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Articles 1 - 30 of 40
Full-Text Articles in Macroeconomics
Can Price Controls Be Optimal? The Economics Of The Energy Shock In Germany, Tom Krebs, Isabella M. Weber
Can Price Controls Be Optimal? The Economics Of The Energy Shock In Germany, Tom Krebs, Isabella M. Weber
Economics Department Working Paper Series
In the wake of the global energy crisis, many European countries used energy price controls to fight inflation and to stabilize the economy. Despite its wide adoption, many economists remained skepti- cal. In this paper, we argue that price controls should be part of the policy toolbox to respond to shocks to systemically important sectors because not using them can have large economic and polit- ical costs. We put forward our arguments in two steps. In a first step, we analyze the impact on the German economy and society of the global energy crisis that followed Russia’s attack on Ukraine …
Intersectoral Conflict And Delays In Macroeconomic Stabilization, Arslan Razmi
Intersectoral Conflict And Delays In Macroeconomic Stabilization, Arslan Razmi
Economics Department Working Paper Series
An important body of literature explores the political economy reasons
underlying delays in macroeconomic stabilization. This paper develops
a framework to analyze conflict between two groups of economic actors,
one that has an endowment of internationally tradable goods and another
that is endowed with non-tradable goods. The focus is on the exchange
rate policy in a developing country set-up where the government employs
seigniorage revenue to finance spending pre-stabilization, and faces fiscal
and balance of payments problems that necessitate stabilization with a step
devaluation. The presence of exchange rate and endowment uncertainty,
the role of forward-looking expectations, and the possibility …
Sellers’ Inflation, Profits And Conflict: Why Can Large Firms Hike Prices In An Emergency?, Isabella M. Weber, Evan Wasner
Sellers’ Inflation, Profits And Conflict: Why Can Large Firms Hike Prices In An Emergency?, Isabella M. Weber, Evan Wasner
Economics Department Working Paper Series
The dominant view of inflation holds that it is macroeconomic in origin and must always be tackled with macroeconomic tightening. In contrast, we argue that the US COVID-19 inflation is predominantly a sellers’ inflation that derives from microeconomic origins, namely the ability of firms with market power to hike prices. Such firms are price makers, but they only engage in price hikes if they expect their competitors to do the same. This requires an implicit agreement which can be coordinated by sector-wide cost shocks and supply bottlenecks. We review the long-standing literature on price-setting in concentrated markets and survey earnings …
Conflict Fuels Inflation But The Tinder Lies Elsewhere: Eclectic Structuralist Thoughts In A Developing Economy Context, Arslan Razmi
Conflict Fuels Inflation But The Tinder Lies Elsewhere: Eclectic Structuralist Thoughts In A Developing Economy Context, Arslan Razmi
Economics Department Working Paper Series
Developing country inflation is in the headlines again. Mainstream macroeconomics typically ignores the role of conflict while non-mainstream work tends to ignore macroeconomic constraints. This paper revisits the issue employing a dependent economy framework with eclectic characteristics. Specifically, I explore the mechanisms that propagate both real and monetary sources of inflation in the presence of real wage resistance and distributional conflict. The analysis shows that the inability to pay for subsidies with taxes or bond issuance in a stylized developing economy could create a situation where a relatively small shock leads to sustained and accelerating inflation and a wage-price spiral, …
Endogenous Business Cycles And Economic Policy, Peter Skott
Endogenous Business Cycles And Economic Policy, Peter Skott
Economics Department Working Paper Series
This paper examines the dynamics of Keynesian models that incorporate feedback effects from the labor market to income distribution, in- vestment, aggregate demand and output. A baseline version of the model can generate endogenous growth cycles, but cumulative divergence and economic collapse also become possible for plausible parameter values. Extensions of the model that include monetary and Öscal policy show greater robustness: the local instability of the stationary point leads to limit cycles (rather than complete collapse), even when large, destabilizing changes are made to parameters describing the private sector. The robustness of the general approach is reinforced by the …
Three Essays On The Political Economy Of The Cfa Franc, Francis Perez
Three Essays On The Political Economy Of The Cfa Franc, Francis Perez
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation is organized into three essays. The second essay provides a historical overview of the CFA franc and explores why the CFA franc has survived for so long. It argues that a historical and dialectical materialist analysis of the CFA’s history can best explain both its extraordinary longevity and the periodic major reforms to its functioning. The third essay assesses whether the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) has an independent monetary policy by examining the relationships between BCEAO’s foreign reserves and base money, and between BCEAO and the European Central Banks’s policy rates. The fourth essay evaluates …
Economic Growth In Dual And Mature Economies: Revisiting The Pasinetti And Neo-Pasinetti Theorems, Peter Skott
Economic Growth In Dual And Mature Economies: Revisiting The Pasinetti And Neo-Pasinetti Theorems, Peter Skott
Economics Department Working Paper Series
This paper (i) examines the role of income distribution in the determination of the average saving rate and the growth process in dual and mature economies, and (ii) revisits the Pasinetti and neo-Pasinetti theo- rems. The profit share may influence saving because of differences in the saving rates across households (the Pasinetti theorem) or because firms retain part of their earnings (the neo-Pasinetti theorem). The two mechanisms are not mutually exclusive, and the alignment between warranted and natural growth rates in mature economies can happen through feed- back e¤ects from employment to the distribution of income.
