Economics Commons^™

A Soft Landing, Steady Growth, And Accelerating Farm Income, John Austin, Chris Decker, Tom Doering, Ernie Goss, Nick Hernandez, Bruce Johnson, Ken Lemke, Franz Schwarz, Scott Strain, Eric Thompson, Keith Turner

Economics Faculty Publications

After years of accelerating growth, the U.S. economy achieved a soft landing in 2006. The rate of economic growth remained positive but slowed sufficiently to reduce inflation pressures and the need for further interest rate increases. At the same time the economy remained strong enough to continue the current expansion which has been in place since late 2001. Such a soft landing is vital because it should allow the economy to continue to expand for years to come, but with moderate inflation.

Globalization And Capital Account Liberalization, Ademola T. Oyejide

Economic and Financial Review

This paper reviews some aspects of the debate on the linkages between globalization and capital account liberalization. This paper analyses globalization and the associated capital flows and then discusses the impact of the capital flows on the financial and real sectors of the economy.

Capital Account Liberalization: What Options For Developing Economies, Biodun Adedipe

Economic and Financial Review

This paper deals with some basic facts about Capital Account Liberalization, Liberalization Experiences, problems and prospects, policy options and recommendations.

Capital Account Liberalization: Experience From The Emerging Market Economies, Mike I. Obadan

Economic and Financial Review

The liberalization of the capital account of the balance of payments is rooted in economic theory and is said, can help to bridge savings and foreign exchange gaps in national economics thereby promoting national growth. In the light of the foregoing, this paper explores the experiences of the developing countries in particular, the emerging market economies, in capital account liberalization.

Capital Account Liberalization In Nigeria: Problems And Prospects, Ayodele F. Odusola

Economic and Financial Review

Capital Account is one of the lynchpins of globalization and it is often seen as an inevitable path to economic development for developing countries. This is based on the premise that liberalizing capital account would permit financial resources to flow from capital abundant countries to capital scarce countries. This paper examines the problems, prospects and challenges of foreign private capital flows in Nigeria.

Capital Account Liberalization: Reflections On Theory And Policy, Obadiah Mailafia

Economic and Financial Review

Developing countries as well as other member countries of the IMF have been encouraged to open up to foreign capital flows through the liberalization of their capital account transactions. Capital account liberalization is embedded in international standards and codes as best practice necessary for developing countries engaging in inter-governmental and non-governmental international relations. It also represents the systemic removal of administrative and legal controls on international capital transactions.

Welcome Address At The 2006 Executive Seminar "Capital Account Liberalization: Issues, Problems, And Prospect", E.O. Alilonu

Economic and Financial Review

The welcome address was given by the then Branch Controller, Calabar Branch of the Central Bank of Nigeria at the 2006 Executive Seminar.

Keynote Address At The Cbn Executive Seminar On "Capital Account Liberalization: Issues, Problems, And Prospect", Obadiah Mailafia

Economic and Financial Review

The keynote address was given by the Deputy Governor, (Economic Policy), Central Bank of Nigeria. He highlighted the aptness of the theme for the seminar in view of the developments in the global economy and the policy reforms embedded in the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

How The No Child Left Behind Act Punishes Schools With Disadvantaged Students, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

Sequencing Capital Account Liberalisation, Bright Okogu, Philip Osafo-Kwaako

Economic and Financial Review

This paper focuses on the case of Nigeria and examines whether following the successful implementation of the recent reform program, appropriate policies are now in place for effective capital account liberalization.

Capital Account Liberalization: The Ecowas Experience, M.O. Ojo

Economic and Financial Review

Capital account liberalization can enhance economic growth and development through access to foreign savings for domestic investment, improvement in the efficiency of resources allocation for greater competitiveness in the global economy. The paper focuses on the status of Capital account liberalization in the ECOWAS region and the policy measures that could be adopted.

Current Account Balances, Financial Development And Institutions: Assaying The World “Saving Glut”, Menzie David Chinn, Hiro Ito

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

We critically assess several of the key assertions underlying the global saving glut hypothesis. First, we investigate whether the behavior of the U.S. current account behavior is anomalous in light of previous industrial country experience. Second, we determine whether East Asian current account balances are predictable using standard macroeconomic variables, augmented with institutional factors. Finally, we investigate whether higher levels of financial development in key East Asian economies would result in smaller current account surpluses. We find that a one percentage-point increase in the budget balance would increase the current account balance by 0.10 to 0.49 percentage-points for industrialized countries, …

Economic Mobility Of Single Mothers: The Role Of Assets And Human Capital Development, Min Zhan

