Exchange rates and asymmetric shocks in small open economies

We study the stabilizing properties of exchange rates in five small open economies during to periods of floating exchange rates and inflation targeting. In the cases of Sweden and Canada, the nominal exchange rates behave in a stabilizing manner. Most exchange rate movements emanate from the exchange rate itself and are hence not responses to fundamental shocks. However, these non-fundamental shocks have only negligible effects on output and inflation. Our findings indicate that exchange rates display some stabilizing properties but can mainly be characterized as disconnected from the rest of the economy. We would like to thank Nils Gottfries and participants at seminars at Uppsala University and the Riksbank for helpful advice and useful comments. Post gratefully acknowledges financial support from Handelsbankens forskningsstiftelser.     

Capacity utilization and technology shocks in the US manufacturing sector

The ability of real business cycle models to generate reasonable aggregate fluctuations depends on the time series properties of technology shocks measured by the change of total factor productivity. Three specifications of a non‐parametric productivity analysis which correct to different degrees for variations of capacity utilization are compared in this article using data for three‐ and four‐digit US manufacturing industries during the years 1958–1996. The results show that correcting for utilization generally leads to substantially smaller technology shocks that are less strongly correlated with growth of output and hours. Moreover, the probability of technological regress is considerably lower after the correction.     

Permanent and transitory shocks in the presence of asymmetric error correction

This article highlights the potential importance of asymmetries in the loading vector of a set of cointegrated variables for the construction, analysis and interpretation of permanent and transitory shocks using impulse response functions. We derive an asymmetric version of the Permanent–Transitory decomposition suggested by Gonzalo and Ng (2001) and illustrate the potential importance of such asymmetries using the ‘cay’ data of Lettau and Ludvigson (2004).     

Uncertainty shocks and asymmetric dynamics in Korea: a non-linear approach

This study investigates the impact of uncertainty shocks on macroeconomic activity in Korea. For this purpose, a Smooth Transition VAR model is employed to document the state-dependent dynamics of two distinct types of uncertainty shocks, namely, financial market based and news-based. When non-linearity is allowed to play a role in our model, quantitatively very different asymmetric dynamics are observed. Following inflation targeting, the responses tend to be smoother and less pronounced. Our empirical results support the view that the link between uncertainty and macroeconomic activity is clear over both recessions and expansions. Furthermore, the impact of uncertainty shocks is more pronounced when economic activity is depressed especially after shocks originate from the financial market, and not from news-based policy uncertainty in Korea.     

A dynamic econometric model of Thailand manufacturing energy demand

The purpose of this article is to employ the dynamic translog framework to model inter-factor and inter-fuel energy demand for the Thai manufacturing sector. The Denny et al. (1981) and Lynk (1989) framework, which proposes a dynamic adjustment for capital stock is employed to motivate the estimated of factor demand and fuel share equations. Three factors: energy, labour and capital; and five fuel types: fuel oil, diesel oil, liquified petroleum gas (LPG), electricity, and coal and lignite; are examined. Regression diagnostics support the empirical specification. Numerous factor and fuel substitution possibilities are identified, with some policy implications described.     

International trade,technological shocks and spillovers in the labour market: a GVAR analysis of the US manufacturing sector

We empirically analyse the response of labour market related variables in the US manufacturing sector to various shocks, notably to trade openness and technology, as well as examining spillovers from industry-specific labour market shocks. The econometric approach involves an application of the recently developed Global Vector Autoregression methodology of Dées et al. (2007 Helbling, T, Jaumotte, F and Sommer, M. 2006. How has globalization affected inflation?. IMF World Economic Outlook, April: 97–134.  [Google Scholar]) to 12 manufacturing industries over the period 1977–2003. The framework allows us to analyse the response of a standard set of labour-market related variables (employment, real compensation, productivity and capital stock) to exogenous factors (a sector-specific measure of trade openness, a common technology and oil price shock), along with industry spillovers using specific measures of manufacturing-wide variables for each sector. Generalized impulse responses indicate that increased trade openness negatively affects real compensation, has negligible employment effects and leads to higher labour productivity. These impacts, however, are relatively weaker than those induced by technology shocks, with the latter positively and significantly affecting both real compensation and employment. There is also evidence of positive spillovers across industries from sector-specific employment and productivity shocks. Impact elasticities suggest strong intra-sectoral linkages for employment and capital stock formation, contrasting with weak linkages for what concerns real compensation and productivity.     

