Trade and unions: Does size matter?

Our empirical analysis builds upon the hypothesis that unions are detrimental to a firm's efficiency. Using a rich survey of German manufacturers, we investigate firm-level determinants on the probability of collective wage bargaining with particular focus on the impact of a firm's engagement in foreign markets. An interesting and very robust finding is that exporters are less likely to engage in union wage bargaining. This finding is in line with a pessimistic perception of unions. The negative effect of collective bargaining can be offset by efficiency gains for larger exporters, who can benefit from operation cost saving effects. Size does matter as larger firms export and may find bargaining with a single entity representing the workforce more convenient than bargaining with each worker individually. We are using firm level information on IT investment as instrument for the export dummy and successfully test for the validity of this instrument.     

Public spending and outcomes: Does governance matter?

This paper studies the links between public spending, governance, and outcomes. We examine the role of governance–measured by the level of corruption and the quality of bureaucracy–in determining the efficacy of public spending in improving human development outcomes. Our analysis contributes to our understanding of the relationship between public spending, governance and outcomes, and helps explain the surprising result that public spending often does not yield the expected improvement in outcomes. We show empirically that the differences in the efficacy of public spending can be largely explained by the quality of governance. Public health spending lowers child mortality rates more in countries with good governance. Similarly, public spending on primary education becomes more effective in increasing primary education attainment in countries with good governance. More generally, public spending has virtually no impact on health and education outcomes in poorly governed countries. These findings have important implications for enhancing the development effectiveness of public spending. The lessons are particularly relevant for developing countries, where public spending on education and health is relatively low, and the state of governance is often poor.     

Fiscal discipline and exchange rates: Does politics matter?

We look at the effect of exchange rate regimes on fiscal discipline, taking into account the effect of underlying political conditions. We present a model where strong politics (defined as policymakers facing longer political horizon and higher cohesion) are associated with better fiscal performance, but fixed exchange rates may revert this result and lead to less fiscal discipline. We confirm these hypotheses through regression analysis performed on a panel sample covering 79 countries from 1975 to 2012. Our empirical results also show that the positive effect of strong politics on fiscal discipline is not enough to counter the negative impact of being at/moving to fixed exchange rates. Our results are robust to a number of sensitivity checks, including the use of different estimators, alternative proxies for fiscal discipline and sub-sample analysis.     

Terrorism and spatial disparities: Does interregional inequality matter?

This article examines the relationship between interregional inequality and the incidence of domestic terrorism in a panel of 48 countries over the period 1990–2010. The results show that a high level of interregional inequality increases the number of domestic terror events in the sample countries. This finding is robust to the inclusion of additional explanatory variables that may affect both interregional inequality and domestic terrorism. Furthermore, the observed link between interregional inequality and terrorist activity does not depend on the choice of the specific measure used to quantify the degree of dispersion in the regional distribution of GDP per capita within the sample countries.     

Preemptive bribery and incomplete information: Does prior knowledge matter?

This paper studies bribery between a firm and a supervisor who monitors the firm for regulatory compliance. Bribery occurs preemptively, that is before the supervisor exerts costly effort to discover the firm's level of noncompliance and collect evidence for successful prosecution. In contrast to previous papers, preemptive bribery is modeled as a Bayesian signaling game because the supervisor is uninformed about the firm's level of noncompliance. We show that under normal informational assumptions, some (possibly all) firms always engage in preemptive bribery. However, if knowledge of the firm's level of noncompliance has implications for the supervisor's ability to collect evidence and prosecute (prior knowledge), preemptive bribery can be completely eliminated. Results which apply to preemptive bribery under complete information do not apply here.     

Does progress matter?

This paper, presented as an addresss to the Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought, argues that writing history may be more interesting if progress is not made the leitmotif. Starting from an examination of early causal accounts of the history of political economy, written in the ninteenth century by Marx, Toynbee, Ingram and Leslie, a plea is made for narratives rather than explanations. Consistent with the former historians of economic thought this may be perceived as eavesdropping on conversations of the past. To understand the richness of these conversations they need to perceive their work not just as a sub-discipline of economics but in a wider interdisciplinary setting.     

