Publications

Working Papers

  • Working Paper No. 1077 | February 2025
    Western media and academia have heralded the China collapse narrative. This paper provides a critical and balanced examination of the four challenges facing the Chinese economy—namely, deflation, debt, demographics, and de-coupling/de-risking. It argues that while deflationary pressure is present, consumer demand has been improving as the property market stabilized and policies to bolster domestic demand were and continue to be effective in reflating the economy. China’s debt is predominantly internal and semi-public; the central government could leverage up to resolve the local government debt conundrum. A talent dividend and employment optimization could offset the dissipating population dividend; and finally, China’s high-quality opening, its participation in the multilateral system and its meaningful engagement with the Global South help counteract the decoupling/de-risking strategies of the US. In sum, while challenges abound, China’s sound economic foundations and sensible developmental and macroeconomic policies help to propel economic growth, structural transformation, and green transition.  

  • Working Paper No. 1076 | February 2025
    This working paper integrates the credit money approach (associated with Post Keynesian endogenous money theory) with the state money approach (associated with Modern Money Theory) by drawing on Wray’s 1990 book (Money and Credit in Capitalist Economies: The Endogenous Money Approach, Edward Elgar), his 1998 book (Understanding Modern Money: the Key to Full Employment and Price Stability, Edward Elgar), and his 2004 edited book (Credit and State Theories of Money: The Contributions of A. Mitchell Innes, Edward Elgar). New sources and interpretation of the history of money make it clear that there is no contradiction between state money and private credit money—each played a role in the creation of the modern monetary system. Indeed, today’s system was created by bringing state money into the private money giro, thereby strengthening both.
     

  • Working Paper No. 1075 | January 2025
    The article analyzes why exchange rate stability has been prioritized in Mexico and why the national currency has appreciated; which policies and factors have made this possible, the costs and consequences of the strong peso, and its sustainability and temporality are also examined. Mexico’s economy does not have the endogenous conditions necessary to maintain such a strong currency—which has relied on the inflow of capital, thus exposing the economy to high vulnerability vis-à-vis the behavior of capital flows. The exchange rate stability has been very costly, due to the fact that there is no longer an economic policy in favor of growth; furthermore, the entry of capital leads to continuous productive imbalances which are behind the external deficit. In essence, Mexico has fallen into the Ponzi effect, whereby debt covers the deficit and pays off debt.
     
    This article posits that an effective, flexible exchange rate should be used to lower the interest rate and increase public spending in favor of growth and employment, and that economic policy should aim to encourage import substitution and increase the domestic value added of exports in order to reduce the external deficit and capital inflow requirements. This should be accompanied by regulating the movement of goods and capital to avoid speculation and protect domestic production from imports, in turn allowing for a more flexible economic policy in favor of the productive sector and employment. Lastly, the article proposes that the economy should be financed with its own currency to boost growth potential and reduce the foreign trade deficit in order to avoid relying on external financing.

  • Working Paper No. 1074 | December 2024
    The paper presents a Kaleckian extended model exploring sustainable development, defined as growth that is economically stable, socially inclusive, and environmentally respectful. The model links CO2 emission trends with public investments in green capabilities, represented by the share of renewables in total energy supply. It incorporates three key actors: green capitalists (G), brown capitalists (B), and workers (R), whose alliances influence taxes, social expenditure, and green capabilities investments. Three political coalitions are formed: green-red (GR), green-brown (GB), and red-brown (RB). The GR coalition promotes sustainable and inclusive growth but may face trade imbalances depending on public investment's ability to boost non-price competitiveness. The GB alliance yields sustainable but non-inclusive growth with a high long-term deficit. The RB coalition results in environmentally unsustainable outcomes but may produce stable growth with income redistribution during high commodity export demand. Applying the model to Mexico highlights fiscal space challenges for public investment and income redistribution amidst emissions reduction targets. 
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    Author(s):
    José Eduardo Alatorre Gabriel Porcile Julia Juarez Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid
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  • Working Paper No. 1073 | December 2024
    Lecture at Bard College, November 19, 2024
    This paper is based on remarks delivered at the EDI Keynote Lecture at Bard College, November 19th, 2024: 'Frankenstein in Fact and Fiction.' View a recording of the lecture on YouTube.

    As we all know, Frankenstein was the scientist in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel of the same name, who invented a human machine—intended to be a benefactor, but which turned out to be a monster. There is a critical question I wish to address this evening: Can we avoid our technology destroying us? This is the most important thread that runs through my book, Mindless, recently published in the United States. The book discusses the impact of machines on jobs, on freedom, and on our survival as a species. The question that dominates all three concerns the impact of machines on our humanness. Today we ponder whether there is still time to control the Machine before it controls us. I will talk about three Frankensteins who each set out to create gods and, in turn, created monsters.
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    Author(s):
    Robert Skidelsky
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  • Working Paper No. 1072 | December 2024
    This paper analyzes the dynamics of Canadian dollar–denominated (CAD) interest rate swap yields. It applies autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) models, using monthly time series data, to estimate the effects of the current short-term interest rate and other relevant macro-financial variables on interest rate swap yields. It shows that the current short-term interest rate is a crucial driver of the swap yields of different maturity tenors. Similar patterns of interest rate swaps denominated in other hard currencies, such as the US dollar, euro, British pound sterling, and Japanese yen, have been discerned in previous empirical research testing the Keynesian hypothesis, which maintains that the current short-term interest rate has a decisive influence on the long-term interest rate. Thus, the findings of this paper lend additional support to the
    Keynesian hypothesis by showing that the same pattern holds for CAD interest rate swap yields. The results obtained in the paper can be useful for portfolio managers, corporate leaders, and policymakers.
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    Author(s):
    Tanweer Akram Khawaja Mamun
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  • Working Paper No. 1071 | December 2024
    Originally issued as EDI Working Paper No. 14, May 2023

    The Central Bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve, has a dual mandate to maintain both full employment and price stability. However, inflation-fighting had always eclipsed the full employment objective without much accountability. Today, the Federal Reserve provides regular testimony before Congress on how well it is achieving its dual mandate. Professor Galbraith wrote that section into law (among others), which requires the Federal Reserve to report to Congress on its work.

    According to Professor Galbraith, the law intentionally kept the scope of Federal Reserve policy wide. The purpose was not to impose some economic theory on the policymaker, but to promote an open dialogue between the Federal Reserve and Congress over what monetary policy is and does. And yet, the legacy of monetarism continues to influence monetary policy today: the belief that there is a trade-off between inflation and unemployment firmly guides contemporary Federal Reserve policy. Even as the Federal Reserve’s own research finds that labor markets are not the driver of inflation, economists, including at the Fed, continue to insist that unemployment and labor market slack are the way to fight price increases. In this keynote, Professor Galbraith highlights other, more effective and enlightened ways of dealing with inflation.

  • Working Paper No. 1070 | December 2024
    Originally issued as EDI Working Paper No. 20, June 2024

    Scholars and affiliates of the Levy Economics Institute have long demonstrated a granular understanding of the "operations" of money, which entails understanding the financial system's law and technology (Grey 2019, Tymoigne 2014, Fullwiler 2010, Bell and Wray 2002-3, Bell 2000). During the dot-com bubble, many Levy-affiliated economists underscored the relationship between government fiscal surpluses and unsustainable private debt (Godley and Wray 1999). Recently, scholars have written about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (Grey 2023; Tankus 2023) and resurgent speculation in the tech sector (Veneroso and Pasquali 2021). These are but a few examples.

    Here, I present some brief thoughts on money as a technology—money itself. I argue there is value in thinking of money not only as a legal institution, political, economic, or social relation but as technology. The exercise sharpens our vision of the future of money even as we continue to believe in radical uncertainty. 

    I address a few points in this essay. First, I make the case for money as technology. I then survey three applications: 1) the trajectory of state money as a technology of public finance and its relationship to the suppression of indigenous and non-state monies, 2) the regulation of money-like liabilities issued by technology companies, which operate according to the accumulative logic of Silicon Valley rather than Wall Street, and 3) money’s future as a technology of surveillance, discipline, and punishment. Finally, I call for scholarship to inform a vision of money as a more democratic technology (per the mission of the Economic Democracy Initiative and Levy Economics Institute). 
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    Author(s):
    Raúl A. Carrillo
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  • Working Paper No. 1069 | December 2024
    Originally issued as EDI Working Paper No. 19, March 2024

    The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is criticized for "derisking" private investment by increasing the gains to private firms. The derisking critique argues that the IRA insufficiently disciplines private firms; it does not utilize legal or financial penalties which would force firms to undertake green investment and bar emissions-intensive investment. This paper answers that critique by providing a Post-Keynesian theory of capital expenditure. It argues all industrial policies promote investment by removing or mitigating risks in an environment of fundamental uncertainty. Industrial policies tackle different risks and can be assessed or compared on their effectiveness in doing so. An insufficient investment growth rate need not be an indication of their failure, but that complementary policies are required to mitigate risks or make risks calculable. For instance, the IRA’s uncapped Investment Tax Credit (ITC) increases clean energy investment by reducing project reliance on expensive debt financing. The ITC does not address other barriers to clean energy investment: transmission and distribution, permitting, or the need for clean firm resources. This is not a failure of discipline, but rather an indication that more state intervention must facilitate rapid decarbonization. The derisking critique’s emphasis on disciplining private firms into investment reallocation underestimates real obstacles to investment, particularly how those obstacles shape choices faced by firms. It also affects the character of investment itself, making it inaccurate to describe investment as the allocation of fixed financial resources. The derisking critique lacks a mechanism connecting financial or legal disciplinary measures on firms to an increase in green capital expenditure. This causes the derisking critique to miss a more productive avenue for investigating industrial policy conditionalities: linking them to a broader state-led coordination of varying industrial policy priorities, the timing of capital expenditure to meet them, and seizing of opportunities presented by their success.

  • Working Paper No. 1068 | December 2024
    Originally issued as EDI Working Paper No. 17, March 2024

    This paper challenges the prevailing view in the sovereign debt literature by arguing that sovereign debt markets, in many respects, behave similarly to other credit markets. These markets are hierarchical rather than flat, inherently hybrid in nature, blending elements of public order and private markets, and regularly suffer from liquidity stress. Therefore, sovereigns, similarly to private actors in the market, are subject to liquidity stress and insolvency crises in a way that is integral to the global financial architecture. Critically, the legal and institutional design of the international monetary system exacerbates this stress. Structural asymmetries, notably the uneven distribution of monetary power, lead to liquidity stress being more pronounced in the periphery than at the apex or core of the system, rendering the former inherently more vulnerable to sovereign debt crises.

    The paper argues that such considerations should assume a central role in global policy discussions concerning the most appropriate mechanisms for addressing sovereign debt crises. It advocates for a reformed global financial architecture, emphasizing the necessity of a legally binding framework for sovereign debt restructuring that draws upon principles of corporate restructuring law, with the UK Companies Act 2006 (CA 2006) providing relevant analogies. This approach aims to ensure timely, equitable, and efficient restructuring processes, thereby confronting the challenges posed by the current ad hoc and often inequitable sovereign debt restructuring processes.

  • Working Paper No. 1067 | December 2024
    Originally issued as EDI Working Paper No. 16, March 2024

    Most debates and policy proposals about Global South countries’ external debt problem take for granted the view that it is normal for their governments to issue debts denominated in foreign currencies. This paper tries to challenge this widely held and usually unquestioned assumption by relying on Modern Money Theory (MMT) insights. The author argues that the MMT lens helps us understand the root causes of the foreign debt problem of Southern countries, those located in Africa in particular, to clarify the ordinarily mis-specified concept of “external constraint” or “balance-of-payments constraint” and to envisage progressive domestic policy measures that are under their control.
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    Author(s):
    Ndongo Samba Sylla
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  • Working Paper No. 1066 | December 2024
    Originally issued as EDI Working Paper No. 10, November 2023

    Minsky (1965) has presented the Job Guarantee program as a recommendation in the war against unemployment and poverty. Kalecki (1943), on the other hand, argued that the full employment situation could be technically feasible but politically hard to implement due to the class struggle, resulting in what we will refer to as the “kaleckian dilemma”. Based on this contradiction, this paper aims to extract lessons from the Rehn-Meidner Swedish plan, which successfully combined low unemployment rates and creeping inflation for over three decades, as a means to study the chances of a Job Guarantee overcoming the kaleckian dilemma. From these lessons, this piece highlights the importance of a tripartite council bargaining board at the national level to settle the Job Guarantee’s wage level. In addition, we highly recommended other desirable features, such as international capital control and taxation on extraordinary profits, to raise the chances of the program successfully dealing with the kaleckian dilemma, just as Rehn-Meidner did.
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    Author(s):
    Caio Vilella Eduardo Bastian
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  • Working Paper No. 1065 | December 2024
    Originally issued as EDI Working Paper No. 09, 2023

    This paper explains the MMT approach for evaluating the affordability of spending programs, contrasting it with the mainstream approach. Using the examples of the Green New Deal, Medicare-for-All, and Build Back Better, it argues that rethinking spending and taxes as claims on, and releases of resources, respectively, leads to different conclusions about the affordability of these programs. Unlike the mainstream view, the MMT approach does not lead to the conclusion that taxes necessarily must go up to “pay for” more spending. Conversely, just because money is not a constraint does not mean that every government program is immediately “affordable”. The resource demands of certain programs might be beyond the economy’s potential, at least in the short-term. The MMT approach thus leads to different solutions for how to make a program “affordable”; to do so it focuses on creating the necessary resource space through the tools the government has at its disposal, such as public investment and taxation.

  • Working Paper No. 1064 | December 2024
    Originally issued as EDI Working Paper No. 08, 2022 

    This paper evaluates the relationship between monetary and fiscal policy and the relative effectiveness of macroeconomic stabilization through the lens of Modern Money Theory (MMT). We articulate previously-neglected aspects of monetary sovereignty to offer a new interpretation of the Bernanke Doctrine that emerged in the wake of the 2008 Global Financial crisis. This Doctrine validated key MMT precepts and paved the way for fiscal policy activism in response to COVID19. The paper argues that fiscal and monetary policy coordination is not new or rare. It is an intrinsic feature of sovereign monetary regimes, allowing for more effective policy responses to financial crises or pandemics. To the extent that monetary policy is able to stabilize an unstable economy, it is largely due to its fiscal components. This recognition also calls for a rethinking of fiscal policy. 

  • Working Paper No. 1063 | December 2024
    Following the Great Financial Crisis of 2008–9, there has been a shift in mainstream economic policy modeling toward “realism,” with dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models partly diverging from the representative agent framework, and large-scale, New-Keynesian structural models addressing real-financial interactions in greater detail. Still, the need for tractability of the former, and the lack of theoretical structure of the latter prevented the complete introduction of a modern—and complex—multi-sector/multi-asset financial system in policy models in use at central banks and treasuries. However, empirical models adopting the Stock-Flow Consistent (SFC) approach resolved most of these complications with a surge in the number of country models over the last few years. The present work lays out the main out-of-sample features of a quarterly SFC model of the Italian economy (MITA).

