THE LOSS OF EARNINGS CAPABILITY FROM DISABILITY/HEALTH LIMITATIONS: TOWARD A NEW SOCIAL INDICATOR

Health problems and physical and mental impairments can restrict the kind and amount of work that individuals can perform. Several studies have estimated the loss in earnings experienced by disabled/health-limited workers, but they do not examine the trend in this loss over time. The authors propose an alternative indicator of productivity loss that is more appropriate for inter temporal comparisons: "lost earnings capability"–the difference between the amount of money persons could potentially earn if they were free of disability/health limitations and the amount of money that they can actually earn given their limitations. The estimates indicate that the mean lost earnings capability per disabled/health-limited person grew over the period from 1973 to 1988, while the population with disabilities/health limitations fell. In 1973, lost earnings capacity totaled about 5.3 percent of Gross National Product (GNP); by 1988, the loss had fallen to about 4.5 percent of GNP as a consequence of the reduction in the number of people with limitations. Data are from the Current Population Surveys and the Survey of Income and Program Participation.     

Monetary Rules and Deficit Shocks

Modern theory on interest rate rules is based on the representative agent framework with infinite-horizon consumers, thereby ignoring redistributions of the fiscal burden across generations due to deficit shocks. We show how the ‘Taylor principle’ relies on this restrictive assumption. In a dynamic New Keynesian general equilibrium model with overlapping generations, the existence of a unique stable rational expectations equilibrium may also occur under a passive monetary policy. However, active monetary policy is still required to stabilize the economy in response to fiscal shocks. Thanks are due to an anonymous referee, Andrea Costa, Jordi Galí and Giancarlo Marini for very useful comments and discussions. Financial support from CNR and the FIRB project is gratefully acknowledged. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Fiscal Policy and Exchange Rates

This paper examines the dynamics of the nominal exchange rate and fiscal deficits in a continuous time optimizing general equilibrium model with OLG. It is shown that alternative financing modes of budget deficits imply different patterns of adjustment along the transitional path towards the steady-state equilibrium. In particular, the respect of public solvency without money financing is not sufficient to avoid the depreciation of the exchange rate in the long-run after a fiscal expansion. In addition, money and tax financing generate opposite intergenerational reallocation of wealth.     

Exchange traded funds and asset return correlations

We provide novel evidence supporting the notion that arbitrageurs can contribute to return comovement via exchange trade funds (ETF) arbitrage. Using a large sample of US equity ETF holdings, we document the link between measures of ETF activity and return comovement at both the fund and the stock levels, after controlling for a host of variables and fixed effects and by exploiting the ‘discontinuity’ between stock indices. The effect is also stronger among small and illiquid stocks. An examination of ETF return autocorrelations and stock lagged beta provides evidence for price reversal, suggesting that some ETF‐driven return comovement may be excessive.     

基于上证50ETF期权的“定价核之谜”研究

基于上证50E T F和上证50E TF期权数据,本文经验研究了中国市场是否存在“定价核之谜”,并对“定价核之谜”与市场走势之间的关系进行了探讨。实证结果显示,中国市场存在“定价核之谜”,且“定价核之谜”与下期市场收益率呈显著负向关系、与下期市场振幅呈显著正向关系。本文首次给出了“定价核之谜”在中国金融市场存在的经验证据,并且证实了“定价核之谜”对下期市场走势具有一定的预测作用。     

Foreign ownership and productivity in Chinese newly listed firms: the moderating roles of founder’s human capital and social ties

This paper studies the effects of foreign ownership on firm-level productivity and examines the different moderating roles of the firm-founder’s human capital and social ties on the foreign ownership - productivity link. Leveraging a unique sample of 428 small and medium-sized firms listed on the Growth Enterprise Market in the Shenzhen Stock Exchange between 2009 and 2016, we find that the foreign ownership’s contribution to productivity is not linear and varies across different quantiles of the productivity distribution. Our findings also show that the founder’s education and foreign experience strengthen the foreign ownership - productivity link, while the founder’s political and managerial ties weaken it. Our results reveal the strategic importance of the founder and contribute to an improved understanding of why firms vary in their ability to enhance productivity in emerging economies.

     

Regional distribution and dynamics of human capital in China 1985–2014

This study investigates the regional distribution and dynamics of human capital in China. We develop a new comprehensive human capital measure based on the Jorgenson-Fraumeni (J-F) lifetime income framework, in addition to using the traditional education-based human capital measures. We find that the new J-F human capital measure reflects more closely the regional economic disparity than the education-based measures. We also conduct a Divisia decomposition analysis to investigate the contributions of different factors to the quantity and quality growth of human capital and to regional disparity. Our results show that the regional human capital gaps in China are enlarging in general. Education and urbanization contribute most to human capital growth, while population aging shows a strong negative effect. Our estimates create a new provincial level human capital panel dataset from 1985 to 2014, which is useful for empirical work and policy analysis.     

Investor Sentiment and Return Predictability of the Option to Stock Volume Ratio

We study the effect of investor sentiment on the relation between the option to stock volume ratio (O/S) and future stock returns. Relative option volume has return predictability under short sale constraints. For this reason, we expect and find a stronger O/S‐return relation during high sentiment periods than during low sentiment periods. We find that Baker and Wurgler's Investor Sentiment Index affects the O/S‐return relation after controlling for consumer sentiment indices and economic environment factors. While prior studies have used consumer sentiment indices as alternative measures of investor sentiment, our results suggest these effects are distinct.     

Post-crisis regulatory reforms and bank performance: lessons from Asia

Based on a large dataset from eight Asian economies, we test the impact of post-crisis regulatory reforms on the performance of depository institutions in countries at different levels of financial development. We allow for technological heterogeneity and estimate a set of country-level stochastic cost frontiers followed by a deterministic bootstrapped meta-frontier to evaluate cost efficiency and cost technology. Our results support the view that liberalization policies have a positive impact on bank performance, while the reverse is true for prudential regulation policies. The removal of activities restrictions, bank privatization and foreign bank entry has a positive and significant impact on technological progress and cost efficiency. In contrast, prudential policies, which aim to protect the banking sector from excessive risk-taking, tend to adversely affect banks’ cost efficiency but not cost technology.     

Detours on the Path to a European Big Data Economy

As envisioned by the European Commission, national boundaries are supposed to disappear under the Digital Single Market. Many small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) are not aware of the significant potentials and promises of big data for their business activities and models.