Habit Formation And The Transfer Paradox

Using a two-country model with habit-forming consumers, we show that the transfer paradox can occur in a free-trade, dynamically stable economy. When the debtor is more in the habit of consuming than the creditor, an income transfer from the creditor to the debtor raises the interest rate in transition through changes in time preference. With sufficiently low elasticities of intertemporal substitution and/or sufficiently large stocks of the creditor's assets, the intertemporal terms-of-trade effect immiserizes the recipient and enriches the donor. This possibility cannot be excluded by the correspondence principle ( à la Burmeister and Long) as the dynamics are saddlepoint-stable.     

Comment on Fritz Breuss “WTO Dispute Settlement: An Economic Analysis of Four EU–US Mini Trade Wars”

In his excellent empirical analysis of the WTO dispute settlement process, Fritz Breuss has amply demonstrated the undesirability of trade retaliation by applying the CGE model to the transatlantic mini trade wars in the Hormones, Bananas, Foreign Sales Corporations and Steel Safeguards cases. The author's conclusion that tariffs are very bad instruments for countermeasures is uncontested. However, the practicability of a mechanism of direct transfers as proposed by the author may be questionable. The comments also discuss the purpose of retaliation (countermeasures) in the WTO dispute settlement system and summarize Japan's experience with the WTO dispute settlement mechanism.     

Cognitive discrepancy in Chinese ��face��: Mian and lian, and their impact on cognition of country-of-origin image

Chinese “face,” as a complex social and psychological phenomenon, has attracted much attention from the fields of sociology and psychology. However, in the field of consumer behavior, research about how mianzi (face) affects consumer behavior is lacking. Moreover, research on the connotations of sub-dimension of mianzi (face), that is, lian and mian as well as their influences on consumer behavior is seldom seen. Based on the grounded theory, using focus group interviews and the self-report method, this study extracted scenario sentences of lian and mian, initially forming a preliminary scale with 14 positive items and 20 negative items concerning lian and mian. Moreover, by using close-ended questionnaire originated from previous grounded theory in terms of Chinese face, this study validated the discrepancy between “mian” and “lian.” Besides the discrepancy between “mian” and “lian” also appeared in consumer perception about product category and country-of-origin image.     

FINANCIAL DISTRESS AND INDUSTRY STRUCTURE: AN INTER-INDUSTRY APPROACH TO THE LOST DECADE IN JAPAN

This paper proposes a novel approach to investigating the propagation mechanism of balance sheet deterioration in financial institutions and firms, by extending the input–output analysis. First, we use a unique input–output table augmented by firm size dimension. Second, we link the input–output table with the balance sheet conditions of financial institutions and firms. Based on Japanese input–output tables, we find that the lending attitude of financial institutions affected firms’ input decision in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. Simulation exercises are conducted to evaluate the effects of changes in the lending attitude toward small firms as favorable as that toward large firms on sectoral allocations. We find that output was increased for small firms and reduced for large firms. The change in output was non-negligible, about 5.5% of the initial output of each sector. In particular, it exceeded 20% in textile, iron and steel and fabricated metal products.     

Ownership dynamics and firm performance in an emerging economy: a meta-analysis of the Russian literature

This paper provides a meta-analysis of studies on the effect of ownership on the performance of Russian firms over 20 years of rapid institutional and economic changes. We review 29 studies extracted from the EconLit and Web of Science databases with a total of 877 relevant estimates. We find that the government negatively affects company performance regardless of its administrative level. In contrast, private ownership is positively associated with firm performance. However, the effect size and statistical significance are notably varied among different types of private ownership. While the effect of insider (employee and management) ownership is comparable to that of foreign investors, the effect of domestic outsider investors is considerably smaller. Our assessment of publication selection bias reveals that the existing literature does not contain genuine evidence for a series of ownership types and, therefore, some of the findings have certain limitations.     

Corporate Governance System and Regional Heterogeneity: Evidence from East and West Russia

Abstract

Using a unique firm-level dataset obtained from a large-scale questionnaire survey conducted in late 2015, we examined the generality and heterogeneity of corporate governance systems between the eastern and western regions of Russia. The survey results strongly suggest that the governance system in the surveyed firms is generally characterized by: the dominance of closed corporate forms, the polarization trend in boards of directors and audit committees in terms of their independence from senior management, the reluctance to employ independent directors or expert auditors, and the strong preference for local auditors and indigenous audit firms as external auditors. At the same time, however, we also found that the probability of establishment of the governance bodies, appointment of independent directors and expert auditors, and execution of external audit in the eastern companies is significantly lower than that in the western counterparts. This finding is robust, even after a series of firm-level attributes are simultaneously controlled for.     

Public Debt,Economic Growth and the Real Interest Rate: A Panel VAR Approach to EU and OECD Countries

ABSTRACT

We investigate the causal relationship between public debt ratios and economic growth rates for 31 EU and OECD countries. We estimate a panel VAR model that incorporates the long-term real interest rate on government bonds as a vehicle to transmit shocks in both the public debt to GDP ratio and the economic growth rate. We find no causal link from public debt to growth, irrespective of the levels of the public debt ratio. Rather, we find a causal relationship from growth to public debt. In high-debt countries, the direct negative impact of growth on public debt is enhanced by an increase in the long-term real interest rate, which in its turn decreases interest-sensitive demand and leads to a further increase in the public debt ratio.     

The Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in Transition Economies: A Meta‐analysis

In this paper, we conduct a meta‐analysis of studies that empirically examine the relationship between economic transformation and foreign direct investment (FDI) performance in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union over the past quarter century. More specifically, we synthesise the empirical evidence reported in previous studies that deal with the determinants of FDI in transition economies, focusing on the impacts of transition factors. We also perform meta‐regression analysis to specify determinant factors of the heterogeneity among the relevant studies and the presence of publication‐selection bias. We find that the existing literature reports a statistically significant non‐zero effect as a whole, and a genuine effect is confirmed for some FDI determinants beyond the publication‐selection bias.     

Do education vouchers prevent dropout at private high schools? Evidence from Japanese policy changes

Although education voucher programs for students attending private high schools have existed in Japan for decades, to date there have been no studies that examine their effectiveness. In this study, we estimate the programs’ preventative effect on dropout by using school-track level (academic or vocational) panel data covering all high schools in northern Japan. Prefectural governments have faced increasing dropout rates stemming from financial difficulties, and expanded the scope and amount of their private high school tuition support programs since the late 1990s. We use this variation to identify the effect of tuition support on students’ dropout decisions, controlling for initial academic ability of students entering the schools and unobservable school-track effects. We also apply the instrumental variable method to account for the possible endogeneity of policy changes. Our results suggest that increasing tuition support is particularly effective in preventing the dropout of private high school students on nonacademic tracks.