Adjustment of inputs and measurement of technical efficiency: A dynamic panel data analysis of the Egyptian manufacturing sectors

The purpose of this article is to construct a dynamic stochastic production frontier incorporating the sluggish adjustment of inputs, to measure the speed of adjustment of output, and to compare the technical efficiency estimates from this dynamic model to those from a static model. By assuming instantaneous adjustment of all inputs, a static model may underestimate technical efficiency of a production unit in the short-run. However, in this article I show that under the assumption of similar adjustment speed for all inputs, a linear partial adjustment scheme for output characterizes the dynamic production frontier. The dynamic frontier with time-invariant technical efficiency is estimated using the system GMM (generalized method of moments) estimator. Applying the model and estimation method on a panel data set spanning 9?years of data on private manufacturing establishments in Egypt, I find that (1) the speed of adjustment of output is significantly lower than unity, (2) the static model underestimates technical efficiency by 4.5 percentage points on average, and (3) the ranking of production units based on their technical efficiency measures changes when the lagged adjustment process of inputs is taken into account.     

Environmental impact of customs union agreement with EU on Turkey's trade in manufacturing industry

In this study, we analyse Turkey's manufacturing industry trade by estimating sectoral import and export demand equations for 1980–2000. The study aims to understand whether the trade in the manufacturing industry complies with pollution haven hypothesis, and whether the free trade environment provided by the customs union (CU) agreement altered the trade pattern of the clean and dirty industries. Results of our econometric models have shown that while CU positively affects the import demand, it does not have any significant impact on the export demand of Turkish manufacturing industry. In terms of the environmental impact, distinction between clean and dirty industries turns out to be significant for both import and export demand. In general, our findings suggest that both clean and dirty industries’ import demand increased during the study period. In terms of export demand, clean industries’ export demand declines whereas dirty industries’ export demand increases compared to the total demand.     

Self-insurance vs. self-financing: A welfare analysis of the persistence of shocks

We study the welfare cost of market incompleteness in a generalized Bewley model where idiosyncratic risk takes the form of entrepreneurial productivity shocks. Market incompleteness in our framework has two dimensions. First, in the Bewley tradition, only a limited set of instruments for consumption smoothing is available. Second, entrepreneurs? capital rental is subject to collateral constraints. As is well known, it is harder to self-insure against more persistent shocks, and the welfare cost of missing consumption insurance increases with shock persistence. On the other hand, with collateral constraints, an increase in shock persistence leads to better allocation of production factors through entrepreneurs? self-financing, and the welfare cost of imperfect capital rental markets decreases with shock persistence. The overall welfare cost of market incompleteness can be increasing, decreasing, or even non-monotone in shock persistence, depending on the relative strengths of its two components—the cost of missing insurance and the cost of imperfect capital markets.     

The impact of productivity and demand shocks on structural dynamics: Evidence from Austrian manufacturing

Based on Pasinetti's model of structural dynamics we develop an empirical identification strategy for aggregate and sectoral labor productivity and demand shocks in a structural vector autoregressive model with long-run restrictions. Impulse response analysis shows that we can distinguish four patterns of the effects of changes in demand and productivity growth on sectoral output growth. For some industries demand is indeed the factor driving sectoral growth. Labor productivity and demand shocks are closely associated with the growth rates of employment and output across industries. However, there is less correlation with entry and exit. This suggest that structural change within and between industries may have quite different determinants.     

Fractional cointegration analysis of EU convergence

Traditional cointegration tests do not provide strong evidence of convergence between EU countries. In this study, fractional cointegration analysis is used to test for convergence between EU members. Fractional cointegration between inflation and between long-term interest rates is found. The results indicate that there is nominal convergence, but that the equilibrium errors display long memory. Fractional cointegration analysis gives no evidence of real convergence in output.     

A dynamic analysis of expenditure patterns in rural India

Recent generalisations of the Linear Expenditure System have concentrated on its restrictive assumption of separable preferences but underplayed its equally restrictive assumption of linearity in income, i.e., constant marginal budget shares. This reflects the data base which has usually been long time series of disaggregated consumer expenditure data. Such generalisations are inappropriated for developing countries which rely on highly aggregated commodity expenditure data from budget surveys with more variation in income responses is introduced, variation in prices. A general procedure for non-linearising income but rather limited applied to some recent LES generalisations to generate still further geenralisations and then used to analyse rural India's expenditure behaviour. The results decisively support the suggested generalisation and, also, provide evidence in favour of dynamic behaviour and habit persistence on budget data.     

Contract length heterogeneity and the persistence of monetary shocks in a dynamic generalized Taylor economy

We develop the generalized Taylor economy (GTE) in which there are many sectors with overlapping contracts of different lengths. In economies with the same average contract length, monetary shocks will be more persistent when longer contracts are present. Using the Bils–Klenow distribution of contract lengths, we find that the corresponding GTE tracks the U.S. data well. When we choose a GTE with the same distribution of completed contract lengths as the Calvo, the economies behave in a similar manner.     