Trust and attitudes toward income inequality: Does individualism matter?

In the last decade authors have increasingly examined the role of two cultural traits – trust and individualism – on a variety of economic outcomes ranging from gendered attitudes to entrepreneurship, human capital accumulation, and economic development. While both have positive effects, recent literature suggests that the effects of trust are often conditional on other variables, and this aspect has been neglected in the literature. Indeed, a recent paper found that with respect to gendered attitudes, there are important interactions between the traits of trust and individualism. Building on this foundation we explore how views of trust and individualism interact to affect attitudes about income inequality. Our results show that while views regarding social trust generally positively affect the desire for income equality, this effect is strengthened in the presence of high individualism. Alternatively stated, distrust in highly individualistic environments leads to a greater desire for income differences (inequality). Our result highlights the important role played by market-based price and profit incentives in fostering economic activity and exchange in larger, impersonal extended orders where interpersonal trust and reputational effects are generally absent (in contrast to personal, small group exchange). Our results are robust to a variety of techniques to establish identification and account for sample selection and omitted variable bias.     

Technology transfer and spillovers: Does local participation with multinationals matter?

This paper examines the effects on technology transfer and spillovers deriving from ownership sharing of foreign multinational affiliates. More specifically, we try to answer two questions, using unpublished Indonesian micro data. Firstly, do establishments with minority and majority ownership differ in terms of productivity levels? Secondly, does the degree of spillover differ with the degree of ownership in the FDI? Our results show that foreign establishments have comparable high levels of labor productivity and that domestic establishments benefit from spillovers. However, the degree of foreign ownership does neither affect the level of labor productivity in foreign establishments, nor the degree of spillovers.     

Location,location, location: currency effects and return predictability?

Most international financial market studies that compare across countries utilize the US dollar as the common numeraire. We explore the little studied question of the appropriate choice for the base currency and ask if currency choice can affect the final conclusion of whether predictability exists. We provide empirical results for stock return predictability that demonstrate the importance of the numeraire. For example, the existence (absence) of predictability for a US investor does not necessarily imply the existence (absence) of predictability for other foreign investors.     

Love,money, and parental goods: Does parental matchmaking matter?

While parental matchmaking has been widespread throughout history and across countries, we know little about the relationship between parental matchmaking and marriage outcomes. Does parental involvement in matchmaking help ensure their needs are better taken care of by married children? This paper finds supportive evidence using a survey of Chinese couples. In particular, parental involvement in matchmaking is associated with having a more submissive wife, a greater number of children, a higher likelihood of having any male children, and a stronger belief of the husband in providing old age support to his parents. These benefits, however, are achieved at the cost of less marital harmony within the couple and lower market income of the wife. The results render support to and extend the findings of (Becker et al., 2015) where parents meddle with children’s preferences to ensure their commitment to providing parental goods such as old age support.     

COVID-19 fatalities and internal conflict: Does government economic support matter?

This study examines the association between COVID-19 mortality rates and internal conflict and investigates the possible moderating role of government economic support during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. Our main hypothesis suggests that countries with lower levels of government economic support are more likely to experience a positive correlation between higher COVID-19 mortality rates and the emergence of internal conflict. Using cross-country data from over 100 countries and controlling for various factors that may influence internal conflict, our analysis provides some support for this hypothesis. The results suggest a possible moderating role for government economic support, with the evidence indicating a weakening or elimination of the association between COVID-19 mortality rates and internal conflict when government economic support is adequate. However, the moderating effect of government economic support is not always significant, and caution is needed when interpreting the results. Our analysis also highlights the potential risks associated with low levels of government economic support during the pandemic. Specifically, we find that in countries where the government's macro-financial package in response to the pandemic is less than approximately 25% of GDP, there is a possible risk of growth in civil disorder resulting from increased COVID-19 deaths per million.     

Foreign direct investment and inequality in developing countries: Does sector matter?

Scholars have studied the relationship between inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and within‐country income inequality in cross‐national contexts, but have not empirically investigated how FDI in different sectors might affect inequality in different ways. We use error correction models to analyze sectoral FDI data compiled from UNCTAD investment reports in 60 middle‐income countries from 1989 to 2010, arguing that FDI in services is more likely to be associated with inequality than FDI in other sectors. We argue that skill biases and changes in employment patterns associated with service sector investments can help explain these findings.     

