Financial market integration: Theory and empirical results

In this article, we introduce a new theoretical international asset pricing model which accounts for partial financial market segmentation. We show that if some investors do not hold all international assets because of implicit and/or explicit segmentation factors, the world market portfolio is not efficient and the classic ICAPM must be augmented by a new factor reflecting the local risk undiversifiable internationally. We test this model empirically for a sample of emerging markets. Our findings show that the degree of market integration is time-varying and that the premium associated with the domestic risk factors is the most important component of the total risk premium. However, our results also show that most of the emerging markets we study have become more integrated in the end of our sample period as a result of liberalization and reforms.     

Intergenerational Altruism and the Environment

We construct an overlapping generations model of pollution externality in which individuals are altruistically linked to their offspring as in Barro (1974). It is shown that steady-state consumption may be a decreasing function of the intergenerational degree of altruism. Despite individuals' altruism, the competitive equilibrium is not optimal. We thus study the social optimum and show that it can be decentralized.
JEL classification: D 62; D 64; D 91     

Securitization, Insurance, and Reinsurance

This article considers strengths and weaknesses of reinsurance and securitization in managing insurable risks. Traditional reinsurance operates efficiently in managing relatively small, uncorrelated risks and in facilitating efficient information sharing between cedants and reinsurers. However, when the magnitude of potential losses and the correlation of risks increase, the efficiency of the reinsurance model breaks down, and the cost of capital may become uneconomical. At this juncture, securitization has a role to play by passing the risks along to broader capital markets. Securitization also serves as a complement for reinsurance in other ways such as facilitating regulatory arbitrage and collateralizing low-frequency risks.     

How long do housing cycles last? A duration analysis for 19 OECD countries

This paper analyzes the duration of house price upturns and downturns in the last 40 years for 19 OECD countries. Both upturns and downturns display duration dependence: they are more likely to end as their duration increases. Downturns display also lagged duration dependence: they are less likely to end if the previous upturn was particularly long. These patterns are consistent with a boom-bust view of housing price dynamics, where booms represent departures from fundamentals that are increasingly difficult to sustain and busts serve as readjustment periods. Findings are robust to the inclusion of macroeconomic variables, which allow for the estimation of additional determinants of house price expansions and contractions.     

Revisiting games of incomplete information with analogy-based expectations

This paper studies the effects of analogy-based expectations in static two-player games of incomplete information. Players are assumed to be boundedly rational in the way they forecast their opponent's state-contingent strategy: they bundle states into analogy classes and play best-responses to their opponent's average strategy in those analogy classes. We provide general properties of analogy-based expectation equilibria and apply the model to a variety of well known games. We characterize conditions on the analogy partitions for successful coordination in coordination games under incomplete information [Rubinstein, A., 1989. The electronic mail game: Strategic behavior under ‘almost common knowledge’. Amer. Econ. Rev. 79, 385–391], we show how analogy grouping of the receiver may facilitate information transmission in Crawford and Sobel's cheap talk games [Crawford, V.P., Sobel, J., 1982. Strategic information transmission. Econometrica 50, 1431–1451], and we show how analogy grouping may give rise to betting in zero-sum betting games such as those studied to illustrate the no trade theorem.     

The Exchange Rate Policy of the Euro: A Matter of Size?

This paper analyzes how country size affects exchange rate policy and volatility. A hump shaped relation between exchange rate variability and the size of countries is generated in the theoretical model: exchange rate variability increases with country size for small countries but then decreases for large countries. The paper finds that this theoretical prediction holds well for bilateral exchange rates of the OECD countries in the period between 1980 and 1995 as well as for a subsample of European exchange rates with respect to the dollar. The results suggest that the dollar/euro volability may be lower than the present dollar/DM volatility.J. Japan. Int. Econ., Dec. 1998,12(4), pp. 455–482. CERAS-ENPC, Graduate Institute of International Studies, and CEPR, 28 rue des Saints Pères, Paris 75007, France.Copyright 1998 Academic Press.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers F33, F41, F42.     

Growth, distance to frontier and composition of human capital

We examine the contribution of human capital to economy-wide technological improvements through the two channels of innovation and imitation. We develop a theoretical model showing that skilled labor has a higher growth-enhancing effect closer to the technological frontier under the reasonable assumption that innovation is a relatively more skill-intensive activity than imitation. Also, we provide evidence in favor of this prediction using a panel dataset covering 19 OECD countries between 1960 and 2000 and explain why previous empirical research had found no positive relationship between initial schooling level and subsequent growth in rich countries.     

How to win a decision in a confederation

This paper deals with collective decision making within a group of independent states. The right to choose the public policy is delegated from the central authority to one of the states through a bidding procedure among the group state members. We identify the following tradeoff: competition among states yields higher transfers to the central authority, but the outcome tends to be less efficient than what it is when states negotiate prior to the decision making process. We extend and illustrate the model by means of a public good game involving several heterogeneous states.     

Public pensions and growth

This paper investigates the relationship between the size of an unfunded public pension system and economic growth in an overlapping generation economy, in which altruistic parents finance the education of their children and leave bequests. Unlike the existing literature, we model intergenerational altruism by assuming that children's income during adulthood is an argument of parental utility. Unfunded public pensions can promote growth when families face liquidity constraints preventing them from investing optimally in the education of their children. We consider two alternative ways of financing a public pension system, either by levying social contributions in a lump-sum manner or in proportion to labour income. We find that there is no case for unfunded public pensions in economies where bequests are operative. By contrast, there exists a growth-maximising size of the public pension system in economies where bequests are not operative and individuals are sufficiently patient.