The aim of this paper is to explore the patterns of trade duration across regions and to identify its determinants. Using an extended Cox model, we evaluate the effects of country and product characteristics, as well as of trade cost variables on the duration of trade relationships from 96 countries from 1995 to 2004. Our results suggest first that the duration of trade relationships increases with the region level of development: trade relationships from richer economies face lower hazard rates i.e. longer duration. Second, the type of product matters for export survival, trade relationships involving differentiated products show a hazard rate that is 11% to 13% lower than trade relationships involving homogeneous goods. Third, high export costs increase the probability of export failure in all regions but the effect diminishes with time, thus suggesting that export experience matters. Finally, the size of exports also matters: the larger the transaction, the higher the probability of survival.
This paper investigates the effects of equity market integration on the transmission of monetary policy shocks. Based on the assumption that financial market liberalization and integration lead to falling portfolio holding costs, we analyze its effect on a twocountry DSGE model with staggered prices and endogenous portfolio choice under incomplete markets. The model predicts that the reaction of stock prices, output and RER becomes muted upon impact and less persistence with falling portfolio holding costs. To test for a similar pattern in the data, we estimate a VAR with rolling coefficients for Australia, which provides a good case study. We identify a monetary policy shock with the sign restriction approach. The impulse responses generated by the data are consistent with the prediction of the model and imply that equity market liberalization seems to weaken the impact of monetary policy, at least on stock prices.
How do asymmetric labor market institutions affect volatility of inflation and unemployment differentials in a currency union? What are the implications for monetary policy? To answer these questions, this paper sets up a DSGE currency union model with unemployment, hiring frictions and real wage rigidities. The model provides a rigorous but tractable framework for the analysis of the functioning of a currency union characterized by asymmetric labor market institutions. Positively, we find that inflation and unemployment differentials strongly depend on the underlying labor market structures. Moreover, asymmetries in labor market structures increase the volatility of both inflation and unemployment differentials. Normatively, we find that the optimal inflation target should give a higher weight to regions with more sclerotic labor markets but with more flexible real wages.
If women make different economic decisions than men on average, then an increase in women's influence in the political and economic spheres of society might change economic outcomes. In this note, we focus on the impact of female enfranchisement on fiscal policy outcomes. We present a simple median voter model and show that if women have different economic preferences than men, then female enfranchisement leads to a change in government budget deficits.
This paper creates a new index (“index of bilateral trade relation”) to quantitatively evaluate the degree of regional economic integration based on countries’ de facto bilateral trade relations. It concludes that a fundamental arrangement of East Asian regionalism should involve at least one of the two “hub” candidates – Japan and China. It also suggests that the China- ASEAN FTA (CAFTA) may trigger domino effects of regionalism in East Asia.
The paper investigates whether higher financial integration leads in general to slower current account adjustments. The study estimates theoretically founded trade balance reaction functions for a panel of seventy countries from 1970-2004. The empirical analysis finds that adjustment in integrated economies is slower. Consistent with the presented theory the trade balance of integrated economies is more persistent, responds less strongly to net foreign assets, and is more sensitive to fluctuations in net output. A sufficiently strong response to net foreign assets is also a condition for external sustainability. Under high integration countries appear to stay close to the sustainability limit.
This paper develops an open economy firm-heterogeneous model where the combination of market rigidities and exchange rate uncertainty acts like a barrier to trade and modifies a firm's optimal choice in terms of production and pricing. The existence of price and labour rigidities, coupled with imperfect financial development and exchange rate uncertainty, separates incumbent firms into (1) domestic producers, (2) exporters setting the price in national currency and (3) more productive exporters pricing in foreign currency. The model predicts that only where financial development is limited a reduction in exchange rate uncertainty raises a firm's profit, lowers prices, and induces new firms to export. Fully financially integrated countries are insulated from exchange rate risk.
This paper analyzes the effects of local externalities on the probability of starting a new economic activity. We use firm-level data and geographic information on French zip-codes for 1993-2002. Poisson and Negative Binomial panel data models are estimated as they naturally allow for large sets of location choices with frequent zero outcomes and control for unobserved zip-code heterogeneity. To measure the geographic extent of location externalities we compute localization, urbanization and congestion variables for neighboring regions. We separately analyze the scale effects stemming from exporting and non-exporting firms. Our results show that agglomeration economies at zip-code level strongly effect the location decision of industrial establishments and find the presence of agglomeration shadows, one of the core predictions of the standard New Economic Geography formulations.
Using NAFTA’s effect on Mexico’s exports as a natural experiment, this paper conducts an empirical analysis on the explanatory power of the two strands of heterogeneous firms trade models: the heterogeneous firms trade (HFT) model and the quality heterogeneous firms trade (QHFT) model. The paper first discusses the common prediction of the two models on ‘new’ goods’ exports and on the contrasting prediction on unit price evolution. An empirical analysis shows a strong supportive evidence on the common prediction, i.e., NAFTA’s positive impact on ‘new’ goods exports from Mexico to the US. The paper then proposes a simple way to check the explanatory power of the models on unit price evolution, and finds no evidence in favour of either model.
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 deficit for most of the analysed period. A moderate SBB surplus is observed in Kazakhstan. The estimated SBBs also demonstrate that fiscal policies tend to be mainly procyclical in Kazakhstan and Russia. Azerbaijan conducted a counter-cyclical fiscal policy for half of the investigated period. Moreover, governments placed more importance on economic stabilization in 2009 due to the global financial crisis.
