International spillovers of knowledge and sectoral productivity growth: some evidence for Canada and the United States

This paper develops and tests a two-country model of a monopolistically competitive industry in which the production function shifts endogenously via national and international spillovers of knowledge. The basic version of this model implies that, in the long run, the growth rate of sectoral productivity is the same in each country. In support of this version, for a number of matched Canadian and US manufacturing industries, the paper finds that these two countries' rates of sectoral productivity growth tend to converge despite marked international differences in R and D.     

International capital flows and development: Financial openness matters

Does capital flow from rich to poor countries? We revisit the Lucas paradox to account for the role of capital account openness. We find that, when accounting for such openness, the prediction of the neoclassical theory is empirically confirmed: among financially open economies, less developed countries tend to experience net capital inflows and more developed countries tend to experience net capital outflows. The results hold also when taking into account private flows, institutions, and numerous controls. We also show that reserve intervention has an effect on the current account only in financially open economies.     

Financial crises and venture capital development: evidence from Indonesia

This exploratory study examines how financial crises impede or support venture capital (VC) development in the context of Indonesia and the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis (AFC). Using a mixed-methods research methodology, the study finds that financial crises have divergent effects on VC development. Financial crises support VC development through accelerated VC practise diffusion, but impede that development by slowing VC enabling conditions. The effects of the substantial macro institutional changes often associated with financial crises are insufficient to overcome these impediments, resulting in a smaller VC industry.     

Liquidity supply and volatility: futures market evidence

This article examines the provision of liquidity in futures markets as price volatility changes. We find that customer trading costs do not increase with volatility. However, for three of the four contracts studied, the nature of liquidity supply changes with volatility. Specifically, for relatively inactive contracts, customers as a group trade more with each other and less with market makers, on higher volatility days. By contrast, for the most active contract, trading between customers and market makers increases with volatility. We also find that market makers' income per contract decreases with volatility for one of the least active contracts in our sample, but is not significantly affected by volatility for the other contracts. These results are consistent with the idea that, for high‐cost, inactive contracts, market makers react to temporary increases in volatility by raising their bid‐ask spreads significantly, and customers provide increased liquidity through standing limit orders. An implication of our results is that electronic systems, where market maker participation is not required, are able to supply adequate liquidity during volatile periods. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 21:1–17, 2001     

International trade in durable goods: Understanding volatility, cyclicality, and elasticities

Data for OECD countries document: 1. imports and exports are about three times as volatile as GDP; 2. imports and exports are pro-cyclical, and positively correlated with each other; 3. net exports are counter-cyclical. Standard models fail to replicate the behavior of imports and exports, though they can match net exports relatively well. Inspired by the fact that a large fraction of international trade is in durable goods, we propose a two-country two-sector model in which durable goods are traded across countries. Our model can match the business cycle statistics on the volatility and comovement of the imports and exports relatively well. The model is able to match many dimensions of the data, which suggests that trade in durable goods may be an important element in open-economy macro models.     

Financial development and the geographies of startup cities: evidence from China

Small Business Economics - It has been widely observed that financial support is the key to entrepreneurial activities. The last decade has witnessed tremendous growth of startups and financial...     

Oil price volatility and real options: 35 years of evidence

There has been a surge in interest in the effects of uncertainty on investment decisions, motivated at least in part by the theory of real options. For example, Bloom (2009, Econometrica, 77, 623–685) shows that higher uncertainty causes firms to temporarily pause investment and hiring, generating sharp economic downturns. This paper investigates these effects by examining the response of disaggregated measures of production to volatility in oil prices. We find that increased oil price volatility has strong negative effects on the production of durable goods, such as transportation equipment, and oil exploration, such as the drilling of oil and gas wells.     

Financial liberalization and remittances: Recent panel evidence

We investigate the impact of financial liberalization on remittances to 84 countries over the period 1986–2005. Explicitly accounting for the multidimensionality of financial reform, we find that the various dimensions impact remittances differently: Increased economic freedom in the financial sector, as captured by absence of direct government control over the allocation of credit, has a positive and immediate impact. However, the improved robustness of financial markets, as captured by the development of security markets, improvement in the quality of banking supervision, and removal of stringent restrictions on interest rates and international capital, has a negative and lagged effect. The net combined effect reveals that financial liberalization may have a modest negative impact on remittances in the long run.     

