The Poverty of Politics: How Income Redistribution Hurts the Poor

In spite of the significant research literature identifying a tradeoff between income redistribution and economic growth, massive public programs have been implemented to help the poor by transferring income to them. Since Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty began in 1964, over 3.5 trillion dollars have been transferred. However, the possibility that everyone, including the poor, may in fact be made worse off by the transfer has largely been ignored. With a simple algebraic model, the authors demonstrate that, over time, both high and low-income groups are harmed by redistribution. In addition, social mobility, as well as political concerns with relative poverty and international income redistribution increases the damage to all income groups produced by redistribution.     

The Effects of Central Banks’ Rate Change Patterns on Financial Market Variables

This study examines whether different patterns of change to the benchmark interest rates of central banks are associated with their contributions to variances in the forecast errors of three financial market variables: the long-term interest rate, the foreign exchange rate, and the stock market index. On average, the central bank’s interest rate accounts for approximately 20% of the variance in each variable. We find that the total range of changes is more important than the frequency of changes. The panel regression shows that the range and frequency of policy rate changes is positively associated with the volatility of long-term interest rates but no association with the volatility of stock prices and exchange rates. These results suggest that small and frequent adjustments of policy rates are desirable for reducing the volatility of interest rates. The panel VAR represents interest rate channel is a more important than exchange rate and stock price channel.     

A New Approach to Measuring a Multidimensional Productivity Index: An Application for 60 Selected Countries

This study aims to develop a productivity index which takes into account the multidimensional characteristics of productivities. Our multidimensional productivity index (MPI) not only measures individual productivities of economic resources but also evaluate productivity enhancing general capacities of economy. Individual productivity indices such as labor productivity are limited because they do not consider the factors, such as the globalization of economies and the market and institutional variables, that could have profound impacts on productivity. The multidimensional Productivity Index (MPI) is measured for 60 countries including 23 OECD countries and 10 Asian countries. Our methodology employs the concept of technical efficiency that allows us to measure the extent to which institutional and market factors contribute to the economic performance. Our findings indicate that standard productivity measures such as labor productivity may overestimate the overall productivity differences across the economies.     

Fixed-Term Contracts and Labor Market Duality in France

The French labor market is segmented between permanent and temporary workers. The second category has difficulty in getting an open-ended contract. This paper aims at depicting workers on short-term contracts and shows the consequences on their professional career are negative and significant. A large part of the wage gap between permanent and temporary workers remains unexplained by observable characteristics. They receive less on-the-job training and their likelihood of obtaining a stable job is lower than 30% after 1 year and a half. They have also a higher probability of being the adjustment variable in case of an economic negative shock. These different findings show the importance of using public policies to encourage transitions from fixed-term to permanent employment and reducing labor-market duality.     

The Surge in Short-Duration Contracts in Spain

Until the outbreak of the recent economic and financial crisis, Spain was leading the ranking of countries with the largest share of temporary employees. During the crisis this share has fallen to its lowest level in decades, but this does not mean that working conditions in Spain have improved. The flow of new temporary contracts is larger than ever before. A particularly striking feature is the steep growth in the volume of fixed-duration contracts lasting less than a week or a month. We document these trends and analyse how this phenomenon has affected the transition from temporary to permanent employment.     

The Diffusion of Local Differentiated Waste Disposal Taxes in the Netherlands

The diffusion of a novel taxing scheme (among Dutch municipalities over the period 1998–2005) is studied in which the waste disposal tax is increasing in the amount of waste a household produces. Inspection of the rise and spread of this tax shows that it is contagious: the probability of introduction is increasing in the number of neighboring municipalities that have already introduced this taxing scheme. A possible rationale is that the tax encourages the dumping of waste in neighboring municipalities. These municipalities may then introduce a similar tax to prevent dumping (spillover effect). Using panel data and a recently developed spatial probit approach (Elhorst et al. in J Appl Econom 32:422–439, 2017), it is possible to distinguish this spillover effect from time-specific effects. The results indicate the presence of strong spillovers.