The State-Constituted Market Economy: A Conceptual Framework For China’S State–Market Relations, Isabella Weber, Hao Qi
The State-Constituted Market Economy: A Conceptual Framework For China’S State–Market Relations, Isabella Weber, Hao Qi
Economics Department Working Paper Series
Scholars increasingly conclude that China has created a distinct economic system. Yet despite a growing literature with valuable contributions on the institutional arrangements under ‘capitalism with Chinese characteristics’, the economic mechanisms underpinning China’s state–market relations remain undertheorised. In this paper we develop a conceptual framework of what we call China’s state-constituted market economy. We argue that the Chinese state ‘constitutes’ the market economy by not only creating new markets through industrial and innovation policies, but by continuously participating and steering markets for essentials in order to stabilise and guide the economy as a whole. Essential is thereby defined as ‘systemically …
Mmt And Policy Assignment In An Open Economy Context: Simplicity Is Useful, Oversimpliflication Not So Much, Arslan Razmi
Mmt And Policy Assignment In An Open Economy Context: Simplicity Is Useful, Oversimpliflication Not So Much, Arslan Razmi
Economics Department Working Paper Series
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has recently received significant attention in academic and policy circles. Critics question the sustainability of MMT-prescribed approaches to fiscal and monetary policy, especially over extended periods of time, in the presence of international financial markets, and for developing country governments that borrow in foreign currency. I formalize some of these arguments using a dynamic, open economy, Tobin-Markowitz portfolio balance environment that takes into account: (1) the role of expectations in the foreign exchange market and the feedback mechanisms between these and the exchange rate and inflation, and (2) interactions between the current account, debt accumulation, and …
Inflation In Times Of Overlapping Emergencies: Systemically Significant Prices From An Input-Output Perspective, Isabella M. Weber, Jesus Lara Jauregui, Lucas Teixeira, Luiza Nassif Pires
Inflation In Times Of Overlapping Emergencies: Systemically Significant Prices From An Input-Output Perspective, Isabella M. Weber, Jesus Lara Jauregui, Lucas Teixeira, Luiza Nassif Pires
Economics Department Working Paper Series
In the overlapping global emergencies of the pandemic, climate change and geopolitical confronta- tions, supply shocks have become frequent and inflation has returned. This raises the question how sector-specific shocks are related to overall price stability. This paper simulates price shocks in an input-output model to identify sectors which present systemic vulnerabilities for monetary stability in the US. We call these prices systemically significant. We find that in our simulations the pre-pandemic average price volatilities and the price shocks in the COVID-19 and Ukraine war inflation yield an almost identical set of systemically significant prices. The sectors with system- ically …
Long-Run Effects Of Austerity, Guilherme Klein Martins
Long-Run Effects Of Austerity, Guilherme Klein Martins
Economics Department Working Paper Series
This paper provides evidence that austerity shocks have long-run negative effects on GDP. Besides addressing the important gap in the growing fiscal research regarding the short time horizon of the estimations, this paper analyzes two other important assumptions made in the literature regarding the (i) symmetry of episodes of fiscal expansion and con- traction and (ii) uniformity of fiscal multipliers for different sizes of shocks. We use narrative fiscal shocks and propensity score reweighting in a local projections setup to account for the potential endogeneity of austerity policies and the non-linearity of its effects over time. The estimation is also …
Systemic Cycles Of Accumulation And Chaos In The World Capitalist System: A Missing Link, Giorgos Galanis, Christian Koutny, Isabella Weber
Systemic Cycles Of Accumulation And Chaos In The World Capitalist System: A Missing Link, Giorgos Galanis, Christian Koutny, Isabella Weber
Economics Department Working Paper Series
We re-examine the Systemic Cycles of Accumulation (SCA) of Arrighi (2010) and Arrighi and Silver (1999) which provide a framework for the analysis of the cyclical patterns of geographical expansion of trade and production and the related shifts of hegemonic power within the world capitalist system. Within the SCA framework, the last stage of a hegemonic cycle is characterized by what is called ‘systemic chaos’, however the drivers of these chaotic dynamics have not been explicitly analyzed. This article fills this gap by providing a link between the accumulation process, the spatio-temporal fix, and systemic chaos, in three steps. First, …
Growth Cycles In Mature And Dual Economies, Peter Skott
Growth Cycles In Mature And Dual Economies, Peter Skott
Economics Department Working Paper Series