Variance and skew risk premiums for the volatility market: The VIX evidence

We extract variance and skew risk premiums from volatility derivatives in a model-free way and analyze their relationships along with volatility index and equity index returns. These risk premiums can be synthesized through option trading strategies. Using a time series of option prices on the VIX, we find that variance swap excess return can be partially explained by volatility index and equity index excess returns while these latter variables carry little information for the skew swap excess return. The results sharply contrast with those obtained for the equity index option market underlining very specific characteristics of the volatility derivative market.     

International trade and child labor: Cross-country evidence

We explore the relationship between exposure to trade (as measured by openness) and child labor in a cross-country setting. Our methodology accounts for the fact that trade flows are endogenous to child labor (and labor standards more generally) by examining the relationship between child labor and variation in trade based on geography. We find that countries that trade more have less child labor. At the cross-country means, the data suggest an openness elasticity of child labor of − 0.7. For low-income countries, the elasticity of child labor with respect to trade with high-income countries is − 0.9. However, these relationships appear to be largely attributable to the positive association between trade and income. We consistently find a small and statistically insignificant association between openness and child labor when we control for cross-country income differences in the full sample, when we split the sample into different country groups, consider only trade between high- and low-income countries, or focus on exports of unskilled-labor intensive products from low-income countries. Thus, the cross-country data do not substantiate assertions that trade per se plays a significant role in perpetuating the high levels of child labor that pervade low-income countries.     

Political institutions and corporate risk-taking: International evidence

Tapping into firm-level accounting data across 90 countries over a 26-year period, we find that sound political institutions are positively associated with corporate risk-taking. This result is economically significant, robust to alternative proxies for corporate risk-taking and political institutions, and continues to hold after mitigating endogeneity concerns of political institutions. We also collect evidence that sound political institutions may compensate for weak legal institutions in inducing corporate risk-taking. We argue that sound political institutions improve the investment environment for firms and can induce higher levels of corporate risk-taking, which is ultimately associated with economic growth.     

Beijing:Next International Financial Hub?

Beijing's new financial dream On May 5,the Beijing Municipal Government released a notice regarding its plans to spur the financial industry, vowing to put forth a strong effort to become the national financial decision- making center,financial management center and financial information and ser- vices center,and formally announcing its ambitious aspiration to become a financial hub with international influence.     

International trade and unemployment: Theory and cross-national evidence

We present a model of trade and search-induced unemployment, where trade results from Heckscher-Ohlin (H-O) and/or Ricardian comparative advantage. Using cross-country data on trade policy, unemployment, and various controls, and controlling for endogeneity and measurement-error problems, we find fairly strong and robust evidence for the Ricardian prediction that unemployment and trade openness are negatively related. This effect dominates the positive H-O effect of trade openness on unemployment for capital-abundant countries, which turns negative for labor-abundant countries. Using panel data, we find an unemployment-increasing short-run impact of trade liberalization, followed by an unemployment-reducing effect leading to the new steady state.     

金融发展、制度质量与国际证券资本流动

本文以47个经济体2000-2016年的数据为样本,利用迭代GMM方法在规模和波动双视角下研究了金融发展和制度质量对国际证券资本流动的影响及其机制,并在此基础上进一步考察了这一影响在不同类型经济体以及不同种类国际证券资本中的异质性,估计结果如下.(1)金融发展有利于国际证券资本流动规模的增加,但未显著降低其波动风险,制度质量在吸引和稳定国际证券资本流动方面均发挥了积极作用.(2)当资本账户开放处于较高水平时,金融发展在吸引国际证券投资方面的作用较强,在稳定国际证券投资方面的作用较弱.(3)高制度质量通过改进主权信用评级影响了国际证券资本流动.(4)异质性结果表明,从不同类型经济体看,发达经济体的金融发展促进了国际证券资本流动规模的增加,新兴经济体的金融发展降低了国际证券资本流动的波动风险,而发达经济体的制度质量在吸引和稳定国际证券资本流动方面均比新兴经济体发挥了更重要的作用;从国际证券资本种类看,金融发展增加了股权资本流动的波动风险,制度质量在吸引和稳定债券资本流动方面均发挥了积极作用.因此,中国需要继续完善金融体系,不断提升制度质量,同时注意防范资本账户开放过程中可能出现的金融风险传染和金融不稳定对国际证券资本流动的冲击.     