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This study examines the economic mobility of single mothers. It highlights the relationships between single mothers' financial assets and human capital development (educational advancement, job training, and work hours) with their economic mobility. Analysis of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) indicates that assets may help improve upward economic mobility. Assets, however, have differential impact on single mothers with different income levels. In addition, human capital development mediates the positive link between assets and the economic mobility for mothers living between the 100% and 200% federal poverty. These results support asset building as an investment strategy to …

Manufacturers' Outsourcing To Employment Services, Matthew Dey, Susan N. Houseman, Anne E. Polivka

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We estimate the effects of manufacturers' use of employment services—comprised primarily of temporary help and professional employer organizations—on measured employment and labor productivity in manufacturing between 1989 and 2004. A major contribution of the paper is the construction of panel data on employment by occupation and industry from the Occupational Employment Statistics program. We use these data to document the dramatic rise of production and other manual occupations within the employment services sector and, in conjunction with information from the Contingent Worker Supplements, to estimate the number of employment services workers assigned to manufacturing over the period. Although measured employment …

The Nature Of Heterodox Economics, John B. Davis

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Openness, The Sacrifice Ratio, And Inflation: Is There A Puzzle?, Joseph P. Daniels, David D. Vanhoose

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

The standard time-inconsistency-based explanation for the negative correlation between openness and inflation requires an inverse relationship between the sacrifice ratio and openness, but Daniels et al. (2005, Openness, central bank independence, and the sacrifice ratio. Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 37 (2), 371–379.) have provided evidence that controlling for central bank independence reveals a positive relationship. This paper embeds the time-inconsistency approach within a model of a multisector, imperfectly competitive, open economy. In this setting, greater openness raises the sacrifice ratio but reduces the inflation bias. Thus, failure to observe an inverse relationship between openness and the sacrifice ratio …

Openness, Centralized Wage Bargaining, And Inflation, Joseph P. Daniels, Farrokh Nourzad, David D. Vanhoose

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

This paper develops a model of an open economy containing both sectors in which wages are market-determined and sectors with wage-setting arrangements. A portion of the latter group of sectors coordinate their wages, taking into account that their collective actions influence the equilibrium inflation outcome in an environment in which the central bank engages in discretionary monetary policymaking. Key predictions forthcoming from this model are (1) increased centralization of wage setting initially causes inflation to increase at low degrees of wage centralization but then, as wage centralization increases, results in an inflation drop-off; (2) a greater degree of centralized wage …

Openness, Income-Tax Progressivity, And Inflation, Joseph P. Daniels, David D. Vanhoose

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

This paper considers a model of an open economy in which the degree of income-tax progressivity influences the interaction among openness, central bank independence, and the inflation rate. Our model suggests that an increase in the progressivity of the tax system induces a smaller response in real output to a change in the price level. This implies that increased income-tax progressivity reduces the equilibrium inflation rate and that the effect of increased income-tax progressivity on inflation is smaller when the central bank places a higher weight on inflation or when there is greater openness. Examination of cross-country inflation data provides …

The Economic Review Of The Travel Industry In Montana: 2006 Biennial Edition, Kara Grau, Melissa Bruns-Dubois, Norma Nickerson

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

This review provides current and historical data of nonresident travel and tourism in Montana, and offers the industry's economic contributions to the state.

Conceptual Framework For An Optimal Labour Market Information System: Final Report, James F. Woods, Christopher J. O'Leary

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Essays On The Latin American Foreign Exchange Market, Isabel Ruiz

Dissertations

During the last decade, Latin American countries have moved towards becoming more open and financially integrated. At the same time, the region has appeared to adopt a "bipolar" position concerning exchange rate regimes. Most countries have moved towards more flexible exchange rates, while others have implemented hard pegs in the form of dollarization. This dissertation has two goals. First, to measure linkages and dynamics across Latin American foreign exchange markets. Second, to explore how exchange rate uncertainty impacts U.S. foreign direct investment (FDI) into Latin America.

In order to study interactions among these markets, I focus on the level of …

Determinants And Consequences Of Workers’ Remittances, Carlos Ivan Vargas-Silva

Dissertations

In this dissertation we study the determinants and consequences of workers' remittances. It is important for developing countries to have a clear understanding of the motivations that migrants have to remit money home, in order to increase remittances inflows. It is also important to understand the impact of remittances in the receiving countries in order to develop policies that can maximize the benefits of remittances, while minimizing any possible detrimental effects. In this dissertation we concentrate on the relationship between remittances and macroeconomic variables in the receiving countries. To this end we use both individual and aggregate level data.

