Real Exchange Rate and Economic Growth: New Empirical Evidence

The article empirically analyses the relationship between real exchange rate (RER) and growth rate of output. We first estimate the effect of the index of RER undervaluation on the rate of output growth in two samples of countries from 1978 to 2007. Our contribution is the use of a different dataset that increases the number of countries in the sample, as well as the number of available control variables. In doing so, the article adds to the literature by applying a method that allows for the control of income levels (quantile regressions). So, we present new findings on a non‐linear relationship the RER‐growth nexus. We conclude that maintaining a competitive level of RER has positive effects on growth rate.     

Input,Output, and Environmental Management Productivity: Effects on Firm Performance

Firms invest considerable resources to control any of their operations that may have environmental impacts in an attempt to reduce such impacts but also generate economic value. Various studies of the basic creation or destruction of monetary value through environmental performance offer contradictory evidence. Therefore, the present study proposes a new definition of environmental management as the transformation of inputs (resources assigned) into outputs (valuable results). Both inputs and outputs should be taken into account to explain financial outcomes; further consideration should also include a third aspect, namely, ‘environmental management productivity’, which describes the relationship between the outputs and inputs of environmental management. Empirical analyses of Spanish firms with a certified environmental management system subject to the European Union's CO₂ emissions trading system provide evidence that all three aspects must be considered in combination to achieve a more comprehensive view of the impact of environmental management on financial performance. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Autocracy,democracy and trade policy

This paper develops a politico-economic model for use in studying the role of intra-elite conflict in the simultaneous determination of a country's political regime, trade policy and income-tax-based redistribution scheme. Three socioeconomic groups are involved: two elite groups and workers, whose preferences regarding trade policy and income taxation are derived from a simple open-economy model. The critical point is that income taxation induces a rich–poor/elite–workers political cleavage, while trade policy opens the door to intra-elite conflict. In this model, when there is no intra-elite conflict, changes in trade policy are associated with political transitions. Coups (democratizations) open up the economy if and only if both elite groups are pro-free-trade (protectionist). However, in the presence of intra-elite conflict, autocracies respond to popular revolts by changing trade policy and reallocating political power within the elite (to the elite group with the same trade policy preference as the workers) rather than offering to democratize the country. The change in trade policy is credible because the elite group with the same trade policy preference as the workers controls the autocracy. Moreover, in the presence of intra-elite conflict, coups tend to result in the maintenance of the existing trade policy unless popular demands are extremely radical and/or the elite group with the same trade policy preference as the workers is exceptionally weak.     

Productivity, exporting, and the learning-by-exporting hypothesis: direct evidence from UK firms

Abstract.  Case studies suggest exporters learn from clients. Econometric evidence is mixed. We use firm-level panel data on exporting and productivity with direct information on learning sources, including clients. We find: (a) firms who exported in the past are likely to learn more from clients (relative to other sources); (b) firms who learned from clients in the past are more likely to have faster productivity growth; (c) the reverse is not the case; that is, past productivity growth is not associated with more learning from clients and past learning from clients is not associated with more exporting. These results are consistent with the learning-by-exporting hypothesis.     

Supplier behavior and its impact on customer satisfaction: A new characterization of negotiation behavior

Many questions of customer/supplier negotiation dynamics remain unanswered. One reason behind this is that most existing models do not entirely reflect the complex relationship between negotiation behavior and the attained outcome of the negotiation process, analyzing the former from a purely dichotomous perspective. This study examines supplier negotiation behavior and how it impacts the outcome (satisfaction) from the customer´s perspective, thereby proposing a new characterization of negotiation behavior. Our analysis is based on a case study of 21 customer/supplier negotiations carried out by four leading supermarket chains in Costa Rica. Evidence supports our proposal that in customer/supplier negotiations, supplier negotiation behavior can include both integrative and competitive actions within the same negotiation, thereby justifying our proposal of different classifications existing within the negotiation continuum. It was also noted that supplier negotiation behavior influences a customer´s perceived satisfaction level. These findings are relevant to both academia and the professional world and can be used to promote better implementation and performance of agreements attained during a negotiation.     

