscores the likelihood that the Fed, by paying interest on reserves, has unknowingly contributed to the restrictiveness of its own monetary policies since the financial crisis, a period during which inflation has run consistently below target. More generally, the monetarist framework downplays the importance of the zero lower interest rate bound and suggests that monetary policy could be conducted more effectively by adopting and adhering to a consistent, rule‐like manner during good times and bad.     

Entrepreneurship and knowledge spillovers from the public sector

A compelling body of research has found that investments in knowledge from other firms and universities spill over to enhance the performance of entrepreneurial firms. This literature has shown that firm performance is positively related to investments in new knowledge by other firms and research universities. This paper addresses a gap in the literature by positing that public sector knowledge is also conducive to enhancing performance by knowledge intensive entrepreneurial (KIE) firms. Our findings suggest that the public sector provides a fertile source of knowledge for enhancing KIE firm performance.

     

Dilip M. Nachane: Critique of the new consensus macroeconomics and implications for India

Journal of Quantitative Economics -     

Volatilidad en los ingresos y en el mercado de trabajo de los jóvenes en Europa

Los autores ofrecen nuevos datos empíricos sobre la volatilidad en los ingresos y en el mercado de trabajo (incluyendo entradas y salidas del empleo) de los jóvenes en Europa durante la Gran Recesión. Los datos de EU‐SILC para el periodo 2004–2013 revelan grandes disparidades al respecto entre los países europeos. La Gran Recesión incrementó la volatilidad entre los jóvenes. Mediante un ejercicio de descomposición de la varianza se observa una mayor rotación laboral en el sur de Europa. Según un modelo de efectos fijos, un mayor nivel de prestaciones de desempleo y de protección del empleo se asocia con una reducción de la volatilidad.     

The more others care,the more you share? – Social contagion as a stardom trigger of social media superstars –

Emerging superstars on social media platforms reshape the media landscape. This research analyses social contagion as a stardom trigger of social media superstars (SMS). We argue that in addition to serving as a quality indicator, the number of observed consumers of SMS performances also indicates the suitability of discussing the SMS performances with others. We experimentally manipulated the number of previous views of a YouTube video and find that a high number of previous views significantly increases the perceived quality and the video’s discussion suitability even when holding all objective video characteristics constant. We discuss implications for aspiring SMS and (online) marketers.     

Financial Instruments and Promotional Banking in the EU are Growing — But is this Justified?

Institutions and the European Investment Bank are at the forefront of EU investment policy. Their role is expanding and it is now a widely-held position that an improvement in the economy will not eliminate the need for their intervention. The proposals for the 2021–2027 MFF launch more financial instruments and present ‘InvestEU’ as a larger more powerful version of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI). However, promotional banking is often misunderstood and so is the actual size of promotional banking in Europe in which InvestEU will operate.