  • Working Paper No. 1062 | December 2024
    This paper examines heterodox theories of the determinants of the value of money. Orthodox approaches that tie money’s value to relative scarcity of money or to the price level are rejected as inconsistent with the monetary theory of production embraced by heterodox traditions linked to Marx, Veblen, and Keynes. This paper examines and integrates (1) recent contributions by David Graeber and Duncan Foley that reinterpret Marx’s labor theory of value, (2) the interpretation of Keynes’s liquidity preference theory as a theory of asset pricing that began with Sraffa and was further developed by Minsky and Kregel, and (3) Modern Money Theory’s approach to sovereign currency. As Heilbroner argued, money is central to the internal logic of the capitalist system, and is what makes capitalism truly different from other social organizations. Our theory of value informs our beliefs about how the deep structure of the economic system generates a system of prices denominated in the money of account.

  • Working Paper No. 1061 | November 2024
    Originally issued as EDI Working Paper No. 04, 2022

    Drumetz and Pfister make several claims about the inadequacy and fallacies of Modern Money Theory (MMT) and conclude that MMT is nothing more than a political manifesto; there are no theoretical and empirical foundations behind it. This paper addresses this last point by focusing on the fiscal and monetary policy aspects of their criticisms. Contrary to what they claim, MMT is backed by a large body of empirical evidence, a rich institutional analysis, and a well-developed theoretical framework (including mathematical models). MMT provides a detailed analysis of the coordination between the fiscal and monetary branches of government, emphasizes that fiscal deficits are a stylized fact, and uses theoretical tools grounded in institutional realities to explain this stylized fact. In line with a large body of work, MMT concludes that fiscal policy, the provision of an elastic currency, and financial regulations have contributed to economic stability and growth; however government involvement can be improved by changing the policymaking praxis. MMT also concludes that fine-tuning of the economy via monetary policy is not effective and does not attribute the “great moderation” to better monetary management.

  • Working Paper No. 1060 | November 2024
    Originally issued as EDI Working Paper No. 02, 2022

    Orthodox economic theory presents the policy maker with an impossible choice: eradicate unemployment at the cost of undesirable inflation or keep prices stable by maintaining some level of involuntary unemployment. This is the canon, as embodied in the natural rate of unemployment theory and the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU). In the mainstream, there is no alternative. Heterodoxy has long criticized the NAIRU and the natural rate, but has not mounted a robust challenge for lack of a clearly articulated policy alternative that can target both goals: full employment and price stability. Modern Money Theory (MMT) has such a proposal—the federal Job Guarantee.

  • Working Paper No. 1059 | November 2024
    Originally issued as EDI Working Paper No. 01, 2021

    The central lesson of the COVID-19 fiscal response is that money is not scarce. Without delay, governments around the world appropriated budgets that dwarfed any other postwar crisis policy. In 2020, Japan passed a stimulus package equal to 54.8 percent of GDP, while in the U.S., it was equivalent to 26.9 percent and in Canada to 20.1 percent. Italy, France, and Germany spent 10.1, 10.4, and 10.7 percent of GDP, respectively.

  • Working Paper No. 1058 | November 2024
    Retracing European and Chinese Monetary Thoughts on Chartalism, Nominalism, and the Origins of Monetary Systems
    A monetary approach that combines Chartalism, Nominalism, and Command origins of monetary systems is often deemed to have emerged only recently, while the Aristotelian approach (Commodity, Metallism, and Market origins of monetary systems) is the only one that existed until the end of the eighteenth/early-nineteenth century. In the major studies of the history of monetary thought, the Chartalism-Nominalism-Command approach is mostly left unmentioned, or at best reduced to an incoherent banality. The paper shows that this approach has a long and rich intellectual history among European monetary thinkers. In Europe, Plato was its first exponent, albeit in a very rudimentary way, and so one may call it the “Platonic approach.” It is developed by Roman legists (such as Javolenus, Paulus, and Ulpian) and Medieval legists (such as Du Moulin, Hotman, and Butigella) who note that coins are similar to securities and that debts are serviced when nominal sums are paid rather than specific coins tendered. During the Renaissance and early modern period, a series of scholars and financial practitioners (such as Law, Dutot, Thomas Smith, and James Taylor) emphasize the financial logic behind monetary mechanics and the similarity of coins and notes. In the twentieth century, authors such as Innes, Knapp, Keynes, and Commons build onto the groundwork provided by these past scholars. In China, the Chartalism-Nominalism-Command approach develops independently and dominates from the beginning under Confucian and Legist thoughts. They emphasize the statecraft origins of monetary systems, the role of tax redemption, and the irrelevance of the material used to make monetary instruments. Clay, lead, paper, iron, copper, and tin are normal and convenient means to make monetary instruments, they are not special/emergency materials. The essence of a monetary instrument is not defined by its materiality but rather by its chartality, that is, by the promise it embeds. The Platonic approach rejects the categories and conceptualizations used by the Aristotelian approach and develops new ones, which leads to a different set of inquiries and understanding of monetary phenomena, problems, and history.

  • Working Paper No. 1057 | October 2024
    This working paper contrasts the neo-Keynesian and post-Keynesian theories of monetary policy for an open economy, highlighting the irrelevance of the orthodox theory and the explanatory capacity of heterodoxy for an emerging economy such as Mexico. It focuses on the role of the central bank and the case of the Mexican currency during the economic recovery after the Great Lockout. In the first section, we criticize two proposals of the 3-Equation New-Keynesian model, concluding that, implicitly, both models reaffirm the extreme neutrality of money and the exchange rate in both the short and the long runs. In contrast, we analyze the post-Keynesian exchange rate model proposed by John T. Harvey (2009). In addition, we rely on the fundamentals of the heterodox school of thought such as the financial instability hypothesis of Hyman Minsky (1994) and the relevance of capital flows for the determination of the exchange rate and its implications for economic growth and prices by Jan Kregel (2008). Finally, the erratic behavior of the excessive appreciation of the Mexican Super Peso against the dollar after the recovery of the COVID-19 crisis and in the context of global risk is presented.
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    Author(s):
    Laura Lisset Montiel-Orozco
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  • Working Paper No. 1056 | October 2024
    Against the backdrop of demographic transition in India, the study highlights the necessity of integrating the elderly population as a critical factor in formula-based intergovernmental fiscal transfers. The demographic transition, characterized by an increasing elderly population, imposes unique fiscal challenges on states, necessitating a revision of transfer formulas to ensure equitable and efficient resource distribution. The paper employs a historical analysis of fiscal devolution criteria, and analyzes the impact of incorporating the elderly population into the devolution formula on the share of states in the total tax transfer to states. The findings indicate that integrating the elderly population into the tax devolution formula can significantly alter the distribution of resources among states, with states benefiting more while having a relatively larger elderly population. The study recommends considering demographic changes by incorporating the elderly to working age population ratio as a criterion used by the Sixteenth Finance Commission to promote a more equitable and efficient allocation of resources. 

  • Working Paper No. 1055 | September 2024
    This paper looks at the relationship between government budget deficits and the growth rate of GDP. While orthodox economic theory offers several reasons to believe that growing deficits might be associated with slower growth, and would ultimately be unsustainable, Keynesians assert that deficits could stimulate growth—at least in the short run—implying the relation between deficits and growth could be positive. Modern Money Theory, adopting Godley’s sectoral balance approach, Lerner’s functional finance approach, and Minsky’s theory of financial instability takes a more nuanced approach. Historical data for a number of countries is presented, showing that there is no obvious relation between the deficit ratio and economic growth over long time periods. However, there is a predictable path of the relationship over the course of the business cycle for all countries examined.

  • Working Paper No. 1054 | June 2024
    Gender budgeting is a public financial management (PFM) tool, used to ensure accountability mechanisms. The analysis of “process” indicators of gender-responsive PFM (GRPFM) reveals that India has been successful in integrating a gender lens within the budget cycle, including in the financial planning and allocation, and in effective implementation. However, a legally mandated GRPFM would be crucial for the sustained impact of gender budgeting on gender equality outcomes. The empirical analysis of the link between GRPFM and gender equality outcomes showed that flexibility of finances is crucial for a government to implement GRPFM. The unconditional fiscal transfers have relatively more impact on gender equality outcomes than conditional transfers. The plausible mechanism through which unconditional tax transfers impact gender equality outcomes lies in the flexibility of use of tax transfers by the subnational governments in prioritizing their gender-related commitments. This inference has policy implications for the 16th Finance Commission.

  • Working Paper No. 1053 | June 2024
    The article analyzes Mexico under globalization, particularly on the free mobility of capital. It argues that globalization has detrimentally impacted the productive and external sectors, causing the economy to become excessively reliant on volatile capital inflows from abroad. The Mexican government—instead of undoing the structural problems that lead to external deficits—implements policies that resolve the short-term liquidity needs and go against economic growth, as if they are promoting capital inflows. The national currency has appreciated greatly and acts only in favor of the financial sector and in detriment of the productive and the external sector.
     
    The Mexican economy has fallen into a context of high external vulnerability since it rests on capital inflows. Capital inflows are highly fragile and volatile. They depend not only on internal problems, but also on the world economy and expectations. For this reason, the reliance on capital inflows to appreciate the peso is unsustainable.
     
    Given the meager growth of the world economy and trade, globalization is being questioned and various countries are implementing industrial and protectionist policies. If Mexico continues to bet on outward growth through nearshoring, it will have no chance of overcoming the problems it faces.
     
    Mexico cannot continue with an economic policy that does not generate endogenous conditions to growth and that has made the economy dependent on the behavior of international financial markets which generate recurrent crises.

  • Working Paper No. 1052 | June 2024
    For Matías Vernengo and Esteban Pérez Caldentey (2020), the MMT literature overemphasizes the choice of the exchange rate regime and the relevance of a flexible exchange rate regime, as well as the ultimate effect of that choice upon the policy space. In addition, they argue that the role of capital flows is underexplored, and that the relevance of the balance-of-payments constraint is often underestimated. Vernengo and Pérez’s criticism fails to consider that exchange-rate flexibility makes it possible to use flexible fiscal and monetary policies as well, to boost growth and employment, and to reduce the balance-of-payments constraint.

  • Working Paper No. 1051 | May 2024
    This paper examines the dynamics of euro-denominated (EUR) long-term interest rate swap yields. It shows that the short-term interest rate has an economically and statistically significant effect on EUR swap yields of different maturity tenors, after controlling for various key macroeconomic variables. It presents several autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) models of the dynamics of EUR swap yields. The estimated econometric models of EUR swap yields of different maturity tenors imply that the European Central Bank (ECB) exerts substantial influence on interest rate swap yields, primarily through the effect of its actions on the current short-term interest rate. Examining the case of EUR interest rate swaps, the findings of the paper lend additional credence to John Maynard Keynes’s hypothesis concerning the ability of a central bank to influence long-term market interest rates.

  • Working Paper No. 1050 | May 2024
    The Guyana government, from 2015 to 2021, accumulated a large overdraft on its central bank account. It owed this overdraft to a binding debt ceiling limit and fractious political environment that prevented an increase in the ceiling, allowing for the auctioning of Treasury bills to create the liquidity reflux necessary to refill the account. This paper studies the macroeconomic effects of reflux (one-sided sales of Treasury bills) and broken or incomplete reflux (base money expansion) by focusing on domestic inflation, the foreign exchange (FX) rate, and the quantity of FX traded in the local market. The empirical results suggest that the inflation rate is largely driven by foreign price and oil shocks. Nevertheless, the broken reflux adversely affected the local FX market by increasing the demand for foreign currencies, marginally depreciating the exchange rate, and slightly increasing the inflation rate. The latter finding has important implications for the enormous post-2020 budget spending since the discovery of offshore oil. However, reflux was found to have a stabilizing effect on the demand for FX and inflation. Granger predictability tests provide strong evidence that the government spends first from its central bank account before reflux occurs. Finally, the paper discusses a few novel institutional features of Guyana which resemble the monetary circuit framework (with government) of neo-chartalists.
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    Author(s):
    Tarron Khemraj
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  • Working Paper No. 1049 | May 2024
    We argue that the US trade and industry sector has experienced several unsustainable sectoral processes, including (i) a fall in the trade balance in machinery and equipment and high-tech (HT) industries, (ii) a rise in import multipliers in machinery and equipment and HT industries, (iii) a fall in the manufacturing share of GDP in machinery and equipment and HT industries, (iv) a rise in commodities share of GDP, (v) a fall in the wage share, (vi) structural shifts in the consumption share of wages, and (vii) a fall in employment multipliers for the US, particularly in manufacturing. To address these issues, the US must shift toward a more sustainable and value-added economy with a focus on innovation and investment in high-tech industries, renewable energy, and sustainable agriculture. Additionally, policies must be put in place to address the negative impacts of resource extraction and to promote a more equitable distribution of income and wealth.

  • Working Paper No. 1048 | April 2024
    This paper econometrically models the dynamics of Swedish government bond (SGB) yields. It examines whether the short-term interest rate has a decisive influence on long-term SGB yields, after controlling for other macroeconomic and financial variables, such as consumer price inflation, the growth of industrial production, the stock price index, the exchange rate of the Swedish krona, and the balance sheet of Sweden’s central bank, Sveriges Riksbank. It applies an autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) approach using monthly data to model SGB yields across the Treasury yield curve. The results of the estimated models show that the short-term interest rate has a marked influence on the long-term SGB yield. Such findings reaffirm John Maynard Keynes’s view that the central bank’s monetary policy affects long-term government bond yields through the current short-term interest rate.  It also shows that the interest rate behavior observed in Sweden is in concordance with empirical patterns discerned in previous studies related to government bond yields in both advanced countries and emerging markets.

  • Working Paper No. 1047 | April 2024
    Analyzing the Tax Buoyancy of the Extractive Sector
    Against the backdrop of fiscal transition concomitant to energy transition policies with climate change commitments, revenue from the extractive sector needs a recalibration in the subnational fiscal space. Extractive tax is the payment due to the government in exchange for the right to extract the mineral substance. Extractive tax has been fixed and paid in multiple tax regimes, sometimes on the measures of ad valorem (value-based) or profits or as the unit of the mineral extracted. Using the ARDL methodology, this paper analyzes the buoyancy of extractive revenue across the states in India, for the period 1991–92 to 2022–23 and analyzes the short- and long-run coefficients and their speed of adjustment. There are no identified structural breaks in the series predominantly because of the homogenous extractive policy regime shift to ad valorem from a unit-based regime. Our findings revealed that extractive tax is a buoyant source of own revenue, though there are distinct state-specific differentials. The policy implication of our study is crucial for a “just transition” related to climate change commitments where extractive industries’ tax buoyancy is compared to other tax buoyancy across Indian states, and can be used as the base scenario to estimate the loss of revenue when fiscal transition sets in with “just transition” policies.

