Central bank independence,inflation and political instability in developing countries

We test whether political instability affects central bank independence in developing countries. Both a legal measure and the turnover tate of central bank governors are used as proxies for central bank independence and the frequency of government transfers is used to proxy political instability. Only the number of coups affects the turnover rate of central bank governors. We also find that both the turnover rate of central bank governors and political instability affect the rate of inflation.     

Human capital and wages in exporting firms

This paper studies the link between the education level of workers, export performance and wages. We argue that firms may escape intense competition in international markets by using high skilled workers to differentiate their products. This story is consistent with our empirical results. Using a very rich matched worker-firm longitudinal dataset, we find that there is a weak negative direct effect of exporting on wages, but an interaction term between export intensity and skill intensity has a positive impact on wages. That is, we find an export wage premium, but only in firms where the skill intensity is sufficiently high.     

Long-run growth empirics and new challenges for unified theory

Annual estimates of productivity are reported for periods over 500 years for eight countries and for five other countries over shorter periods. One- and two-break time series models are used to investigate discontinuities in productivity growth. The results support two-break models of long-run productivity and they favour approaches to unified growth modelling with three epochs. However, the lessening of productivity gaps and the decisive shifts to higher productivity occurred in the twentieth century, chiefly in the years around the World War II. The timing of the breaks and the complexity of the historical record highlights a need for unified models to connect more closely with economic history.     

R&D,TECHNOLOGY SPILLOVERS AND STOCK PRICES†

Abstract. Theories of endogenous growth suggest that technological progress is driven by firms’ own R&D effort and knowledge spillovers. Using panel data for US firms over the period from 1990 to 1999 this paper tests the influence on stock prices of technological spillovers through firms’ purchase of intermediate products from other firms. The empirical results show that stock prices are significantly positively affected by knowledge spillovers through the input of intermediate products.     

The housing slump and the great depression in the USA

The collapse of residential construction was a notable feature of the Great Depression in the USA. The housing slump did not simply follow the downward shifts in income: rather residential investment collapse helped to precipitate the Great Depression. By utilizing an augmented Tobin’s q model of residential investment, we show that heightened uncertainty surrounding builders’ anticipated profits largely explains the housing slump in the key year of 1930. A combination of forces, including house prices, building costs, credit and demand constraints, and financing costs, is shown to explain the longer decline of residential investment in 1928–1933. Tighter monetary policy played an important role in 1928–1929, whereas financial disintermediation was influential in 1933–1934.     

The anatomy of growth in the OECD since 1870

Conventional growth accounting exercises are extended in this paper to allow for endogeneity of capital, demographic transitions, age dependency, and employment rates, among other factors. Using data for the OECD countries in the period 1870-2006 it is shown that growth has been predominantly driven by demographics and TFP growth. TFP has, in turn, been driven by R&D, knowledge spillovers through the channel of imports, educational attainment, and the interaction between educational attainment and the distance to the technology frontier. The estimates suggest permanent growth effects of R&D and human capital.     

Information dissemination in an experimentally based agent-based stock market

This paper builds an agent-based model to reproduce the results of an experimental stock market that studies how the market aggregates private information. The aim is to use experiments and agent-based modeling to analyze the trading behavior in experimental stock markets. Using the experimental environment and results, it is possible to formulate a hypothesis about the subjects’ behavior and thereby formalize (algorithmically) the trading behavior in an agent-based model. This may lead to a better understanding of how the market converges to an equilibrium and of the mechanism that allows dissemination of private information in the market.     

Towards an Objective European Rule on Transaction Avoidance in Insolvencies

Following up on Insol Europe's Note ‘Harmonisation of Insolvency Law at EU level’ (2010), this article provides a proposition for a European rule on transaction avoidance in insolvencies. The question explored here is whether, and to what extent, it is possible and desirable to identify rules on transaction avoidance solely on the basis of objective criteria. Based on a comparison of English, German and Dutch law a largely objective rule is formulated for three basic categories of detrimental legal acts. The first category concerns legal acts compromising the integrity of the estate of the debtor. The second category is formed by preferences. The third category consists of shareholder loans and shareholder guarantees. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dispositional affectivity and work outcomes of expatriates

How the two components of dispositional affectivity, positive affectivity, representing the predisposition to respond positively to environmental stimuli, and negative affectivity, depicting the opposite reaction, influence work has been the focus of much research. Although dispositional affectivity appears to be a promising construct to explain and predict many attitudinal and behavioral outcomes in the workplace, few studies have empirically investigated dispositional affectivity and the work of expatriates. Hence, data from a net-based survey including 350 expatriates in Denmark were used to examine the relationship between dispositional affectivity and their work outcomes. Results showed consistent positive associations between positive affectivity and all the studied work outcomes and the opposite relationships for negative affectivity. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed in detail.     

The impossibility of rational consumer choice

In this paper we show that a rational consumer choice along the lines traditionally suggested might lead to paradoxical results if one considers multidimensional goods, which incorporate a series of incommensurable aspects. Thereby, we explore the similarity between the resulting paradox and Kenneth Arrow’s well known Impossibility Theorem. Based on these considerations we suggest a solution for the former problem along the lines of Herbert Simon and Amos Tversky, which might—if driven to its extreme—even provide a unique and arguably rational solution for consumer choice among multidimensional goods. Eventually, we argue that the resulting framework poses a potentially useful starting point for further developing an evolutionary theory of consumer choice.