Market Structure Dynamics in Indian Industry

Can changes in industry structure be characterized by movements towards a long-run concentration ratio (CR)? This paper estimates an error correction model for 33 industries in India for the period 1974–85, using nonlinear estimation methods. The results indicate that structural change in India is composed both of significant changes towards the long-run CR and of significant changes of the long-run CR. The adjustment towards the long-run CR seems to be faster in India than in most Western studies. In spite of this, it is below 0.5 in most industries, indicating that even after 11 years, all the difference between actual and long-run CRs is not eroded and ‘excess’ market shares persist in most industries. Across industries, speeds of adjustment are higher in industries with high profit margins and lower in industries which are reserved for the public sector.     

Fractional cointegration,low frequency dynamics and long-run purchasing power parity: an analysis of the Australian dollar over its recent float

A relatively new but generalized concept of fractional cointegration is applied to shed some light on the validity of purchasing power parity (PPP) as a long-run equilibrium condition, by examining the long-run relationship between quarterly consumer price indices and bilateral exchange rates of the Australian dollar and seven major OECD trading partners, over Australia's recent float. The paper demonstrates that relaxing the condition that the residual from the cointegration equation must be a I(0) process, provides a wide range of cases of parity-reversion with processes that are CI(1,d) with 0 < d < 1. Findings tend to suggest that, while standard tests of cointegration fail to support cointegration between nominal exchange rates, domestic and foreign prices, and thus the empirical favour for PPP as a long-run phenomenon, the fractional cointegration analysis permits deviations from equilibrium to follow a fractionally integrated process and hence captures a much wider class of parity or mean-reversion behaviour. Results are mainly supportive of long-run PPP. Furthermore, an analysis of the short-run dynamics propelling the long-run relationship (through a VECM) reveals that domestic prices are consistently the initial receptor of an exogenous shock to the equilibrium and the long-run equilibrium is restored through the short-run adjustment of the nominal exchange rates. These findings are shown to hold clear policy implications.     

Purchasing power parity in the short and long run: a reappraisal of the post-1973 evidence

In this paper, an attempt is made to separate the short-run and long-run aspects of the purchasing power parity (PPP) relationship, using the techniques of band-spectral regression and cointegration for eight industrialized countries. The long-run PPP is first tested for all the eight countries, with reference to their nominal bilateral exchange rates vis-à-visthe US dollar. For five European currencies, the analysis is repeated with respect to the Deutschmark, with a separate consideration of the post-EMS period. In the concluding sections, possible reasons for PPP deviations are examined.     

A common trends model of UK core inflation

In this paper the long-run trend in RPI inflation (core inflation) for the UK over the 1961–1997 period is estimated within the framework of a multivariate common trends model which extends the bivariate VAR approach of Quah and Vahey (1995). In this context core inflation is directly linked to money and wage growth and interpreted as the long-run forecast of inflation from a small-scale, cointegrated macroeconomic system. First version received: September 1999/Final version received: October 2001 RID="*" ID="*"  We thank two anonymous referees for many helpful comments and suggestions. Work on this paper was partially conducted when C. Morana was at Heriot-Watt University.     

The P* model and Austrian prices

In theP ^* model the price level is determined by the money stock per unit of potential out-put and the long-run equilibrium level of the velocity of money. This article applies this model to Austria. Problems in identifying permanent shocks to potential output and/or velocity lead to the rejection of such models of the price level, but their first-difference version is not so suspect. While evidence is found of a long-run relationship between Austria inflation and money growth, even the first-difference version of theP ^* model is rejected for Austria. Since Austria is a small economy, closely tied to Germany, the article also investigates whether Austrian prices are tied to a GermanP ^* measure. This hypothesis is also rejected, but there is a statistically-significant long-run relationship between Austrian and German inflation. Moreover, Austrian money growth remains significant even in this relationship.This article was written while the author was a Visiting Scholar at the Austrian National Bank. The author is indebted to Fritz Breuss, W. Jahnke, and Dieter Proske for help in obtaining the data used here, and for useful discussions about the data, relevant theoretical issues and results. The comments of the referees on an earlier version are also gratefully acknowledged. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of the Austrian National Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.     

Data-dependent selection of the lag truncation parameter in unit root tests of the Phillips-Perron type

The Andrews (Econometrica, 1991, 59, 817–858) plug-in method of heteroscedastic and autocovariance consistent covariance matrix estimation is used to construct estimators of the long-run variance parameter for use in Phillips-Perron unit root tests. This allows the lag truncation parameter to be data dependent. Monte Carlo size and power estimates are obtained suggesting that this apparently natural approach does not provide significant improvements in test performance.     