Does the star power matter?

This study investigates the role of superstars in the Korean movie industry. We apply a two-step approach: the first step is to test the significance of the star power during 1988–1999 in Korea; the second step is to estimate the magnitude of star power. The appearance of a star actor increases the probability of a hit or success by 15–19% and star power is higher than a director power. A domestic award is associated with positive performance. We find that the top 15 players among 68 actors and actresses significantly impacts on the success of movies.     

Does Environmental Policy Necessarily Discourage Growth?

This paper analyzes the long-run impact of an environmental policy on economic growth. A growth model with vertical innovation is modified by including intermediate goods as a source of pollution. Taxation on pollution reduces profits of intermediate firms as well as final outputs. However, it increases their mark-ups and alleviates profit losses. In this setting, profit losses are offset by the general equilibrium effect; thus, the tax enhances R&Ds which drive economic growth while it reduces pollution. If the government provides an R&D subsidy, the growth rate will be accelerated.     

Export performance of developing countries: Does landlockedness matter?

Landlockedness imposes additional costs on trade and reduces international competitiveness. This paper examines the determinants of export performance in developing countries, within a comparative perspective of landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) and non‐landlocked developing countries, by using a standard gravity modeling framework. The study covers data from 1995 to 2015. The results suggest that despite recent trade policy reforms, the overall export performance of LLDCs is lower than that of non‐landlocked developing countries due to the inherent additional trade costs associated with landlockedness. The conventional wisdom that export performance is aided by economic openness also applies to LLDCs, but distance‐related trade costs have a greater negative impact on exports from LLDCs than on other developing countries. The immediate trade policy challenge for LLDCs is therefore to create a more trade‐friendly environment by lowering tariffs, reforming exchange rates and entering into regional trade agreements.     

How competition affects schools' performances: Does specification matter?

If the number of individuals is odd, majority rule is the only non-dictatorial strategy-proof social choice rule on the domain of linear orders that admit a Condorcet winner (Campbell and Kelly, 2003). This paper shows that the claim is false when the number of individuals is even, and provides a counterpart to the theorem for the even case.     

World economic convergence: Does the estimation methodology matter?

An extant empirical literature produces evidence on economic convergence using methods that assume an underlying deterministic trend. Competing approaches that assume a stochastic trend, however, produce only limited evidence of economic convergence. In this paper we address this puzzling feature of the literature by providing a comprehensive analysis of economic convergence using three methodologies that cover all possible underlying assumptions: deterministic, stochastic, and combination trends. We also develop a method for an overall Stochastic Convergence Rate Index, that combines the outcomes of alternative stochastic tests and provides a single measure of the intensity of stochastic convergence. We consider 135 economies over the period 1980–2017. We find that economic convergence occurs at a global level through the formation of convergence clubs, and economic convergence emerges as a deterministic rather than a stochastic process. Tests that ignore deterministic trends tend to understate the evidence for convergence.     

Revisiting the democracy-private investment nexus: Does inequality matter?

Contrary to the predictions of a large theoretical literature, recent cross-country evidence suggests autocracies can generate statistically indistinguishable levels of private investment compared to democracies. We argue that the previous exclusion of inequality explains part of this puzzle. We model current investment as a function of investors’ beliefs about future tax rates, which are conditioned by the constraints on the Executive in setting tax rates and expropriating tax revenues. In democracies, where tax rates reflect the preferences of the median voter, investment declines with rising inequality. In autocracies, investor beliefs about future tax rates reflect the relative power of Elites compared to the Executive. As inequality rises, the increased resources available to Elites constrains the Executive’s ability to expropriate more tax revenues. The heterogeneous determinants of investor beliefs can explain the observed pattern of investment across regime types. We first test our predictions at the macro-level with cross-country data. We then test the behavioral underpinnings of our model with a novel laboratory experiment showing how inequality affects individual-level investment behavior dependent upon regime type. Results from both types of analyses show that when inequality is taken into account autocracies can generate similar levels of investment to democracies.