  • Working Paper No. 1046 | March 2024
    This paper offers a retrospective view of the key pillar of Solow’s neoclassical growth model, namely the aggregate production function. We review how this tool came to life and how it has survived until today, despite three criticisms that undermined its raison d’être. They are the Cambridge Capital Theory Controversies, the Aggregation Problem, and the Accounting Identity. These criticisms were forgotten by the profession, not because they were wrong but because of the key role played by Robert Solow in the field. Today, these criticisms are not even mentioned when students are introduced to (neoclassical) growth theory, which is presented in most economics departments and macroeconomics textbooks as the only theory worth studying.

  • Working Paper No. 1045 | March 2024
    This inquiry examines the role of federal policy in gender inequality using the principles of institutional adjustment (Foster 1981; Bush 1987) in the context of the Veblenian dichotomy of habit formation. Specifically, the authors assert that Social Security, though exclusive at its inception in 1935, has undergone significant institutional adjustment. Today, Social Security plays a determining role in providing the appropriate institutional space for not only increasing economic security for older women, but also for reducing gender inequality overall.

  • Working Paper No. 1044 | February 2024
    This paper econometrically models the dynamics of long-term Chinese government bond (CGB) yields based on key macroeconomic and financial variables. It deploys autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) models to examine whether the short-term interest rate has a decisive influence on the long-term CGB yield, after controlling for various macroeconomic and financial variables, such as inflation or core inflation, the growth of industrial production, the percentage change in the stock price index, the exchange rate of the Chinese yuan, and the balance sheet of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC). The findings show that the short-term interest rate has an economically and statistically significant effect on the long-term CGB yield of various maturity tenors. John Maynard Keynes claimed that the central bank’s policy rate exerts an important influence over long-term government bond yields through the short-term interest rate. The paper’s findings evince that Keynes’s claim holds for China, implying that the PBOC’s actions are a driver of the long-term CGB yield. This means that policymakers in China have considerable leeway in fiscal and monetary operations, government deficit finance, and central government debt management.

  • Working Paper No. 1043 | February 2024
    This paper critically reviews both mainstream and Keynesian empirical studies of interest rate dynamics. It assesses the key findings of a selected number of these studies, surveying the debates between the mainstream and the Keynesian schools. It also explores the debates on interest rate dynamics within the Post Keynesian school of thought. Lastly, the paper identifies the critical questions relevant for future empirical research.

  • Working Paper No. 1042 | February 2024
    For more than 25 years, the Social Security Trust Fund was projected to run out of money in 2033 (give or take a few years), potentially causing benefits to be severely reduced in the absence of corrective legislative action. Today (February 2024), projections are made by the Social Security Administration that indicate that future benefits will need to be reduced by roughly 25 percent or taxes will need to be increased by about 33 percent, or some combination to avoid benefit curtailment. While Congress will most probably prevent benefits from being reduced for retirees and those nearing retirement, the longer Congress and the president take to address the shortfall, the more politically unpalatable (and possibly draconian) the solutions will be for all others.
     
    Dozens of proposals are being evaluated to address the long-term problem by mainstream benefits experts, economists, think tanks, politicians, and government agencies but, with rare exceptions from a few economists, none address the short-term problem of Trust Fund depletion, provide a workable roadmap for the long-term challenges, or consider fundamental financing differences between the federal government and the private sector.
     
    This paper aims to address these issues by suggesting legislative changes that will protect the Social Security system indefinitely, help ensure the adequacy of benefits for retirees and their survivors and dependents, and remove confusing and misleading legislative and administrative complexity. In making recommendations, this paper will demonstrate that the Social Security Trust Funds, while legally distinct, are essentially an artificial accounting contrivance within the US Treasury that have become a tool to force program changes that, for ideological reasons, will likely shift an increasing financial burden onto those who can least bear it.  Finally, while the focus of this paper is on the Social Security system, it would be incomplete without also addressing, albeit in a limited way, the larger political issue of the nation’s debt and deficit along with the implications for inflation.

  • Working Paper No. 1041 | February 2024
    Can Green Spending Reduce Gender and Race Inequalities?
    Announced in June 2021, the never-implemented Green Recovery Plan for the Brazilian Legal Amazon Region (GRP) would be a green transition initiative to be carried out by the state governments of the region. The GRP represented the first large-scale proposal aiming at the transition to a low-carbon economy in Brazil and offered a preliminary framework to evaluate the opportunities and limitations of green development in Global South economies. The GRP's initial phase would provide an investment of 1.5 billion reais (around $315 million in September 2023) in four areas: control of illegal deforestation, sustainable development, green technology, and green infrastructure. This article presents a counterfactual analysis by assessing the impacts of green spending in Amazon on the labor market, quantitatively—in terms of the number of jobs created—and qualitatively—exploring the distribution of those jobs by region and according to gender and race categories. We build synthetic sectors representing each area of investment in a two-region input-output matrix (“Brazilian Amazon” and “Rest of Brazil”). Using employment multipliers, we simulate a demand shock on the Amazonian economy and its impact on job creation in the two regions.  Results suggest that green spending in the Amazon offers good perspectives (but also highlights limitations) for a just transition to a low-carbon economy in Brazil: the effects on employment favored the female workforce (both black and white) relative to the male and black workforce in the Amazon, leading to inequality-reducing composition changes in the Brazilian workforce as whole.
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    Luiza Nassif Pires Gilberto Tadeu Lima Pedro Romero Marques Tainari Taioka José Bergamin
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  • Working Paper No. 1040 | February 2024
    Against the backdrop of COP28, this paper investigates the impact of intergovernmental fiscal transfers (IGFT) on climate change commitments in India. Within the analytical framework of environmental federalism, we tested the evidence for the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) using a panel model covering 27 Indian states from 2003 to 2020. The results suggest a positive and significant relationship between IGFT and the net forest cover (NFC) across Indian states. The analysis also suggests an inverse-U relationship between Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) and the environmental quality, indicating a potential EKC for India. The findings substantiate the fiscal policy impacts for climate change commitments within the fiscal federal frameworks of India, and the significance of IGFT in increasing the forest cover in India. This has policy implications for the Sixteenth Finance Commission of India in integrating a climate change–related criterion in the tax-transfer formula in a sustainable manner. 
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    Lekha S. Chakraborty Amandeep Kaur Ranjan Kumar Mohanty Divy Rangan Sanjana Das
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  • Working Paper No. 1039 | February 2024
    An Assessment Based on the Estimation of the Balance-of-Payments–Constrained Growth Rate
    We expand the standard balance-of-payments–constrained (BOPC) growth rate model in three directions. First, we take into account the separate contributions of exports in goods, exports in services, overseas remittances, and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. Second, we use state-space estimation techniques to obtain time-varying parameters of the relevant coefficients. Third, we test for the endogeneity of output in the import equation. We apply this framework to assess the feasibility of the target set by the new Philippine administration of President Marcos (elected in 2022) to attain an annual GDP growth rate of 6.5–8 percent during 2024–28. We obtain an estimate of the growth rate consistent with equilibrium in the basic balance of the Philippines of about 6.5 percent in 2021 (and declining during the years prior to it). This BOPC growth rate is below the 6.5–8 percent target. We also find that exchange-rate depreciations will not lead to an improvement in the BOPC growth rate. The Philippines must lift the constraints that impede a higher growth of exports. In particular, it must shift its export structure toward more sophisticated products with a higher income elasticity of demand.
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    Author(s):
    Jesus Felipe Manuel L. Albis
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  • Working Paper No. 1038 | January 2024
    This paper revisits Keynes’s (1930) essay titled “The economic possibilities for our grandchildren.” We discuss the three broader trends identified by Keynes that he expected would come to characterize the socio-economic evolution of advanced countries under individualistic capitalism: first, continued technological progress and capital accumulation as the main drivers of exponential growth in economic possibilities; second, a gradual general rebalancing of life choices away from work; and third, a change in the code of morals in societies approaching an envisioned stationary state of zero net capital accumulation in which mankind has solved its economic problem and enjoys a lifestyle predominantly framed by leisure rather than disutility-yielding work. We assess actual outcomes by 2023 and attempt to peek into the future economic possibilities for this generation’s grandchildren.

  • Working Paper No. 1037 | January 2024
    The post-pandemic surge in inflation was accompanied by a surge in the corporate share of profits. As a result, several economists and policy makers have given to it names such as “profit-led inflation” or “sellers’ inflation.” The present paper discusses the extent to which profit-led inflation, as an explanation for the recent surge in inflation, is compatible with what we know about the price-setting behavior of firms, income distribution, and inflation. We do that in juxtaposition to two recent critiques: that the increase in the profit share is the result of cyclical factors, and that the increase in import prices leads to higher profit shares even under constant markups. We show that there is little evidence that the recent surge in profitability is cyclical in nature. Moreover, after outlining the Structuralist/Kaleckian theories of prices and inflation we argue that profit-led inflation does not require an increase in the markup of the firms and is consistent with these theories. In the face of large import and other price shocks even under constant markups, firms are able to pass the burden of adjustment to real wages. Thus, the term profit-led emphasizes the distributional source and consequences of inflation. We also provide an empirical examination of the markups in the post-pandemic period using data from the Compustat database. We show that, on average, firms were able to increase or maintain their markups, although there is significant heterogeneity across sectors or the position of the firms in the distribution of markups.

  • Working Paper No. 1036 | January 2024
    For decades, the literature on the estimation of production functions has focused on the elimination of endogeneity biases through different estimation procedures to obtain the correct factor elasticities and other relevant parameters. Theoretical discussions of the problem correctly assume that production functions are relationships among physical inputs and output. However, in practice, they are most often estimated using deflated monetary values for output (value added or gross output) and capital. This introduces two additional problems—an errors-in-variables problem, and a tendency to recover the factor shares in value added instead of their elasticities.  The latter problem derives from the fact that the series used are linked through the accounting identity that links value added to the sum of the wage bill and profits. Using simulated data from a cross-sectional Cobb-Douglas production function in physical terms from which we generate the corresponding series in monetary values, we show that the coefficients of labor and capital derived from the monetary series will be (a) biased relative to the elasticities by simultaneity and by the error that results from proxying physical output and capital with their monetary values; and (b) biased relative to the factor shares in value added as a result of a peculiar form of omitted variables bias. We show what these biases are and conclude that estimates of production functions obtained using monetary values are likely to be closer to the factor shares than to the factor elasticities. An alternative simulation that does not assume the existence of a physical production function confirms that estimates from the value data series will converge to the factor shares when cross-sectional variation in the factor prices is small. This is, again, the result of the fact that the estimated relationship is an approximation to the distributional accounting identity.
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    Author(s):
    Jesus Felipe John McCombie Aashish Mehta
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  • Working Paper No. 1035 | January 2024
    In this paper, we discuss the balance sheet mechanics of the Swedish government. We examine spending, government bond purchases, and tax payments. As long as the Swedish central bank, which is created through Swedish laws, supports the Swedish central government, it cannot run out of money. The Swedish government therefore plays a large role in the Swedish economy. It can and should target full employment and price stability, bringing to bear its fiscal power.
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    Author(s):
    Dirk Ehnts Jussi Ora
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  • Working Paper No. 1034 | December 2023
    This paper models the month-over-month change in euro-denominated (EUR) long-term interest rate swap yields. It shows that the change in the short-term interest rate has an economically and statistically significant effect on the change in EUR swap yields of different maturity tenors, after controlling for various macroeconomic and financial variables, such as the month-over-month change in inflation or core inflation and the growth of industrial production, and the percentage change in the equity price index, the exchange rate, and the size of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) balance sheet. It uses a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) approach to model the dynamics of the monthly change in EUR swap yields and their volatility. The results of the estimated models of EUR swap yields of different maturity tenors extend the Keynesian view that the central bank’s monetary policy actions have a decisive influence on long-term government bond yields and long-term market interest rates, primarily through their effects on the current short-term interest rate.

  • Working Paper No. 1033 | November 2023
    The research leverages yearly variations in climate variables, such as rainfall and temperature, across the West Bank from 1999 to 2018 to assess their influence on individuals' decisions to stay in the agricultural sector. The main findings suggest that an increase in rainfall in the previous year is associated with a higher proportion of workers in the agricultural sector, especially in regions where agriculture is the primary economic activity. Temperature variation is also an important factor. An increase in the maximum temperature will generally have a negative effect on the supply of labor in the agricultural sector, while an increase in the minimum temperature may have a positive effect. However, this effect varies across different regions of the West Bank, reflecting the diverse agricultural practices and irrigation methods employed. The study also examines two potential mechanisms through which climate change affects labor decisions: agricultural labor migration to the Israeli labor market and how climate shocks affect agricultural wages.

  • Working Paper No. 1032 | October 2023
    The policy evaluation is a crucial component in analyzing the efficacy of public spending in translating the money spent into desired outcomes. Using OECD evaluation criteria, we analyzed the child protection schemes of Odisha to understand whether legal commitments on child protection are translated into fiscal commitments. The intergovernmental fiscal transfers and state-targeted programs for children in need of care and protection (CNCP) and children in conflict of law (CCL) are evaluated using the OECD criteria of relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability. Using the theory of change, various fiscal interventions for child protection are analyzed with activities, outputs, intended outcomes, and impacts. The analysis revealed that, in the post-pandemic fiscal strategy of Odisha, various programs have been designed by the government to tackle the capability deprivation, hardships, and vulnerabilities faced by children within the budgetary frameworks, and that these programs are made fiscally sustainable through public expenditure convergence within the classification of budgetary transactions. However, the low utilization ratios of the funds and the institutional constraints are identified as challenges in the effective implementation of child protection programs in Odisha. 

  • Working Paper No. 1031 | October 2023
    This study aims to develop an ecological stock-flow consistent (SFC) model based on the Latin American–stylized facts regarding economic, financial, and environmental features. We combine the macro-financial theoretical framework by Pérez-Caldentey et al. (2021, 2023) and the ecological modeling of Carnevali et al. (2020) and Dafermos et al. (2018). We discuss two scenarios that test exogenous climate-related shocks. The first scenario presents the case in which international regulation on commodity trade becomes more stringent due to environmental concerns, thus worsening the balance-of-payment constraint of the region. The second scenario concerns the increase in frequency and intensity of adverse climate events in the region. Both scenarios show that the financial external constraint that determines the growth path of Latin American economies may be further exacerbated due to environmental-related issues.
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    Lorenzo Nalin Giuliano Toshiro Yajima Leonardo Rojas Rodriguez Esteban Pérez Caldentey José Eduardo Alatorre
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  • Working Paper No. 1030 | October 2023
    An Analysis of Political Settlements, Rents, and Deals
    The main gateway for the Philippines to develop and become an upper-middle-income economy—and eventually, a high-income economy—is to expedite the shift of workers out of agriculture and to produce and export more complex products with a higher income elasticity of demand. The actual growth rate is constrained by the balance-of-payments equilibrium growth rate, about 6 percent—the maximum the country can attain without incurring balance-of-payments problems. We use the Pritchett-Sen-Werker political-economy framework to analyze the roles of different types of firms and the deals environment from successive Philippine administrations until the current one. Due to their economic size and political power, only the nation’s conglomerates will be able to lead the transformation of the economy. However, the country’s large groups do not have incentives nor do they see the need to shift to the production and export of tradables. Without this transformation, the country will be able to register positive growth but will not become an internationally competitive economy, and will not be able to achieve, and especially maintain, the growth rate targeted by the current administration: 6.5–8 percent per annum during 2023–28.
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    Author(s):
    Jesus Felipe Edgar Desher Empeño Brendan Miranda
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  • Working Paper No. 1029 | September 2023
    The year 2023 commemorates the 30th anniversary of the publication of the influential, yet controversial, study The East Asian Miracle report by the World Bank (1993). An important part of the report’s analysis was concerned with the sources of growth in East Asia. This was based on the neoclassical decomposition of growth into productivity and factor accumulation. At about the same time, the publication of Alwyn Young’s (1992, 1995) and J. I. Kim and Lawrence Lau’s (1994) studies, and Paul Krugman’s (1994) popularization of the “zero total factor productivity growth” thesis, led to a very important debate within the profession, on the sources of growth in East Asia. The emerging literature on China’s growth during the 1990s also used the neoclassical growth model to decompose overall growth into total factor productivity growth and factor accumulation. This survey reviews what the profession has learned during the last 30 years about East Asia’s growth, using growth-accounting exercises and estimations of production functions. It demystifies this literature by pointing out the significant methodological problems inherent in the neoclassical growth-accounting approach. We conclude that the analysis of growth within the framework of the neoclassical model should be seriously questioned. Instead, we propose that researchers look at other approaches, for example, the balance-of-payments–constrained growth rate approach of Thirlwall (1979) or the product space of Hidalgo et al. (2007), together with the notion of complexity of Hidalgo and Hausmann (2009).

