Monetary Policy,the Composition of GDP and Crisis Duration in Europe

This paper analyzes the effects of changes in interest rates on the composition of production in 10 European countries during the boom period of the 2000s. We find that output elasticity differs across industries and across countries for similar industries. The paper suggests that in the run-up to the 2008 crisis, the European Central Bank's low interest rate policy affected the allocation of resources across industries. This may explain the sluggish overall recovery from the crisis in Europe.     

Sudden stops and output: an empirical Markov switching analysis

Sudden stops and their negative effects on GDP have recently received increased attention because quantitative easing has led to substantial capital inflows into emerging economies. We extend the empirical literature on the impact of sudden stops on GDP by proposing an alternative econometric approach which is multivariate, nonlinear and uses a novel way to identify sudden stops. We estimate a Markov switching vector autoregression with a latent variable indicating whether the economy is in a sudden stop regime. We use the maximum fraction of forecast error variance approach for partial structural identification of the vector autoregression model. Beyond confirming findings from the existing empirical literature on sudden stops, our results additionally show that (i) sudden stops are associated with regime switches (i.e., breaks in the behavior of economic variables), which have significantly negative and permanent effects on GDP; (ii) impulse responses to net capital inflow shocks are regime dependent with economies being more vulnerable to shocks during the sudden stop regime; and (iii) there were different main drivers of the output decline in historical sudden stop episodes.     

Trade,Migration and Integration – Evidence and Policy Implications

This paper takes as its point of departure the unique position recently adopted by Swedish policymakers emphasising migration as a tool to increase trade. We attempt to empirically scrutinise this position. Our results demonstrate that migrants stimulate exports, especially along the extensive product margin of trade and for differentiated products, but have no significant impact on imports. This finding suggests that for small open economies where numerous immigrants are refugees, the strategy of using migration to facilitate trade may only be effective with respect to exports. This paper also contributes to the literature on trade and migration by exploiting data on gender and age, which allow us to draw inferences on the underlying impact channels. We adopt an instrumental variable approach to address the endogeneity issue due to potential reverse causality. The pattern of results is consistent with the hypothesis that migration primarily reduces fixed trade costs resulting from information and trust friction across migrant host and source countries. Importantly, the results imply that policymakers may be able to promote trade by improving immigrants’ labour market integration instead of simply being restricted to promoting more liberal immigration policies, which is generally more controversial.     

Simulation-based optimization of an agent-based simulation

Optimization of an agent-based simulation (ABS) bears specific challenges. It is demonstrated in this paper that mainstream simulation-based optimization (SBO) approaches often do not perform well in such a setting, sometimes hardly outperforming a mere random search. Two new algorithms for SBO which combine superior solution quality with high resource efficiency and reliability for such problems are presented: an evolutionary algorithm called “neighbourhood elite selection” (NELS) with a specific selection mechanism which prevents premature clustering, and a hybrid algorithm which combines NELS with the popular best-in-class algorithm Simultaneous Perturbation Stochastic Approximation (SPSA). Those two algorithms are designed to perform well for problems which show typical properties of an agent-based simulation, a field that has largely been neglected so far, but should structurally also be universally applicable for other simulation-based optimization problems as well. In contrast to present literature, specific emphasis lies on the dynamic control of how many replications of the simulation are required for each solution brought up during the optimization run in order to make efficient use of the scarce simulation resources. The algorithms are benchmarked against the academic best-in-class optimization algorithm SPSA. A sketch of practical case studies is provided, showing how the optimization of an ABS can be used to help solve business decision problems like price optimization for a mobile phone operator.     

Exporting Spatial Externalities

Using spatial econometrics, we estimate the effect of externalities generated by neighbors’ exports on place-level exports, explicitly modeling the distance to those neighbors. We find there is a positive effect of neighbors’ exports on exports to the same country but less so for exporting generally. We also find that using a spatial-weights term based on the physical distance between exporters greatly outperforms a dichotomous measure based on exporters in the same region. The results are robust to alternative definitions of the spatial weight.     

The Level of Compliance with the International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes: Does it Matter to Stock Markets?

The present paper explores, theoretically, and empirically, whether compliance with the International Code of marketing of breast-milk substitutes impacts on financial performance measured by stock markets. The empirical analysis, which considers a 20-year period, shows that stock markets are indifferent to the level of compliance by manufacturers with the International Code. Two important issues emerge from this result. Based on our finding that financial performance as measured by stock markets cannot explain the level of compliance, the first issue refers to what alternative types of mechanisms drive manufacturers who comply the least with voluntary codes such as the International Code. Conversely, from our finding that stock markets do not reward the most compliant, the second issue raised is an inherent weakness of stock markets to fully incorporate social and environmental values.     

The Discursive Dilemma in Monetary Policy

The discursive dilemma implies that the decision of a board depends on whether the board votes directly on the decision (conclusion‐based procedure) or votes on the premises for the decision (premise‐based procedure). We derive results showing when the discursive dilemma might occur. Under majority voting, a discursive dilemma can occur either (i) if the relationship between the premise and the decision is non‐monotonic, or (ii) if the board members have different judgments on at least two of the premises. Normatively, a premise‐based procedure tends to give better decisions when there is disagreement on parameters of the model.