Dynamic Costs of the Draft

Abstract. We propose a dynamic general‐equilibrium model with human capital accumulation to evaluate the economic consequences of compulsory services (such as military draft or social work). Our analysis identifies a so far ignored dynamic cost arising from distortions in time allocation over the life cycle. We provide conservative estimates for the excess burden that arises when the government relies on forced labor rather than on income taxation to finance public expenditures. Our results suggest that eliminating the draft could produce considerable dynamic gains, both in terms of GDP and lifetime utility.     

Are Public and Private Social Expenditures Complementary?

Most analyses of social protection are focussed on public arrangements. However, social effort is not restricted to the public domain; all kinds of private arrangements can be substitutes to public programs. OECD data indicate that accounting for private social benefits has an equalising effect on levels of social effort across a number of countries. This suggests complementarity between public and private social expenditures. But their distributional effects differ. Using cross-country data, we find a negative relationship between net public social expenditures and income inequality, but a positive relationship between net private social expenditures and income inequality. We conclude that changes in the public/private mix in the provision of social protection may affect the redistributive impact of the welfare state.Part of Leiden Social Security Incidence Project. Revised version of a paper presented at the 57th International Atlantic Economic Conference, Lisbon, Portugal (March 10–14, 2004), and at the 60th Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance, Milan, Italy (August 23–26, 2004). The usual disclaimer applies.     

Spurious regression: A higher-order problem

This paper investigates solving the spurious regression problem using an autocorrelation correction. It is shown that if the relevant data generation processes contain higher-order terms, this solution is not as effective as in the first-order case.     

Alternative unit root testing strategies using the Fourier approximation

Two alternatives to  and  Fourier unit root testing strategy, which incorporates pretesting for nonlinearity, are considered. One is based on the union of rejection (UR) approach, and the other is a hybrid strategy that combines the UR approach with the use of extra information from nonlinearity pretesting. Simulation results show that the two proposed strategies, especially the hybrid, frequently outperform the original pretesting strategy.     

Inequality, cooperation, and growth: An experimental study

In a three player dynamic public goods experiment, social output today determines production possibilities tomorrow. In each period, players choose to sabotage, to cooperate, or to play best response. Sabotage harms social output and growth. Mutual cooperation maximises both. The property rights to social output are distributed unequally. Extent and skew of inequality are varied. We observe equilibrium play in most cases. There is also substantial cooperation, but little sabotage. Our exogenous variations of inequality are neutral to growth, neither negatively correlated to cooperation, nor positively correlated to sabotage. The neutrality result is shown to be sensitive to the dynamic nature of the employed game.     

On selective indirect tax reform in developing countries

The current consensus on indirect tax reform in developing countries favors a reduction in trade taxes with an increase in VAT to raise revenue. The theoretical results on selective reform that underlie this consensus are, however, derived from partial models that ignore the existence of an informal economy. Once the incomplete coverage of VAT due to an informal economy is acknowledged, we show that, contrary to the current consensus, the standard revenue-neutral selective reform of trade taxes and VAT reduces welfare under plausible conditions. Moreover, a VAT base broadening with a revenue-neutral reduction in trade taxes may also reduce welfare. The results raise serious doubts about the wisdom of the indirect tax reform policies pursued by a large number of developing countries.     

The persistence in real exchange rate: Evidence from East Asian countries

In this article, we examine the degree of persistence in monthly real exchange rate of six East Asian countries in relation to their two major trading partners, the United States and Japan, to study the validity of PPP for the 1976:01–2009:03 period. To investigate the persistency in real exchange rate series, we use sum of the autoregressive (AR) coefficients and the confidence interval for it using grid-bootstrap procedure recently developed by Hansen (1999). We have two findings: first, we find evidence for high persistency in real exchange rate in terms of the Japanese yen for five countries and for four countries in terms of the US dollar the for the full and pre-crisis sample periods. Second, for the post-crisis period, the presence of low persistency in real exchange rate supports PPP for three countries in terms of the Japanese yen and five countries in terms of the US dollar. These findings indicate that real exchange rate series of five East Asian countries are mean-revert based on their exchange rate policies and East Asian countries can form a currency union.     

