The impact of a ‘soda tax’ on prices: evidence from French micro data

Based on an original data set of more than 500,000 non-alcoholic beverage price records, we evaluate the impact on consumer prices of the ‘soda tax’, an excise on drinks with added sugar or sweetener, introduced in France in January 2012. We adopt a difference in differences approach and find that the tax was gradually passed through to the prices of the taxed beverages. After 6 months of its introduction, it was fully shifted to soda prices and almost fully shifted to the prices of fruit drinks, while the pass-through for flavoured waters was incomplete. We also find that the pass-through was heterogeneous across brands and retail groups.     

‘More is different’, exaptation and uncertainty: three foundational concepts for a complexity theory of innovation

Universities are engaging in more licensing and patenting activities than ever before, and the amount of research funded by industry is increasing. Academics’ commercialization activities may inhibit traditional academic scholarship. If the output of such scholarship is an important input into technological innovation and economic growth, then such an inhibition would be cause for concern. We introduce new instruments and techniques and demonstrate them using a novel panel dataset of academic electrical engineers from Stanford University. We find no evidence that engaging in inventive activity reduces the quantity of scientific output and some evidence that it increases its quality.     

‘Humour is Serious’ as a Geopolitical Speech Act: IMDb Film Reviews of Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator

Humour is a manifold cultural institution through which society and space become politicised. In this paper, the political nature of humour is discussed by dissecting the IMDb film reviews of Sacha Baron Cohen's comedy, The Dictator (2012), a parody of democracy in which the topics of racism, political incorrectness and sexism, as well as their relationship to the discourses of Neo-Orientalism and the Global War on Terrorism, are present. The reviews are perceived as speech acts, which establish broader interpretative patterns through which audience may approach the questions related to the serious and political aspects of humour. The analysis focuses on how the ‘humour is serious’ claim and similar arguments are expressed in order to condemn or support the use of ‘immature’ and sophomoric humour within the context of politically sensitive issues. Similarly, the paper scrutinises how IMDb functions as a stage on which opportunity for political participation becomes accessible.     

A methodology to position nations’ efforts in a technology domain with a patent network analysis: case of the electric vehicle domain

When a nation is making strategies in a technology domain, it makes sense to know where the nation is currently in the domain and to know where other nations are as well. This paper presents a method to position nations’ efforts in a technology domain. The method builds a network of International Patent Classifications (IPCs) based on their co-occurrence in patent applications and applies an index called the Revealed Patent Application Advantage (RPAA), which reflects where nations’ efforts have been spent in a technology domain denoted as the IPC network. We applied the proposed method to position the efforts that have been spent in the electric vehicle (EV) technology domain by mainland China, Germany, Japan, and the United States.     

The Dixit–Stiglitz economy with a ‘small group’ of firms: A simple and robust equilibrium markup formula

In a general version of Dixit–Stiglitz two-sector economy, we present three variants of the concept of oligopolistic equilibrium in price-quantity pairs (d’Aspremont and Dos Santos Ferreira, 2016) integrating income feedback effects in three different ways. For the first two variants (Ford effects ignored or restricted to profits), a single and simple equilibrium markup formula is derived involving, for each firm, a conduct parameter indicating its degree of competitive toughness. Different specifications of these conduct parameters lead to different oligopolistic equilibria in prices and/or in quantities. In particular in the standard Dixit–Stiglitz economy, we show, that the first order conditions of a symmetric oligopolistic price equilibrium correspond to a unique degree of competitive toughness in the general markup formula, This degree is decreasing (and the markup increasing) as more feedback effects are taken into account by firms. On the contrary, for the third variant, introducing full Ford effects leads to lower markups and higher competitive toughness in the standard Dixit–Stiglitz economy and under conditions ensuring the equilibrium markup to remain in tne right interval,     

Changing patterns of Asian currencies’ co-movement with the US dollar and the Chinese renminbi: Evidence from a wavelet multiresolution analysis

We extend the Frankel–Wei approach by using wavelet analysis to evaluate the relative importance of the dollar and the renminbi as anchor currencies at different time scales. We find that Asian currencies’ co-movement with the dollar weakened after the global financial crisis, while that with the renminbi strengthened particularly after China introduced a new exchange rate management system in 2015. The evidence suggests that emerging Asian economies have recently attached more importance to the renminbi as an anchor in exchange rate management.     

Exchange‐rate volatility and US–Hong Kong industry trade: is there evidence of a ‘third country’ effect?

In an effort to better understand the determinants of trade flows worldwide, researchers have recently incorporated external volatility (in addition to that of the partners’ bilateral exchange rate) into their models. The so‐called ‘third country’ effect is present if adding this term changes the bilateral volatility estimates that are found when external volatility is omitted. This study examines US exports to Hong Kong for 143 industries, and imports from Hong Kong for 110 industries, and finds two key results. First, expected inflation due to Hong Kong's dollar peg leads to increased US exports in a large number of industries. Second, comparing our results with those of a previous study shows strong evidence of a ‘third country’ effect, especially for US imports. Nonparametric tests suggest that these effects differ by sector: for both exports and imports. Manufacturing industries that enjoy a large trade share are less likely to experience this effect once external volatility is incorporated into the analysis.