Search results for "050205 econometrics"
showing 10 items of 212 documents
Determinants of sub-central European government debt
2017
Abstract The aim of this paper is to analyze the determinants of sub-central government debt in Europe (Italy, France, Austria, Germany, Belgium and Spain) through estimation for each State based on corresponding panel data from 1996 to 2010. Furthermore, we estimate the debt model using a joint sample, consolidating conclusions on the most influential variables in terms of public debt. A comparative analysis of institutional frameworks in Europe shows that relationships between central and sub-central tax authorities have common traits, although the extent of change in each country remains unknown. In sum, this study shows that sub-sovereign government budgets are counter-cyclical, that ec…
CONVERGENCE AND DIVERGENCE: A NEW APPROACH, NEW DATA, AND NEW RESULTS
2020
Recently, Penn World Tables include new data that enable calculation of total factor productivity in addition to output for a large set of countries. We use these new data to examine convergence and divergence across countries by applying a new approach, which differentiates between the dynamics of output and of productivity. Our empirical results lead to two main new contributions to the literature. The first is on the interpretation of “β-convergence” in “growth regressions.” It means that output per worker in each country converges to productivity but does not imply convergence across countries, since productivity tends to diverge from the global frontier. The second contribution is to t…
The effect of polytechnic reform on migration
2011
This paper examines the effect of the polytechnic reform on geographical mobility. A polytechnic, higher education reform took place in Finland in the 1990s. It gradually transformed former vocational colleges into polytechnics and also brought higher education to regions that did not have a university before. This expansion of higher education provides exogenous variation in the regional supply of higher education. The reform raised the mobility of high school graduates across local labour markets in the years after they had completed their secondary studies, which indicated increased mobility between high school and post-secondary education. We estimate that the reform enhanced the annual…
Income Inequality and Technology Diffusion: Evidence from Developing Countries*
2011
We study the effect of within-country income inequality on the diffusion of mobile phones using data on market penetration in a sample of developing countries from 1985 to 1998. Mobile phones are an example of international technology, originating in industrialized countries and diffusing worldwide. We find that income inequality, as measured by the income share of the highest earning deciles, has a positive effect on the early diffusion of mobile phones and that the estimated effect becomes greater when a measure of agricultural endowments is used as an instrument. The instrumental variable results are robust to weak instruments. Our findings suggest that the diffusion of new technologies …
Implementing a Negative Income Tax. Net Cost, Poverty and Inequality Effects
2019
The main aim of this paper is to propose a financially viable alternative to the current Spanish system of social protection: A Negative Income Tax (NIT) unifying in a single mechanism the system of public benefits and income tax. We analyse the main characteristics of the NIT and simulate several NIT proposals for Spain, using the Living Conditions Survey. These proposals are distinct in that they do not suppose an additional cost in the tax-benefit system. The results of our simulations indicate a radical improvement in the indicators of poverty and inequality, especially extreme poverty, and also a redistribution of income from the elderly to families with children.
Financial development and intergenerational education mobility
2018
Using years of education as a measure of status, we study the relationship between financial development and intergenerational mobility, focusing on human capital investments boosted by financial deepening. We consider a set of indices to capture different components of the overall intergenerational education mobility. Using a sample of 39 countries, we find that financial development is related to structural mobility but not to exchange mobility. In particular, while we detect an inverted U-shaped relationship between financial development and structural mobility, we do not find any significant relationship with exchange mobility. Keywords: Intergenerational mobility, Financial development…
When do cooperation and commitment matter in a monetary union?
2013
International audience; This paper offers a framework to study strategic interactions between private players, national fiscal authorities and a common central bank in monetary unions. We establish general conditions, in terms of restrictions on spillover effects of actions by private and public players, under which games that differ in the degree of cooperation and commitment can admit the same equilibrium outcome. We use these conditions to characterize benchmark results on the irrelevance of cooperation and commitment established in recent literature. Moreover, we show for a general setting, in which the benchmark results do not apply, that gains from fiscal cooperation depend on the num…
An Empirical Analysis of the Determinants of Perceived Inequality
2017
Perception of inequality is important for the analysis of individuals' motivations and decisions and for policy assessment. Despite the broad range of analytic gains that it grants, our knowledge about measurement and determinants of perception of inequality is still limited, since it is intrinsically unobservable, multidimensional, and essentially contested. Using a novel econometric approach, we study how observable individual characteristics affect the joint distribution of a set of indicators of perceived inequality in specific domains. Using data from the International Social Survey Programme, we shed light on the associations among these indicators and how they are affected by covaria…
World Interest Rates and Inequality: Insight from the Galor - Zeira Model
2018
In this paper, we study the relationship between changes in the world interest rate and within-country inequality during the 1985–2005 period in which the world interest rate sharply declined. In line with the predictions of the seminal model of Galor and Zeira [Income distribution and macroeconomics. Review of Economic Studies 60, 35–52], the analysis suggests that the decrease in the world interest rate is associated with a decrease in inequality in poor countries and an increase in inequality in rich ones.
The signaling effects of central bank tone
2021
Abstract Does policymakers’ choice of words matter? We assess empirically whether the tone of FOMC statements contains useful information for financial market participants and explore the nature of the information conveyed. We quantify central bank tone using computational linguistics. We find that the tone of FOMC statements explains monetary surprises beyond FOMC information released on policy announcement days such as policymakers’ forecasts and votes. We also find that the FOMC tone matters more around monetary cycle turning points. We show that the tone of policy statements also helps predict future policy decisions. Our findings suggest that the central bank tone may be one of the veh…