Money,random matching and endogenous growth: A quantitative analysis

In this study, we develop a search-and-matching monetary growth model to analyze the effects of inflation on economic growth and social welfare by introducing endogenous economic growth via capital externality into a two-sector search-and-matching model. We find that the channel through which inflation affects economic growth in the search-and-matching model is different from the traditional cash-in-advance model. To facilitate the calibration, we obtain an empirical estimate of the effects of inflation on economic growth using panel regressions. In the simulation analysis, we quantitatively evaluate the welfare effect of inflation in the search-and-matching endogenous growth model and compare it to a search-and-matching exogenous growth model. We find that the welfare effect of inflation is nonlinear in the endogenous growth model whereas it is linear in the exogenous growth model. Furthermore, we find that the welfare cost of inflation under endogenous growth is up to four times as large as the welfare cost of inflation under exogenous growth.     

Social housing in France: A permanent and multifaceted challenge for public policies

This paper examines the dynamics of the overwhelmingly generous social housing in France that covers a wide spectrum of recipients. Being influenced by electoral power of rotating ruling parties and social ideals, policy formulations are often reflected by idealistic politics which tends to over-stretch the nation’s budget and restrict its scope in reaching its target groups. From the 1990s, fund availability has been further hit by economic globalization causing falling business profitability and high unemployment rates affecting notably ethnic minorities. Upcoming social crisis has been met with public response via a series of technical-led remedial acts to promote social integration in housing and by identifying social ills and polarization in sensitive and problematic urban quarters. New technical and financial measures in coping with the complexity and magnitude of social housing are expected to remain highly challenging in the French parliamentary politics.     

金融发展、企业创新与经济增长

本文通过在一般均衡模型中引入银行部门,考察了金融发展对企业创新和经济增长的影响。基于模型的理论分析表明,在均衡状态下,金融发展可以提高经济中储蓄向投资转化的效率、缓解信息不对称,有效降低了研发部门的外部融资成本,从而促进企业增加研发投入,并推动经济实现更高速的增长。在此基础上,本文以中国31个省份2008—2016年的面板数据对上述结论进行了实证检验,相关结果表明:(1)金融发展对企业研发投入具有显著的促进效应;(2)在工业化程度、外商投资水平较高的地区以及政府支出水平较低、人才资源相对短缺的地区,金融发展的促进作用更加明显;(3)企业研发创新可以有效推动经济增长,且在金融支持实体经济中发挥了重要的中介作用。本文的理论和实证分析揭示了“金融发展—企业创新—经济增长”的内生性传导机理及其在中国的体现,从而为金融支持创新型经济增长的改革逻辑奠定了初步的理论和经验基础。     

The internal dynamic of Indian economic growth

A stylised fact of India's economic history since 1950 is that the rate of growth of the economy has accelerated periodically and across policy regimes. In this paper we present a theoretical framework that can generate such a pattern due to cumulative causation through positive feedback. The growth process is then investigated using cointegration analysis. We are able to establish the existence of positive feedback which is at the centre of cumulative causation. We are also able to date the onset of this mechanism which has driven growth in India for close to half a century by now. This leads us to conclude that the internal dynamics are at least as important as the policy regimes to understand growth over the long term in this country.     

The role of consumers' attitude towards economic climate in their reaction to ‘PL-only’ assortments: Evidence from the United States and Spain

Retailers’ assortment rationalisation strategies have found an “ally” in the current global economic crisis. Indeed, retail boycotts of individual brands in economic recession contexts are not uncommon in the CPG industry. In fact, many of the consumers who began buying PLs during the economic recession are continuing their PL behaviour post-recession. So, what is the role of the economic climate in consumers’ reaction– in terms of store loyalty – to retailers’ NB delisting decisions? Is it so relevant? This paper examines how consumers’ attitude towards the economic climate influences his/her reaction to retailers’ strategy of offering ‘PL-only’ assortments in the context of an economic slump (Spain) compared to a context of economic recovery (U.S.). To do so, we have designed a controlled online experiment for two large consumer panels in the Spanish and the U.S. markets. Our results suggest that consumers’ acceptance of ‘PL-only’ assortments is a separate phenomenon rather than merely being a “consequence” of the current economic situation. Nevertheless, in an economic recovery, such ‘PL-only’ assortments do not appear to be the best strategy.     

