WHAT ACCOUNTS FOR THE DECLINE IN CRIME? İmrohoroğlu, Ayse; Merlo, Antonio; Rupert, Peter
International economic review (Philadelphia),
August 2004, Letnik:
45, Številka:
3
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In this article we analyze recent trends in aggregate property crime rates in the United States. We propose a dynamic equilibrium model that guides our quantitative investigation of the major ...determinants of observed patterns of crime. Our main findings can be summarized as follows: First, the model is capable of reproducing the drop in crime between 1980 and 1996. Second, the most important factors that account for the observed decline in property crime are the higher apprehension probability, the stronger economy, and the aging of the population. Third, the effect of unemployment on crime is negligible. Fourth, the increased inequality prevented an even larger decline in crime. Overall, our analysis can account for the behavior of the time series of property crime rates over the past quarter century.
This paper investigates Chinese industrial productivity from 1980 to 1996. Results include series for foreign-linked, shareholding, and private enterprises. We find long-term productivity increase, ...with growth rates declining during the 1990's. Productivity outcomes outside the state and collective sectors are modest, with shareholding enterprises suffering productivity declines. The paper examines differences in marginal factor productivity across ownership types, considers the impact of business cycles on the interpretation of productivity trends, and documents a statistical relationship among the profitability of state enterprises, the relative productivity performance of state firms, and the entry of new firms outside the state sector.J. Comp. Econom., December 2000, 28(4), pp. 786–813. Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts 02254; University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260; Institute of Quantitative and Technical Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 5 Jianguomennei Street, Beijing, China 100732.
Many happy returns? Recidivism and the IMF Bird, Graham; Hussain, Mumtaz; Joyce, Joseph P.
Journal of international money and finance,
03/2004, Letnik:
23, Številka:
2
Journal Article
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IMF programs are designed to provide a temporary source of finance for countries with balance of payments disequilibria. Consequently, borrowing from the IMF should occur infrequently and be widely ...distributed among member countries. However, some countries are recurrent users of Fund resources. This paper investigates which variables account for multiple borrowings from the IMF. We use models of count data to examine the impact of the need for financing, domestic policies, external shocks, and structural and institutional factors on borrowings between 1980 and 1996. We find that recidivist borrowers have lower reserve holdings, larger current account deficits and capital outflows, lower but less volatile terms of trade, larger debt service and external debt ratios, lower investment rates and per-capita income, and weak governance.
Failure to account for differences between immigrants and natives in their responsiveness to changes in macroeconomic conditions may bias estimates of assimilation effects on immigrant earnings. ...Using Norwegian register data from 1980 to 1996, we first establish that earnings of immigrants from non-OECD countries exhibit greater sensitivity to local unemployment than do earnings of natives. The empirical analysis further reveals that standard methods of estimation-which fail to consider differential immigrant and native responsiveness-understate earnings growth and overstate cohort differentials among non-OECD immigrants. These biases are attributable to trends in macroeconomic conditions over the sample period.
Since Mexico's devaluation in 1994, some observers have called for policies designed to keep the real exchange rate highly competitive in order to promote exports and output growth. However, over the ...past few decades, devaluations have been associated nearly exclusively with economic contraction, while real appreciations have been followed by expansions. We attempt to disentangle the possible factors underlying this correlation — (1) reverse causation from output to the real exchange rate, (2) spurious correlation with third factors such as capital account shocks, and (3) temporary contractionary effects of devaluation — and determine whether a positive long-run effect of real depreciation on output is in the data. Based on the results of several VAR models, we conclude that even after sources of spurious correlation and reverse causation are controlled for, real devaluation has led to high inflation and economic contraction in Mexico. While changes in Mexico's economic structure and financial situation may qualify the future applicability of this conclusion, our findings point to substantial risks to targeting the exchange rate at too competitive a level.
The environmental Kuznets curve theory suggeststhat economic growth in the long run may reduceenvironmental problems. In this article, we usea decomposition analysis to isolate eightdifferent ...factors, in order to investigate theorigins of changes in emissions to air over theperiod from 1980 to 1996. Among these factorsare economic growth, changes in the relativesize of production sectors and changes in theuse of energy. Given constant emissions perproduced unit, economic growth alone would havecontributed to a significant increase in theemissions. This potential degradation of theenvironment has been counteracted by first ofall more efficient use of energy and abatementtechnologies. In addition, the substitution ofcleaner for polluting energy types and othertechnological progressions and politicalactions have reduced the growth in emissions.Consequently, the growth in all emissions hasbeen significantly lower than economic growth,and negative for some pollutants.The results indicate that policymakers mayreduce emissions considerably through creatingincentives for lower energy use andsubstitutions of environmental friendly forenvironmental damaging energy types, inaddition to support environmental friendlyresearch or to conduct direct emission reducingactions, such as abatement requirements orbanning of environmental damaging products.This is particularly relevant to countries andsectors with relatively high energy intensitiesand low pollution abatement. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2003
Empirical evidence on the relationship between trade liberalization, exchange rates, and tax revenue is mixed. This paper examines these linkages anew, using a methodology similar to that of Adam et ...al. , Adam, C., Bevan, D., & Chambas, G. (2001), Exchange rate regimes and revenue performance in Sub-Saharan Africa,
Journal of Development Economics, 64, 173–213. Using a panel of 22 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, over 1980–1996, we perform Generalized Method of Moment regressions to test this relationship. We find evidence that the relationship between trade liberalization and tax revenue is sensitive to the measure used to proxy trade liberalization, but that, in general, trade liberalization is not strongly linked to aggregate tax revenue or its components—though with one measure, it is linked to higher income tax revenue. Currency appreciation and higher inflation show some linkage to lower tax revenues or its components. These results are consistent with previous findings, and support the notion that trade liberalization accompanied by appropriate macroeconomic policies can be carried out in a way that preserves overall revenue yield.
Edge of Empireexamines struggles over urban space in three contemporary first world cities in an attempt to map the real geographies of colonialism and postcolonialism as manifest in modern society. ...From London, the one-time heart of the empire, to Perth and Brisbane, scenes of Aboriginal claims for the sacred in the space of the modern city, Jacobs emphasises the global geography of the local and unravels the spatialised cultural politics of postcolonial processes.Edge of Empireforms the basis for understanding imperialism over space and time, and is a recognition of the unruly spatial politics of race and nation, nature and culture, past and present.
Psychologists have found that the age at which successful practitioners typically do their best work varies across professions, but they have not considered whether these peak ages change over time, ...as economic models suggest they might. Using auction records, we estimate the relationship between artists’ ages and the value of their paintings for two successive cohorts of leading modern American painters: de Kooning, Pollock, Rothko, and others born during 1900–1920 and Frank Stella, Warhol, and others born during 1921–40. We find that a substantial decline occurred over time in the age at which these artists produced their most valuable—and most important—work and argue that this was caused by a shift in the nature of the demand for modern art during the 1950s.
In this paper, we estimate ARFIMA–FIGARCH models for the major exchange rates (against the US dollar) which have been subject to direct central bank interventions in the last decades. We show that ...the normality assumption is not adequate due to the occurrence of volatility outliers and its rejection is related to these interventions. Consequently, we rely on a normal mixture distribution that allows for endogenously determined jumps in the process governing the exchange rate dynamics. This distribution performs rather well and is found to be important for the estimation of the persistence of volatility shocks. Introducing a time-varying jump probability associated to central bank interventions, we find that the central bank interventions, conducted in either a coordinated or unilateral way, induce a jump in the process and tend to increase exchange rate volatility.
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