Monetary policy and dividend growth in Germany: long-run structural modelling versus bounds testing approach

This study examines the long-run relationship between monetary policy and dividend growth in Germany. For this purpose, cointegration is tested for between both variables in the period 1974 to 2003. However, problems related to spurious regression arise from the mixed order of integration of the series used, from mutual causation between the variables and from the lack of a long-run relationship among the variables of the model. These problems are addressed by applying the bounds testing approach to cointegration in addition to a more standard long-run structural modelling approach. In principle, both procedures are capable of dealing with the controversial issue of the exogeneity of monetary policy vis-à-vis dividend growth. However, the structural modelling approach still leaves a certain degree of uncertainty about the integration properties of the interest rate and the dividend growth. Hence, one feels legitimized to refer to the bounds testing procedure and to conclude that in the longer term short-term rates drive stock returns but not vice versa.     

Empirical evidence on the long-run neutrality hypothesis using low-frequency international data

We use the Backus and Kehoe (American Economic Review, 1992, 82, 864–888) long, low-frequency data on real GNP/GDP, prices, and money for Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States to examine the long-run neutrality proposition. In doing so, we apply the Fisher and Seater (American Economic Review, 1993, 83, 402–415) non-structural methodology, paying explicit attention to the univariate time-series properties of the variables. We conclude that the data are generally supportive of the quantity-theoretic proposition that money is long-run neutral.     

Reputation with observed actions

Summary A single long-run player plays a fixed stage game (simultaneous orsequential move) against an infinite sequence of short-run opponents that play only once but can observe all past realized actions. Assuming that the probability distributions over types of long and short-run players have full support, we show that the long-run player can always establish a reputation for theStackelberg strategy and is therefore guaranteed almost his Stackelberg payoff in all Nash equilibria of the repeated game.The financial support of the National Science Foundation, Grant SES 90-7999, and of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche is gratefully acknowledged. I wish to thank David Levine, Wolfgang Pesendorfer and Seminar Participants at UCLA, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and University of Naples for useful discussions and suggestions.     

The inflationary bias of real uncertainty and the harmonic Fisher equation

Summary. We argue that real uncertainty itself causes long-run nominal inflation. Consider an infinite horizon cash-in-advance economy with a representative agent and real uncertainty, modeled by independent, identically distributed endowments. Suppose the central bank fixes the nominal rate of interest. We show that the equilibrium long-run rate of inflation is strictly higher, on almost every path of endowment realizations, than it would be if the endowments were constant.Indeed, we present an explicit formula for the long-run rate of inflation, based on the famous Fisher equation. The Fisher equation says the short-run rate of inflation should equal the nominal rate of interest less the real rate of interest. The long-run Fisher equation for our stochastic economy is similar, but with the rate of inflation replaced by the harmonic mean of the growth rate of money.Received: 25 February 2005, Revised: 26 May 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: C7, C73, D81, E41, E58.An earlier version of this paper “Inflationary Bias in a Simple Stochastic Economy,” as a 2001 Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper No. 1333.     

Choice of currency basket weights and its implications on trade balance

This paper seeks to find an optimal choice of currency basket weights for emerging economies that peg their currencies to a currency basket, and to examine the long-run relationship between the real exchange rates of a group of trading partners. A general equilibrium model is set up to establish an optimal set of currency basket weights, coupled with the choice of fiscal policy, to simultaneously stabilize trade balance and aggregate price level of an economy. This optimal set of weights is a weighted average of two sets of weights; each targets at one policy goal (stabilizing either balance of trade or aggregate price level) at a time. Empirical studies including vector autoregression (VAR) analysis and cointegration analysis on the long-run relationship between the Thai baht and the real exchange rates of its major trading partners are presented.     

Reconsidering the Impact of the Environment on Long-run Growth when Pollution Influences Health and Agents have a Finite-lifetime

Using an overlapping generation model à la Blanchard (1985, J Polit Econ 93:223–247) with human capital accumulation, we demonstrate that the influence of the environment on optimal growth in the long-run may be explained by the detrimental effect of pollution on life expectancy. We also show that, in such a case, greener preferences are growth- and welfare-improving in the long-run even if the ability of the agents to learn is independent of pollution and utility is additively separable. Finally, we establish that a minimum environmental policy is required to obtain a sustainable equilibrium in the market economy and that it is possible to implement a win–win environmental policy.     