  • Working Paper No. 1028 | August 2023
    Using the model proposed in Krugman and Taylor’s “Contractionary effects of devaluation” (1978), we examine the macroeconomic effects of shocks to foreign prices. We show that these shocks can be contractionary for two reasons: (i) because they imply a loss of income if an economy has a trade deficit or import prices increase proportionally more than export prices; (ii) because there is a redistribution of income from wages to profits and rent, which leads to a decrease in consumption and output (as the wage earner's propensity to consume is higher than those of profit earners and rentiers). An endogenous reaction of nominal wages to the increase in the price level might lead to even higher increases in prices, but mitigates the negative macroeconomic effects of the foreign price shocks because it reduces their negative distributional effects. If the proportional increase in nominal wages is higher than that of domestic prices, the distributional effect becomes positive. The opposite is the case with markups. If they increase in reaction to higher prices, they contribute to further price increases but they also exacerbate the negative distributional effects. The paper also provides an analytical solution for a general case of the model of Krugman and Taylor.

  • Working Paper No. 1027 | August 2023
    Structural change has long been at the core of economic development debates. However, the gender implications of structural change are still largely unexplored. This paper helps to fill this gap by analyzing the role of structural change in the gender distribution of sectoral employment in sub-Saharan African countries. I employ aggregate and disaggregate measures of gender sectoral segregation in employment on a panel database consisting of 10 sectors and 11 countries during 1960–2010. Fixed effects and instrumental variables’ regression models show a significant, non-linear link between labor productivity and gender segregation. Increasing labor productivity depresses gender segregation at initial phases of structural change. However, further productivity gains beyond a certain threshold of sectoral development increases gender segregation. Country-industry panel data models complement the analysis by considering relative labor productivity as a determinant of sectoral feminization. The estimates suggest that manufacturing, utilities, construction, business, and government services are key to correcting gender biases in employment along the process of structural change.

  • Working Paper No. 1026 | August 2023
    This paper analyzes the implications of distributional contrast for the monetary theory of distribution. The first step is to try to introduce the banking sector within Pivetti's monetary distribution theory approach. Pivetti in fact does not analyze the links between the central bank and the banking sector. It therefore seems interesting to study what role the banking sector and the financial capitalists play in this framework. Thus, an attempt is made to model the banking sector and its links to the production sector within the framework of Pivetti’s approach. As this integration does not present any particular theoretical problems, the paper discusses then the ability of the aforementioned approach to explain the coexistence of near-zero (if not negative) interest rates and low real wages. The difficulty in explaining this economic phenomenon opens the way to a more general discussion of the dynamics inherent in the contrast between workers and capitalists and between financial and productive capitalists. Thus, the analysis shows that six different distributional configurations are possible (plus two others that are unstable or unrealistic), of which only two can be explained through Pivetti's monetary theory of distribution. The other four can be explained by elaborating more recent approaches that continue, enrich, and develop Marx's approach.

  • Working Paper No. 1025 | August 2023
    A Financial Post-Keynesian Comparison
    The purpose of public policy, expansionary or contractionary, is to encourage the expansion of income, output, and employment. Theory decides the nature and kind of policy, and the underlying mechanics that result in expansion. Keynes (1964) brings money and a monetary production economy to the forefront of economic analysis, yet in the General Theory, he is skeptical of the efficacy of monetary policy. This paper analyzes how prices of assets, liabilities, and commodities interact in response to unconventional monetary policy and fiscal policy (namely automatic stabilizers) to create conditions that stimulate private investment and economic activity. Modern economics, after accepting the need for intervention, tends to attempt to use monetary policy to steer aggregate demand. “Unconventional” monetary policy such as zero and negative interest rates, and quantitative easing have been instituted in an attempt to fight slumps and stimulate economic activity without increasing government deficits. In this paper, we point out—using Davidson’s (1972) financial post-Keynesian framework—how unconventional monetary policy is not sufficient to create the conditions of backwardation that stimulate production. Finally, we explain how automatic stabilizers, using the Kalecki profits (price) equation, are the best avenue to create the conditions for backwardation that stimulate economic activity. We conclude, like Keynes, that fiscal policy is the reliable path to economic expansion.

  • Working Paper No. 1024 | July 2023
    A Stock-Flow Consistent Approach to the Currency Hierarchy
    Underdevelopment is often conceived as being reproduced domestically. This paper emphasizes the international forces that enable the persistence of underdevelopment. We first explore how the currency hierarchy imposes a dependency relation between developed and underdeveloped economies. We improvise and quantify the currency hierarchy using ratios from the consolidated sovereign balance sheet. Using the improvisation of the currency hierarchy, we identify that a weak currency must compensate its position by resorting to three mechanisms: changes in interest rates, changes in exchange rates, and accumulation of international reserves to improve balance sheet structure. We employ these relationships to formulate two novel, financial post-Keynesian behavioral equations: an international reserves function and a domestic interest rate function. These equations are simulated in a stock-flow consistent model. We simulate the transmission of international shocks and domestic fiscal expansion. The key findings are (1) that the intensity of economic activity in the emerging economy is reliant on the level of economic activity (and policy) i n the developed economy and (2) that any attempts to stimulate—through government spending—the emerging economy benefit primarily the developed economy while harming the emerging economy’s private sector, assuming free capital and goods mobility. This indicates the existence of a balance-of-payment constrained expansion originating from the demand for international reserves as a margin of safety. Simulations show import controls to be a solution. We find government spending complemented by import substitution to be the most appropriate response to a crisis of international origin and suggest the need for international cohesion between emerging economies to create a more conducive international financial and trade system, halting the reproduction of underdevelopment. 

  • Working Paper No. 1023 | July 2023
    Evidence From an Emerging Country, India
    According to the theory of efficient markets, economic agents use all available information to form rational expectations. The rational expectations hypothesis asserts that information is scarce, the economic system generally does not waste information, and that expectations depend specifically on the structure of the entire system. Fiscal marksmanship—the accuracy of budgetary forecasting—can be one important piece of such information that rational agents must consider in forming expectations. Against the backdrop of fiscal rules, our paper explores the budgetary forecast errors of climate change–related public spending in India. The fiscal rules stipulate that fiscal deficit–to–GDP ratio should be maintained at 3 percent. However, in the post-COVID fiscal strategy, a medium-term fiscal consolidation path of 4.5 percent fiscal deficit–to­–GDP is envisioned by 2025–26. Within this fiscal consolidation framework, we analyzed the budget credibility of fiscal commitments for climate change in India. We analyzed the fiscal behavioral variables in terms of bias, variation, and randomness, and captured the systemic variations in budgetary forecast related to climate change for a period 2017–18 to 2020–21 across sectors. We identified the sectors where systematic components of forecasting errors are relatively higher than random components, where minimizing errors through altering the fiscal behavioral models is done by revising the assumptions and by applying better forecasting methods. A state-level decomposition of the public spending revealed that disaggregated fiscal space available for developmental spending constitutes around 60 percent of the total. However, identifying the specifically targeted public spending related to climate change across all states and analyzing its fiscal markmanship can further the subnational inferences.

  • Working Paper No. 1022 | July 2023
    As country after country in the European Union is called to respond to the current challenge of our time—high inflation and declining real wages—governments must engage in a transformative agenda and go beyond emergency energy vouchers and income support cash-transfers. And if the goal is to lead the way to a resilient and sustainable European Union, business as usual will not do. The share of wages to GDP has been declining since the late 1970s, deregulation of labor markets has increased insecurity and precariousness, and, among ordinary working people, a sense of uncertainty, disenfranchisement, and mistrust in governing institutions is prevalent. A thorough re-evaluation of policies is needed. In response to the deterioration of living standards, a guarantee of minimum wages adequate to secure a decent living standard should be a starting point; a permanent policy of automatic adjustment of wages to inflation rates in all member states should be promoted; and strengthening collective bargaining agreements ought to be re-invigorated for a fair sharing of productivity between wages and profits. An EU Job Guarantee should be at the center of this policy transformation. This bold agenda, advocated in this paper, can mobilize people to regain trust that a Social Europe is possible.

  • Working Paper No. 1021 | June 2023
    The Role of Profits in Banking Regulation
    Since the nineties, crises have punctuated financial markets, shattering the conventional wisdom about how these markets work and how to regulate them, and forcing a deep rethinking of the supervisory framework that, however, did not change much of the banks’ behavior and incentives. In particular, banking regulation did not face the nexus profitability-riskiness. Based on Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis, we discuss the literature on banks’ profitability and its relation to the originate-to-distribute model. We also propose a different strategy for banking regulation, based on a profitability cap that prevents financial innovation from overwhelming supervision. Finally, we discuss the data for the US case, confirming the importance of profitability as a signal of incoming troubles and the possibility of using the profitability cap to greatly simplify banking regulation.
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    Author(s):
    Lorenzo Esposito Giuseppe Mastromatteo
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  • Working Paper No. 1020 | June 2023
    This paper econometrically models the dynamics of Indian rupee (INR) swap yields based on key macroeconomic factors using the autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) approach. It examines whether the short-term interest rate has a decisive influence on long-term INR swap yields after controlling for other factors, such as core inflation, the growth of industrial production, the logarithm of the equity price index, and the logarithm of the INR exchange rate. The estimated models show that the short-term interest rate has an important influence on the swap yields. This implies that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) can sway borrowing and lending rates not just on Indian government bonds but also INR-denominated private-market financial instruments, such as swaps and swaptions.
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    Author(s):
    Tanweer Akram Khawaja Mamun
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  • Working Paper No. 1019 | May 2023
    This paper econometrically models Japanese yen (JPY)–denominated interest rate swap yields. It examines whether the short-term interest rate exerts an influence on the long-term JPY swap yield after controlling for several key macroeconomic variables, such as core inflation, the growth of industrial production, the percentage change in the equity price index, and the percentage change in the exchange rate. It also tests whether there are structural breaks in the dynamics of Japanese swap yields and related variables. The estimated econometric models show that the short-term interest rate exerts an important influence on the long-term swap yield in some periods but not in other periods in which core inflation exerts a marked influence on the swap yield. The findings from the econometric models reveal a discernable relationship between the call rate and the swap yield of different maturity tenors clearly held prior to April 2014 but did not in the subsequent period. These findings highlight the limits and scope of John Maynard Keynes’s contention that the central bank’s policy rate commands a decisive influence over the long-term market rate through the short-term interest rate. The policy implications of the estimated models’ results are discussed.
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    Author(s):
    Tanweer Akram Khawaja Mamun
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  • Working Paper No. 1018 | April 2023
    How to Deal with the “Demographic Time Bomb”
    The aging of the global population is in the headlines following a report that China’s population fell as deaths surpassed births. Pundits worry that a declining Chinese workforce means trouble for other economies that have come to rely on China’s exports. France is pushing through an increase of the retirement age in the face of what is called a demographic “time bomb” facing rich nations, created by rising longevity and low birthrates. As we approach the debt limit in the US, while President Biden has promised to protect Social Security, many have returned to the argument that the program is financially unsustainable. This paper argues that most of the discussion and policy solutions proposed surrounding aging of populations are misfocused on supposed financial challenges when they should be directed toward the challenges facing resource provision. From the resource perspective, the burden of caring for tomorrow’s seniors seems far less challenging. Indeed, falling fertility rates and an end to global population growth should be welcomed. With fewer children and longer lives, investment in the workers of the future will ensure growth of productivity that will provide the resources necessary to support a higher ratio of retirees to those of working age. Global population growth will peak and turn negative, reducing demands on earth’s biosphere and making it easier to transition to environmental sustainability. Rather than facing a demographic “time bomb,” we can welcome the transition to a mature-aged profile.

  • Working Paper No. 1017 | April 2023
    This paper revisits a traditional theme in the literature on the political economy of development, namely how to redistribute rents from traditional exporters of natural resources toward capitalists in technology-intensive sectors with a higher potential for innovation and the creation of higher-productivity jobs. Porcile and Lima argue that this conflict has been reshaped in the past three decades by two major transformations in the international economy. The first is the acceleration of technical change and the key role governments play in supporting international competitiveness. This role provides the strategic public goods to foster innovation and the diffusion of technology (what Christopher Freeman called “technological infrastructure”). The second is the impact of financial globalization in limiting the ability of governments in the periphery to tax and/or issue debt to finance those public goods. Capital mobility allows exporters of natural resources to send their foreign exchange abroad to arbitrate between domestic and foreign assets, and to avoid taxation. Using a macroeconomic model for a small, open economy, the authors argue that in this more complex international context, the external constraint on output growth assumes different forms. They focus on two polar cases: the “pure financialization” case, in which legal and illegal capital flights prevent the government from financing the provision of strategic public goods; and the “trade deficit” case, in which private firms in the more technology-intensive sector cannot import the capital goods they need to expand industrial production.
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    Author(s):
    Gabriel Porcile Gilberto Tadeu Lima
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  • Working Paper No. 1016 | February 2023
    Monetary policy has been historically concerned with controlling inflation, using the interest rate as its main tool. However, such policies are not gender- or race-neutral. This paper explores econometrically the effect of changes in the interest rate for female and black employment creation in Brazil. We conduct a panel data fixed effects analysis for 13 states between 2012 and 2021 to estimate the effects of changes in interest rates on unemployment, separating the data by gender and race. Our results show that the real interest rate has a positive effect on the relative unemployment of black men to white men, no effect on the relative unemployment of black women to white men, and a negative effect on the relative unemployment of white women to white men. These effects are intensified in regions where the black population ratio is lower. This paper contributes to understanding the challenges to closing gender and racial gaps, particularly in developing economies. We conclude that social stratification, if not considered, can lead to misleading policies that perpetuate unequal socioeconomic outcomes.
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    Patricia Couto Clara Brenck
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  • Working Paper No. 1015 | February 2023
    Fractional reserve regimes generate fragile banking, and full reserve regimes (e.g., narrow banking) remove fragility at the cost of suppressing the role of banks as lenders. A Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) could provide safe money, but at the cost of potentially disrupting bank lending. Our aim is to avoid this potential disruption. Building on the recent literature on CBDCs, in this study we propose what we call the “CBDC next-level model,” whereby the central bank creates money by lending to banks, and banks on-lend the proceeds to the economy. The proposed model would allow for deposits to be taken off the balance sheet of banks and into the balance sheet of the central bank, thereby removing significant risk from the banking system without adversely impacting banks’ basic business. Once CBDC is injected in the system, irrespective of however it is used, wherever it accumulates, and whoever holds and uses it, it will always represent central bank equity, and no losses or defaults by individual banks or borrowers can ever dent it or weaken the central bank’s capital position or hurt depositors. Yet, individual borrowers and banks would still be required to honor their debt in full, lest they would be bound to exit the market or even be forced into bankruptcy. The CBDC next-level model solution would eliminate the threat of bank runs and system collapse and induce a degree of financial stability (“super-stability”) that would be unparalleled by any existing banking system.

