The Origins and Development of the Latin American Structuralist Approach to the Balance of Payments, 1944–1964

The paper offers an historical account of the origins and development of the Latin American structuralist approach to the balance of payments between 1944 and 1964. We focus on the contributions by Raul Prebisch, Celso Furtado and Juan Noyola, all of them members of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (CEPAL) during the 1950s. Prebisch used the foreign trade multiplier concept to distinguish the business cycle mechanisms at the ‘centre’ and at the ‘periphery’. Noyola introduced the notion of external disequilibrium as a feature of the industrialization process. This was further elaborated by Prebisch's formula connecting the relative rates of growth to the ratio of income-elasticities of import. Furtado examined the implications of the external demand constraint for economic growth, an important element of the two-gap models of the 1960s. The main piece of empirical structuralist research was the CEPAL 1957 report about Mexican external disequilibrium elaborated by Furtado and Noyola, not published at the time; we discuss that report in the context of the Mexican devaluation of 1954.     

Einzelbesprechungen

Ohne ZusammenfassungAus dem Italienischen übersetzt von M. St. Braun, WienAus dem Italienischen übersetzt von E. Allina, WienAus dem Russischen übersetzt von A. GerschenkronÜbersetzt von Paul Brüll, Wien.     

Income and religion: a heterogeneous panel data analysis

A recent empirical literature has addressed the relationship between income and religion, but most of the studies are based on microdata. Macroeconomic analysis of the issue has largely ignored the potential heterogeneity between countries. Using retrospective data on church attendance rates for a panel of countries between 1925 and 1990, we apply heterogeneous panel data estimators and reveal that the effect of participation in religious activities on income per capita is mostly non-significant. This is consistent with some of the recent research that casts doubt onto the influence of religion on income, once causality is taken into account.     

第三方仓储物流企业盈利模式探讨

文中主要论述了第三方仓储物流企业三大类共四种不同类型的盈利模式,包括空间仓储服务模式、增值服务模式和基于供需管理平台的服务模式,其中基于供需管理平台的服务模式可分为作为初级阶段管理增值模式和高级阶段的供需网控模式。文中最后还提出了模式转换的建议措施。认为,前两种模式是过去和当前第三方仓储物流企业的主要盈利模式,后两种模式则代表着企业未来的发展方向。     

The winner-loser anomaly: recent evidence from Greece

This article finds evidence of significant reversals in returns over the medium term in Greek stocks. In contrast with previous research, return reversals are more pronounced for past winners, suggesting that the market overreacts to a greater extent to good news. These contrarian returns are particularly elevated when portfolios are formed using quartiles and during tranquil and bull markets. The optimum contrarian strategy involves skipping the first 6 months of the holding period and implementing the contrarian strategy for a period of 18 months, as returns exhibit continuation followed by reversal. The profitability of the contrarian investment strategy is robust to adjustments for risk and seasonalities. It is the tranquil times and not the crisis/volatile times that generates a significant and profitable contrarian strategy. The recent credit crisis and resulting stock market falls, resulted in extreme movements in some Greek stocks and testing of the contrarian strategy problematic, especially when portfolios are decile ordered. Our findings also highlight the importance of survivorship bias and also suggest that contrarian strategies that just use market beta may be ill-equipped to take into consider extreme market movements, illiquidity and short-sales constraints.     

International portfolio reallocation: Diversification benefits and European monetary union

We investigate the determinants of bilateral international equity and bond portfolio reallocation across a large cross-section of countries spanning over two sample periods: 1997-2001 and 1997-2005. We find that the strongest drivers are the marginal diversification benefits arising from the pure asset component and the initial degree of underweight. This evidence suggests that global portfolio reallocations over the asset boom and bust period were determined by optimal diversification considerations. We also find that due to economic and monetary union (EMU) the weight assigned by euro area investors to investment in euro area countries increased significantly in equity and fixed income portfolios, with a trade diverting effect against the British bond market.     

On Weitzman's ‘recession resistant’ employee compensation arrangements

This note presents a slight modification of the alternative pay systems discussed by Weitzman (1983). The modification preserves the recession resistance property, yet guarantees that the workers already in the firm, will not become worse off by the conversion to the new pay system even when no other firm converts to it.     

Analysis and Forecast of the State of Environmental Protection in Russia

The main purpose of the present study is to analyse the emission dynamics of atmospheric and water pollutants in Russia and cost of their removal in the 1980s and early 1990s, and to forecast them by means of a Dynamic Input–Output Model according to different scenarios of future economic development till 1998. Main results of the work are:– methodological principles have been elaborated for singling out the environmental protection sector within the national economy;– a method has been offered for including the ecological block into a Dynamic Input–Output Model of the Russian economy;– a method of data preparation has been elaborated for the ecological block of the above-named model, the data base which characterizes the ecological situation in Russia has been formed and analysed;– calculations for 1994–1998 have been executed for forecasting the economic and ecological development of Russia using the above-mentioned model and the results obtained have been analysed. The results showed that if the existing tendencies towards low environmental protection capital costs remain the same, then the negative environmental impact will increase. In order to implement ecological programs and international agreements, to increase the proportion of removed pollutants, it is necessary to increase substantially expenditures on purifying water and air resources. The proportion of environmental protection investments in the total amount of the national economy capital costs should increase by up to 12–40% according to different scenarios of the economic development and different purposes of the environmental protection policy.     

Challenges for the Chilean economy under cyclical shocks, 1999–2016

A brief summary of the evolution of economic policies and growth in Chile since 1973 is presented, distinguishing between four periods: 1973–89 with average growth of 2.9 percent, 1990–98 with 7.1 percent (notably above the 3.2 percent Latin American average), 1999–2013 with 3.9 percent, and 2014–16 with 1.9 percent, explaining the main forces underlying these sharp differences. Analysis focuses on the fiscal and external disequilibrium associated with the fiscal treatment of the copper price and the adoption of a free exchange rate since 1999. Subsequently, the focus is on the macroeconomic situation in 2013 and five sources of accumulated disequilibria that suggested a high probability of significant deceleration of the economy. The article ends with a discussion of the actual deceleration in more recent years, converging with the negative average outcome of the region, and concludes that worsening economic performance has been associated mainly with the shift from the coherent countercyclical policies of the 1990s to the procyclical opening of the capital account, liberalization of the exchange rate, and adoption of sharp inflation targeting overcoming other relevant macroeconomic targets since then.