LIQUIDITY,MONETARY POLICY,AND UNEMPLOYMENT: A NEW MONETARIST APPROACH

We discover a consumption channel of monetary policy in a model with money and government bonds. When the central bank withdraws government bonds (short‐term or long‐term) through open market operations, it lowers returns on bonds. The lower return has a direct negative impact on consumption by households that hold bonds and an indirect negative impact on consumption by households that hold money. As a result, firms earn less profits from production, which leads to higher unemployment. The existence of such a consumption channel can help us understand the effects of unconventional monetary policy.     

Comparing Different Central Bank Targets

In this paper we analyze different target regimes for a central bank. First, we determine the main macroeconomic variables under inflationtargeting and nominal income targeting in the context of a Mundell–Flemmingtwo country model. We then investigate under which conditions onetarget regime is superior to another if supply or demand shocks occur.The main result of this paper is that there exists a unique boundary for theweight on employment in the objective function of the centralbank. If the actual weight is smaller than this bound, inflation targetingis superior to nominal income targeting. For a weight larger than thisbound, nominal income targeting causes a smaller loss. For the two extremecases of the weight, namely zero or infinity one target regime coincideswith the loss-minimizing solution: inflation targeting for a weight of zeroand nominal income targeting for a weight of infinity.     

Firm-level Intermediate Demand for Pacific Whiting Products: A Multi-attribute, Multi-sector Analysis

Variation in seafood prices resulting from differences in product characteristics are often obscured by highly aggregated data or data representing only upstream sectors. This can lead to myopic commodity-based analysis that fails to identify how changes in public and private fisheries management may impact product characteristics, market development, and long-run social benefits. Given these problems, alternative methods are needed to complement traditional demand, supply and cost-benefit analysis. Mail and personal surveys of seafood wholesalers were conducted to determine preferences for Pacific whiting products. The relative importance of fillet and headed and gutted product characteristics are determined using conjoint analyses and factorial-based market experiments. Estimation of relative profitability, probability of purchase and short-run "conditional" demand models reveal the importance of wholesaler characteristics, physical product characteristics and contractural arrangements. Marketing margins and demands for improved products are also estimated. Implications for private and public resource management are discussed.     

Executive women and the myth of having it all

When it comes to having a high-powered career and a family, the painful truth is that women in the United States don't "have it all." At midlife, in fact, at least a third of the country's high-achieving women--a category that includes high wage earners across a variety of professions--do not have children. For many, this wasn't a conscious choice: Indeed, most yearn for motherhood. So finds economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett, who recently fielded a nationwide survey to explore the professional and private lives of highly educated and high-earning women. Other findings are similarly disturbing. Many of these women who are raising children have suffered insurmountable career setbacks. In addition, today's young women will likely experience even starker trade-offs. In general, Hewlett's data show that, for too many women, the demands of ambitious careers, the asymmetries of male-female relationships, and the difficulties of conceiving later in life undermine the possibility of combining high-level work with family. By contrast, Hewlett's research reveals that high-achieving men continue to "have it all." Of the men she surveyed, 79% report wanting children, and 75% have them. Indeed, the more successful the man, the more likely he is to have a spouse and children. The opposite holds true for women, particularly the highest-achieving women in Hewlett's survey: At age 40, 49% of these ultra-achievers are childless, while 19% of their male peers are. The facts and figures are bleak but, the author contends, could be liberating if they spur action. Hewlett urges lawmakers and corporations to establish policies that support working parents. But recognizing that changes won't happen overnight, she exhorts young women to be more deliberate about their career and family choices.     

Global Urban Policymaking in Africa: A View from Angola Through the Redevelopment of the Bay of Luanda

A burgeoning literature looks into the processes and actors involved in the adoption and emulation of best practices and models of urban policy and development across the globe, often with the aim of attracting investment and making cities more competitive. With its focus on leisure, tourism and global capital, the redevelopment of the Bay of Luanda, in the capital of Angola, echoes the rhetoric, policies and projects underpinning such practices. Yet, a deeper interrogation reveals that the redevelopment forms part of a predominantly inward‐looking project driven by the highest echelons of the national government and its ruling party. While these actors mimic and appropriate the language and tools of entrepreneurial cities, their aim is not necessarily to make the city more internationally competitive but to achieve domestic political legitimacy and stability. The argument presented in this article builds on McCann's ( 2013 ) call for scholars to also consider the ‘introspective’ politics of urban policy boosterism from the perspective of a context in which power is highly centralized. The article thus contributes to a growing literature that advances more adequate and provincialized theorizations of urban policy and city governance in the global South, with a particular focus on the African context.     

Financial systems and the cost channel transmission of monetary policy shocks

We study the role of financial systems for the cost channel transmission of monetary policy in a calibrated business cycle model. We characterize financial systems by the share of bank-dependent firms and by the degree of the pass-through from policy to bank lending rates, for which we provide empirical estimates for the euro area and the US. For plausible calibrations of the dynamics of the lending rate we find that the cost effects directly related to interest rate movements have only a limited effect on the transmission mechanism.     

Structural breaks in Austrian foreign trade with Eastern Europe during the early 1970s

Between 1955 and 1987, Austrian trade with Eastern Europe was characterized by specific factors. On the one hand, trade flows were influenced by the central planning system in Eastern Europe. On the other hand, Austria applied non-standard policy tools to manage Eastern trade. Furthermore, Austrian trade with Eastern Europe was affected by the implementation of the free trade agreement with the European Communities (EC) and the change in the institutional framework for Eastern trade in the early 1970s. Austrian Eastern exports were fostered by increased export subsidies and barter trade. We assess the net effects of these contradictory measures of trade policy by estimating aggregate import and export equations and testing for a structural break in 1973. Our results are consistent with the view that Austria subsidized Eastern exports to pursue a countercyclical policy after 1973.

Regulating oligopolistic industries: A generalized incentive scheme

This paper deals with the design of regulatory mechanisms for oligopolistic industries. The proposed incentive scheme consists of two parts: a subsidy depending upon a firm's contribution to an equilibrium price reduction, and a tax equal to the profit of the previous period. This mechanism is as effective in regulating oligopolies as the well-known incremental surplus subsidy scheme in a monopoly framework. The proposed scheme provides appropriate incentives to enforce competitive behavior in a Cournot oligopoly. The scheme is welfare improving even if firms collude.