Foreign direct investment and technical progress in Spanish manufacturing

This article analyses the effects of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on technical progress in Spanish manufacturing. Particularly, we study how FDI's contributions vary depending on the economic structure of the industry. The results show that most FDI goes to capital-intensive sectors, especially when those sectors are also Research and Development (R&D)-intensive. Our estimates of the Solow residual show that the positive effect of contemporaneous and lagged FDI on manufacturing productivity is only attributable to capital and R&D intensive industries in what seems to be related to a dynamic capabilities explanation or to complementarities with R&D expenditures.     

Regional productivity variation and the impact of public capital stock: an analysis with spatial interaction,with reference to Spain

In this article, we examine whether variations in the level of public capital across Spain's Provinces affected productivity levels over the period 1996 to 2005. The analysis is motivated by contemporary urban economics theory, involving a production function for the competitive sector of the economy (‘industry’) which includes the level of composite services derived from ‘service’ firms under monopolistic competition. The outcome is potentially increasing returns to scale resulting from pecuniary externalities deriving from internal increasing returns in the monopolistic competition sector. We extend the production function by also making (log) labour efficiency a function of (log) total public capital stock and (log) human capital stock, leading to a simple and empirically tractable reduced form linking productivity level to density of employment, human capital and public capital stock. The model is further extended to include technological externalities or spillovers across provinces. Using panel data methodology, we find significant elasticities for total capital stock and for human capital stock, and a significant impact for employment density. The finding that the effect of public capital is significantly different from zero, indicating that it has a direct effect even after controlling for employment density, is contrary to some of the earlier research findings which leave the question of the impact of public capital unresolved.     

Did FIN 48 increase companies’ tax payments? Trade-off between disclosure and tax burdens

This article examines the effects of implementing FIN 48 on companies’ tax burdens. While the literature examines how FIN 48 impacts companies’ financial reporting, its effect on tax payments has not yet been explored. We find that FIN 48 likely increased larger companies’ tax burdens. Prior to the adoption of FIN 48, larger companies may have used their asymmetric information advantage over the tax authorities to maintain relatively aggressive tax positions. To the extent that such tax-saving strategies were possible only for larger companies, FIN 48 appears to have reduced the appeal of these more aggressive tax minimization strategies.     

The cyclicality of consumption,wages and employment of the public sector in the euro area

This study empirically examines the business cycle behaviour of public consumption and its main components, the public wage bill (including its breakdown into compensation per employee and public employment) and intermediate consumption, in the euro area aggregate, euro area countries and a group of selected non-euro area Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (Denmark, Sweden, the UK, Japan and the US). It looks across a large number of variables and methods, using annual data from 1960 to 2005. It finds robust evidence supporting that public consumption, wages and employment co-move with the business cycle in a pro-cyclical manner with 1–2 year lags, notably for the euro area aggregate and euro area countries. The findings reflect mainly the correlation between cyclical developments, but also point to an important role of pro-cyclical discretionary fiscal policies.     

Market volatility and the dynamic hedging of multi-commodity price risk

Commodity cash and futures prices experienced a severe boom-and-bust cycle between 2006 and 2009. Increases in commodity price volatility have raised concerns about the usefulness of commodity futures and options as risk management tools. Dynamic hedging strategies have the potential to improve risk management when conditional (co)variances depart significantly from their unconditional, long-run counterparts and may be useful to decision-makers despite their greater complexity and higher transaction costs. We propose a Nonparametric Copula-based Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (NPC-GARCH) approach to estimate time-varying hedge ratios, and evaluate the benefits of dynamic hedging during four sub-periods between 2000 and 2011 using a stylized Texas cattle feedlot management problem. The NPC-GARCH approach allows for a flexible, nonlinear and asymmetric dependence structure between cash and futures prices for different commodities. We find that NPC-GARCH dynamic hedging performs better than either static, GARCH-Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) or GARCH-Baba, Engle, Kraft and Kroner (BEKK) hedging in terms of lower tail risk (expected shortfall), but that there is no significant difference between hedging approaches in terms of portfolio variance reduction.     

Pass-through in dollarized countries: should Ecuador abandon the US dollar?

In this article, we examine the convenience of dollarization for Ecuador today. As Ecuador is strongly integrated financially and commercially with the United States, the exchange rate pass-through should be zero. However, we sustain that rising rates of imports from trade partners other than the United States and subsequent real effective exchange rate depreciations are causing the pass-through to move away from zero. Here, in the framework of the Vector Error Correction Model, we analyse the impulse response function and variance decomposition of the inflation variable. We show that the developing economy of Ecuador is importing inflation from its main trading partners, most of them emerging countries with appreciated currencies. We argue that if Ecuador recovered both its monetary and exchange rate instruments, it would be able to fight against inflation. We believe such an analysis could be extended to other countries with pegged exchange rate regimes.     

The real exchange rate,regime changes and volatility shifts

We make use of a data-set with both long span and high frequency to test for purchasing power parity (PPP) while allowing for a structural shift in the volatility of the Mexico–US bilateral real exchange rate (RER). The Kim, Leybourne and Newbold (2002) unit root test, robust to changes in the innovation variance, indicates mean stationarity of the monthly RER, and hence evidence of PPP, for the full sample, 1930–2012, and various subsamples. The persistence of deviations of the real rate from its PPP level as measured by half-lives ranges from 1.37 to 2.41 years.     

Pricing fx forwards in OTC markets – new evidence for the pricing mechanism when faced with counterparty risk

By using daily foreign exchange (fx) market data for five major currency pairs, this article shows that, especially since the beginning of the financial crisis, pricing of fx forwards has not matched the pricing formula derived from the covered interest rate parity (CIP). This corresponds to previous empirical results. Therefore, the CIP leads to systematic over- or underpricing. Overall, four statistically significant explanatory factors for this systematic over- or underpricing have been identified – the volatility in the difference between the interest rate levels, the spot price, the fx forward spread and the counterparty risk. In particular, the high significance of the counterparty risk demonstrates that pricing models for fx forwards should be reviewed.     

FDI performance: a stochastic frontier analysis of location and variance determinants

The opening up process of the eastern European countries was marked by greater integration of FDI with their western neighbouring countries. Using the single-step ML approach to stochastic frontier analysis, the location and variance determinants of FDI are estimated using the knowledge capital (KK) model framework. The findings, based on a panel of bilateral FDI stocks from 10 western to 10 eastern European countries over the 1996–2007 period, suggest FDI is determined by both horizontal and vertical motives while the process of liberalization and infrastructural developments significantly reduces the variance of FDI. In using a stochastic frontier specification of the KK model, the efficiency of FDI performance is identified relative to maximum levels. The bilateral efficiency scores suggest a mixed performance, indicating scope to improve the efficiency of FDI.     

Loan price modelling for local governments using risk premium analysis

Previous studies have highlighted the question of government loan interest as one of great current importance. Government borrowing levels are high, and reducing interest payments would generate savings to meet other spending needs and/or to lower taxation, thus supporting the sustainability of public finances. However, no previous study has presented a method for a local government to calculate its own credit risk and thus be in a position to negotiate lower interest rates on its borrowing. This article defines a financial model that enables local governments to estimate the interest rate payable on a bank loan, based on their credit risk premium, in accordance with the Basel II rules and the findings of our empirical study of large local governments.