¿Hay evidencia de ciclo político-económico en el empleo sectorial de México, 1998-2013?

This paper looks for evidence of political-business cycles associated to the presidential elections in the Mexican sectorial employment over the period 1998-2013. By estimating panel data models, and controlling for the effects of the major determinants of employment, no evidence consistent with the predictions of the theoretical opportunistic model is found, i.e. whereas employment shows an expansion before and during the elections periods, the estimates are neither statistically significant nor robust. Furthermore, employment does not experience contractions after the elections or the office taking periods. Notwithstanding, the evidence suggests that employment is positively and negatively affected by output and real wages, respectively.     

EBITDA margin in brazilian companies Variance decomposition and hierarchical effects

This study explores the controversy between the business and academic perspectives regarding earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA). Some authors argue that EBITDA is not useful as an indicator, except for comparing companies within the same sector (Assaf Neto, 2003, McClure, 2006, Stumpp, 2000). On the other hand, the business world strongly uses this type of indicator as a tool to support its decisions (Schmalensee, 1985, Moraes, 2005). This difference in opinions has aroused interest in understanding the reasons for its use and has raised questions regarding the usefulness of EBITDA for comparing companies from both the same and different sectors. By applying Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM), the main goal of this research is to observe EBITDA behavior across companies selling goods in Brazil, comparing them within the same sector and across different sectors over time. This research allows for the analysis of the reasons why EBITDA patterns occasionally occur. The results show significant variation in EBITDA among companies across the same sector and across companies from different sectors. On the other hand, our results have shown, nevertheless, that the variability among companies from the same sector was the highest one, raising questions on the actual usefulness of this indicator to compare companies from the same sector.     

Prices,institutions, and determinants of supply in the Malian cotton sector

Cotton, both a source of livelihood for millions of poor rural households and a major source of export revenues, is a vital commodity for the economic and social development of Mali. Inefficiencies in the Malian cotton system at the ginnery and producers’ cooperative levels (e.g., late payment to farmers and poorly functioning credit schemes) have recently led to an important decline in supply, threatening the sustainability of the sector. Using regional data from 1998/1999 to 2008/2009, this study aims to quantitatively assess the contribution of key determinants, such as cotton prices and timely payment, toward the downward trend in cotton area. A dynamic supply model, based on adaptive expectations and partial adjustment, is employed to estimate the effects of prices and institutional factors, such as credit recovery rates and date of payment to farmers, on the Malian cotton supply. Results show that supply responds significantly to cotton prices relative to cereal and fertilizer prices. Date of payment varies across agricultural cycles and late payment negatively influences land devoted to cotton. Low credit repayment rates create disincentives to grow cotton. Therefore, the revitalization of the Malian cotton sector depends upon getting both prices and institutions right.     

On the need to compensate the compensating variation in CGE modeling

The message of this research is that in the standard calibrated setting of Computational General Equilibrium (CGE) models, the welfare measures typically used to compare benchmark with counterfactuals are numéraire dependent. This evaluation bias affects the compensating variation and the Konüs index of cost of living. We show that the equivalent variation is neutral regarding the choice of value units in calibrated models but would be affected as well in uncalibrated CGE models. We illustrate with a simple example and propose an even simpler theoretical solution to overcome these biases; all that is required to have correct welfare estimates is to compensate normalizing with a suitable price index. This type of correction is necessary to overcome the sometimes blind implementation of welfare measures in numerical general equilibrium analysis. We show that the induced quantitative errors may be substantial providing biased welfare estimates and misleading results.     

