Monetary policy regime change and regional inflation dynamics: looking through the lens of sector‐level data for Korea

This paper explores the impact of the adoption of inflation targeting (IT) on the dynamics of city‐level inflation in Korea using both aggregate and sector‐level data. When looking at aggregate regional inflation, we find that the mean, volatility and persistence fell in all cities in the wake of the monetary policy regime change, consistent with other evidence in the literature. Delving more deeply into the disaggregate data reveals additional insights however. For most of the changes we observe in the dynamics of regional inflation, we find that the aggregate effects are being driven primarily by sectors that fall into the ‘Services’ category. We posit that the impact of better anchored inflationary expectations is primarily on the less‐traded services sectors of the economy, where the domestic monetary policy framework has a relatively larger influence. When it comes to the increased co‐movement observed across regions under an IT regime, however, it is the ‘Commodities’ sectors rather than ‘Services’ that are responsible, probably because services inflation becomes relatively more influenced by local factors once it has stabilized within the target range. Therefore, adoption of IT may not necessarily increase all measures of regional synchronization even when the goal of better‐anchored inflationary expectations is achieved.     

Labour Migration,Food Expenditure,and Household Food Security in Eastern Indonesia

This paper investigates the impact of migration on the food expenditure and household food security status of migrant‐sending households using data from eastern Indonesia. We find that migration significantly increases food expenditure and overall household expenditure. Combining the food frequency and food consumption module of the Indonesia Family Life Survey (East), this paper shows that having at least one migrant in the family increases the composite index of Food Consumption Score, as well as the family's food security. Evaluation of food diversity also shows that migration increases expenditure on six out of ten food groups.     

Real exchange rate and export performance in Argentina, 2002–2008

Between 2002 and 2008, Argentina experienced a phase of very high and sustained economic growth. During this period, macroeconomic policy aimed to preserve a stable and competitive real exchange rate (SCRER). There is controversy on whether the SCRER policy was a key factor fostering growth and, even more, on whether it helped promote the expansion of tradable activities and exports. We use a methodology to detect episodes of export surges among Argentina’s export industries and find that labor-intensive industries—especially low- and medium-technology manufactures—experienced the highest proportion of export surges within this period. We also find that between 1980 and 2015, the highest proportion of surges in total exports occurred during the 2003–8 period. The performance of export of services was also particularly dynamic during this period. This evidence suggests that the SCRER policy was instrumental for export surges in Argentina during 2002–8.     

Are EU trade preferences really effective? An impact evaluation assessment of the Southern Mediterranean Countries’ case

This work assesses the causal impact of the EU trade preferences granted to the Southern Mediterranean Countries (SMCs) in agriculture and fishery products over the period 2004–2014. It overcomes some of the weaknesses of previous assessments and presents several methodological improvements. Firstly, it relies on a continuous treatment – i.e. preferential margins – to capture the ‘average treatment effect’ of trade preferences, rather than on a binary treatment based on dummy variables. Secondly, it uses highly disaggregated data at sectoral level in order to evaluate properly the preferential treatment. Thirdly, it applies a non-parametric matching technique for continuous treatment – specifically, a generalized propensity score matching. The results show, on the one hand, that the impact of the EU preferences is positive and significant on SMCs trade and is better evaluated using impact evaluation techniques. On the other hand, they demonstrate that the relationship between preferences and trade flows is asymmetric and warn against the risk of providing too much of a good thing. These results raise important issues for policy-making. First, they demonstrate that raising the level of preferences is not the solution to foster the SMCs trade towards EU. Second, that the policy-makers should put more emphasis on complementary factors other than trade barriers.     