The Great Leap Forward, Economic Reforms, and the Unit Root Hypothesis: Testing for Breaking Trend Functions in China''s GDP Data

This paper has two related objectives. The first is to evaluate empirically whether annual data for China's GDP and its sectoral components from 1952 to 1998 can be modeled more accurately as a stationary process around a breaking trend function as opposed to a unit-root process. The second is to identify the long-run growth path of the Chinese economy and shocks that are big enough to have altered the path. The conclusion that China's major output time series are trend stationary with structural breaks has significant implications for the government in policy decisions for long-run growth and short-run stabilization. It also has implications for modeling comovements between output variables and other macroeconomic variables in cointegration analysis of the Chinese economy.J. Comp. Econom., December 2000, 28(4), pp. 814–827. Department of Commerce, Massey University (Albany), Auckland, New Zealand.     

Does the exchange rate matter to bilateral trade between Korea and Japan? Evidence from commodity trade data

This study examines the short- and long-run effects of exchange rate changes on trade flows in the context of disaggregating industry data of bilateral trade between Korea and Japan. For this purpose, an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach is used. Results show that Korea's exports and imports are relatively sensitive to the bilateral exchange rate in the short-run, but less responsive in the long-run. It is also found that income in the two countries has significant impacts on the bilateral trade flows in both the short- and long-run. Finally, exchange rate uncertainty and Japanese FDI to Korea are found to have little impacts on Korea's trade with Japan in the short- and long-run.     

Rapid evolution under inertia

This paper demonstrates that inertia driven by switching costs leads to more rapid evolution in a class of games that includes m×m pure coordination games. Under the best-response dynamic and a fixed rate of mutation, the expected waiting time to reach long-run equilibrium is of lower order in the presence of switching costs, due to the creation of new absorbing states that allow Ellison's [Ellison, G., 2000. Basins of attraction, long-run stochastic stability, and the speed of step-by-step evolution. Rev. Econ. Stud. 67, 17–45] “step-by-step” evolution to occur.     

Breaking Trend Functions in Real Exchange Rates: Evidence from Seventeen OECD Countries

This paper tests for unit roots in dollar-based and DM-based real exchange rates using quarterly data (from 1957:i to 1995:iv) for seventeen OECD countries. The results show that the unit root hypothesis cannot be rejected even if allowance is made for the possibility of a one-time change in the mean of the series at an unknown point in time. This is evidence against the hypothesis of absolute long-run purchasing power parity over this period.     

Explaining local manufacturing growth in Chile: the advantages of sectoral diversity

This article investigates whether the agglomeration of economic activity in regional clusters affects long-run manufacturing Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth in an emerging market context. We explore a large firm-level panel dataset for Chile during a period characterized by high growth rates and rising regional income inequality (1992–2004). Our findings are clear-cut. Locations with greater concentration of a particular sector have not experienced faster TFP growth during this period. Rather, local sector diversity was associated with higher long-run TFP growth. However, there is no evidence that the diversity effect was driven by the local interaction with a set of suppliers and/or clients. We interpret this as evidence that agglomeration economies are driven by other factors such as the sharing of access to specialized inputs not provided solely by a single sector, e.g. skills or financing.     

σ: The long and short of it

Research on the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor – σ – has been proceeding for 75 years. While there is clearly a strong case for the importance of σ in the analysis of growth and other economic issues, much less agreement exists on the value of σ. This paper offers some perspectives on prior estimates of σ, emphasizing the fundamental tension between the short-run data that are available and the long-run parameter that is required. Estimates of σ based on various short-run and long-run models are discussed and, while the estimates range widely, the weight of the evidence suggests a value of σ in the range of 0.40–0.60. There is little evidence to sustain the assumption of a Cobb–Douglas production function.     

Firms facing new institutions: transactional governance in Romania

How do firms respond to new institutions? This question is addressed by analyzing the determinants of firms' strategies on transactional governance, using data from a Romanian survey. Strategy variables are regressed on factors that should determine behavior according to agency and transaction-cost theories. The results suggest that strategies do not reflect the long-run efficiency considerations emphasized by theory. Behavior reflects peculiarities of transition; history, ownership, and state relations are more important in determining responses to institutions. Firms use institutions but not as predicted by theories emphasizing efficiency, suggesting that institutional reform must reflect both transitional responses and predicted long-run behavior. Journal of Comparative Economics 31 (4) (2003) 695–714.     

A cointegrated structural VAR model of the Canadian economy

This paper implements a cointegrated structural VAR model of the Canadian economy using quarterly data over the period 1964–1994. The dynamic properties of the estimated model are compared to the predictions of a simple textbook macro model. Four long-run equilibrium relationships are tested: (i) consumption–income; (ii) consumption–wealth; (iii) money demand; and (iv) the Fisher equation. The empirical results obtained are generally consistent with the predictions of the textbook model's long-run implications, although level shifts are observed in the consumption/income and the wealth/income ratios. Similarly it is found that there was an increase in the ex post real interest rate, implying a level shift in the Fisher relation, following the Bank of Canada's policy change towards a stable price level target.