Mature economies may experience fluctuations, but the average medium and long run growth rate matches the natural rate. Like Kaldor's neo- Keynesian models, the Marx-Goodwin tradition explains this outcome by endogenizing the distribution of income and assuming that the accumulation of capital is increasing as a function of the profit share. The application of Goodwin cycles to developing economies may be hard to justify, however. The modified Goodwin models in this paper include relative-wage norms as a central element of wage formation. Norms change endogenously, leading to path dependence (hysteresis) in the stationary solution for the employment share of the …
Capital Nationality And Economic Development, Guilherme Klein Martins
Capital Nationality And Economic Development, Guilherme Klein Martins
Economics Department Working Paper Series
This paper reviews different literature strands and performs an empirical test to evaluate how capital ownership, particularly its nationality, might affect long-run economic develop- ment. Our results indicate that low and middle-income countries with larger foreign capital stock in 1980 had lower economic growth over the next 39 years. The estimations also indi- cate that these economies developed a less specialized export basket, which became relatively more concentrated in low-tech goods. The results are inverted to high-income economies, for which the effects are positive on GDP growth and export specialization and complexi- fication. The results are in line with the …
The Political Economy Of The Cost Of Foreign Exchange Intervention, Devika Dutt
The Political Economy Of The Cost Of Foreign Exchange Intervention, Devika Dutt
Doctoral Dissertations
Central Banks around the world increasingly intervene in the foreign exchange market for a variety of reasons, such as maintaining exchange rate stability and maintaining a buffer against the impact of capital flight. In fact, research shows that central banks can lean against the macroeconomic policy trilemma through maintaining reserves and intervening in the foreign exchange market, and thereby secure policy space. However, securing this policy space can come at substantial cost. This dissertation explores the political economy of these costs of foreign exchange intervention. Chapter I discusses the concept of the direct cost of intervention, calculates these costs for …
Essays On Exchange Rate Shocks And The Political Economy Of Local Fiscal Policy In Brazil, Raphael Rocha Gouvea
Essays On Exchange Rate Shocks And The Political Economy Of Local Fiscal Policy In Brazil, Raphael Rocha Gouvea
Doctoral Dissertations
Do exchange rate shocks have distributional consequences? Does employment respond to exchange rate shocks? Do political parties matter when it comes to governing cities? Each chapter of this dissertation attempts to answer one of these questions in the Brazilian context. In the first chapter, titled Large devaluations and inflation inequality: evidence from Brazil, I show that prices of tradable goods/lower-priced varieties increase significantly more than the prices of nontradables/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 …
The (Im-)Possibility Of Rational Socialism: Mises In China’S Market Reform Debate, Isabella M. Weber
The (Im-)Possibility Of Rational Socialism: Mises In China’S Market Reform Debate, Isabella M. Weber
Economics Department Working Paper Series
This paper investigates the long first decade of reform in China (1978-1992) to show that Mises, in particular his initiating contribution to the Socialist Calculation Debate, became relevant to the reconfiguration of China’s political economy when the reformers gave up on the late Maoist primacy of continuous revolution and adhered instead to an imperative of development and catching up. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao had rejected the notions of efficiency and rational economic management. In the late 1970s, the reformers under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership elevated these notions to highest principle. As a result, Mises’ critique that socialism could not achieve …
The Nature Of Money And The Theory Of International Trade: Thornton And Ricardo, Isabella M. Weber
The Nature Of Money And The Theory Of International Trade: Thornton And Ricardo, Isabella M. Weber
Economics Department Working Paper Series
A rich recent literature reinvestigates the nature of money, but little attention has been paid to the ramifications of the ways in which we theorize money for the theory of international trade. This paper examines the logical relationship between the neutrality of money and self-balancing trade based on Henry Thornton and David Ricardo as two foundational contributions to credit and commodity money theories respectively. I show that both authors theorize trade as self-balancing whenever money is conceptualized as neutral. I distinguish two notions of the neutrality of money: ex ante and ex post neutrality. In Thornton’s Paper Credit money is …
Shooting For An Economic “Miracle”: German Post-War Neoliberal Thought In China’S Market Reform Debate, Isabella M. Weber
Shooting For An Economic “Miracle”: German Post-War Neoliberal Thought In China’S Market Reform Debate, Isabella M. Weber
Economics Department Working Paper Series
