infonet-economy

This paper studies the determinants of pricing-to-market at the firm-level, with a particular focus on the role of firm-specific and policy-induced market power. We use a large dataset containing export values and quantities by product and destination for all exporting firms in 12 developing and emerging countries, over several years. We first show that firms in our sample do price…

Global Value Chains (GVCs) have become a central topic in trade and development policy but little is known about their actual impact on economic performance because data availability has been limited. Using a new unique set of Inter-Country Input-Output tables with extensive country coverage, I look at the relationship between GVC participation and domestic value added at the…

In the wake of the Alstom restructuring, the French government indicated that current merger control rules do not allow for the development of European champions and called for a change in the rules. This paper argues that such a move may be not be advisable but that enforcement of the current rules should be improved, in particular regarding the assessment of efficiencies and the…

The real unit labor cost is an important variable in today's debate over competitiveness and labor cost imbalances in the Eurozone. This paper documents the link existing between developments in the labor share and relative monetary policy stance across euro area members. First I present the theoretical foundations of such link using a standard New Keynesian framework, then I…

When allocating their aid budget, development agencies need to decide whether to give outright grants or use concessional loans that blend a grant and credit element. Theory suggests that the degree of concessionality should be negatively correlated with debt sustainability. Several donors use the World Bank/IMF Debt Sustainability Framework to guide their aid decisions. They give…

This paper uses cross-country, firm-level, panel data to study how exporters from Low Income Countries (LICs) adjust their prices according to their trade partners’ characteristics. The results show that the free on board (fob) price of exports is differentiated across markets in all countries in the sample. This differentiated pricing is not commonly associated with small economies…

Guest-worker programs have been providing rapidly growing economies with millions of temporary foreign workers over the last couple of decades. With the duration of stay strictly limited by program rules in most of the host countries and wages paid to guest workers often set at sub-market levels, many of the migrants choose to overstay and seek employment in the underground economy.…

We study how substitutability between clean and dirty alternatives affects the effectiveness of environmental regulation in a field experiment that controls for the choice set of respondents. We consider four product categories with clean and dirty alternatives: (i) cola products in plastic bottles vs. in aluminum cans; (ii) skimmed vs. whole milk; (iii) chicken meat vs. beef meat;…

We examine the case of payback killings and similar retributive sanctions in the context of a transplant regime such as that existing in Papua New Guinea. This is a post-colonial regime with multiple overlaid legal systems, with significant negative interaction existing between the different regimes. We explain how multiple regimes can co-exist in the context of negative…