The study investigates the influence of financial development on foreign trade in transitional economies using panel data (1994–2014). Although empirical studies on the impact of financial ...development on foreign trade are available, none of them that the authors are aware of attempted to explore the subject matter in the context of transitional economies. None attempted to investigate if human capital development is a channel through which financial development influences foreign trade or international trade. Under fixed effects, financial development was found to have a non‑significant positive influence on foreign trade, while the random effects approach shows a significant positive relationship running from financial development towards foreign trade. The findings resonate with the majority of the literature on the subject. However, pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) shows that financial development had a significant negative influence on foreign trade. Under both fixed and random effects, human capital development was found to be a channel through which financial development had a significant positive effect on foreign trade. The results are in line with Patrick’s (1966) argument that foreign trade is quickened by high levels of human capital and financial development. The implication of the study is that transitional authorities should develop and implement human capital development enhancement policies in order to enable financial development to have a significant positive effect on foreign trade. In contrast to the available literature, human capital development was found to have had a significant negative impact on foreign trade under the OLS approach. Future studies on the subject matter should address the endogeneity concerns and the dynamic characteristics of the foreign trade data.
We use a semi‐structural fan‐chart approach to measure the changing nature of uncertainty for public debt targets in New Zealand. We find that economic and fiscal factors dominate the uncertainty ...landscape over the 3 year and longer time horizons. The near term tends to be dominated by non‐fundamental factors, such as measurement errors, that are typically outside of reasonable policy responses. We conclude that medium‐term fiscal targets are better placed to support macroeconomic stability than short‐term targets. We also quantify the fiscal buffers that may be needed to offset some of the future uncertainty, if policy‐makers choose to do so. The analysis is intended to support contingency planning in fiscal management and communication strategy of fiscal targets.
Forensic economists may receive a request from an attorney asking to project lost wages for his or her client to age 70 or older. This request is likely to occur when the plaintiff that attorney is ...representing is adamant with respect to how long he or she intended to work absent the incident of the legal case. Worklife expectancy tables will not provide a basis to make a computation of wage loss to age 70 or older unless the plaintiff had reached their late sixties as of the date of incident. However, worklife expectancy tables do not take into account "intent" since the tables are based on actual retirement patterns without knowledge of individuals' retirement plans. Individuals who had the intent to retire at age 70 or older may significantly differ from individuals who planned to retire at earlier ages in the number of years they work. In 1992, participants in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) were asked when they planned to retire. The HRS followed up with these same individuals every two years from 1994 to 2014 and asked about their work status. HRS participants who stated they planned to work to age 70 or older were indeed statistically different than individuals who planned to retire earlier. The intent to work to age 70 or older accounted for 2.5 increased work years, on average, compared to those who did not plan to work to age 70 or older.
In January 2012, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) began publicly releasing its participants' projections for the future value of the federal funds rate in its quarterly Summary of Economic ...Projections (SEP). These projections reflect each participant's view of appropriate monetary policy and are thus not unconditional forecasts. Highlighting the release of these projections, former FOMC Chair Ben Bernanke noted that "providing regular information about the future path of policy . . . has aided the public in forming policy expectations, reduced uncertainty emphasis added, and made policy more effective."However, the individual-and possibly conflicting-nature of these projections may not necessarily lead to lower uncertainty about future policy. A single participant's views about the appropriate future funds rate may not align with the views of the rest of the Committee. If participants notably disagree with each other about the appropriate path of policy, then the release of these projections may actually lead to an increase in uncertainty about future interest rates. Indeed, some monetary policy makers have suggested using these projections to communicate their disagreement. For example, in advocating for the release of the projections, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President John C. Williams stated, "the range of our funds rate forecast would appropriately convey the disagreement and uncertainty we face" (Board of Governors 2017a).Do these projections decrease or increase uncertainty about future policy? To answer this question, we examine how uncertainty about future interest rates, as measured by options prices from financial markets, changed after the FOMC began releasing its participants' projections for the appropriate federal funds rate. To isolate the releases' effects, we examine our market-based uncertainty measures immediately before and after FOMC meetings.We find that overall uncertainty about future interest rates fell after the Committee began releasing its participants' interest rate projections. Specifically, we find the level of uncertainty on the day before and the day of an FOMC announcement decreased after the FOMC began releasing interest rate projections. However, we also find that uncertainty is significantly correlated with disagreement across participants' projections. Furthermore, we find changes in participant disagreement are helpful in explaining changes in interest rate uncertainty after an FOMC meeting. In summary, our results provide empirical support for the claims of both Bernanke and Williams.
This paper examines the weak-form market efficiency of the Malaysian commercial banks over the period of 17 October 1994 to 23 May 2014. We apply a powerful panel stationarity tests proposed by ...Carrión-i-Silvestre et al. (2005) that allow for the presence of multiple structural breaks and exploit the cross-section variation of the bank prices series. Our results indicate that all series can be characterized by a random walk process suggesting the bank stocks are weak-form efficient. We also find the evidence showing the presence of structural breaks and cross-sectional dependence (CSD) in the series. The results suggest that ignoring structural breaks and CSD can lead to biased estimates and spurious inference. The overall finding of this study is in favour of the weak-form efficiency. This finding has salient implications in terms of capital allocation, stock price predictability, forecasting technique, and the impact of shocks to stock prices.
NAFTA at 20 Boskin, Michael J
2014, 2014-10-01, Letnik:
655
eBook
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was bold and controversial from the start. When first conceived, it was far from obvious that it would be possible given the circumstances of the ...times. Drawing from a December 2013 Hoover Institution conference on "NAFTA at 20," this book brings together distinguished academics who have studied the effects of NAFTA with high-level policy makers to present a comprehensive view of the North American Free Trade Agreement. It looks at the conception, creation, outcomes so far, and the future of NAFTA from the perspective of economists, historians, and the aforementioned policy makers in the words of those who actually participated in the negotiations and research. In the context of the fundamental economic and political transformation of North America, they discuss the trade, real wage, and welfare gains that NAFTA has produced for the United States, Mexico, and Canada, along with a review of the major energy markets within and among the three countries. They include lessons from NAFTA for the future, both for NAFTA itself and for other trade agreements, and stress the importance of political leadership and providing information on the benefits of trade liberalization to voters and potentially ill-informed politicians who hear most loudly from the opponents.
Provider: - Institution: - Data provided by Europeana Collections- All metadata published by Europeana are available free of restriction under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain ...Dedication. However, Europeana requests that you actively acknowledge and give attribution to all metadata sources including Europeana
Provider: - Institution: - Data provided by Europeana Collections- All metadata published by Europeana are available free of restriction under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain ...Dedication. However, Europeana requests that you actively acknowledge and give attribution to all metadata sources including Europeana
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