Circular business model evolution: Stakeholder matters for a self-sufficient ecosystem

Food waste is a key issue in the circular economy. A circular ecosystem results from the contributions of various stakeholders; however, the claims and value propositions of these stakeholders can differ, hampering long-term sustainability of the ecosystem. This study analyses the case of RiCibo, a circular ecosystem based in Genoa, Italy. RiCibo collects surplus food and redistributes it to the needy in the local community. The study examines the conditions that facilitated RiCibo’s evolution from a simple project to a circular self-sufficient ecosystem characterised by a co-designed circular business model with a broad range of stakeholders. The results show that sharing people, infrastructure and knowledge, together with mutual trust among stakeholders, are the preconditions of a circular ecosystem. Long-term continuity depends on additional tools that enhance financial self-sufficiency, namely, participative governance, a co-designed circular business model, accountability, frequent engagement, local actions and the development of advocacy power.     

Selling Together: The Benefits of Cooperatives to Women Honey Producers in Ethiopia

Smallholder farmers in developing countries encounter multiple barriers in access to inputs and technology, which prevent them from reaping the benefits from market participation. Women farmers face additional constraints due to gender norms that further limit their engagement in productive activities. While collective action has been shown to improve access to markets and economic outcomes for farmers overall, the evidence on the effects of cooperative membership for women smallholders remains limited. We investigate empirically the economic benefits of collective action for women farmers in the honey sector in Ethiopia. Relying on a rich data set on women honey producers, both cooperative members and non‐members, we evaluate the effects of belonging to a cooperative on three outcome variables through coarsened exact matching and regression analysis. Our results indicate that cooperative membership significantly increases the market price and the production quantity and, while the average effect on the share of product marketed is statistically insignificant, significant differences emerge for women with given characteristics. These results are shown to be robust to a number of tests that address biases from selection on observables and unobservables. An analysis of the heterogeneous effects of household membership in multiple groups finds that membership of self‐help groups or farmer associations amplifies the positive outcomes from belonging to a formal cooperative. Finally, qualitative findings derived from the same communities indicate self‐reported improvements in agency and self‐esteem among women members, thus reinforcing the importance of the quantitative findings.     

CURRENCY UNION WITH OR WITHOUT BANKING UNION

We build a symmetric two‐country monetary model with credit to study the interplay between currency integration and credit markets integration. The currency arrangement affects credit availability through default incentives. We capture credit markets integration by the extra cost incurred to obtain credit for cross‐border transactions and, with the euro area context in mind, label as banking union a situation where this cost is low. For high levels of the cross‐border credit cost, currency integration may magnify default incentives, leading to more credit rationing and lower welfare. The integration of credit markets restores the optimality of the currency union.     

How Chinese Agricultural Immigrants Affect Farmers in the Russian Far East

China’s international position as a net creditor nation provides it with foreign exchange that it has invested in Asian and African countries. One example is China's investment in the Russian Far East (RFE). Thousands of Chinese agricultural workers have migrated to the RFE in recent decades. They are often welcomed by Russian farmers who face a labor shortage and by local residents who can buy cheap vegetables from them, but there are others who resent their presence in the region as competitors. Our study is the first empirical study of this relationship. Our results demonstrate economic benefits to the Russian households. There are, however, some negative repercussions of Chinese farmers in the RFE, and the governments of both China and Russia need to manage the situation wisely.     

EXTENSIONS TO THE MULTIPLIER DECOMPOSITION APPROACH IN A SAM FRAMEWORK: AN APPLICATION TO VIETNAM

The aim of this paper is to provide an extension of a technique recently introduced by Pyatt and Round (2006) to decompose each element of the ‘global multiplier matrix’ in ‘microscopic detail’ in order to capture the linkages between each household groups’ income and the exogenously injected income of other accounts. The methodology we propose allows dividing the impact of exogenous injections into four different effects: direct-direct effect (D-D); direct-indirect effect (D-I); indirect-direct effect (I-D) and indirect-indirect effect (I-I). Results using the 2000 Vietnamese SAM show that the highest direct effects on the income of household groups are related to exogenous injections into the agricultural sector, while the highest indirect effects result from investing in other agriculture-related sectors such as, for example, food processing. Policy interventions focusing on the agricultural sector and on rural households will thus have the greatest effect on reducing the level of income inequality.