  • Working Paper No. 1014 | February 2023
    This paper models the dynamics of Chinese yuan (CNY)–denominated long-term interest rate swap yields. The financial sector plays a vital role in the Chinese economy, which has grown rapidly in the past several decades. Going forward, interest rate swaps are likely to have an important role in the Chinese financial system. This paper shows that the short-term interest rate exerts a decisive influence on the long-term swap yield after controlling for various macro-financial variables, such as inflation or core inflation, the growth of industrial production, percent change in the equity price index, and the percentage change in the CNY exchange rate. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach is applied to model the dynamics of the long-term swap yield. The empirical findings show that the People’s Bank of China’s influence extends even to the over-the-counter derivative products, such as CNY interest rate swap yields, through the short-term interest rate. The findings reinforce and extend John Maynard Keynes’s notion that the central bank’s actions have a decisive role in setting the long-term interest rate in emerging market economies, such as China.

  • Working Paper No. 1013 | January 2023
    A Sectoral Multiplier Analysis for the United States
    We assess the sectoral impact of the implementation of a “green” employer of last resort (ELR) program in the US, based on an environmental modification of an extended Kurz’s (1985) multiplier framework and data from OECD Input-Output tables. We use these multipliers to estimate the impact of an “optimal” ELR, designed to maximize the impact on both output and employment while minimizing both imports and carbon emissions. We then test several alternative policy scenarios based upon different compositions of US government expenditure. We provide evidence that (1) investing in the optimal sectors in terms of output, employment, Co2, and import multipliers does not always deliver optimal results in the aggregate; (2) ecological sustainability for the US economy also fosters import sustainability; (3) a rebounding effect in Co2 emissions may be tamed if the ELR satisfies the abovementioned optimality condition, though this undermines its success in terms of output and employment. 

  • Working Paper No. 1012 | December 2022
    John Maynard Keynes argued that the central bank influences the long-term interest rate through the effect of its policy rate on the short-term interest rate. However, Keynes's claim was confined to the behavior of the long-term government bond yield. This paper investigates whether Keynes's claim holds for the yields of spread products and over-the-counter financial derivatives by econometrically modeling the dynamics of the pound sterling–denominated long-term interest rate swap yield. It uses the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) modeling approach to examine the relationship between the month-over-month changes in the short-term swap yield and the month-over-month change in the long-term swap yield, while controlling for several key macroeconomic and financial variables. The month-over-month change in the short-term interest rate has a positive and statistically significant effect on the month-over-month change in the long-term swap yield. This finding reinforces Keynes's conjecture concerning the central bank's influence over the long-term interest rate. The investigation's empirical findings and their policy implications are discussed from a Keynesian perspective.
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    Tanweer Akram Khawaja Mamun
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  • Working Paper No. 1011 | September 2022
    A Keynesian Perspective
    John Maynard Keynes (1930) asserted that the central bank sways the long-term interest rate through the influence of its policy rate on the short-term interest rate. Recent empirical research shows that Keynes's conjecture holds for long-term Treasury yields in the United States. This paper investigates whether Keynes's conjecture also holds for the monthly changes in US long-term swap yields by econometrically modeling its dynamics using an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach. The econometric modeling reveals that there is statistically significant effect on the monthly changes in the Treasury bill rate on the monthly changes in swap yields of different maturity tenors after controlling for a host of macroeconomic and financial control variables. The findings from the econometric models that are estimated render a perspicacious Keynesian perspective on key policy questions and contemporary debates in macroeconomics and finance.

  • Working Paper No. 1010 | September 2022
    Angela Merkel is the second-longest-serving chancellor of modern Germany, with more than 16 years in office. During her tenure there were many years of economic stability, but there were also years of domestic, EU, and geopolitical tensions. Merkel inherited an economy that was recovering after the launching of probusiness policies known as the Hartz I IV Reforms, introduced by the government of the previous chancellor, Gerhard Schröder. Chancellor Merkel was criticized for mishandling the eurocrisis, as she failed to declare support for the financially distressed eurozone countries. Instead she convinced EU officials and country leaders to adopt a contractionary fiscal policy in the midst of a recession. As a result of the austerity measures, Merkel became popular among the German taxpayers and voters. This triggered credit rating agencies to downgrade the government bonds of the periphery eurozone countries and investors to sell these bonds, driving their prices to zero. Periphery eurozone countries came close to bankruptcy but were jointly bailed out by the EU and the IMF, though this prolonged the crisis. As a result of the imposed austerity, which was unnecessary and avoidable, millions of people became unemployed and experienced poverty, loss of dignity, and humiliation and Greece was the country hit hardest. For Merkel, placing national interests above EU interests was the most important mistake in her career; it took, however, a bigger crisis (i.e., the COVID-19 pandemic), to convince Merkel to place EU interests above national interests.
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    Author(s):
    George Zestos Harrison Whittleton Alejandro Fernandez-Ribas
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  • Working Paper No. 1009 | August 2022
    Empirical Evidence from Subnational Governments in India
    Public financial management (PFM) has a significant role in linking resources to results by financing human development outcomes. When economic stimulus packages are short run in nature, thematic PFM, such as child budgeting, has a crucial role in reducing crime against children. Using fixed effects models, we explore the determinants of reduced crime against children. The PFM-related variables are found to have greater impact than economic growth per se in tackling crime against children. Capital expenditure in the social sector is found to be inversely related to crimes against children, though mere allocation in social sector budgets is not found to be effective in reducing crime rates. Specific PFM tools, like child budgeting, need to be analyzed for their role in child protection services. In India, child budgeting has been introduced in states where the rates of crime against children are also high. To understand the efficacy of child budgeting in reducing crime rates, the year of inception (year in which the child budgeting was introduced in the state) of children budgeting in a state is incorporated in the panel models. The coefficients reveal that years of inception and crime against children are inversely related, reinforcing the effectiveness of PFM tools such as child budgeting in reducing crimes. The existence of a positive link between social expenditure and the incidence of crime is at first counterintuitive, but a closer examination reveals a nonlinear relationship between crime incidence and social spending, which is revealed from the statistically significant negative squared term.

  • Working Paper No. 1008 | May 2022
    This paper econometrically models the dynamics of the Chilean interbank swap yields based on macroeconomic factors. It examines whether the month-over-month change in the short-term interest rate has a decisive influence on the long-term swap yield after controlling for other factors, such as the change in inflation, change in the growth of industrial production, change in the log of the equity price index, and change in the log of the exchange rate. It applies the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) approach to model the dynamics of the long-term swap yield. The change in the short-term interest rate has an economically meaningful and statistically significant effect on the change of the interbank swap yield. This means that the Banco Central de Chile’s (BCCH) monetary policy exerts an important influence on interbank swap yields in Chile.

  • Working Paper No. 1007 | May 2022
    Evidence from West Bank Schools
    The current study aims to investigate the impact of academic achievement on child labor. The study utilizes survey data collected from Palestinian children in West Bank schools who are in the primary grades (5th–9th). The results show that increasing a child’s academic achievement is significantly associated with decreasing the probability that a child works for money in the following period. Our findings varied among children according to their gender, age, and parental academic background. Our analyses are subject to different specifications, including two-stage least squares (2SLS) to account for potential endogeneity. The results provide robust evidence about the linkage between school performance and child labor in the West Bank. Further, the study proposes an assessment of the child’s mental health problems by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) as a potential mechanism through which the child’s achievement at school affects child labor.
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    Sameh Hallaq Ayman Khalifah
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  • Working Paper No. 1006 | April 2022
    This paper argues that the 40-year-old Feldstein-Horioka “puzzle” (i.e., that in a regression of the domestic investment rate on the domestic saving rate, the estimated coefficient is significantly larger than what would be expected in a world characterized by high capital mobility) should have never been labeled as such. First, we show that the investment and saving series typically used in empirical exercises to test the Feldstein-Horioka thesis are not appropriate for testing capital mobility. Second, and complementary to the first point, we show that the Feldstein-Horioka regression is not a model in the econometric sense, i.e., an equation with a proper error term (a random variable). The reason is that by adding the capital account to their regression, one gets the accounting identity that relates the capital account, domestic investment, and domestic saving. This implies that the estimate of the coefficient of the saving rate in the Feldstein-Horioka regression can be thought of as a biased estimate of the same coefficient in the accounting identity, where it has a value of one. Since the omitted variable is known, we call it “pseudo bias.” Given that this (pseudo) bias is known to be negative and less than one in absolute terms, it should come as no surprise that the Feldstein-Horioka regression yields a coefficient between zero and one.
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    Author(s):
    Jesus Felipe Scott Fullwiler Al-Habbyel Yusoph
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  • Working Paper No. 1005 | April 2022
    Starting from the seminal works of Wynne Godley (1999; Godley and Lavoie 2005, 2007a, 2007b), the literature adopting stock-flow consistent (SFC) models for two or more countries has been flourishing, showing that consistently taking into account real and financial markets of two open economies will generate different results with respect to more traditional open economy models. However, few contributions, if any, have modeled two regions in the same country, and our paper aims at filling this gap. When considering a regional context, most of the adjustment mechanisms at work in open economy models—such as exchange rate movements, or changes in interest on public debt—are simply not present, as they are controlled by "external” authorities. So, what are the adjustment mechanisms at work?
     
    To answer this question, we adapt the framework suggested in Godley and Lavoie (2007a) to consider two regions that share the same monetary, fiscal, and exchange rate policies. We loosely calibrate our model to Italian data, where the South (Mezzogiorno) has both a lower level of real income per capita and a lower growth rate than the North. We also introduce a fragmented labor market, as discouraged workers in the South will move North in hopes of finding commuting jobs.
     
    Our model replicates some key features of the Italian economy and sheds light on the interactions between financial and real markets in regional economies with “current account” imbalances.

  • Working Paper No. 1004 | March 2022
    A Theoretical Framework
    Liabilities denominated in foreign currency have established a permanent role on emerging market firms’ balance sheets, which implies that changes in both global liquidity conditions and in the value of the currency may have a long-lasting effect for them. In order to consider the financial conditions that may encourage (discourage) structural change in a small, open economy, we adopt the framework put forward by the “monetary theory of distribution” (MTD). More specifically, we follow the formulation adopted by Dvoskin and Feldman (2019), whereby the financial system is intended as a basic sector that promotes innovation (Schumpeter 1911). In accordance with this, financial conditions are binding only for the innovative entrepreneurs, whose methods of production are not dominant and hence they need to borrow from banks to kickstart their production. Through this device, our model offers an explanation of the technological lock-in experienced by a small, open economy that takes international prices as given.

  • Working Paper No. 1003 | March 2022
    Pandemic or Policy Response?
    This paper examines the recent increase of the measured inflation rate to assess the degree to which the acceleration is due to problems created (largely on the supply side) by the pandemic versus pressures created on the demand side by pandemic relief. Some have attributed the inflation to excess demand, most notably Larry Summers, who had warned that the pandemic relief spending was too great. As evidence, one could point to the quick recovery of GDP and to reportedly tight labor markets. Others have variously blamed supply chain disruptions, shortages of certain inputs, OPEC’s oil price increases, labor market disruptions because of COVID, and rising profit margins obtained through exercise of pricing power. We conclude that there is little evidence that excess demand is the problem, although we agree that in the absence of the relief checks, recovery would have been sufficiently slow to minimize inflation pressure. We closely examine the main contributors to rising overall prices and conclude that tighter monetary policy would not be an effective way to reduce price pressures. We also cast doubt on the expectations theory of inflation control. We present evidence that suggests there is currently little danger that higher inflation will become entrenched. If anything, rate hikes now will make it harder for the economy to adjust to current realities. The potential for lots of pain with little gain is great. The best course of action is to tackle problems on the supply side.

  • Working Paper No. 1002 | February 2022
    Empirical Evidence from India
    Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper analyzes the economic stimulus packages announced by the Indian national government and tries to identify some plausible fiscal and monetary policy coordination. The shrinking fiscal space due to revenue uncertainties has led to a theoretical plausibility of a reemergence of finite monetization of deficits in India. However, the empirical evidence confirms no direct monetization of the deficit.

  • Working Paper No. 1001 | February 2022
    This paper estimates the distribution-led regime of the US economy for the period 1947–2019. We use a time varying parameter model, which allows for changes in the regime over time. To the best of our knowledge this is the first paper that has attempted to do this. This innovation is important, because there is no reason to expect that the regime of the US economy (or any economy for that matter) remains constant over time. On the contrary, there are significant reasons that point to changes in the regime. We find that the US economy became more profit-led in the first postwar decades until the 1970s and has become less profit-led since; it is slightly wage-led over the last fifteen years.

  • Working Paper No. 999 | January 2022
    Does Financial “Bonanza” Cause Premature Deindustrialization?
    The outbreak of COVID-19 brought back to the forefront the crucial importance of structural change and productive development for economic resilience to economic shocks. Several recent contributions have already stressed the perverse relationship that may exist between productive backwardness and the intensity of the COVID-19 socioeconomic crisis. In this paper, we analyze the factors that may have hindered productive development for over four decades before the pandemic. We investigate the role of (non-FDI) net capital inflows as a potential source of premature deindustrialization. We consider a sample of 36 developed and developing countries from 1980 to 2017, with major emphasis on the case of emerging and developing economies (EDE) in the context of increasing financial integration. We show that periods of abundant capital inflows may have caused the significant contraction of manufacturing share to employment and GDP, as well as the decrease of the economic complexity index. We also show that phenomena of “perverse” structural change are significantly more relevant in EDE countries than advanced ones. Based on such evidence, we conclude with some policy suggestions highlighting capital controls and external macroprudential measures taming international capital mobility as useful tools for promoting long-run productive development on top of strengthening (short-term) financial and macroeconomic stability.