International financial integration: Stock return linkages and volatility transmission between Vietnam and advanced countries

This paper investigates the interdependence between the Vietnamese stock market and other influential equity markets in terms of return linkage and volatility transmission covering the period including pre, during and post the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. A VAR model is utilized to estimate the conditional return linkage among these indices and a GARCH-BEKK model is employed to investigate the volatility transmission. We find evidence of statistically significant correlation, return spillover and volatility linkage between Vietnamese stock market with other leading equity markets of the US, Hong Kong and Japan. Moreover, we find that during the financial crisis, stock markets become more interrelated.     

Entrepreneurship,economic development,and institutional environment: evidence from OECD countries

The purpose of this article is to establish a typology of entrepreneurship for OECD countries over the 1999–2012 period. Our aim is to draw a distinction between managerial and entrepreneurial economies, to identify groups of countries with similar economic and entrepreneurial activity variables, and to determine the economic and institutional drivers of entrepreneurial activities in each group. We show that the level of development, sectoral specialization, and institutional variables related to entrepreneurship, functioning of the labor market, and openness of the country are decisive to understand differences in entrepreneurship activity across countries. Results show that the pre-crisis period, from 1999 to 2008, is a period of growth favorable to entrepreneurship. The financial crisis involved a break in entrepreneurial dynamism, with agricultural economies withstanding the financial crisis better. The 2010–2012 period of recovery is a period of a sharp slowdown in entrepreneurial activity, during which the countries that are less dependent on the financial sector proved to be the most resilient in terms of entrepreneurial activity. Nevertheless, it is the advanced knowledge economies with developed financial markets, fewer institutional regulatory constraints, and greater scope for qualitative entrepreneurship that show lower unemployment rates. These findings have important implications for the implementation of public policy in order to promote entrepreneurial activity and reduce unemployment.     

International trade policies,industrialization, and economic development

During the 1950s and 1960s, most developing nations, particularly the larger ones, strongly opted for a policy of import substitution industrialization (ISI). This was based on heavy protection and generally led to very inefficient industries. Since the early 1970s, an increasing number of developing countries deregulated their economies and liberalized trade, and this stimulated efficiency and growth. Some developing nations also tried strategic trade policies and to endogenize growth (as postulated by endogenous growth theory), but with only limited success. It seems impossible and inconsistent under the new international trade rules, however, for other developing countries to duplicate the East Asia “miracle,” which was based on strong government support for domestic industry while stimulating competition and efficiency among domestic firms. The successful completion of the Uruguay Round is expected to greatly benefit developing countries through continued deregulation and increased access to developed-country markets.     

COVID-19 and corporate tax avoidance: International evidence

Governments across the globe initiated various tax reforms in the post- Global Financial Crisis period to rein in aggressive corporate tax avoidance for managing budget deficits. These developments created new realities in the international business environment by altering the costs and benefits of corporate tax management. Yet, we have a limited understanding of the effectiveness of tax reforms in controlling corporate tax avoidance at the global level. COVID-19 offers a litmus test for how corporates manage their taxes during the pandemic in light of past tax reforms. We use financial constraints and reputational costs as two contradicting theoretical perspectives to explain corporate tax avoidance during the crisis. Consistent with the financial constraints hypothesis, we find that firms avoid taxes amid COVID-19 to prevent liquidity crunches. Our study also highlights the role of country-level information and governance quality in curbing tax avoidance during extreme events like COVID-19. Our findings call for an immediate tax policy intervention to limit corporate tax avoidance during the ongoing pandemic phases.