Coordination and price shocks: an empirical analysis

This paper outlines a new technique, which makes optimal control in a stochastic minimum variance framework computationally feasible. The new approach is then used to evaluate gains to policy coordination in the context of a macroeconometric model for the G-3. More specifically, we consider policy responses to a temporary price shock in a single country and in multi-country cases. The results show that coordination brings about a striking improvement in the overall control of inflation and a reduction in output costs.     

Structural shocks and dynamic elasticities in a long memory model of the US gasoline retail market

A structural multivariate long memory model of the US gasoline market is employed to disentangle structural shocks and to estimate the own-price elasticity of gasoline demand. Our main empirical findings are: (1) there is strong evidence of nonstationarity and mean reversion in the real price of gasoline and in gasoline consumption; (2) accounting for the degree of persistence present in the data is essential to assess the responses of these two variables to structural shocks; (3) the contributions of the different supply and demand shocks to fluctuations in the gasoline market vary across frequency ranges; and (4) long memory makes available an interesting range of convergent possibilities for gasoline demand elasticities. Our estimates suggest that after a change in prices, consumers undertake a few measures to reduce consumption in the short- and medium-run but are reluctant to implement major changes in their consumption habits.     

Technology clubs, R&D and growth patterns: Evidence from EU manufacturing

This paper investigates the forces driving output change in a panel of EU manufacturing industries. A flexible modeling strategy is adopted that accounts for: (i) inefficient use of resources and (ii) differences in the production technology across industries. With our model we are able to identify technical, efficiency, and input growth for endogenously determined technology clubs. Technology club membership is modeled as a function of R&D intensity. This framework allows us to explore the components of output growth in each club, technology spillovers and catch-up issues across industries and countries.     

A dynamic analysis of fiscal pressure and demographic transition

In this paper, the effects of demographic changes, particularly in the age structure of population, on government social expenditure is estimated. The results indicate that income elasticity of government social services is unitary in high income countries and above that level in low income countries, especially in education and welfare. The paper attempts also to forecast the pressure of these government outlays in four distinct countries characterized by different demographic parameters.     

Disaggregated approach to government spending shocks: a theoretical analysis

We calibrate a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model that features a transmission mechanism with different types of government spending, while the literature usually treats government spending as a homogenous compound. In this regard, we manage to distinguish between different types of government spending (namely: government investment, government wage component consumption and non-wage component consumption) where each type of spending has a varied role in the economy. The government wage increase has the largest positive effect both on private consumption and output by affecting the economy through the government production. This is a natural consequence of government production being complementary to private consumption in our model. Other two government spending types, namely government non-wage consumption and government investment, also have positive effects on output, whereas their responses on (private) consumption are mostly negative. These results provide an alternative explanation for the wide range of multipliers existing in the literature as our setup enables them to produce different effects on macroeconomic variables.     

A dynamic analysis of water footprint of Jinghe River basin

Water footprint in a region is defined as the volume of water needed for the production of goods and services consumed by the local people, Ecosystem services are a kind of important services, so ecological water use is one necessary component in water footprint. Water footprint is divided into green water footprint and blue water footprint but the former one is often ignored.In this paper waterJootprint includes blue water needed by agricultural irrigation, industrial and domestic water demand, and green water needed by crops, economic forests, livestock prochtcts, forestlalands and grasslands. The study calculates the footprint of the Jinghe River basin in 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2005 with quarto methods. Results of research show that water footprints reached 164.1 ×10^8m3, 175. 69 ×10^8m3 and 178. 45 ×10^8m3 respectively in 1990, 1995 and 2000 including that of ecological water use, but reached 77.68×10^8m3, 94.24×10^8m3, 92.92×10^8m3 and 111.36 ×10^8m3 respectively excluding that of ecological water use. Green water.footprint is much more than blue water footprint; thereby, green water plays an important role in economic development and ecological construction The dynamic change of water footprints shows that blue water use increases rapidly and that the ecological water use is occupied by economie and domestic water use. The change also shows that water use is transferred from primary industry to secondary industry In primary industry, it is transferred from crops farming to forestry, and animal agriculture. The factors impelling the change include development anticipation on econonomy; government policies, readjustment of the industrial structure, population growth, the raise of urbanization level, and structurul change of consumption, low level of waler-saving and poor ability of waste water treatment.With blue water use per unit, green water use per unit, blue water use structure and green water use structure, we analyzed the difference of the six ecologieal function districts of the Jinghe River