  • Working Paper No. 998 | January 2022
    A Critique of Aggregate Indicators
    Economic analysts have used trends in total factor productivity (TFP) to evaluate the effectiveness with which economies are utilizing advances in technology. However, this measure is problematic on several different dimensions. First, the idea that it is possible to separate out the relative contribution to economic output of labor, capital, and technology requires ignoring their complex interdependence in actual production. Second, since TFP growth has declined in recent decades in all of the developed market societies, there is good reason to believe that the decline is an artifact of the slower rates of economic growth that are linked to austerity policies. Third, reliance on TFP assumes that measures of gross domestic product are accurately capturing changes in economic output, even as the portion of the labor force producing tangible goods has declined substantially. Finally, there are other indicators that suggest that current rates of technological progress might be as strong or stronger than in earlier decades.

  • Working Paper No. 997 | December 2021
    We analyze the extent to which occupational identity is conducive to worker well-being. Using a unique survey dataset of individuals working in the German skilled crafts and trades (2017–18, n=757), we use a novel occupational identity measure that captures identity more broadly than just referring to organizational identification and social group membership, but rather comprises personal and relational elements inherent in one’s work. The latter are linked to significant social interactions a worker has in their job and the former to specific work characteristics of the work conducted itself. We find that higher job satisfaction is related to a stronger sense of occupational identity in our sample. This relationship is quite sizable and robust across model specifications, whereas income is not associated with job satisfaction in most models. Occupational identity is positively associated with a number of work characteristics, viz. task significance, task and skill variety, as well as social support, and our analysis shows that identity mediates the influence of these characteristics with regard to job satisfaction.

  • Working Paper No. 996 | December 2021
    Modern Money Theory (MMT) has generated considerable scrutiny and discussions over the past decade. While it has gained some acceptance in the financial sector and among some politicians, it has come under strong criticisms from all sides of the academic spectrum and from conservative political circles. MMT has been argued to be both fascist and communist, orthodox and heterodox, dangerous and benign, unworkable and obvious, and unrealistic and clearly nothing new. The contradictory aspects of the range of criticisms suggest that there is at best a superficial understanding of the MMT framework. MMT relies on a well-established theoretical framework and is not inherently about changing the economic system; it is about changing the policymaking praxis to implement a given public purpose. That public purpose can be small or large and can be conservative or progressive; it ought not to be narrowly determined but rather should be set as democratically as possible. While MMT proponents tend to favor a public purpose that deals with what they see as major drawbacks of capitalist economies (persistent nonfrictional unemployment, unfair inequalities, and financial instability), their policy proposals do not lead to a major shift of domestic resources to the public purpose. If a major increase in government spending is implemented, MMT provides some guidance on how to do that in the least disruptive manner by drawing on past economic experiences. The point is to implement the public purpose at a pace that recognizes the potential constraint that comes from domestic resource availability and potential inflationary pressures from bottlenecks, rising import prices, and exchange rate depreciation, among others. In most cases, economies have more flexibility than what is admitted. In all cases, when monetary sovereignty prevails, the fiscal position and the public debt are poor metrics for judging the viability of a public purpose and its pace of implementation.

    As such, applying MMT to policymaking does not mean that a government ought to be encouraged to record fiscal deficits or that the relation between the central bank and the treasury ought to be radically changed to allow direct financing. The fiscal balance is not a proper policy goal because it leads to irrelevant or incorrect policymaking and because it is largely outside the control of policymakers. The financial praxis of monetarily sovereign governments already conforms to MMT. Central banks and treasuries routinely coordinate their financial operations. Some governments have allowed direct financing of the treasury by the central bank; others have not but have developed equivalent ways to coordinate their fiscal and monetary operations that work around existing political constraints. Such routine coordination ensures an elastic financing of government operations that at least deals with domestic resources and is not intrinsically inflationary.

  • Working Paper No. 995 | November 2021
    A Stock-Flow Consistent Analysis
    The health and economic crises of 2020–21 have revived the debate on fiscal policy as a major tool for stabilization and meeting long-term goals. The massive surge in unemployment, due to the economic disruption of the lockdown measures, has increased the interest in policies that target employment directly instead of trying to achieve it via a general “demand push.” One of the proposals currently under debate is the job guarantee. Under such a policy the government would act as an “employer of last resort” by offering a job to everyone that is able and wants to work but cannot find a job in the private sector. This paper argues that a carefully designed scheme of direct employment and public provision by the state—addressing both the low- and high-skill workforce—can have permanent effects and promote the economy’s structural transformation, in particular by fostering energy transition and a lower carbon footprint. Starting from this point, a stock-flow consistent model is developed to study the long-run effect of the job guarantee’s implementation, inspired by the work of Godin (2013) and Sawyer and Passarella (2021).

  • Working Paper No. 994 | October 2021
    Biased Coefficients and Endogenous Regressors, or a Case of Collective Amnesia?
    The possible endogeneity of labor and capital in production functions, and the consequent bias of the estimated elasticities, has been discussed and addressed in the literature in different ways since the 1940s. This paper revisits an argument first outlined in the 1950s, which questioned production function estimations. This argument is that output, capital, and employment are linked through a distribution accounting identity, a key point that the recent literature has overlooked. This identity can be rewritten as a form that resembles a production function (Cobb-Douglas, CES, translog). We show that this happens because the data used in empirical exercises are value (monetary) data, not physical quantities. The argument has clear predictions about the size of the factor elasticities and about what is commonly interpreted as the bias of the estimated elasticities. To test these predictions, we estimate a typical Cobb-Douglas function using five estimators and show that: (i) the identity is responsible for the fact that the elasticities must be the factor shares; (ii) the bias of the estimated elasticities (i.e., departure from the factor shares) is, in reality, caused by the omission of a term in the identity. However, unlike in the standard omitted-variable bias problem, here the omitted term is known; and (iii) the estimation method is a second-order issue. Estimation methods that theoretically deal with endogeneity, including the most recent ones, cannot solve this problem. We conclude that the use of monetary values rather than physical data poses an insoluble problem for the estimation of production functions. This is, consequently, far more serious than any supposed endogeneity problems.

  • Working Paper No. 993 | September 2021
    Theory and Empirics
    This paper provides a theoretical and empirical reassessment of supermultiplier theory. First, we show that, as a result of the passive role it assigns to investment, the Sraffian supermultiplier (SSM) predicts that the rate of utilization leads the investment share in a dampened cycle or, equivalently,  that a convergent cyclical motion in the utilization-investment share plane would be counterclockwise. Second, impulse response functions from standard recursive vector autoregressions (VAR) for postwar US samples strongly indicate that the investment share leads the rate of utilization, or that these cycles are clockwise. These results raise questions about the key mechanism underlying supermultiplier theory.

  • Working Paper No. 992 | August 2021
    Government as the Source of the Price Level and Unemployment
    Many of the claims put forth by Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) center around the state’s monopoly over its own currency. In this paper I interrogate the plausibility of two claims: 1) MMT’s theory of the price level—that the price level is a function of prices paid by government when it spends—and 2) the claim that the cause of deficient effective demand is the state’s failure to supply government liabilities so as to meet the demand for net financial assets. I do so by building a model of “monopoly money” capable of producing these two outcomes.

  • Working Paper No. 991 | July 2021
    This paper presents multifactor Keynesian models of the long-term interest rate. In recent years there have been a proliferation of empirical studies based on the Keynesian approach to interest rate modeling. However, standard multifactor models of the long-term interest rate in quantitative finance have not been yet incorporated Keynes’s insights about interest rate dynamics. Keynes’s insights about the influence of the current short-term interest rate are introduced in two different multifactor models of the long-term interest rate to illustrate how the long-term interest rate relates to the short-term interest rate, the central bank’s policy rate, inflation expectations, the central bank’s inflation target, volatility in financial markets, and Wiener processes.

  • Working Paper No. 990 | July 2021
    Analyzing the Flypaper Effects
    Using panel data models, we analyze the flypaper effects—whether intergovernmental fiscal transfers or states’ own income determine expenditure commitments—on ecological fiscal spending in India. The econometric results show that the unconditional fiscal transfers, rather than the states’ own income, determine ecological expenditure in the forestry sector at subnational levels in India. The results hold when the models are controlled for ecological outcomes and demographic variables.

  • Working Paper No. 989 | June 2021
    The paper provides an empirical discussion of the national emergency utilization rate (NEUR), which is based on a “national emergency” definition of potential output and is published by the US Census Bureau. Over the peak-to-peak period 1989–2019, the NEUR decreased by 14.2 percent. The paper examines the trajectory of potential determinants of capacity utilization over the same period as specified in the related theory, namely: capital intensity, relative prices of labor and capital, shift differentials, rhythmic variations in demand, industry concentration, and aggregate demand. It shows that most of them have moved in a direction that would lead to an increase in utilization. The main factor that can explain the decrease in the NEUR is aggregate demand, while the increase in industry concentration might have also played a small role.

  • Working Paper No. 988 | June 2021
    There are several widely used benchmark models of the long-term interest rate in quantitative finance. However, these models have yet to incorporate Keynes’s valuable insights about interest rate dynamics. The Keynesian approach to interest rate dynamics can be readily incorporated in the benchmark models of the long-term interest rate. This paper modifies several benchmark interest rate models. In these modified models the long-term interest rate is related to the short-term interest rate and a Wiener process. The Keynesian approach to interest rate dynamics can be useful in addressing theoretical and policy issues.

  • Working Paper No. 987 | March 2021
    The Anatomy of a Pure Price-Chasing Bubble
    It is widely agreed that the Nasdaq during the dot-com era 20 years ago was a full-fledged stock market bubble. Recently, the US stock market according to many metrics has become significantly more speculative and overvalued than it was at the dot-com peak 20 years ago. In both instances, a very broad subset of stocks became so highly valued that speculation in them had to be untethered from all fundamentals: the essence of what we call a “pure price-chasing bubble.”
     
    This paper, drawn from a book in progress, examines the history of stock markets for comparable pure price-chasing bubbles, finding nine or so which have ever reached such a speculative extreme, with an over-the-counter market in Kuwait in the early 1980s called the “Souk al-Manakh” representing the most extreme example. Based on personal exposure to this Souk al-Manakh almost 40 years ago, we describe this anatomy and thereby make transparent the recurrent dynamics—on the way up and on the way down—of these greatest asset bubbles in human history. When one applies this framework to the current US stock market, one sees that the stock market in the US today will likely follow the disastrous path of the dot-com market.
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    Frank Veneroso Mark Pasquali
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  • Working Paper No. 986 | March 2021
    Evolution and Contemporary Relevance
    This paper traces the evolution of John Maynard Keynes’s theory of the business cycle from his early writings in 1913 to his policy prescriptions for the control of fluctuations in the early 1940s. The paper identifies six different “theories” of business fluctuations. With different theoretical frameworks in a 30-year span, the driver of fluctuations—namely cyclical changes in expectations about future returns—remained substantially the same. The banking system also played a pivotal role throughout the different versions, by financing and influencing the behavior of return expectations. There are four major changes in the evolution of Keynes’s business cycle theories: a) the saving–investment framework to understand changes in economic fluctuations; b) the capabilities of the banking system to moderate the business cycle; c) the effectiveness of monetary policy to fine tune the business cycle through the control of the short-term interest rate or credit conditions; and d) the role of a comprehensive fiscal policy and investment policy to attenuate fluctuations. Finally, some conclusions are drawn about the present relevance of the policy mix Keynes promoted for ensuring macroeconomic stability.

  • Working Paper No. 985 | February 2021
    No! And Yes.
    Modern Money Theory (MMT) economists have used Japan as an example of a country that demonstrates that high deficits and debt do not lead to insolvency, high interest rates, or inflation. MMT insists that governments that issue their own sovereign currency cannot be forced into insolvency, that they can make all payments as they come due, and that they do not really spend tax revenue or borrow in their own currency—with Japan serving as an example of a country that does not face financial budget constraints as normally defined. In this paper we evaluate whether Japan is the poster child of MMT and argue that policy-wise Japan is not following MMT recommendations; in fact, it is generally adopting policies that are precisely the opposite of those proposed by MMT, consistently adopting the path of stop-go fiscal measures and engaging in inadequate and temporary fiscal stimuli in the face of recessions, followed by austerity whenever the economy has seemed to recover.

  • Working Paper No. 984 | February 2021
    This paper presents empirical models of Mexican government bond (MGB) yields based on monthly macroeconomic data. The current short-term interest rate has a decisive influence on MGB yields, after controlling for inflation and growth in industrial production. John Maynard Keynes claimed that government bond yields move in lockstep with the short-term interest rate. The models presented in the paper show that Keynes’s claim holds for MGB yields. This has important policy implications for Mexico. The empirical findings of the paper are also relevant for ongoing debates in macroeconomics.

  • Working Paper No. 983 | February 2021
    A Comparative Analysis for Sub-Saharan African Countries
    In this working paper, we analyze factors that may explain gender differences in the allocation of time to household production in sub-Saharan Africa. The study uses time use survey data to analyze the determinants of time spent on household production by husbands and wives in nuclear families in Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, and South Africa. We assume that the time spent by each spouse is a function of personal and household characteristics. A bivariate Tobit model is used to estimate the marginal impact of a set of key variables that figure recurrently in the literature on time allocation. We observe a high degree of variability in the results for the set of countries, which does not allow us to draw hard general conclusions. We do find some weak evidence that supports time availability and gender ideology theory as well as for the hypothesis that bargaining power plays a role in explaining the intrahousehold allocation of household production.

  • Working Paper No. 982 | January 2021
    The success of alternative payment systems has led to discussion of various proposals to replace money with a new technology-based system, though many lack a clear idea of what exactly is the “money” they seek to replace. We begin by presenting the explanation of money’s role in the economy embraced by most mainstream economists and policy analysts, based on the idea that money evolved out of the process of market exchange. An alternative explanation that looks on money as a part of the organization of production and distribution based on network clearing systems across balance sheets expressed in a common unit of account is then presented, distinguishing between a purely notional unit of account and means of settlement or discharge of debt. The final section addresses the possibility of a fundamentally different modern extension of this alternative approach that is not inspired by digital technology, distributed ledger accounting, or application operating on a mobile/cell phone system, but rather the actually existing system available from an internet telephone service provider that currently offers subsidiary domestic and international payment services whose operating procedures come close to replicating the alternative explanation of money mentioned above, with the potential to provide all the services of the existing payments system at lower costs and greater stability.

  • Working Paper No. 981 | January 2021
    Lessons from Hyman P. Minsky
    The job guarantee is a viable policy option for tackling both unemployment and underemployment. Hyman P. Minsky was one of the seminal writers on this subject. The first part of this working paper provides a survey of Minsky’s writings to identify what kind of jobs he had in mind when recommending employer-of-last-resort policies. Minsky favored: (1) jobs increasing socially useful output, providing all of society better public services and goods; (2) jobs guaranteed by the public sector on a project-by-project basis at a minimum wage; (3) jobs in the places where people need them; and (4) jobs taking the people that need them as they are. The second part of the paper suggests policy recommendations for today’s economy. As long as the COVID-19 pandemic still rages on, a targeted public job guarantee program can assist in the social provisioning and distribution of food, shelter, and medical services. After the pandemic, a public job guarantee can reduce poverty and inequality, and bring about a more democratic, sustainable, and socially cohesive economic system.

