infonet-economy

This paper documents the novel fact that Regional Trade Agreements (RTA) decrease bilateral trade imbalances as measured by conventional measure of the net export share in gross trade. While on average an RTA decreases bilateral trade imbalance by 7%, greater trade integration through a deeper RTA is associated with a reduction of up to 50% among the sample of over 160 countries…

This study aims to analyse the discretionary fiscal policy of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Russia for the period 2003-2015 using the structural budget balance (SBB). The SBB considers the permanent component of oil revenue and therefore clearly defines the discretionary fiscal position and the aggregate demand effect of fiscal policy. The SBBs in Azerbaijan and Russia experience a…

We propose a novel theoretical framework to study how environmental regulation shapes economic development in a developing country such as China. We develop a dynamic tax competition model in which local governments, located in development zones, use variation in taxes to attract workers to their jurisdictions. Their objective is to maximize tax revenue less local health costs that…

We incorporate consumption indivisibilities into the Krugman (1980) model and show that an importer’s per capita income becomes a primary determinant of “export zeros”. Households in the rich North (poor South) are willing to pay high (low) prices for consumer goods; hence unconstrained monopoly pricing generates arbitrage opportunities for internationally traded products. Export…

The rise of the programmable web offers new opportunities for the empirically driven sciences. The access to, compilation and preparation of data from the programmable web for statistical analysis can, however, involve substantial up-front costs for the practical researcher. The R-package RWebData provides a high-level framework that allows data to be easily collected from the…

Having grown in real terms by 60% between 2000 to 2008, extra-EU exports have since stagnated. Stripping out other determinants of EU export growth, the focus here is on the impact of trade distortions imposed by foreign governments since the global economic crisis began. Our econometric analysis implies that crisis-era trade distortions held back EU Member State export growth to…

This paper establishes a measure of bilateral differences in values using 857 questions from the World Values Survey. We explore the determinants of value distance, linking it to geography as well as the historical relatedness of populations across 90 countries. Furthermore, we explore the explanatory power of value distance for the diffusion of technological development.

Self-help groups (SHGs) are the most common form of microfinance in India. We provide evidence that SHGs, composed of women only, undertake collective actions for the provision of public goods. Using a theoretical model, we show that an elected official, whose aim is to maximise re-election chances, would exert higher effort in providing public goods when private citizens undertake…

Are stocks' varying sensitivies to changing investor attention and sentiment priced? Employing internet search-based proxies for both, I find novel results that are consistent with theory. Stocks that co-vary negatively with increased investor attention to the stock market outperform in the following months in a behavior consistent with a risk premium. The pricing of co-…