An assessment of the macroeconomic determinants of inequality

The paper provides an assessment of the determinants of income inequality in a broader macroeconomic context. In particular the hypothesis that income inequality is related to fundamentals affecting economic growth is examined.     

The macroeconomic determinants of private equity investment: a European comparison

A strong private equity (PE) market is a cornerstone for commercialization and innovation in modern economies. However, substantial differences exist in the relative amounts raised and invested in PE across European countries. We investigate the macroeconomic determinants of PE investment in Europe, focusing on the comparison between Central and Eastern European (CEE) and Western European countries. Our estimations are based on a data set running from 2001 to 2011 that covers 16 countries. Applying robust estimation techniques, we identify a ‘robust’ set of determinants of PE activity in both regions. We find similarities as well as differences in the driving forces of PE investments in Western European and CEE countries. Our results suggest that economic activity, the inflation rate, equity market capitalization, unit labour costs, the unemployment rate as well the the institutional and legal environment are significant determinants of PE activity.     

The determinants of health care expenditure in Australia

The objective of this article is to examine the long-run relationship and short-run dynamics of the health care expenditure in Australia during the period 1960–2003. Consistent with the conventional findings, the income elasticity for health care is found to be greater than one, suggesting that health care is a luxury good in Australia. Demographic structure is found to exert a significant positive impact on health care expenditure. An increase in the accessibility to health care services is associated with higher per capita real health care expenditure. Finally, public funding of health care appears to have a contributory effect on the formation of health care expenditure in Australia.     

The determinants of academic patenting by Italian universities

This work investigates the determinants of patenting at Italian universities. We test the effect of public and external funds, in terms of commercial activity by universities, towards the propensity of universities to file patents at the European Patent Office. We then estimate the effect of several variables referring to the contextual characteristics of both university and localisation. The results suggest that, while in the southern regions of Italy commercial income bears a negative effect on the patenting activity of universities, in the other regions we register an important positive effect. We moreover find that the adoption of internal university regulations relating to patenting and the fact of being embedded in an innovative region are factors that exert a positive influence on the university rate of application for patents.     

Professors and hamburgers: an international comparison of real academic salaries

In recent years, academic staff unions and associations have argued for higher salaries for academics on the grounds that existing salaries have not kept pace with inflation, are well below commercial salaries and, most glaringly, are much lower than the salaries of their overseas counterparts. However, most international comparisons are made based on exchange rate conversions, which is inappropriate since purchasing power differentials are only reflected in exchange rates in the long term. Furthermore, the volatility of exchange rates make such conversions highly inaccurate. A comparison is provided of real academic salaries by converting the nominal salaries in each country to their purchasing power equivalents, using the Big Mac Index. Our results show that real academic salaries are highest in Hong Kong and Singapore, relative to the developed countries, while Hong Kong tax and social security deductions are lowest. Furthermore, real salary levels, combined with intrinsic considerations such as the quality-of-life, indicate that Canada and New Zealand are unattractive places for visiting/migrating academics, while Australia and the USA are relatively attractive. It is suggested that these findings could be of use to policy-makers and academic unions in salary negotiations, as well as academics making relocation decisions.     

Labour market reform and the macroeconomic efficiency of the labour market in Australia

This paper assesses the effects of a decade and a half of labourmarket reform in Australia on labour market flexibility at themacroeconomic level. Increased labour market flexibility isinterpreted as reduced structural unemployment and enhancedefficiency of matching. We use shifts in the Beveridge Curveas a measure of changes in labour market efficiency (followingSolow, R., What is labour-market flexibility? What is it goodfor?, Keynes Lecture, British Academy, London, December, 1997).Time series analysis of unemployment, vacancies and other relevantvariables strongly suggests that changes in the efficiency oflabour market matching over the period reflect the cyclicaleffects of hysteresis rather than the effects of labour marketreform.     

The macroeconomic consequences of disasters

Natural disasters have a statistically observable adverse impact on the macro-economy in the short-run and costlier events lead to more pronounced slowdowns in production. Yet, interestingly, developing countries, and smaller economies, face much larger output declines following a disaster of similar relative magnitude than do developed countries or bigger economies. A close study of the determinants of these adverse macroeconomic output costs reveals several interesting patterns. Countries with a higher literacy rate, better institutions, higher per capita income, higher degree of openness to trade, and higher levels of government spending are better able to withstand the initial disaster shock and prevent further spillovers into the macro-economy. These all suggest an increased ability to mobilize resources for reconstruction. Financial conditions also seem to be of importance; countries with more foreign exchange reserves, and higher levels of domestic credit, but with less-open capital accounts appear more robust and better able to endure natural disasters, with less adverse spillover into domestic production.     

