Level and dynamics of financial depth: consequences for volatility of GDP

The existing literature documents positive but potentially non-linear relationship between financial depth measured as private credit to GDP ratio and volatility of GDP. In this paper, we extend the analysis by considering also the role of financial depth dynamics. We use dynamic spatial panel models to address the issue of cross-sectional dependence of errors obtained from the standard dynamic panel models. We confirm the non-linear impact of the financial depth level but also find that higher growth rates of financial depth are significantly associated with higher volatility of output. The role of the latter factor is considerably more important in terms of explained variance compared to the impact of the private credit level. These results are robust to changes in the sample range, specification of the model, and measurement of the key variables. We also document considerable differences between the estimates obtained from the standard GMM and the spatial models.     

Occupational choice and development

The rise in world trade since 1970 has been accompanied by a rise in the geographic span of control of management and, hence, also a rise in the effective international mobility of labor services. We study the effect of such a globalization of the world?s labor markets. The world?s welfare gains depend positively on the skill-heterogeneity of the world?s labor force. We find that when people can choose between wage work and managerial work, the worldwide labor market raises output by more in the rich and the poor countries, and by less in the middle-income countries. This is because the middle-income countries experience the smallest change in the factor-price ratio, and where the option to choose between wage work and managerial work has the least value in the integrated economy. Our theory also establishes that after economic integration, the high skill countries see a disproportionate increase in managerial occupations. Using aggregate data on GDP, openness and occupations from 115 countries, we find evidence for these patterns of occupational choice.     

Do people really want to be informed? Ex-ante evaluations of information-campaign effectiveness

Experimental Economics - We develop a method to assess population knowledge about any given topic. We define, and rationalize, types of beliefs that form the ‘knowledge spectrum’. Using...     

How optimal distinctiveness affects new ventures' failure risk: A contingency perspective

In this article, we apply the concept of optimal distinctiveness to test whether category spanning has a nonlinear effect on new ventures' risk to fail. We argue that by being optimally distinct, i.e., by attaining a level of category spanning that allows new ventures to benefit from balancing the competing needs of conformity with and differentiation from competitors, new ventures can improve their survival chances. In addition, we argue that the relevance of optimal distinctiveness varies with a venture's age and a category's density. We tested our hypotheses using data from 1668 metal bands that were founded in the United Kingdom between 1967 and 2005. The results indicate that optimal distinctiveness is relevant to new ventures' failure risk. Moreover, we show that venture age attenuates the relevance of optimal distinctiveness, whereas category density strengthens that factor's relevance.     

Export‐led growth and its determinants: Evidence from Central and Eastern European countries

In this study, we assess the importance of exports and global value chain (GVC) participation for economic growth. Using novel methods and an extensive data set, we decompose GDP growth in the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) to show that in a large part of the period of transition and integration with the EU, exports have played a predominant role in shaping economic growth. We also show that exports have been the major factor driving the convergence of the CEECs with their advanced counterparts. We employ panel methods to analyse the determinants of growth of exported value added and show that the major growth drivers in the analysed period of 1995–2014 are GVC participation, imports of technology and capital deepening.Jel classificationC23, F21, O33     

ECONOMIC EXPERIMENTS,HYPOTHETICAL SURVEYS AND MARKET DATA STUDIES OF INSURANCE DEMAND AGAINST LOW‐PROBABILITY/HIGH‐IMPACT RISKS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF DESIGNS,THEORETICAL INSIGHTS AND DETERMINANTS OF DEMAND

This paper provides a systematic review of the literature on 80 experimental, hypothetical survey and market data studies of insurance demand against low‐probability/high‐impact risks. The objective of the review is to extract lessons from these studies and to outline an agenda for future research. We contrast the results of experimental and survey studies to findings from market data. We focus on experimental design methods, insurance characteristics, as well as results about theories, heuristics, behavioural biases and explanatory variables. Lessons for policymakers are drawn which can facilitate disaster preparedness.     

Speculation and volatility—A time-varying approach applied on Chinese commodity futures markets

Experts have long discussed and empirically investigated whether speculative activity increases volatility on commodity futures markets. Little empirical research, however, analyzes the role of speculators on commodity futures markets in China. Using time-varying vector autoregression models with stochastic volatility, this paper investigates for four heavily traded metal and agricultural contracts, how the relationship between returns volatility and speculation evolves over time. Our findings indicate that speculative activity has little to no impact on volatility. On the contrary, for all commodities examined, returns volatility seems to amplify speculation.     

The Opportunity Cost of Negative Screening in Socially Responsible Investing

This paper investigates the impact of negative screening on the investment universe as well as on financial performance. We come up with a novel identification process and as such depart from mainstream socially responsible investing literature by concentrating on individual firms’ conduct and by studying a much wider range of issues. Firstly, we study the size and financial performance of fourteen potentially controversial issues: abortion, adult entertainment, alcohol, animal testing, contraceptives, controversial weapons, fur, gambling, genetic engineering, meat, nuclear power, pork, (embryonic) stem cells, and tobacco. We investigate an international sample of more than 1,600 stocks for more than twenty years. We then analyze the impact of applying negative screens to a market portfolio. Our findings suggest that the choice for negative screening strategies does matter for the size of the investment universe as well as for risk-adjusted return performance. Investing in controversial stocks in many cases results in additional risk-adjusted returns, whereas excluding them may reduce financial performance. These findings suggest that there are opportunity costs to negative screening.     

Business Process Management as a Key Factor for eHealth Success

International Advances in Economic Research -     

Positive Assortative Matching: Evidence from Sports Data

It is difficult to establish empirically whether or not there is positive assortative matching in the labor market. We use longitudinal data from a 24‐hour relay marathon in Belluno, Italy, in which participants are affiliated with teams, to study group dynamics in a manner that closely resembles workers' accessions to and separations from firms. In our dataset the productivity of the individual agents is measured and we exploit this by investigating the determinants of accessions, separations, and assortative matching. We find support for the existence of positive assortative matching; i.e., better runners moving to better teams in subsequent years.