Does tighter environmental policy lead to a comparative advantage in less polluting goods?

A two-factor model is developed to analyze the effects of environmentalpolicy on patterns of comparative advantage. A pollution taxaffects goods' prices via: (1) the tax burdens on each good,which depend on their respective polluting tendencies; and (2)changes in factor returns due to increased abatement activity.The good intensive in the factor whose returns have risen willtend to face a price increase, ceteris paribus. The net outcomedepends on both effects. A higher tax will not always raise(lower) the autarky price of the more (less) polluting good.Therefore a country with the higher (lower) tax does not alwayshave a comparative advantage in the less (more) polluting good.     

Fiscal policy and growth forecasts in the EU: are official forecasters still misestimating fiscal multipliers?

Review of World Economics - Blanchard and Leigh (Am Econ Rev 103(3):117–120, 2013; IMF Econ Rev 62(2):179–212, 2014) find fiscal multipliers to be underestimated in the EU in the deep...     

Is there a trade-off between free capital mobility,financial stability and fiscal policy flexibility in the EMU?

The recent dynamics characterizing the Eurozone economy suggest the existence of a new policy trilemma faced by its member countries. According to this policy trilemma, there is a trade-off between free capital mobility, financial stability and fiscal policy flexibility. In this paper, we analyze the foundations of such a trade-off and, based on the data for 11 Eurozone countries, present an empirical investigation on the existence of the trilemma. The results highlight the existence of the trade-off, with some differences between member countries. The existence of this trilemma in the Eurozone provides arguments for implementing centralized financial supervision together with fiscal and monetary reforms that should strengthen the currency union.     

Trade policy and industrial policy in China: What motivates public authorities to apply restrictions on exports?

This paper investigates the motives behind China's fiscal policy targeting exports. It relies on detailed data at the product level over the period 2002–2012. We analyze two major export fiscal instruments: export tax and export VAT rebate. Our results suggest that while pursuing many objectives simultaneously, Chinese policy used the two instruments in a complementary way with the aim of achieving their industrial policy and strategic objectives. Some are officially stated objectives such as promoting technology or environmental protection, while others do not appear in official documents, such as subsidizing downstream sectors. We also observed that China managed these instruments dynamically to address temporary shocks, for example to temper rising food price or to support strategic sectors sensitive to price competitiveness in the middle of the financial crisis.     

Fiscal policy in central and Eastern Europe: what happened in the run-up to EU accession?

This paper analyses the evolution of fiscal policy in central and eastern European countries during the EU accession process, testing for country and time specific effects. This is done by constructing Taylor-type policy rules and by calculating three measures of fiscal stance. A key finding is that the differences across countries are more significant than those across time. Baltic countries tended to have had tighter fiscal policy which responded to the output gap, larger central European countries had more lax (and increasingly lax) fiscal policies which were unresponsive to the output gap. These differences correlate closely with cross-country differences in exchange rate regimes and no link is found to either spending composition or political variables. Taken together the results suggest that the exchange rate regime is by far the most significant determinant of fiscal performance. These results suggest that the “soft power” of the prospect of EU entry did not act as a spur to greater fiscal discipline and that higher budget deficits in recent years cannot be blamed on costs of accession.

Does central bank communication really lead to better forecasts of policy decisions? New evidence based on a Taylor rule model for the ECB

Nowadays, it is widely believed that greater disclosure and clarity over policy may lead to greater predictability of central bank actions. We examine whether communication by the European Central Bank (ECB) adds information compared to the information provided by a Taylor rule model in which real-time expected inflation and output growth are used. We use five indicators of ECB communication that are all based on the ECB President’s introductory statement at the press conference following an ECB policy meeting. Our results suggest that even though the indicators are sometimes quite different from one another, they add information that helps predict the next policy decision of the ECB. Furthermore, also when the interbank rate is included in our Taylor rule model, the ECB communication indicators remain significant.     

Do trade and investment agreements lead to more FDI? Accounting for key provisions inside the black box

The previous literature provides a highly ambiguous picture on the impact of trade and investment agreements on FDI. Most empirical studies ignore the actual content of BITs and RTAs, treating them as “black boxes”, despite the diversity of investment provisions constituting the essence of these agreements. We overcome this serious limitation by analyzing the impact of modalities on the admission of FDI and dispute settlement mechanisms in both RTAs and BITs on bilateral FDI flows between 1978 and 2004. We find that FDI reacts positively to RTAs only if they offer liberal admission rules. Dispute settlement provisions play a minor role. While RTAs without strong investment provisions may even discourage FDI, the reactions to BITs are less discriminate with foreign investors responding favourably to the mere existence of BITs.     

Farm Strategy,Self-Selection and Productivity: Can Small Farming Groups Offer Production Benefits to Farmers in Post-Socialist Romania?

This paper addresses two questions: why are Romanian farmers continuing to place land in cooperative forms of farming when theory suggests that private farming is more productive and, are there efficiency gains to be had from cooperative farming endeavors? Results from an econometric selection model suggest that smaller, endogenously developed farming cooperatives, such as family societies, provide benefits over private farming strategies under certain conditions. This paper questions the wholesale rejection of cooperation around production and challenges policy to move away from the typically dichotomized presentation of agrarian structure as being a trade off between private small-scale farming and large-scale collective farming.