The macroeconomic costs of conflict

Macroeconomic costs of conflict are generally very large, with GDP per capita about 28 percent lower ten years after conflict onset. This is overwhelmingly driven by private consumption, which falls by almost 25 percent ten years after conflict onset. Conflict is also associated with dramatic declines in official trade, with exports (imports) estimated to be 58 (34) percent lower ten years after conflict onset. The onset of conflict often also induces significant refugee outflows to neighboring non-advanced countries in the short run, and relatively small but very persistent refugee outflows to advanced countries over the long run. To alleviate reverse causality concerns between GDP and conflict onset, we control for pre-conflict GDP forecasts from the IMF World Economic Outlook and show that similar results are obtained with and without pre-conflict GDP forecasts.     

The macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy

We investigate the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy using a Bayesian Structural Vector Autoregression (B-SVAR) approach. We identify fiscal policy shocks via a partial identification scheme, but also: (i) include the feedback from government debt; (ii) look at the impact on the composition of output; (iii) assess the effects on asset markets; (iv) use quarterly data; and (v) analyse empirical evidence from the US, the UK, Germany and Italy. The results show that government spending shocks, in general, have a small effect on Gross Domestic Product (GDP); lead to important ‘crowding-out’ effects; have a varied impact on housing prices and generate a quick fall in stock prices. Government revenue shocks generate a mixed effect on housing prices and a small and positive effect on stock prices. The empirical evidence also suggests that it is important to explicitly consider the government debt dynamics in the model.     

The macroeconomic impact of NAFTA termination

US President Trump has threatened to leave the North American Free Trade Agreement. How much would each member country gain or lose if this threat were carried out? Would trade imbalances within the region diminish? What would the transition to new production and consumption patterns look like? I provide quantitative answers to these questions using a dynamic general equilibrium model with a multi-sector input–output production structure, heterogeneous firms that make forward-looking export participation decisions, and adjustment frictions in trade and factor markets. Regional trade flows would fall dramatically, and while the US trade deficit with Canada would decline, the deficit with Mexico would grow. Welfare would fall by 0.04%, 0.12%, and 0.2% in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, respectively, and transition dynamics would significantly affect welfare in both the short run and the long run.     

The macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy in Spain

This paper focuses on the effects of fiscal policy in Spain analysed in a VAR context. Fiscal shocks are found to involve significant effects on GDP, private consumption, private investment, interest rates and prices. Non-Keynesian effects are observed. Moreover, evidence on the channels highlighted in the literature for such effects to arise is found, notably the effects of permanent income on consumption and investment on the demand side, coupled with the response of the equilibrium wage on the supply side affecting entrepreneurial profits and investment. The response of interest rates seems to reinforce both effects. Furthermore, the different readings of spending or taxes do not affect macroeconomic variables homogeneously.     

The HUMP-shaped behavior of macroeconomic fluctuations

We analyze the nature of persistence in macroeconomic fluctuations. The current view is that shocks to macroeconomic variables (in particular realGNP) have effects that endure over an indefinite horizon. This conclusion is drawn from the presence of a unit root in the univariate time series representation. Following Perron (1989), we challenge this assessment arguing that most macroeconomic variables are better construed as stationary fluctuations around a breaking trend function. The trend function is linear in time except for a sudden change in its intercept in 1929 (The Great Crash) and a change in slope after 1973 (following the oil price shock). Using a measure of persistence suggested by Cochrane (1988) we find that shocks have small permanent effects, if any. To analyze the effects of shocks at finite horizon, we select a member of theARMA(p, q) class applied to the appropriately detrended series. For the majority of the variables analyzed the implied weights of the moving-average representation have the once familiar humped shape.     

The drivers of household indebtedness reconsidered: An empirical evaluation of competing arguments on the macroeconomic determinants of household indebtedness in OECD countries

Abstract

Household debt is at a record high in most Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and it played a crucial role in the recent financial crisis. Several arguments on the macroeconomic drivers of household debt have been put forward, and most have been empirically tested, albeit in isolation of each other. This article empirically tests 7 competing hypotheses on the macroeconomic determinants of household indebtedness together in one econometric study. Existing arguments suggest that residential house prices, upward movements in the prices of assets demanded by households, the income share of the top 1%, falling wages, the rolling back of the welfare state, the age structure of the population, and the short-term interest rate drive household indebtedness. We formulate these arguments as hypotheses and test them for a panel of 13 OECD countries over the period 1993–2011 using error correction models. We also investigate whether effects differ in boom and bust phases of the debt and house price cycles. The results show that the most robust macroeconomic determinant of household debt is real residential house prices, and that the phase of the debt and house price cycles plays a role in household debt accumulation.     