  • Working Paper No. 980 | December 2020
    A Stock-Flow Consistent Framework for Mexico
    This working paper empirically and theoretically analyzes the exchange rate’s role in Mexico’s development for the period 2004–19. We test the hypothesis of the re(emergence) of the balance sheet effect due to an increase in external debt in the nonfinancial corporate sector; higher foreign debt would affect private investment after episodes of real currency depreciation, in the spirit of the literature put forward by Gertler, Gilchrist, and Natalucci (2007) and Céspedes, Chang, and Velasco (2004). We build a stock-flow consistent (SFC) model, following the OPENFLEX model proposed in Godley and Lavoie (2006), to explore the balance sheet implications from a theoretical perspective. We simulate the 2014 fall in the Mexican peso generated by the drop in oil prices to replicate stylized facts for Mexico for the period under investigation. The scenario analysis points to a hysteresis effect of the real exchange rate (RER) depreciation on investment flows. That is, firms’ investment ratio does not completely recover from negative shocks in the currency.

  • Working Paper No. 979 | November 2020
    As the nation is experiencing the need for ever-increasing government expenditures to address COVID-19 disruptions, rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, and many other worthy causes, conventional thinking calls for restoring at least a portion corporate taxes eliminated by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, especially from progressive circles. In this working paper, Edward Lane and L. Randall Wray examine who really pays the corporate income tax and argue that it does not serve the purposes most people believe.

    The authors provide an overview of the true purposes and incidence of corporate taxation and argue that it is inefficient and largely borne by consumers and employees, not shareholders. While the authors would prefer the elimination of the corporate profits tax, they understand the conventional thinking that taxes are necessary to help finance government expenditures—even if they disagree. Accordingly, the authors present alternatives to the corporate tax that shift the burden from consumers and employees to those who benefit the most from corporate success.

  • Working Paper No. 978 | November 2020
    Daycares closed on March 16, 2020 in Turkey to prevent the spread of COVID-19. At the same time, the two most common nonparental childcare arrangements in Turkey—care of children by grandparents and nannies—became undesirable due to health concerns and in some cases also unfeasible due to the partial lockdown for individuals under the age of 20 and over the age of 64. We estimate the potential impact of new constraints on nonparental childcare arrangements due to the pandemic on parental caregiving time of married parents of preschool-age children by using data from the 2014–15 Turkish Time Use Survey. Comparing how parental caregiving time varies by gender and use of nonparental childcare arrangements, we find that new constraints on nonparental childcare arrangements during the pandemic have potentially increased the gender difference in parental caregiving time by an hour and forty minutes in Turkey.

  • Working Paper No. 977 | November 2020
    This paper relates Keynes’s discussions of money, the state theory of money, financial markets, investors’ expectations, uncertainty, and liquidity preference to the dynamics of government bond yields for countries with monetary sovereignty. Keynes argued that the central bank can influence the long-term interest rate on government bonds and the shape of the yield curve mainly through the short-term interest rate. Investors’ psychology, herding behavior in financial markets, and uncertainty about the future reinforce the effects of the short-term interest rate and the central bank’s monetary policy actions on the long-term interest rate. Several recent empirical studies that examine the dynamics of government bond yields substantiate the Keynesian perspective that the long-term interest rate responds markedly to the short-term interest rate. These empirical studies not only vindicate the Keynesian perspective but also have relevance for macroeconomic theory and policy.

  • Working Paper No. 976 | November 2020
    This paper consists of three economic literature review essays that survey the Palestinian labor market during the last three decades. The first essay examines the economic return to schooling since 1981 until the recent period, taking into consideration the major shocks that the Palestinian economy experienced, such as the First and Second Palestinian Intifadas (1987–93 and 2000–5), respectively, and the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority in 1993. A special focus is laid on overcoming the potential endogeneity arising from the schooling coefficient. The second essay discusses the economic costs of several conflict measures (e.g., time and geographical variation in fatalities and other conflict incidents, days under curfews, checkpoints, movement restrictions, and substitution of foreigner workers for Palestinian labor) on the labor market and human capital. Earnings and unemployment are the main labor market indicators, while the human capital impact was assessed by educational attainment. The third essay sheds light on the wage differential in the Palestinian labor market due to geographical and employment sector factors.

  • Working Paper No. 975 | November 2020
    Some Insights from an Empirical Stock-Flow Consistent Model
    The Argentinean economy has just ended another lost decade. After the peak registered in 2011, the per capita GDP has oscillated with a decreasing trend, leaving the economy poorer than it was ten years before. During these ten years, different governments with conflicting macroeconomic programs were in power, none of them able to save the economy from stagflation. The goal of this paper is to address to what extent the economic performance would have been better had other policy combinations been implemented. The analysis is made through an empirical quarterly stock-flow consistent (SFC) model for the period 2007–19 in order to ensure the coherence of the results and to give the outcomes of the simulations a holistic and dynamically consistent interpretation. From the results of the simulations it seems that the problem that is keeping Argentina in stagflation goes beyond the domain of macroeconomics. The fact that in practice two divergent macroeconomic programs were implemented—neither of them being able to produce good and sustainable macroeconomic performance—is a first symptom that favors the case for that hypothesis. When the model is used to counterfactually test the policy recommendations of these approaches with the external conditions that prevailed while the opposite program was implemented, none of them yield results that can be deemed sustainable. Yet, the model developed in this paper can be useful for studying the different policy combinations that, given a specific context, can bring about more stable and sustainable dynamics for the Argentinean economy.
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    Sebastian Valdecantos
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  • Working Paper No. 974 | October 2020
    Financial Instability and Crises in Keynes’s Monetary Thought
    This paper revisits Keynes’s writings from Indian Currency and Finance (1913) to The General Theory (1936) with a focus on financial instability. The analysis reveals Keynes’s astute concerns about the stability/fragility of the banking system, especially under deflationary conditions. Keynes’s writings during the Great Depression uncover insights into how the Great Depression may have informed his General Theory. Exploring the connection between the experience of the Great Depression and the theoretical framework Keynes presents in The General Theory, the assumption of a constant money stock featuring in that work is central. The analysis underscores the case that The General Theory is not a special case of the (neo-)classical theory that is relevant only to “depression economics”—refuting the interpretation offered by J. R. Hicks (1937) in his seminal paper “Mr. Keynes and the Classics: A Suggested Interpretation.” As a scholar of the Great Depression and Federal Reserve chairman at the time of the modern crisis, Ben Bernanke provides an important intellectual bridge between the historical crisis of the 1930s and the modern crisis of 2007–9. The paper concludes that, while policy practice has changed, the “classical” theory Keynes attacked in 1936 remains hegemonic today. The common (mis-)interpretation of The General Theory as depression economics continues to describe the mainstream’s failure to engage in relevant monetary economics.

  • Working Paper No. 973 | October 2020
    An Open Economy Perspective
    This paper is focused on Modern Monetary Theory’s (MMT) treatment of inflation from an open economy perspective. It analyzes how the inflation process is explained within the MMT framework and provides empirical evidence in support of this vision. However, it also makes use of a stock-flow consistent (open economy) model to underline some limits of the theory when it is applied in the context of a non-US (relatively) open economy with a flexible exchange rate regime. The model challenges the contention made by MMTers that measures such as the job guarantee program can achieve full employment without facing an inflation-unemployment trade-off.
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    Emilio Carnevali Matteo Deleidi
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  • Working Paper No. 972 | September 2020
    On the Nature and Outcomes of the Beauty Contest
    Since the 2008 crisis, the economics literature has shown a renewed interest in Keynes’s “beauty contest” (BC) as a fundamental aspect of the functioning of financial markets. We argue that to understand the importance of the BC, psychological and informational factors are of small importance, and a dynamic-structural approach should be followed instead: the BC framework is paramount because it is rooted in the historical trajectory of capitalism and it is not simply a consequence of “irrational” (i.e., biased) agents. In this genuine form, the BC mechanism allows one to understand the main trends of a financialized world. Moreover, the conventional nature of financial markets provides a sound method for assessing different economic policies whose effectiveness depends on how much they can influence the convention itself. This alternative understanding of the BC can be used to start the needed rethinking of economics, urged by the crisis, that is for now reduced to studying the financial and psychological “imperfections” of the market.
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    Author(s):
    Lorenzo Esposito Giuseppe Mastromatteo
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  • Working Paper No. 971 | September 2020
    In a seminal 1972 paper, Robert M. May asked: “Will a Large Complex System Be Stable?” and argued that stability (of a broad class of random linear systems) decreases with increasing complexity, sparking a revolution in our understanding of ecosystem dynamics. Twenty-five years later, May, Levin, and Sugihara translated our understanding of the dynamics of ecological networks to the financial world in a second seminal paper, “Complex Systems: Ecology for Bankers.” Just a year later, the US subprime crisis led to a near worldwide “great recession,” spread by the world financial network. In the present paper we describe highlights in the development of our present understanding of stability and complexity in network systems, in order to better understand the role of networks in both stabilizing and destabilizing economic systems. A brief version of this working paper, focused on the underlying theory, appeared as an invited feature article in the February 2020 Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences newsletter (Hastings et al. 2020).

  • Working Paper No. 970 | September 2020
    This paper presents a description of the quality of match of the statistical matches used in the Levy Institute Measure of Time and Consumption Poverty (LIMTCP) estimates prepared for Ethiopia and South Africa. For Ethiopia, the statistical match combines the Ethiopian Socio-economic Survey—Wave 3—2015/2016 (ESS) with the Ethiopian Time Use Survey (ETUS) 2013. For South Africa it combines the October Household Survey (OHS) 1998 with the time use data obtained from the SA-Time Use Survey (SATUS) 2000, and the South African Living Conditions Survey (SALCS) 2014/2015 with the SATUS 2010. In all cases, the alignment of the two datasets is examined, after which various aspects of the match quality are described. Despite the differences in the survey years, the quality of match for South Africa is high and the synthetic dataset appropriate for the time poverty analysis. For Ethiopia, due to data quality differences, we restrict the analysis to married couple households with an employed spouse and young children. Conditioning on the restriction and sample reweighting, the Ethiopian synthetic dataset seems appropriate for the time poverty analysis.

  • Working Paper No. 969 | September 2020
    This paper analyzes the nominal yields of UK gilt-edged securities (“gilts”) based on a Keynesian perspective, which holds that the short-term interest rate is the primary driver of the long-term interest rate. Quarterly data are used to model gilts’ nominal yields. These models bring to light the complex dynamics relating the nominal yields on gilts to the short-term interest rate, inflation, the growth of industrial production, and the government debt ratio. The results show that the short-term interest rate has a crucial influence on the nominal yields on gilts, even after controlling for various factors. Contrary to widely held views, a higher government debt ratio does not lead to higher nominal yields.

  • Working Paper No. 968 | September 2020
    A Minskyan Approach to Mapping and Managing the (Western?) Financial Turmoil
    The COVID-19 crisis paralyzed huge parts of the planet in weeks. It not only infected the population but injected a gargantuan dose of uncertainty into the system. In that regard, as in many others, it is a phenomenon without precedent. As of the time of writing (May–June 2020), we are witnessing, simultaneously, a health crisis, an economic crisis, and a crisis of global governance as well. In the forthcoming months, it could well turn into a set of financial, social, and political crises most governments and international organizations are ill-prepared to handle. In this paper, what concerns us is the financial dimension of the crisis. The paper is divided into four sections. Following the introduction, the second section maps the financial dimension of the pandemic through an extension of Hyman Minsky’s financial fragility analysis. The result is a three-pronged analytical framework that encompasses financial fragility, financial instability, and insolvency-triggered asset-liability restructuring processes. These are seen as three distinct but interconnected processes advancing financial fragility. The third section dissects how these three processes have been managed as they have unfolded since March 2020, underlining the key policy interventions and institutional innovations introduced so far, and suggesting further measures for addressing the forthcoming stages of the financial turmoil. The fourth section concludes the paper by pointing out the results as of June 2020 and highlights our intended analytical contribution to Minsky’s theoretical framework.

  • Working Paper No. 967 | September 2020
    This paper assesses the quality of the statistical matching used in the LIMTIP estimates for Italy for 2008 and 2014. The match combines the 2008–9 and 2013–14 Italian Time Use Survey (IT-TUS) with the Italian data collected for the European Survey on Income and Living Conditions (IT-SILC) in 2009 and 2015. After the matching, the analysis of the joint distributions of the variables shows that the quality is good.
     
    The preliminary results of the LIMTIP estimates in Italy display widespread time poverty, which translates into significant hidden poverty. The LIMTIP also reveals that the increase in the poverty rate between 2008 and 2014 was even higher that what standard poverty measures report.

  • Working Paper No. 966 | August 2020
    This paper discusses new methods of combined macro-micro analysis of labor demand and supply to investigate the gender impacts of public policy. In particular it examines how studies have used input-output analysis together with more or less sophisticated methods of allocating people to jobs to model the impact of public investment in care on the gender employment gap and other inequality measures. It presents some results of a cross-country comparison of investment in the care and construction industries, suggesting methodological refinements to take account of the labor supply effects of such investment policies in order to enable a more detailed analysis of who gets the jobs generated and under what conditions of employment to achieve a more accurate assessment of a policy’s full impact on employment inequalities. We argue that such a microsimulation of who is likely to get any newly created jobs should be able to take account of the (child)care “tax” paid by those with caring responsibilities on time spent in employment (as well as the formal tax and benefit system).
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    Jerome De Henau Susan Himmelweit
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  • Working Paper No. 965 | July 2020
    This paper attempts to estimate the intergenerational transmission of human capital in Palestine. The main question is whether formal parental education improves their offspring’s cognitive skills and school achievements. I use the instrumental variable (IV) method in the estimations to overcome the potential endogeneity of parental education. The main source of variation in parental educational attainment is parents’ exposure to the First Palestinian Intifada (1988–93) during their middle- and high school ages. During the First Palestinian Intifada, many school days were lost due to frequent school closures and other restrictions. Furthermore, many young people preferred to search for low-skill employment in Israel, since it provided them with better wages than the local labor market and hardly required any level of educational attainment. This study employs two outcomes, namely the standardized cognitive test scores and school achievements during the academic year 2012/13 for students between grade 5 and grade 9 in West Bank schools. Overall, the results support the hypothesis of a human capital spillover but more so for girls than for boys, where the IV results are often insignificant because of their large standard errors.