This paper develops a comparative and connected history of the debates over transition to a market economy in West-Germany after World War II and in China during the first decade of reform and opening up under Deng Xiaoping (1978-1988). At both historical moments the political aim was to reintroduce market mechanisms into a dysfunctional command economy. The question what kind of price reform this required was subject to heated debates among economists. This paper shows how the West-German 1948 currency and price reform was introduced into the Chinese reform debate by German ordoliberals and neoliberals like Friedman. It traces how …
Three Essays On Gender-Specific Employment Outcomes Of Macroeconomic Policies, Selin Secil Akin
Three Essays On Gender-Specific Employment Outcomes Of Macroeconomic Policies, Selin Secil Akin
Doctoral Dissertations
This three-essay dissertation examines the impact of fiscal and monetary policies on gender-disaggregated employment outcomes both theoretically and empirically. The first essay constructs a structuralist macroeconomic model that explores channels whereby fiscal and monetary policies impact women’s paid and unpaid work. The essay discusses two factors related to labor market segregation that can explain differential effects of macroeconomic policies on male and female employment: the labor intensity of female-dominated sectors, and different responses of capacity utilization to aggregate demand shocks in male and female-dominated sectors. In addition, a decline in output resulting from aggregate demand shocks may increase women’s unpaid …
Understanding China’S Discourse On South-South Cooperation And China-Africa Higher Education Exchange: A Field Research Study At Zhejiang Normal University’S China-Africa International Business School, Yi Sun
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation research attempts to distinguish China’s model from that of the traditional North-South relationship, with a focus on how China’s philosophy articulates its foreign policy and the nation’s higher education engagement with African countries. It examines the China-Africa higher education partnership in response to China’s discourse on South-South Cooperation (SSC), Africa’s human resource flows, and the benefits and constraints of current China-Africa cooperation. In order to achieve these goals, the dissertation uses one of the China-Africa partnership universities in China, Zhejiang Normal University (ZJNU) as a site for its field research. The fieldwork looks at both a student level …
Bangladesh's Energy Policy: Economic, Environmental, And Climate Change Impacts, Rohini Kamal
Bangladesh's Energy Policy: Economic, Environmental, And Climate Change Impacts, Rohini Kamal
Doctoral Dissertations
The research examines Bangladesh’s energy policies with respect to development, climate change, and environmental risks by comparing three plans for 2050: business-as-usual (BAU), a government renewable plan, and an alternate green plan, along five aspects: investment costs, employment, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, environmental costs, and social costs. The model used is an Input Output Model, which calculates factor inputs (land, water, labor, emissions: GHG and co-pollutants) for energy-related sectors considered in the three plans. To apply the model to specific plants for a more accurate estimate of localized environmental and social costs, and to analyze distributional impacts, a supplemental field-study …
The Political Economy Of Accumulation In South Africa: Resource Extraction, Financialization, And Capital Flight As Barriers To Investment And Employment Growth, Seeraj Mohamed
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation uses a heterodox economics approach to explain poor levels of accumulation in South Africa. This approach to investment theory and models recognizes that many institutions are shaped to help people create stability in a world of fundamental uncertainty and irreversibility. Therefore, this dissertation examines the system of accumulation that developed in South Africa and its evolution. This approach to investment recognizes that beliefs and biases of people running institutions influence investment outcomes and shape ‘path dependence’. The corporations that grew to dominate the South African economy were formed during colonialism and apartheid. They grew around a core of …
Social Structure Of Accumulation In Turkey (1963 – 2015), Osman C. Icoz
Social Structure Of Accumulation In Turkey (1963 – 2015), Osman C. Icoz
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation analyzes capitalism in Turkey during post-1963 period from social structure of accumulation (SSA) theory perspective. The SSA theory is a theory of interaction of institutions and capital accumulation over long run. This dissertation will be the first book length study on Turkey using SSA Theory approach. It will enrich the SSA literature by adding a case of Turkey, which is a developing country; and hence it will be another example that SSA framework can be extended outside of US. I observe two different SSAs during the period of interest. The first one is Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) SSA …
Essays In Financial Economics: Announcement Effects In Fixed Income Markets, James J. Forest
Essays In Financial Economics: Announcement Effects In Fixed Income Markets, James J. Forest
Doctoral Dissertations
