THE BEHAVIOR OF U.S. PUBLIC DEBT AND DEFICITS DURING THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS

In this paper we test the sustainability of U.S. public debt for the period 1916–2012 by analyzing how the primary surplus to gross domestic product (GDP) responds to changes in the debt to GDP ratio in a time‐varying parameter model. Further, we determine the stationarity property of the debt/GDP ratio while accommodating possible breaks in the data caused by wars and economic crisis under both the null and alternative hypotheses of an endogenous unit root test. The results show that the U.S. public debt was sustainable until 2005 when the primary surplus to GDP reacted negatively to the debt/income ratio. This is further exacerbated during the global financial crisis when primary surpluses continued to fall with increased debt, thus jeopardizing the sustainability of fiscal policy. While the stationarity test shows that the U.S. fiscal debt/GDP ratio is sustainable, it fails to highlight the risk that its debt policy has been becoming unsustainable in recent years. (JEL H62, E62, C2)     

Vertical specialization in the EU and the causality of trade

We use a novel classification scheme to identify three stages of production in the manufacturing sector: parts, components and final goods. In particular, we offer evidence on the revealed comparative advantage of the EU-27 countries concerning the three vertically separated stages of production. Moreover, we investigate whether, and if so how, imports of parts, and components can work as a predictor for the exports of final goods. We find that countries specialize at different stages of production, and that components are Granger causal for the export of final goods in many countries with a lag of 3 months.     

BUSINESS CYCLES IN SMALL OPEN ECONOMIES: EVIDENCE FROM PANEL DATA BETWEEN 1900 AND 2013

Using a novel data set for 17 countries between 1900 and 2013, we characterize business cycles in both small developed and developing countries in a model with financial frictions and a common shock structure. We estimate the model jointly for these 17 countries using Bayesian methods. We find that financial frictions are an important feature for not only developing but also small developed countries. Furthermore, business cycles in both groups of countries are marked with trend productivity shocks. Common disturbances explain one third of the fluctuations in small open economies, especially during important worldwide phenomena.     

Monetary Policy Transmission in Vietnam: Evidence from a VAR Approach

A thorough understanding of the transmission mechanism is a key requirement for central banks for successful implementation of monetary policy. This paper investigates the existence of the interest rate channel, exchange rate channel and asset price channel in Vietnam by employing a vector autoregressive model analysis using monthly data ranging from 2003M1 to 2012M12. The results from the analysis present evidence for a cost channel. However, we find no evidence for the existence of an exchange rate channel or asset price channel of monetary transmission in Vietnam.     

The role of trade openness and investment in examining the energy-growth-pollution nexus: empirical evidence for China and India

Most of the existing literature dealing with the relationship between carbon emissions, energy consumption and economic growth either suffers from ignoring relevant variables such as trade openness or investment, or suffers from using econometric methods that are unable to distinguish between short- and long-term causality and are not robust to the degree of integration of time series used for the analysis. This article suggests using the autoregressive distributed lag approach along with additional explanatory variables such as measures of trade and investment to shed a new light on the link between emissions, energy consumption and income in the two largest and energy-intensive developing economies: China and India. Our results, over the 1971–2009 period, provide evidence that investment plays a major role in shaping the relationship between carbon emissions, energy consumption and income in China while this is not the case in India. Furthermore, trade openness is found to play a key function in the short term in China but does not contribute to the emissions-energy-growth scenario in India.     

The wealth effect and diamond risk structure of financial regulation

The objective of this article was to evaluate the effect of announcements of financial regulation on risk and return in the Vietnamese equity market. The techniques used for the purpose of analysing risk and return include event study and non-parametric tests, as well as asset pricing models supplemented with interaction variables and a variety of ARCH-like specifications such as GARCH, TARCH, EGARCH and PARCH. We find evidence for the wealth effect, the presence of delayed response and a risk shifting behaviour in the form of diamond risk structure. Our results show that abnormal returns are present around the announcements of operating rules and other stock market regulations. Abnormal returns can also be obtained after considering legal documents such as circulars and decisions.     

Increased Concentration in Banking: Megabanks and Their Implications for Deposit Insurance

During the past two decades, the U.S. banking industry has experienced an unprecedented wave of consolidation, marked by a substantial decline in the number of insured depository institutions and the emergence of banking behemoths with assets totaling in the hundreds of billions of dollars. This unparalleled concentration of assets and deposits among a handful of "megabanks" has important implications for deposit insurance. Most importantly, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) now faces a situation in which the failure of even a single megabank could overwhelm the resources immediately available to the deposit insurance system and expose both the banking industry and the government (i.e., taxpayers) to huge potential liabilities. This article highlights the current structure of the banking industry, examines the threat that this structure poses to the deposit insurance funds, and suggests possible approaches for dealing with megabanks and the increasing concentration of insured deposits.     

Measuring total factor productivity,technical change and the rate of returns to research and development

This paper examines the relationship between research and development expenditures and total factor productivity using establishment level (or micro) data. The confidential data are taken from the U.S. Bureau of the Census Annual Survey of Manufacturers and other Census surveys. Several measures of total factor productivity are considered as are several variables that proxy for technical knowledge. The latter include research and development expenditures by the firm, the accumulated research expenditures of the industry, and new equipment purchases. We find that there is a statistically significant relationship among above measures of technical expertise and a broad measure of total factor productivity.The refereeing process of this paper was handled through N.R. Adam.