In …

Three Essays On International Transmission And Monetary Policy In Emerging Countries, Martha Cruz Zuniga

Dissertations

This dissertation investigates two aspects of foreign shocks that affect emerging countries: U.S. monetary shocks and workers' remittances. My attention inparticular centers on the macroeconomic impact of these foreign shocks. More specifically, in the first essay (Chapter 2) I analyze the international transmission of U.S. monetary policy to emerging economies distinguishing between a direct transmission process and an augmented international transmission. In the augmented transmission mechanism, U.S. shocks may impact leading countries in different regions, and those countries' reactions then affect smaller countries. In the second essay (Chapter 3) I investigate the effects of monetary policy on stock market returns …

Slovakia's Surge: The New System's Impact On Fiscal Decentralization, Phillip J. Bryson, Gary C. Cornia

Faculty Publications

Slovakia's transition history long paralleled that of the Czech Republic, but the former adopted bold new reforms early in tis decade. This paper is a comparative treatment of fiscal decentralization since 1993 and more recent reforms of public administration, the two efforts representing the foundation of the New System. Czech experience is invoked simply to provide an appropriate benchmark for the evaluation of Slovakia's New System introduced in 2004, including the 19% "flat tax" and other striking measures in local public finance. The second focus of the paper is on the macro-economic impact of the New System. It is too …

Household Heterogeneity And Optimal Inter-Temporal Pricing For A Durable-Good Monopoly, Winston T. H. Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper, I extend the analysis in Koh (2006) to examine the optimality of inter-temporal price discrimination for a durable-good monopoly in a model where infinitely-lived households consume both durable goods and a stream of non-durable goods subject to different inter-temporal budget constraints. I also consider the multi-dimensional setting where households differ in both inter-temporal budget constraints and the utilities they derive from the consumption of the durable good.

A Two-Stage Realized Volatility Approach To Estimation Of Diffusion Processes With Discrete Data, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper motivates and introduces a two-stage method of estimating diffusion processes based on discretely sampled observations. In the first stage we make use of the feasible central limit theory for realized volatility, as developed in [Jacod, J., 1994] and [Barndorff-Nielsen, O., Shephard, N., 2002], to provide a regression model for estimating the parameters in the diffusion function. In the second stage, the in-fill likelihood function is derived by means of the Girsanov theorem and then used to estimate the parameters in the drift function. Consistency and asymptotic distribution theory for these estimates are established in various contexts. The finite …

Maximum Likelihood And Gaussian Estimation Of Continuous Time Models In Finance, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper overviews maximum likelihood and Gaussian methods of estimating continuous time models used in finance. Since the exact likelihood can be constructed only in special cases, much attention has been devoted to the development of methods designed to approximate the likelihood. These approaches range from crude Euler-type approximations and higher order stochastic Taylor series expansions to more complex polynomial-based expansions and infill approximations to the likelihood based on a continuous time data record. The methods are discussed, their properties are outlined and their relative finite sample performance compared in a simulation experiment with the nonlinear CIR diffusion model, which …

Simulation-Based Estimation Of Contingent-Claims Prices, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

A new methodology is proposed to estimate theortical prices of financial contingent-claims whose values are dependent on some other underlying financial assets. In the literature the preferred choice of estimator is usually maximum likelihood (ML). ML has strong asymptotic justification but is not necessarily the best method in finite samples. The present paper proposes instead a simulation-based method that improves the finite sample performance of the ML estimator while maintaining its good asymptotic properties. The methods are implemented and evaluated here in the Black-Scholes option pricing model and in the Vasicek bond pricing model, but have wider applicability. Monte Carlo …

Indirect Inference For Dynamic Panel Models, Christian Gourieroux, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

It is well-known that maximum likelihood (ML) estimation of the autoregressive parameter of a dynamic panel data model with fixed effects is inconsistent under fixed time series sample size (T) and large cross section sample size (N) asymptotics. The estimation bias is particularly relevant in practical applications when T is small and the autoregressive parameter is close to unity. The present paper proposes a general, computationally inexpensive method of bias reduction that is based on indirect inference (Gouriéroux et al., 1993), shows unbiasedness and analyzes efficiency. The method is implemented in a simple linear dynamic panel model, but has wider …

Mixing Frequencies: Stock Returns As A Predictor Of Real Output Growth, Anthony S. Tay

Research Collection School Of Economics

We investigate two methods for using daily stock returns to forecast, and update forecasts of, quarterly real output growth. Both methods aggregate daily returns in some manner to form a single stock market variable. We consider (i) augmenting the quarterly AR(1) model for real output growth with daily returns using a nonparametric Mixed Data Sampling (MIDAS) setting, and (ii) augmenting the quarterly AR(1) model with the most recent r -day returns as an additional predictor. We find that our mixed frequency models perform well in forecasting real output growth.