Digital Commons Network^™

Using 'Big Data' To Explain Visits To Lakes In 17 Us States, Erik Nelson, Maggie Rogers, Spencer Wood, Jesse Chung, Bonnie Keeler

Economics Department Working Paper Series

We use large dataset on US lakes from 17 states to estimate the relationship between summertime visits to lakes as proxied by social media use and the lakes' water quality, amenities, and surrounding landscape features and socioeconomic conditions. Prior to estimating these relationships we worked on 1) selecting a parsimonious set of explanatory variables from a roster of more than 100 lake attributes and 2) accounting for the non-random pattern of missing water quality data. These steps 1) improved the interpretability of the estimated visit models and 2) widened our estimated models' scope of statistical inference. We used Machine Learning …

Where Do The Poor Live In Cities? Revisiting The Role Of Public Transportation On Income Sorting In Us Urban Areas, Erik Nelson

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Glaeser et al. (2008) argue that the relative distribution of poor and rich households (HHs) in American cities is "strongly" explained by the spatial location of the cities' public transportation (PT) networks. Among their claims: 1) The broad distribution of poor and rich HHs in the typical American city is consistent with a basic monocentric city model that includes commute technology speeds; 2) Poor commuters will overwhelmingly transition from commuting by PT to car if they experience a substantial increase in their HH’s income; 3) areas in American cities that receive new PT infrastructure become poorer over time. Using 2017 …

Revisiting India’S Growth Transitions, Deepankar Basu

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper reconsiders two questions relating to India’s economic growth: structural breaks in growth and the impact of equipment investment on aggregate economic growth. First, statistical tests of structural change show that economic growth in post-independence India has witnessed four structural breaks: in 1964-65, in 1978-79, in 1990-91, and in 2004-05. However, substantial growth accelerations, i.e. increase of more than 1.0% per annum in the growth rate of per capita real GDP, occurred only at two points: 1978-79 and 2004-05. Second, to analyze the impact of equipment investment on growth, I use an ARDL bounds testing methodology. I find a …

The Real Exchange Rate And Development. Theory, Evidence, Issues, And Challenges, Firat Demir, Arslan Razmi

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the effects of the real exchange rate (RER) on international trade, economic development and growth. We summarize the main conceptual issues, discuss the relevance of the RER as an instrument of development policy, provide an overview of the macroeconomic and microeconomic mechanisms that link the RER to trade and long run growth and development, analyze the challenges – especially the disconnect between theory and data -- that often arise in empirical applications, and present new avenues for future research. In the process, we present some updated estimates and illustrative figures. The …

Sources Of Inflation And The Effects Of Balanced Budgets And Inflation Targeting In Developing Economies, Guilherme Klein Martins, Peter Skott

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper presents a model of inflation in developing economies and uses it to evaluate macroeconomic policy in those countries. We see cross-sectoral interactions between demand and supply side forces as central and show that the standard macroeconomic policy recommendations of inflation targeting and balanced budgets (i) increase volatility by amplifying external shocks and (ii) can lead to premature deindustrialization. The analysis applies to economies with marked underemployment, a central feature of developing and emerging countries. The recent Brazilian experience is used to illustrate the argument.

Weaknesses Of Mmt As A Guide To Development Policy, Adam Aboobaker, Esra Nur Ugurlu

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper addresses the limitations of Modern Money Theory (MMT) as a guide to development policy. We explore two central questions on this topic: whether MMT policies 1) ought to be implemented in low- and middle-income economies and 2) can be implemented. In relation to the first question, we argue that the MMT literature mischaracterizes the essence of the development challenge for low- and middle-income economies. Our argument is that the chief long-run growth challenge faced by developing countries concerns structural transformation rather than general aggregate demand insufficiency. We use several formal representations of the consumption-investment trade-off in growth theory, …

Marx's Theory Of Ground-Rent: A Suggested Reformulation, Deepankar Basu

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper develops a simple theoretical model to analyze Marx's

theory of ground rent. Using the model, I demonstrate two important

results. First, if we take capital as exogenous, then total ground-rent

can be decomposed into the three components: differential rent of the

first variety (DRI), differential rent of the second variety (DRII), and

absolute rent (AR). Second, if we endogenize capital outlays using

profit-maximizing behaviour of capitalist farmers, then absolute rent

becomes zero. Thus, under reasonable behavioural assumptions about

landlords and capitalist farmers, there will be no absolute rent in a

capitalist economy.

Fiscal Policy And Structural Transformation In Developing Economies, Peter Skott

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Developing economies with high levels of open or hidden unemployment face structural transformation problems. Unlike in mature economies there are no structural aggregate demand problems, and sustained aggregate demand stimulus can lead to a profit squeeze in the modern sector and deindustrialization. Adaptations of functional finance to developing economies should aim to stabilize the level and composition of demand at values that are consistent with a target rate of growth of the modern sector. Populist temptations, however, may lead to deindustrialization.

