infonet-economy

In countries where rain-fed agriculture constitutes a significant portion of household livelihood, increased weather variability represents a source of vulnerability to stable consumption, food security and household well-being. Weather induced income changes affect household consumption and saving decisions. We evaluate saving and consumption responses to weather variation in South…

It is increasingly claimed that unconventional monetary policies are subject to decreasing effectiveness in supporting growth and raising the inflation rate. There are good reasons to believe that the effects of further asset purchases by central banks and of moving the interest rate deeper in negative territory progressively decline. But has it been happening? This paper attempts to…

This paper synthesizes previous studies analyzing the effects of capital account liberalization on industry growth while controlling for financial crises, domestic financial development and the strength of institutions. We find reasonably strong evidence that financial openness has positive effects on the growth of financially-dependent industries, although these growth-enhancing…

The large regional variation of minimum wage changes in 2002—08 implies that Chinese manufacturing firms experienced competitive shocks as a function of firm location and their low-wage employment share. We find that minimum wage hikes accelerate the input substitution from labor to capital in low-wage firms, reduce employment growth, but also accelerate total factor productivity…

In April 2010, Greece became the first euro area country to request financial support from the IMF. The IMF joined the European Commission (EC) and the European Central Bank (ECB)—thus constituting what informally came to be known as the troika—in providing emergency financing, with the Fund’s contribution taking the form of a €30 billion three-year Stand-By Arrangement (SBA)…

Using a unique dataset collected in 59 rural Gambian villages, we study how ethnic heterogeneity is related to the structure of four economic exchange networks: land, labor, inputs and credit. We find that different measures of village-level ethnic fragmentation are mostly uncorrelated with network structure. At a more disaggregated level, household heads belonging to ethnic…

The increase in the level of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the atmosphere in the last centuries, and the subsequent increase in temperature, has been a widely studied area in the last few decades. Climate change has become a key item on the political agenda due to concerns regarding the sustainability of current human consumption for future generations. Consumption of food and…

An interaction can be observed between a company’s level of exports and its domestic sales. Estimates made using data on French companies show that a 10% increase (decrease) in exports is accompanied, in the same year, by a 1% to 3% increase (decrease) in domestic sales. This strong interaction between sales in different markets can result from short-term funding constraints that…