Schumpeterian competition in heterogeneous oligopolies

The modeling of Schumpeterian competition as a process of innovation, imitation and selection was first presented by Nelson/Winter (1982) in a simulation study and further analyzed in a similar but general analytical formulation by Iwai (1984a, 1984b). Their results concerning the relations between the combination of the different forces of Schumpeterian competition and market structure respectively the distributions of profits are interesting, but restricted to competitive markets. Comparing rules of thumb and satisficing for the Ramp;D decisions the present study analyzes the process of Schumpeterian competition in a heterogeneous oligopoly. Firstly, the authors find for the Ramp;D-concentration relation results contrary to the traditional interpretation of Schumpeter. Secondly, Iwai’s (1984a, 1984b) qualitative results hold in this less restrictive modeling.     

Can microcredit reduce vulnerability to poverty? Evidence from rural Vietnam

Extant literature has extensively explored microcredit's impacts, confirming its essential role in poverty alleviation. However, most studies focus on poverty measures that exclusively emphasize current poverty status without adequately addressing the potential of falling into or remaining in poverty. Furthermore, the role of credit services in helping the poor in rural areas appears to be underexamined in the literature. To address this knowledge gap, this study investigates whether rural microcredit can reduce household vulnerability to poverty. A theoretical framework is developed to capture the mechanism by which microcredit borrowing has a vital role in household businesses and impacts the probability of being poor in the future. The Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey data set from 2008 to 2016 is used to explore this issue. The findings indicate that rural Vietnam's access to microcredit significantly reduces vulnerability to poverty. Moreover, better-off households are seemingly the most effective at using microcredit, whereas the opposite is found among worse-off households. These results are found to be robust using the propensity score matching method.     

PRICING OPTIONS ON VARIANCE IN AFFINE STOCHASTIC VOLATILITY MODELS

We consider the pricing of options written on the quadratic variation of a given stock price process. Using the Laplace transform approach, we determine semi‐explicit formulas in general affine models allowing for jumps, stochastic volatility, and the leverage effect. Moreover, we show that the joint dynamics of the underlying stock and a corresponding variance swap again are of affine form. Finally, we present a numerical example for the Barndorff‐Nielsen and Shephard model with leverage. In particular, we study the effect of approximating the quadratic variation with its predictable compensator.     

Banking and the Macroeconomy in China: A Banking Crisis Deferred?

The downturn in the world economy following the global banking crisis has left the Chinese economy relatively unscathed. This paper develops a model of the Chinese economy using a DSGE framework with a banking sector to shed light on this episode. It differs from other applications in the use of indirect inference procedure to test the fitted model. The model finds that the main shocks hitting China in the crisis were international and that domestic banking shocks were unimportant. However, directed bank lending and direct government spending was used to supplement monetary policy to aggressively offset shocks to demand. The model finds that government expenditure feedback reduces the frequency of a business cycle crisis but that any feedback effect on investment creates excess capacity and instability in output.