A ‘new’ economic history of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region

This article argues that there is a need to develop a ‘new’ economic and social history of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region that is based on exploiting novel sources of data, including (a) primary papyrological sources from the medieval period, (b) primary sources at the region's local archives and European (colonial) archives, and (c) primary sources from the ancient (pre-Islamic) period. The proposed ‘new’ history of the MENA region must be inter-disciplinary for two reasons: (a) digitizing and employing these novel data sources in research requires the collaboration of social scientists, historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, demographers and papyrologists, as well as the co-operation of MENA-based scholars who have better access to MENA's local archives, and (b) even if these novel sources are digitized, data limitations are likely to impose a constraint on the reach of quantitative analysis and thus necessitate an inter-disciplinary methodology that combines quantitative evidence with historical analysis.     

Corporate governance in family firms,learning and reaction to recession: Evidence from Italy

This paper focuses on the interaction between internal and external factors explaining performance of small and medium-sized family firms. We used framework foresight to suggest how learning and internal factors such as CEO’s origin, tenure and turnover, could affect the firm’s reactions to one particular external factor, economic recession. The paper draws on empirical observations of a large sample of small and medium family firms operating in Italy between 2002 and 2011 to identify the baseline future, an expected future for these firms. This analysis may be of interest to both management scholars and practitioners. We hope to contribute to the debate on how internal and external factors interact to affect firm success, measured as sales growth. The implications for the future viability of an economic system based on family businesses are straightforward, as the turbulence and instability of the economic environment has grown significantly in the last decade, especially in more developed countries. Whether the ability of a company to adapt and survive to negative shocks depends on its governance provides a rationale for exploring alternative perspectives on the competitiveness of the economic system and the ability of different owners to cope with future negative events.     

Bank liquidity,stock market participation,and economic growth

We develop a growth model with banks and markets to reconcile the observed decreasing trend in the relative liquidity of many financial systems around the world with the increasing household participation in direct market trades. At low levels of economic development, the presence of fixed entry costs prevents the agents from accessing the market, and pushes them towards the banks, which provide high relative liquidity. We characterize the threshold after which the agents are rich enough to access the market, where the relative liquidity is lower, and show that the relative liquidity of the whole financial system (banks and markets) drops because of the increasing market participation. We provide some evidence consistent with this theoretical prediction: a one-unit increase in an index of securities market liberalization leads to a drop in the relative liquidity of between 17 and 27 per cent.     

Economic slowdowns,hazard rates and foreign ownership

This paper evaluates the link between foreign ownership and firm exit during crises, using a longitudinal micro dataset over an 18-year period. We address two main questions: first, if foreign affiliates have different failure rates than domestic firms during economic downturns, and second if the foreignness effect differs between two different economic downturns. The results partially confirm the liability of foreignness argument, suggesting that when the crisis was more pronounced at home than abroad, the differences in hazard rates between foreign and domestic firms reduce. The footloose argument is also only partially confirmed. For policy makers, our results on survival dynamics during crises are not against policies stimulating inward investment. There is no need to fear that foreign firms destabilize more than usual the host economy during economic slowdowns by immediately closing down operations.     

Economic growth and income inequality in the Asia-Pacific region: A comparative study of China,Japan, South Korea,and the United States

This paper builds an inequality-growth-redistribution nexus, and applies the Engle–Granger two-step ECM approach to estimate the long-run and short-run relationships between inequality and growth for four economies: China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States. Our estimation results support the S-shaped curve hypothesis relating GDP per capita to inequality with different starting points for the four economies. For the reverse relationship, we find a positive causal relationship for China, Japan, and the United States, indicating that increased income inequality spurred economic growth. In addition, we find mixed results on the effect of trade openness on inequality and growth. Trade openness reduced inequality in the United States and Japan, worsened it in China and had no significant effect in South Korea. In the inequality-GDP per capita relationship, exports provided an impetus to economic growth for Japan. As for redistribution, although fiscal redistributive measures reduced inequality in Japan, they played no major role in the other three countries. With regard to the inequality-GDP per capita relationship, all countries except for China show a negative effect of fiscal redistribution on GDP per capita.