International mobility of capital,wage indexation,and the cost of policy mistakes under ambiguity: a CGE evaluation

In this paper we focus on the role institutions and structural parameters play in macroeconomic policy design and test the differential effects of tax policies on two structural parameters: the degree of international capital mobility and the rules of wage indexation practiced in the economy. We evaluate counterfactual changes in taxation in the Argentine economy using a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Model with unemployment, calibrated with 2006 data, showing that policy mistakes (diagnosis failures) are costlier when the degree of capital mobility is greater and the rules to determine salaries could amplify the losses. Among other taxes, we evaluate the choice of export taxation, historically one of the preferred revenue sources of Argentine governments. We discuss the choice of taxes that an optimistic and a pessimistic policymaker will make under Knightian uncertainty and find that, in the case of our CGE, an optimistic policymaker prefers to tax export goods, while a more pessimistic one tends to tax imports or non-tradable goods.     

Productivity,Structural Change and Latin American Development

We calibrate a simple neoclassical growth model adapted to illustrate a process of structural transformation or industrialization to a group of nine South American countries. The paper shows that low levels of agricultural productivity can substantially delay the process of industrialization, which, together with low levels of non‐agricultural productivity observed in recent decades, satisfactorily explains the significant differences in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita levels among the countries in our sample. The results suggest that Argentina underwent the process of industrialization first followed by Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay and Bolivia. The model predicts that the ranking of these countries in terms of GDP per capita would follow this order until convergence occurs. The empirical evidence confirms the prediction of the model with the exceptions of Uruguay and Chile which caught up with Argentina in terms of GDP per capita levels in the late 1980s.     

Fiscal Federalism and Legislative Malapportionment: Causal Evidence from Independent but Related Natural Experiments

We exploit three natural experiments in Argentina in order to study the role of legislative malapportionment on the biased federal tax sharing scheme prevalent in the country. We do not find support to attribute it to legislative malapportionment during periods when democratic governments were in place; nor did we find any evidence that the tax sharing distribution pattern became less biased under centralized military governments. We argue that these results are at least partly attributable to two of Argentina's institutional characteristics: first, the predominance of the executive branch over the legislature (main fiscal decisions are the outcome of a bargaining process among executive authorities); and, second, the lack of any significant difference in the pattern of geographic representation in the executive branch under democratic and autocratic governments. Thus, the observed biases in the distribution of tax revenues among the Argentine provinces are not caused by legislative malapportionment, but are probably the result of a more structural equilibrium that transcends the geographic distribution of legislative representation and even the nature of the political regime. Our findings illustrate the importance of informal institutions and de facto mechanisms to study fiscal federalism in developing countries.     

The Trouble with Harrod: The fundamental instability of the warranted rate in the light of the Sraffian Supermultiplier

The paper argues that Harrodian instability is an instance of what Hicks in his book Capital and Growth (1965) called static instability, related to the direction (and not to the intensity) of the disequilibrium adjustment process. We show why such instability obtains in demand‐led growth models in which the ratio of capacity creating private investment to output ratio is given exogenously by the aggregate marginal propensity to save. We also show that Sraffian Supermultiplier model overcomes the Harrodian instability and that its demand‐led equilibrium is statically stable. It is explained that the latter results do not follow from the presence of autonomous non‐capacity creating expenditure component as such but from its presence within a model in which investment is driven by the capital stock adjustment principle (i.e., the flexible accelerator). Finally, we argue that, although being statically stable, the equilibrium growth path of the Sraffian Supermultiplier model can be dynamically stable or unstable depending on the intensity of the reaction of investment to demand. We then provide a discrete time sufficient condition for the dynamic stability of such equilibrium that implies that the marginal propensity to invest remains lower than the marginal propensity to save during the adjustment process, a modified Keynesian stability condition.