ABSTRACT ESSAYS IN FINANCIAL ECONOMICS: ANNOUNCEMENT EFFECTS IN FIXED INCOME MARKETS PHD IN FINANCE MAY 2018 JAMES J FOREST B.A., FRAMINGHAM STATE UNIVERSITY M.S., NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS – AMHERST Directed by: Professor Hossein B. Kazemi This dissertation demonstrates the use of empirical techniques for dealing with modeling issues that arise when analyzing announcement effects in fixed income markets. It describes empirical challenges in achieving unbiased and efficient parameter estimates and shows the importance of modelling a wide range of macroeconomic announcement effects to avoid omitted variable bias. Employing techniques common in Macroeconomics, financial market researchers are better …
Currency Mismatch And Balance Sheet Effects Of Exchange Rate In Turkish Non-Financial Corporations, Serkan Demirkilic
Currency Mismatch And Balance Sheet Effects Of Exchange Rate In Turkish Non-Financial Corporations, Serkan Demirkilic
Doctoral Dissertations
Until the East Asian Crisis of 1990s, literature exclusively focused on the assumed expansionary competitiveness channel of deprecation in the domestic currency. The East Asian and Latin American Crisis of 1990s proved that depreciation in the domestic currency caused fragilities through the deterioration in firms’ balance sheet net- worth. Many have argued that excessive reliance on short-term debt and un-hedged foreign currency borrowings of firms were responsible of fragilities, and resulting poor performances of firms in these countries. The latter body of the literature introduced the contractionary balance sheet effects of foreign currency indebtedness through depreciation, and argued that if …
Three Essays On International Economics And Finance, Juan Antonio Montecino
Three Essays On International Economics And Finance, Juan Antonio Montecino
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation studies the macroeconomic and social impacts of two increasingly common macroeconomic policies: restrictions on international capital mobility -- capital controls -- and so-called unconventional monetary policy -- often referred to as “quantitative easing.” The consensus view is that capital controls can effectively lengthen the maturity composition of capital inflows and increase the independence of monetary policy but are not generally effective at reducing net inflows and influencing the real exchange rate. The first essay presents empirical evidence that although capital controls may not directly affect the long-run equilibrium level of the real exchange rate, they may enable disequilibria …
Master's Tools And The Master's House: A Historical Analysis Exploring The Myth Of Educating For Democracy In The United States, Timothy Scott
Master's Tools And The Master's House: A Historical Analysis Exploring The Myth Of Educating For Democracy In The United States, Timothy Scott
Doctoral Dissertations
Over the past forty-years, neoliberal education reform policies in the U.S. have spurred significant resistance, often galvanized by claims that such policies undermine public education as a vital institution of U.S. democracy. Within this narrative, many activists call to “save our schools” and return them to a time when public schools served the common good. With these narratives in mind, I explore the foundational and persistent power structures that characterize the U.S. as a means to reveal the fundamental purpose of its public education system. The questions that guide my research include: (1) With an understanding that capitalism, white supremacy, …
Three Essays On Labor Market Friction And The Business Cycle, Jong-Seok Oh
Three Essays On Labor Market Friction And The Business Cycle, Jong-Seok Oh
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation examines the macroeconomic impact of reduced labor market friction on the U.S. business cycle after the mid-1980s. The first two essays investigate the relationship between labor market flexibility and macroeconomic stability from a post-Keynesian perspective. In the third essay which reviews the relationship between labor market flexibility and patterns of U.S. business cycle, I test the argument that after 1985 Okun’s coefficient became larger due to the flexible labor market. In essay 1, considering two aspects of labor market flexibility, employment flexibility and real wage flexibility, I adopt the flex-output model (Skott, 2015) to first discuss employment flexibility …
Three Essays On The Macroeconomic Impacts Of Rent Seeking, Kurt Von Seekamm
Three Essays On The Macroeconomic Impacts Of Rent Seeking, Kurt Von Seekamm
Doctoral Dissertations
Chapter 1 of this dissertation focuses on the political economy of rent seeking. Using trading in financial markets, patent litigation and managerial privilege as descriptive examples from the modern economy, it identifies situations where rent seeking opportunities occur. The challenge of correctly distinguishing between productive activities and rent seeking activities demonstrate the empirical challenges of examining rent seeking. This chapter also suggests that in addition to the opportunity cost of physical capital, modern rent seeking has a significant opportunity cost in the form of the misallocation of human capital. Chapter 2 explores the relationship between increased rent seeking, aggregate demand, …