银行盈利的宏微观因素——对中国银行业的实证研究

This paper seeks to examine the determinants of the profitability of the Chinese banking sector during the post-reform period of 2000–2005. The empirical findings from this study suggest that all the determinants variables have statistically significant impact on China banks profitability. However, the impacts are not uniform across bank types. We find that liquidity, credit risk, and capitalization have positive impacts on the state owned commercial banks (SOCBs) profitability, while the impact of cost is negative. Similar to their SOCB counterparts, we find that joint stock commercial banks (JSCB) with higher credit risk tend to be more profitable, while higher cost results in a lower JSCB profitability levels. During the period under study, the empirical findings suggest that size and cost results in a lower city commercial banks (CITY) profitability, while the more diversified and relatively better capitalized CITY tend to exhibit higher profitability levels. The impact of economic growth is positive, while growth in money supply is negatively related to the SOCB and CITY profitability levels.      

The macroeconomic drivers in hedge fund beta management

We investigate how macroeconomic indicators alter the dynamic risk exposure of different hedge fund style strategies. We implement a multifactor model to estimate the unobservable time-varying risk exposure conditional on macroeconomic information and a VAR to measure the impact of macroeconomic predictors on different time horizons. Using monthly returns on a cross-section of 10 different style indices from February 1997 to August 2019, we find that, on average, macroeconomic indicators explain approximately 30%, 55%, and 75% of the variability of betas at 1-, 6-, and 36-month horizons, respectively. Although macroeconomic predictors play a critical role at every horizon, at 1 month, the dominating effect comes from idiosyncratic shocks, which indicates that in the short run, hedge fund managers rely mostly on their own reallocation signals. Moreover, consistent with the fundamental drivers of the smart beta factors, we find that the interest rate level and GDP growth similarly impact hedge fund exposures across styles.     

The macroeconomic risks of undesirably low inflation

This paper investigates the macroeconomic risks associated with undesirably low inflation using a medium-sized New Keynesian model. We consider different causes of persistently low inflation, including a downward shift in long-run inflation expectations, a fall in nominal wage growth, and a favorable supply-side shock. We show that the macroeconomic effects of persistently low inflation depend crucially on its underlying cause, as well as on the extent to which monetary policy is constrained by the zero lower bound. Finally, we discuss policy options to mitigate these effects.     

The underground economy and its macroeconomic consequences

This study develops a dynamic general equilibrium model in which optimizing agents evade taxes by operating in the underground economy. The cost to firms of evading taxes is that they find themselves subject to credit rationing from banks. Our model simulations show that in the absence of budgetary flexibility to adjust expenditures, raising tax rates too high drives firms into the underground economy, thereby reducing the tax base. Aggregate investment in the economy is lowered because of credit rationing. Taxes that are too low eliminate the underground economy, but result in unsustainable budget and trade deficits. Thus, the optimal rate of taxation, from a macroeconomic point of view, may lead to some underground activity.     

The macroeconomic impact of the baby boom generation

"This paper analyzes the impact of the Baby Boom generation on macroeconomic relationships in the United States. Using quarterly postwar data, it finds that measures of population age composition influenced real interest rates, income, inflation, and unemployment. The demographic variables complement or dominate other economic variables in reduced-form macroeconomic specifications. The paper also projects how the aging of the generation may influence future macroeconomic activity."     

The macroeconomic effects of fiscal rules in the US states

Fiscal policy restrictions are often criticized for limiting the ability of governments to react to business cycle fluctuations and, consequently, the adoption of quantitative restrictions is viewed as inevitably leading to increased macroeconomic volatility. In this paper, we use data from 48 US states to investigate how budget rules affect fiscal policy outcomes. Our key findings are that (1) strict budgetary restrictions lead to lower policy volatility (i.e. less aggressive use of discretion in conducting fiscal policy) and (2) fiscal restrictions reduce the responsiveness of fiscal policy to output shocks. These two results should have opposite effects on output volatility. While less discretion should reduce volatility, less responsiveness of fiscal policy might amplify business cycles. We provide empirical support for the first effect: restrictions, by reducing discretion in fiscal policy, can reduce macroeconomic volatility.     

The Liverpool macroeconomic model of the United Kingdom

The paper describes the Liverpool Model, a rational expectations model of the UK economy used for forecasting since March 1980. The model is of the ‘new classical’ type, in that all markets clear; in the labour market, there is a union sector with one-year nominal wage contracts but the non-union sector clears excess demands. Equilibrium (or ‘natural rate’) values of output, employment, real wages, etc are endogenously determined. In- and out-of-sample errors, a full set of simulations, and a complete listing are included. The interim experience of the model as a test bed for rational expectations methods is ‘far from discouraging’.