Economic Fluctuations in the U.S. and Euro Area: Quantifying the Contribution of Technical Change

This article aims at quantifying the contribution of technical change to cyclical fluctuations in the U.S. and euro area. We distinguish technical progress in labor-augmenting and capital-augmenting change. To this end, we derive and estimate a New Keynesian DSGE model embodying a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function for both areas. Our main findings are: (i) capital-augmenting progress is the main source of technical change volatility; (ii) labor-augmenting shocks give a negligible contribution to the variance of output; (iii) technical change (of both types) explains more economic fluctuations in the U.S. than in the euro area; and (iv) historical decomposition of GDP growth over our sample period (1980–2008) shows that capital-augmenting progress is one of the key drivers of the business cycle.     

Selection in asset markets: the good, the bad, and the unknown

In this paper, we use a series of simple examples to illustrate how wealth-driven selection works in a market for Arrow securities. Our analysis delivers both a good and a bad message. The good message is that, when traders invest constant fractions of their wealth in each asset and have equal consumption rates, markets are informationally efficient: the best informed agent is rewarded and asset prices eventually reflect this information. However, and this is the bad message, when asset demands are not constant fractions of wealth but dependent upon prices, markets might behave sub-optimally. In this case, asymptotic prices depend on preferences and beliefs of the whole ecology of traders and do not, in general, reflect the best available information. We show that the key difference between the two cases lies in the local, i.e. price dependent, versus global nature of wealth-driven selection.     

Productivity or Discrimination? Beauty and the Exams*

Do good looks make people more productive? An impact of looks on earnings has been found in the empirical literature: plain people earn less than average‐looking people who in turn earn less than good‐looking people. However, an important question remains unanswered: is the impact of beauty due to pure discrimination or productivity? We provide evidence against the hypothesis of Becker‐type discrimination stemming from tastes and in favour of productivity‐related discrimination.     

Technological Change and Population Growth

What is the relationship between the rate of population growth and the rate of technological change? To answer this question, I discuss a model where increasing returns generate long-run growth but where the scale effect is absent. More precisely, the model predicts that steady-state productivity growth does not depend on population size because an increase in population size leads to entry. The resulting crowding-in effect generates dispersion of R&;D resources across firms and offsets the positive effect of the scale of the economy on the returns to R&;D. Changes in population size have only transitory effects on productivity growth. This desirable property allows me to introduce population growth in the model and study the effects of demographic shocks. The predicted patterns of growth, entry, and change in industrial structure match the experience of several industrialized countries. In addition, they match several of the empirical observations cited as evidence against standard models of endogenous technological change.     

Did fiscal institutions affect Wagner’s law in Italy during 1951–2009 period? An empirical analysis

In this article, we test Wagner’s assumption of the one-sided directional flow moving from economic growth to public spending in Italy for the 1951–2009 period. We pay particular attention to the impact of certain regime shifts related to changes in Italian budget regulations and procedures and the relevance of fiscal institutions to the fiscal performance equation, i.e. the public spending–national income nexus. The Error Correction Model is estimated to measure short-run dynamic effects and the long-run equilibrium between the two time series. The empirical evidence suggests that Wagner’s law is supported. In regard to policy implications, we find that public spending reacted less to positive changes in economic growth when the strengthening of the Ministry of Finance occurred in 1997 (Ciampi’s reform). Some sensitivity analyses confirm our empirical evidence.     

The Manhattan Metaphor

Fixed operating costs draw a sharp distinction between endogenous growth based on horizontal and vertical innovation: a larger number of product lines puts pressure on an economy’s resources; greater productivity of existing product lines does not. Consequently, the only plausible engine of endogenous growth is vertical innovation whereby progress along the quality or cost ladder does not require the replication of fixed costs. Is, then, product variety expansion irrelevant? No. The two dimensions of technology are complementary in that using one and the other produces a more comprehensive theory of economic growth. The vertical dimension allows endogenous growth unconstrained by endowments, the horizontal provides the mechanism that translates changes in aggregate variables into changes in product-level variables, which ultimately drive incentives to push the technological frontier in the vertical dimension. We show that the potential for exponential growth due to an externality that makes entry costs fall linearly with the number of products, combined with the limited carrying capacity of the system due to fixed operating costs, yields logistic dynamics for the number of products. This desirable property allows us to provide a closed-form solution for the model’s transition path and thereby derive analytically the welfare effects of changes in parameters and policy variables. Our Manhattan Metaphor illustrates conceptually why we obtain this mathematical representation when we simply add fixed operating costs to the standard modeling of variety expansion.     