Is the leadership style important in R&D departments in Spanish industrial companies? An empirical analysis

This paper aims to thoroughly look into the effects of the differences between the diverse leadership styles on innovative outputs (intensive, efficient and eco-efficient) in Spanish industrial companies. A questionnaire for the factories was sent and was received between the months of September 2013 and June 2014. A total of 142 valid questionnaires were received. Several regression models were used in the empirical analysis. The results show that charismatic leadership positively induces an intensive innovative output, at the same time as it improves firms’ eco-efficient innovative output. Likewise, the individualised consideration that characterises transformational leadership makes this leadership style produce positive results on the whole group of innovative outputs considered. At the other end of the leadership spectrum, the transactional style causes negative effects on the relationship between innovative activity and innovative outputs, and more specifically, on the efficient innovative output.     

Do professional forecasters behave as if they believed in the New Keynesian Phillips Curve for the euro area?

This paper finds that participants in the European Central Bank’s Survey of Professional Forecasters have submitted forecasts that are consistent with a (mostly forward-looking) empirical version of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve for the euro area. The estimation technique takes advantage of the panel nature of the Survey of Professional Forecasters’ dataset to exploit both its time series and cross-section dimensions, and to control for unobservable individual heterogeneity across forecasters. The estimation results suggest that euro-area inflation forecasts have reacted less to unemployment forecasts after the start of the financial crisis but another cost measure (energy inflation) remains significant. This finding is consistent with a flatter Phillips Curve in the euro area after 2007. However, the reasons suggested by the International Monetary Fund for this finding, namely a better anchoring of inflation expectations and increases in structural unemployment do not seem to find support in the survey data. Instead, the expectations for compensation per employee submitted by professional forecasters are consistent with the existence of downward real-wage rigidities in euro-area labour markets.     

The effect of nonreciprocal preferential trade agreements on benefactors’ exports

Over the last decades, developed countries have provided developing countries with preferential market access via trade policies in the form of nonreciprocal preferential trade agreements (NRPTAs). Despite the lack of reciprocity of this kind of agreements, certain criteria for designating eligible countries refer to the commercial interests of benefactor countries. This paper examines for the first time the effect of NRPTAs on benefactors’ exports to beneficiary countries. Using recent developments in the econometric analysis of the gravity equation, we find robust evidence that nonreciprocal agreements have had an economically significant effect on exports not only for beneficiary countries but also for benefactor countries.     

Tax and transfer programs,retirement behavior,and work hours over the life cycle

In this paper, we use a computable overlapping generations model economy to analyze the quantitative effects of some reforms on tax and transfer programs, aimed at easing the tax burden on the labor supply of older workers. We focus on retirement behavior, work hours over the life cycle, and efficiency gains. We find that the labor supply of older workers is very responsive to changes in tax and transfer programs and show that the gains, in terms of old-age work hours, are non-trivial. However, we also find that longer careers may not substantially increase aggregate hours because workers may reallocate labor supply over the life cycle in response to retiring later. Moreover, since longer careers may also reduce saving rates, we also find that changes in tax and transfer programs aimed at boosting the employment rates of the elderly may reduce output per head.     

Technical efficiency analysis correcting for biases from observed and unobserved variables: an application to a natural resource management project

This article brings together the stochastic frontier framework with impact evaluation methodology to compare technical efficiency (TE) across treatment and control groups using cross-sectional data associated with the MARENA Program in Honduras. A matched group of beneficiaries and control farmers is determined using propensity score matching techniques to mitigate biases stemming from observed variables. In addition, possible self-selection arising from unobserved variables is addressed using a selectivity correction model for stochastic frontiers recently introduced by Greene (J Prod Anal 34:15?C24, 2010). The results reveal that average TE is consistently higher for beneficiary farmers than the control group while the presence of selectivity bias cannot be rejected. TE ranges from 0.67 to 0.75 for beneficiaries and from 0.40 to 0.65 for the control depending on whether biases were controlled or not. The TE gap between beneficiaries and control farmers decreases by implementing the matching technique and the sample selection framework decreases this gap even further. The analysis also suggests that beneficiaries do not only exhibit higher TE but also higher frontier output.