Exchange rate regime verification: An alternative method of testing for regime changes

This work proposes a change in persistence test for identifying de facto exchange rate regime changes. The results from 25 African countries show that this approach is able to identify some regime changes not captured by existing methods.     

How far from the Euro Area? Measuring convergence of inflation rates in Eastern Europe

We present a common factor framework of convergence which we implement using principal components analysis. We apply this technique to a dataset of monthly inflation rates of EMU and the Eastern European New Member Countries (NMC) over 1996–2007. In the earlier years, the NMC rates moved independently from an average of the three best performing countries over the past twelve months, while they moved somewhat closer in line with them in the later years. Looking at the sample of the EMU and NMC countries as a whole, there is evidence of a formation of convergence clubs across the two groups.     

Long-run purchasing power parity with asymmetric adjustment: Further evidence from nine transition countries

In this study, we applied a threshold cointegration test to investigate the properties of asymmetric adjustment on long-run purchasing power parity (PPP) in nine transition countries between January 1995 and December 2008. Although there was strong evidence of long-run PPP for these nine transition countries (i.e., Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Russia), the adjustment mechanism was asymmetric. These results have important policy implications for the nine transition countries included in the study.     

Do real exchange rates really follow threshold autoregressive or exponential smooth transition autoregressive models?

Nonlinear models, especially threshold autoregressive [TAR] and exponential smooth transition autoregressive [ESTAR] classes, are widely applied for modeling real exchange rates in order to examine the validity of purchasing power parity [PPP]. Even though the nonlinear models are theoretically well-motivated, some of the recent findings cast doubts on their relevance for real exchange rates. In particular, the nonlinear models do not necessarily yield improved out-of-sample forecasts over linear models and add little value in resolving the well-documented PPP puzzle. Utilizing a nonparametric entropy measure of dependence proposed by Granger et al. (2004), we show, in this study, that the real exchange rates from four major countries had exhibited quite strong nonlinear serial dependence, which linear autoregressive models fail to replicate. Furthermore, the nonlinear TAR and ESTAR models estimated for the real exchange rates also have some difficulty in generating significant serial dependence structure actually observed in the data. Overall, other nonlinear models than the currently entertained TAR and ESTAR should be considered to study the dynamics of the real exchange rates.     

Nonlinear adjustment in the real dollar–euro exchange rate: The role of the productivity differential as a fundamental

In this paper we analyze the influence of productivity differentials in the dynamics of the real dollar–euro exchange rate. Using nonlinear procedures for the estimation and testing of ESTAR models during the period 1970–2009 we find that the dollar–euro real exchange rate shows nonlinear mean reversion towards the fundamentals represented by the productivity differential. In addition, we provide evidence about the ability of this variable to capture the overvaluation and undervaluation of the dollar against the euro.     

New trade theory,non-price competitiveness and export performance

This paper develops a demand function for Greece's exports of manufactures according to New Trade Theory. Non-price competitiveness plays a vital role in explaining export performance and failure to include it in the export equation may lead to mis-specification error. Foreign income has a moderately high effect on exports in the long run and no effect in the short run. Exports are also sensitive to domestic and competitors' prices in the long run, but cost and price competitiveness elasticities are close to one, indicating that Greek exporters have some ability to compete on the basis of prices.     

Do foreigners replace native immigrants? A panel cointegration analysis of internal migration in Italy

This paper examines the impact of the immigration of foreigners on domestic labor mobility. Since David Card's seminal study on the regional labor market impact of the Mariel Boatlift it is controversial whether domestic labor mobility equilibrates economic conditions across regions. However, there is little or no evidence that natives leave destinations where migrants tend to cluster. In this paper we reconcile the existing evidence by taking another route: we analyze whether the immigration of foreigners replaces domestic mobility from poor to rich regions. We focus on Italy, which is characterized by large North-South wage and unemployment differentials, and apply panel cointegration methods. The main finding is that, conditional on unemployment and wage differentials, the presence of foreign workers in the labor force of the destination regions discourages internal labor mobility significantly. As a consequence, spatial correlation studies which use the variance of the foreigner share across regions for identifying the wage and employment effects of immigration, tend to understate the actual impact of foreign immigration.