Evaluation of the Reggio approach to early education

We evaluate the Reggio Approach using non-experimental data on individuals from the cities of Reggio Emilia, Parma and Padova belonging to one of five age cohorts: ages 50, 40, 30, 18, and 6 as of 2012. The treated were exposed to municipally offered infant-toddler (ages 0–3) and preschool (ages 3–6) programs in Reggio Emilia. The control group either did not receive formal childcare or were exposed to programs offered by municipal systems (outside of Reggio Emilia), or by state or religious systems (in all three cities). We exploit the city-cohort structure of the data to estimate treatment effects using three strategies: difference-in-differences, matching, and matched-difference-in-differences. Most positive and significant effects are generated from comparisons of the treated with individuals who did not receive formal childcare. Relative to not receiving formal care, the Reggio Approach significantly boosts outcomes related to employment, socio-emotional skills, high school graduation, participation in elections, and obesity. Comparisons with individuals exposed to alternative forms of childcare do not yield strong patterns of positive and significant effects. This suggests that differences between the Reggio Approach and other alternatives are not sufficiently large to result in significant differences in outcomes. This interpretation is supported by a survey we conduct, which documents increasing similarities in the administrative and pedagogical practices of childcare systems in the three cities over time.     

Stochastic dominance and thick-tailed wealth distributions

Right-skewed and thick-tailed wealth distributions have been documented as an empirical regularity across space and time. A key mechanism for explaining these distributional features is proportional random growth. We investigate the comparative statics of a well-defined class of random growth models when allowing for stochastically ordered shifts in the wealth return process. An order-contingent monotone comparative statics property is identified, according to which pure increases in risk (e.g. higher volatility of capital returns) foster top wealth concentration whereas first-order stochastically dominated shifts in the return process (induced by e.g. proportional capital income taxation) rather lower inequality at the upper end of the distribution. Our analysis points to the potentially ambiguous effects on top wealth inequality of introducing or modifying capital income tax treatments in the presence of stochastic returns.     

The effect of computer use on earnings in Italy

This paper studies the effect of computer use on earnings among a cohort of recent Italian high school graduates. The IV and Heckman techniques are used in order to control for endogeneity of computer use. Results show that the wage premium associated with computer use disappears once selection into computer use is accounted for. On the other hand, using the computer to perform a number of specific tasks leads to higher earnings. It is therefore suggested that not all individuals who use a computer at work receive a wage premium, but only those possessing complementary computer skills such as communication, networking and problem solving abilities.      

Strategy,Valuation, and Forecast Accuracy: Evidence from Italian Strategic Plan Disclosures

Using a sample of 264 strategic plan presentations by Milan Stock Exchange firms during 2001–2012, we present evidence of both a security price reaction and an increase in the accuracy of analysts’ earnings forecasts pursuant to plan disclosure. In the cross-section, the information content of the plan disclosures and the accuracy increase are incrementally associated with the extent of forward-looking narrative disclosures in the plan, after controlling for other disclosures within and outside the plan presentation and the fact that the firm has self-selected into the sample. Both quantitative and qualitative narrative disclosures are informative to investors and analysts. The results are driven by narrative disclosures about company strategy and action plans rather than about the business environment in which the company operates. Our study informs the current debate on the use of voluntary comprehensive, integrated, long-run-oriented strategic plan disclosure as a potential complement for disclosures such as quarterly earnings forecasts that have been described as an example of ‘short-termism’.