I discuss the impact of financialisation on real capital accumulation in the US. Using data from a sample of non-financial corporations from 1973 to 2003, I find a negative relationship between real ...investment and financialisation. Two channels can help explain this negative relationship: first, increased financial investment and increased financial profit opportunities may have crowded out real investment by changing the incentives of firm managers and directing funds away from real investment. Second, increased payments to the financial markets may have impeded real investment by decreasing available internal funds, shortening the planning horizons of the firm management and increasing uncertainty.
This paper shows that a large fraction of the 1973-2003 growth in residual wage inequality is due to composition effects linked to the secular increase in experience and education, two factors ...associated with higher within-group wage dispersion. The level and growth in residual wage inequality are also overstated in the March Current Population Survey (CPS) because, unlike the May or Outgoing Rotation Group (ORG) CPS, it does not measure directly the hourly wages of workers paid by the hour. The magnitude and timing of the growth in residual wage inequality provide little evidence of a pervasive increase in the demand for skill due to skill-biased technological change.
This article analyses the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) performance of fisheries in Iceland, Norway and Sweden during the period 1973 to 2003. We measure TFP growth using real gross value added as ...output and capital input, labour input and a stock input index based on the major fish stocks. In developed neighbouring countries, we expect rapid diffusion of fishing technology innovations contributing to productivity convergence. In addition, innovations in the public regulation and the industrial organization may also have influenced productivity growth during the period. We find that Iceland had the highest annual TFP growth. Accounting for stock changes, it amounts to 3%, while the corresponding figures for Sweden and Norway are 2.8% and 0.8%, respectively. Despite best practice fishing technologies being widely available, we find no evidence of productivity convergence among the three countries.
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is a leading cause of mortality among infants and is responsible for thousands of infant deaths every year. Prenatal smoking and postnatal environmental smoke have ...been identified as strong risk factors for SIDS. Given the link between smoking and SIDS, this paper examines the direct effects of cigarette prices, taxes and clean indoor air laws in explaining changes in the incidence of SIDS over time in the United States. State-level counts of SIDS cases are generated from death certificates for 1973–2003. After controlling for some observed and unobserved confounding factors, the results show that higher cigarette prices and taxes are associated with reductions in SIDS cases. Stronger restrictions on smoking in workplaces, restaurants and child care centers are also effective in reducing SIDS deaths.
We study a sample of nine developed and nine developing countries to evaluate the questions of how foreign income uncertainty and real exchange rate (RER) uncertainty impact international trade and ...how those impacts vary according to stage of development. RER uncertainty has a negative and significant impact on export growth for six of the nine less developed countries in our sample, while it has an insignificant effect for a majority of the developed countries. In both groups, foreign income uncertainty has a more pervasively significant (and frequently larger) influence on trade than does RER uncertainty.
Many polarization measures proposed in the literature assume some invariance condition. Clearly, each invariance condition imposes a specific value judgment on polarization measurement. In inequality ...and poverty measurement, B. Zheng suggests rejecting these invariance conditions as axioms, and proposes replacing them with the unit‐consistency axiom. This property demands that the inequality or poverty rankings, rather than their cardinal values, are not altered when income is measured in different monetary units. Following Zheng's proposal we explore the consequences of the unit‐consistency axiom in the bipolarization field. We introduce a new family of Krtscha‐type intermediate bipolarization indices, and also propose and characterize a class of intermediate polarization orderings which are unit‐consistent. Finally, a short empirical application using data from Spain is also provided to illustrate how the bipolarization orderings proposed may be used in practice.
We propose an empirical commodity market model with heterogeneous speculators. While the power of trend-extrapolating chartists is constant over time, the symmetric impact of stabilizing ...fundamentalists adjusts endogenously according to market circumstances: Using monthly data for various commodities such as cotton, sugar or zinc, our STAR-GARCH model indicates that their influence positively depends on the distance between the commodity price and its long-run equilibrium value. Fundamentalists seem to become more and more convinced that mean reversion will set in as the mispricing enlarges. Commodity price cycles may thus emerge due to the nonlinear interplay between different trader types. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
The pre-holiday effect is one of the best known of the calendar effect anomalies. This paper extends prior work by examining whether the effect has declined for the U.S., U.K. and Hong Kong markets. ...For all three markets, the effect is shown to have declined, but only significantly in the U.S. The result is not surprising given the relative sophistication of the market. What is surprising, however, is the reversal of the pre-holiday effect during the period 1991–1997, with the mean return on pre-holiday days becoming negative, and the subsequent elimination of this effect during 1997–2003.
In this study, 37 605 paintings by 60 well‐known Australian artists sold at auction over the period 1973–2003 are used to construct a hedonic price index. The attributes included in the hedonic ...regression model include the name and living status of the artist, the size and medium of the painting and the auction house and year in which the painting was sold. The resulting index indicates that returns on Australian fine‐art averaged 7 per cent over the period with a standard deviation of 16 per cent. The hedonic regression model also captures the willingness to pay for perceived attributes in the artwork, and this shows that works by McCubbin, Gascoigne, Thomas and Preston and other artists deceased at the time of auction, works executed in oils or acrylic, and those auctioned by Sotheby's or Christie's are associated with higher prices.
Average idiosyncratic stock volatility forecasts the bilateral exchange rates of the US dollar against major foreign currencies in and out of sample. The US dollar tends to appreciate after an ...increase in US idiosyncratic volatility. Similarly, ceteris paribus, German and Japanese idiosyncratic volatilities positively and significantly correlate with future US dollar prices of the Deutsche mark and the Japanese yen, respectively. Our results suggest that exchange rates are predictable.
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