Unit Labor Costs And Manufacturing Sector Performance In Africa, Karmen Naidoo, Léonce Ndikumana

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Several studies have highlighted that African manufacturing wages are higher than comparator countries at similar levels of development, which contributes to the continent’s lower levels of manufacturing competitiveness. This paper derives unit labor costs – average wages relative to productivity – for two-digit manufacturing sectors across a wide range of developed and developing countries over the 1990-2015 period. We benchmark the unit labor costs to China and estimate the impact of relative unit labor costs on manufacturing sector value added, employment, investment and exports. We find that relative unit labor costs have a smaller effect on manufacturing performance in Africa …

Exploitation Of Labour Or Exploitation Of Commodities?, Deepankar Basu

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Attempts to use commodities to construct theories of value and use such value theory to claim that, in capitalism, commodities can be exploited, just like labour is, rest on two conceptual flaws: (a) failure to distinguish between labour and labour-power; and (b) failure to distinguish labour-power and other commodities. One way to avoid these conceptual mistakes is to use the labour theory of value.

Some Short-Run Macroeconomic Considerations As Society Deals With A Once-In-Generations Pandemic, Arslan Razmi

Economics Department Working Paper Series

COVID-19 constitutes a health crisis which has rapidly turned into a social and economic crisis. This paper briefly explores some of the issues raised by the combination of a massive supply-side shock with a massive demand-side shock, and the interaction of these with the exponential dynamics of a viral infection. The analysis suggests that, during the recovery, the state of infection among the existing workforce relative to that of the incoming one will play an important role in determining the dynamic interactions between economics and epidemiology. Perhaps counterintuitively, the logic of the basic epidemiological SI model suggests that, under plausible …

Fiscal Policy, The Sraffian Supermultiplier And Functional Finance, Peter Skott, Júlio Fernando Costa Santos, José Luís Da Costa Oreiro

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Sraffian supermultiplier models (SSM) try to identify autonomous components of demand. The most plausible candidate is government consumption. Descriptively, however, government consumption does not grow at a constant rate, and prescriptively there is no justification for keeping constant the growth rate of government consumption, irrespective of economic performance. An active fiscal policy guided by principles of functional finance can produce more powerful stabilization, avoid overheating and excessive utilization rates, and secure faster adjustments of the growth rate towards its target level.

Can Commodities Be Substances Of Value?, Deepankar Basu

Economics Department Working Paper Series

The Marxian labour theory of value considers labour as the only substance of value. The generalized commodity exploitation theorem (GCET) purports to demonstrate that many other commodities can be substances of value. This note argues that the GCET is based on two conceptual flaws: (a) failure to distinguish labour and labour-power; and (b) failure to distinguish labour-power and other commodities. Once these flaws are corrected, it is easy to show that commodities cannot function as the substances of value. Only labour can be the substance of value.

A Marxian Model Of Market For Money Capital: Profit Rate, Interest Rate, And Leverage Ratio, Hyun Woong Park

Economics Department Working Paper Series

In this paper, I develop a Marxian model of market for money capital populated by capitalists equipped with equal money capital endowment but with heterogeneous linear production technology. Due to a maximization of return on equity, capitalists with relatively weak technology, yielding profit rate lower than interest rate, become a money capitalist (lender) and capitalists with relatively strong technology, yielding profit rate greater than interest rate, become an industrial capitalist (borrower). The equilibrium interest rate is derived by the associated demand and supply relation. In this context, Marx’s notion of the role of credit system in an expanded reproduction of …

What To Make Of The Kaldor-Verdoorn Law?, Deepankar Basu, Manya Budhiraja

Economics Department Working Paper Series

The Kaldor-Verdoorn law refers to a positive but less than one-for-one relationship between the growth rates of output and labor productivity, with causality running from the former to the latter. Empirical research has affirmed such a relationship and have found that the Kaldor-Verdoorn coefficient lies between 0 and 1. But the interpretation of this finding remains unclear. In this paper, we present a model to derive the Kaldor-Verdoorn law. Our results show that the Kaldor-Verdoorn coefficient is jointly determined by the elasticity of factor substitution, labor supply elasticity, the profit share and the increasing returns to scale (or demand-induced technical …

Large Devaluations And Inflation Inequality: Evidence From Brazil, Raphael Rocha Gouvea

Economics Department Working Paper Series

In the aftermath of large devaluations, prices of tradable goods and lower-priced varieties increase significantly more than the prices of nontradables and higher-priced varieties. These relative price changes may lead to inflation inequality when household consumption baskets are different across the distribution of income. Using Cravino and Levchenko [2017]’s methodology, we show that inflation for poor households in Brazil was at least 11 percentage points higher than for rich ones in the aftermath of the 2002 large devaluation. A detailed case study of the City of São Paulo estimates an inflation inequality ranging from 8 to 11 percentage points in …