  • Working Paper No. 964 | July 2020
    Analyzing the Fiscal Forecasting Errors of 28 States in India
    Budget credibility, or the ability of governments to accurately forecast macro-fiscal variables, is crucial for effective public finance management. Fiscal marksmanship analysis captures the extent of errors in the budgetary forecasting. The fiscal rules can determine fiscal marksmanship, as effective fiscal consolidation procedures affect the fiscal behavior of the states in conducting the budgetary forecasts. Against this backdrop, applying Theil’s technique, we analyze the fiscal forecasting errors for 28 states (except Telangana) in India for the period 2011–16. There is a heterogeneity in the magnitude of errors across subnational governments in India. The forecast errors in revenue receipts have been greater than revenue expenditure. Within revenue receipts, the errors are more significantly pronounced in the grants component. Within expenditure budgets, the errors in capital spending are found to be greater than revenue spending in all the states. Partitioning the sources of errors, we identified that the errors were more broadly random than due to systematic bias, except for a few crucial macro-fiscal variables where improving the forecasting techniques can provide better estimates.

  • Working Paper No. 963 | July 2020
    The COVID-19 pandemic seemingly appeared out of nowhere but changed nearly everything. As the pandemic unfolded, industries deemed nonessential were leveled. Many occupations in these industries are low-wage, and women constitute a greater share of America’s low-wage labor force than men. Even as some workers were able to do their jobs from their homes, a high proportion of “essential workers” were African American, other people of color, women, and an intersection of these groups—women of color. The goal of this paper is to closely examine the contours, depth, and causes of COVID-19’s impact on Black women’s employment in the United States through the lenses of both feminist economic theory and stratification economics.

    The data appendix for Holder, Jones, and Masterson, "The Early Impact of COVID-19 on Job Losses Among Black Women in the United States," forthcoming in Feminist Economics is available here. This appendix includes detailed tables of major labor force indicators by race and sex; employment by race, sex, and industry and occupation; and unemployment by race and sex for early 2020.
     
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    Michelle Holder Janelle Jones Thomas Masterson
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  • Working Paper No. 962 | July 2020
    This paper models the dynamics of Japanese government bond (JGB) nominal yields using daily data. Models of government bond yields based on daily data, such as those presented in this paper, can be useful not only to investors and market analysts, but also to central bankers and other policymakers for assessing financial conditions and macroeconomic developments in real time. The paper shows that long-term JGB nominal yields can be modeled using the short-term interest rate on Treasury bills, the equity index, the exchange rate, commodity price index, and other key financial variables.

  • Working Paper No. 961 | July 2020
    Modern money theory (MMT) synthesizes several traditions from heterodox economics. Its focus is on describing monetary and fiscal operations in nations that issue a sovereign currency. As such, it applies Georg Friedrich Knapp’s state money approach (chartalism), also adopted by John Maynard Keynes in his Treatise on Money. MMT emphasizes the difference between a sovereign currency issuer and a sovereign currency user with respect to issues such as fiscal and monetary policy space, ability to make all payments as they come due, credit worthiness, and insolvency. Following A. Mitchell Innes, however, MMT acknowledges some similarities between sovereign and nonsovereign issues of liabilities, and hence integrates a credit theory of money (or, “endogenous money theory,” as it is usually termed by post-Keynesians) with state money theory. MMT uses this integration in policy analysis to address issues such as exchange rate regimes, full employment policy, financial and economic stability, and the current challenges facing modern economies: rising inequality, climate change, aging of the population, tendency toward secular stagnation, and uneven development. This paper will focus on the development of the “Kansas City” approach to MMT at the University of Missouri–Kansas City (UMKC) and the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.

  • Working Paper No. 960 | July 2020
    Fiscal policy is useful as a government instrument for supporting the economy, contributing to an increase in employment, and reducing inequality through more egalitarian income distribution. Over the past 30 years, developing countries have failed to increase their real wages due to the lack of domestic value-added in the era of globalization, where global supply chains are the driving factor for attracting foreign direct investment. Under such circumstances, the role of fiscal policy has become an important factor in creating the necessary conditions for boosting the economy. With the end of commodity-export-led growth, Mexico experienced a moderate reduction of 5 percent in poverty between 2014 and 2018 due to the structural adjustment of social policies and its economic and trade relationship with the United States; during the same period there has been no change in poverty in Argentina, and Brazil has suffered a rise in poverty. Following the global financial crisis, greater attention has been paid to fiscal policy in developed and developing countries—specifically Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico (ABM)—in order to attain macroeconomic stability. One of the consequences of the financial crisis is rising income inequality and its negative effects on economic growth. Over the past decade, fiscal policy has been adopted for the economic recovery. However, the recovery has been accompanied by a decrease in real wages of the middle class. The purpose of the present research is to critically examine the results of fiscal policy in ABM and the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

  • Working Paper No. 959 | June 2020
    Comparative Evidence for Developed, Semi-Industrialized, and Low-Income Agricultural Economies
    This paper applies a robust empirical methodology, which considers issues relating to cross-country heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence, to inspect the contributions of gender equality and factor income distribution to an economy’s growth path. A dynamic model of aggregate demand is estimated on a unique panel dataset from 46 countries that are further grouped into developed (DC), semi-industrialized (SIEs), and low-income agricultural economies (LIAEs).
     
    The empirical findings suggest that, overall, growth is driven by investment in the short run and domestic demand in the long run. In the short run, the results suggest that low female wages act as a stimulus to growth in SIEs but may promote contractionary pressures on demand in the long run. For LIAEs and DCs, the effect of improved labor market conditions for women—leaving men’s constant—on demand-led growth conditions are positive in the short run but may harm long-term growth prospects.
     
    In all, the empirical evidence, combined with the stylized facts about institutional and economic inequality, suggests that the impact of gender and income inequality on macroeconomic outcomes will differ depending on the economic structure and level of economic development.

  • Working Paper No. 958 | June 2020
    Macroeconomists and political officers need rigorous, albeit realistic, quantitative models to forecast the future paths and dynamics of some variables of interest while being able to evaluate the effects of alternative scenarios. At the heart of all these models lies a standard macroeconomic module that, depending on the degree of sophistication and the research questions to be answered, represents how the economy works. However, the complete absence of a realistic monetary framework, along with the abstraction of banks and more generally of real–financial interactions—not only in dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models but also in central banks’ structural econometric models—made it impossible to detect the rising financial fragility that led to the Great Recession.

    In this paper, we show how to address the missing links between the real and financial sectors within a post-Keynesian framework, presenting a quarterly stock-flow consistent (SFC) structural model of the Italian economy. We set up the accounting structure of the sectoral transactions, describing our “transaction matrix” and “balance sheet matrix,” starting from the appropriate sectoral data sources. We then “close” all sectoral financial accounts, describe portfolio choices, and define the buffer stocks for each class of assets and sector in the model. We describe our estimation strategy, present the main stochastic equations, and, finally, discuss the main channels of transmissions in our model.

  • Working Paper No. 957 | June 2020
    The Long Period Method, Technical Change, and Gender
    This paper presents a critique of Karl Marx’s labor theory of value and his theory of falling profit rates from an intersectional political economy perspective. Specifically, I rely on social reproduction theory to propose that Marx-biased technical change disrupts the social order and leads to competition between workers. The bargaining power of workers cannot be dissociated from class struggle within the working class. I argue that technical change increases social conflict, which can counterbalance the long-run tendency of the profit rate to fall. The conclusion is that class struggle is multilayered and endogenous to the process of accumulation.

  • Working Paper No. 956 | May 2020
    This paper empirically models the dynamics of Brazilian government bond (BGB) yields based on monthly macroeconomic data in the context of the evolution of Brazil’s key macroeconomic variables. The results show that the current short-term interest rate has a decisive influence on BGBs’ long-term interest rates after controlling for various key macroeconomic variables, such as inflation and industrial production or economic activity. These findings support John Maynard Keynes’s claim that the central bank’s actions influence the long-term interest rate on government bonds mainly through the short-term interest rate. These findings have important policy implications for Brazil. This paper relates the findings of the estimated models to ongoing debates in fiscal and monetary policies.

  • Working Paper No. 955 | May 2020
    Evidence from West Bank Schools
    This study uses rich administrative and survey data to investigate the effects of class size on students’ cognitive tests as well as bullying and violent behavior. I use the maximum class size rule to create a regression discontinuity (RD) relation between cohort enrollment size and class size in the public and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) school system in the West Bank. In addition, I provide evidence that there is no violation of the RD assumptions resulting from discontinuities in the relationship between enrollment and students’ household background at cutoff points induced by a maximum class size rule. The main findings suggest that class size has no direct impact on students’ cognitive skills except for those in grade six. However, class size reduction improves the quality of life for children by mitigating the bullying and violent behavior among pupils that may negatively affect their achievements. Finally, I point to peer relations and mental health problems as a potential mechanism through which class size affects children’s self-reported bullying–victim instances and violent behavior.

  • Working Paper No. 954 | April 2020
    A Microeconometric Analysis
    This paper examines whether relative income and income inequality within reference groups affect household consumption. Using the explanations of consumption behavior based on Dusenberry’s relative income hypothesis, we test if household consumption levels in Turkey are affected by the household’s relative position and inequality in the reference group between 2005–12 by employing cross-sectional household-level data. We find that household consumption is negatively related to the relative income indicator after controlling for absolute income, and positively related to the income inequality of the reference group, as the literature suggests. The paper also shows that household indebtedness has a positive impact on household consumption when inequality in the reference group and the relative position of households are controlled for. We confirm that the results are not sensitive to chosen relative income indicators and income inequality.
     

  • Working Paper No. 953 | April 2020
    Some Empirical Issues
    The paper makes three contributions. First, following up on Nikiforos (2016), it provides an in-depth examination of the Federal Reserve measure of capacity utilization and shows that it is closer to a cyclical indicator than a measure of long run variations of normal utilization. Other measures, such as the average workweek of capital or the national emergency utilization rate are more appropriate for examining long-run changes in utilization. Second, and related to that, it argues that a relatively stationary measure of utilization is not consistent with any theory of the determination of utilization. Third, based on data on the lifetime of fixed assets it shows that for the issues around the “utilization controversy” the long run is a period after thirty years or more. This makes it a Platonic Idea for some economic problems.

  • Working Paper No. 952 | April 2020
    Some Theoretical Issues
    This paper discusses some issues related to the triangle between capital accumulation, distribution, and capacity utilization. First, it explains why utilization is a crucial variable for the various theories of growth and distribution—more precisely, with regards to their ability to combine an autonomous role for demand (along Keynesian lines) and an institutionally determined distribution (along classical lines). Second, it responds to some recent criticism by Girardi and Pariboni (2019). I explain that their interpretation of the model in Nikiforos (2013) is misguided, and that the results of the model can be extended to the case of a monopolist. Third, it provides some concrete examples of why demand is a determinant for the long-run rate of utilization of capital. Finally, it argues that when it comes to the normal rate of utilization, it is the expected growth rate of demand that matters, not the level of demand.

  • Working Paper No. 951 | April 2020
    This paper presents a simple model of the long-term interest rate. The model represents John Maynard Keynes’s conjecture that the central bank’s actions influence the long-term interest rate primarily through the short-term interest rate, while allowing for other important factors. It relies on the geometric Brownian motion to formally model Keynes’s conjecture. Geometric Brownian motion has been widely used in modeling interest rate dynamics in quantitative finance. However, it has not been used to represent Keynes’s conjecture. Empirical studies in support of the Keynesian perspective and the stylized facts on the dynamics of the long-term interest rate on government bonds suggest that interest rate models based on Keynes’s conjecture can be advantageous.

  • Working Paper No. 950 | April 2020
    The United States government recently passed legislation and stabilization packages to respond to the COVID-19 (i.e., coronavirus disease 2019) outbreak by providing paid sick leave, tax credits, and free virus testing; expanding food assistance and unemployment benefits; and increasing Medicaid funding. However, the response to the global pandemic might be hindered by the lassitude of the state and the administration’s conception of social policy that leaves the most vulnerable unprotected. The administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration campaign poses public health challenges, especially in the prevention of communicable diseases. In addition to the systemic obstacles noncitizens face in their access to healthcare, recent changes to immigration law that penalize recipients of some social services on grounds that they are a public charge will further restrict their access to treatment and hinder the fight against the pandemic.

  • Working Paper No. 949 | February 2020
    This paper extends the empirical stock-flow consistent (SFC) literature through the introduction of distributional features and labor market institutions in a Godley-type empirical SFC model. In particular, labor market institutions, such as the minimum wage and the collective bargaining coverage rate, are considered as determinants of the wage share and, in turn, of the distribution of national income. Thereby, the model is able to examine both the medium-term stability conditions of the economy via the evolution of the sectoral financial balances and the implications of functional income distribution on the growth prospects of the economy at hand. The model is then applied to the Greek economy. The empirical results indicate that the Greek economy has a significant structural competitiveness deficit, while the institutional regime is likely debt-led. The policies implemented in the context of the economic adjustment programs were highly inappropriate, triggering private sector insolvency. A minimum wage increase is projected to have a positive impact on output growth and employment. However, policies that would enhance the productive sector’s structural competitiveness are required in order to ensure the growth prospects of the Greek economy.

  • Working Paper No. 948 | February 2020
    This paper analyzes recent macroeconomic developments in the eurozone, particularly in Germany. Several economic indicators are sending signals of a looming German recession. Geopolitical tensions caused by trade disputes between the United States and China, plus the risk of a disorderly Brexit, began disrupting the global supply chain in manufacturing. German output contraction has been centered on manufacturing, particularly the automobile sector. Despite circumstances that call for fiscal intervention to rescue the economy, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government was overdue with corrective measures. This paper explains Germany’s hesitancy to protect its economy, which has been based on a political and historical ideology that that rejects issuing new public debt to increase public spending, thus leaving the economy exposed to the doldrums. The paper also considers serious shortcomings in the European Union’s (EU) foreign and defense policies that recently surfaced during the Syrian refugee crisis. The eurocrisis revealed near-fatal weaknesses of the European Monetary Union (EMU), which is still incomplete without a common fiscal policy, a common budget, and a banking union. Unless corrected, such deficiencies will cause both the EU and the EMU to dissolve if another asymmetric shock occurs. This paper also analyzes recent geopolitical developments that are crucial to the EU/eurozone’s existential crisis.

  • Working Paper No. 947 | February 2020
    Starting from the mid-nineteenth century, this paper analyzes two periods of financial instability connected with financial globalization. The first culminates with the 1929 crisis, while the second characterizes the more recent experience starting from the 1970s. The period in between is divided into two subperiods. The first goes up to World War II and sees a retrenchment from globalization and the affirmation of a statist approach to national policy autonomy in pursuing domestic goals, for which we take as examples the New Deal, financial regulation, and the new international cooperative approach finally leading to Bretton Woods. The second subperiod, marked by the new international monetary order and limited globalization, although appearing as a relatively calm interlude, conceals the seeds of a renewed push toward financial fragility. The above periods are synthetically analyzed in terms of the development and mutual fertilization of theories, institutions, and vested public and private interests. The narrative is based on two interpretative keys: the Minskyan theory of financial fragility and changes in the public-private partnership, mainly with reference to the financial sector for which the role of the state as guarantor of last resort necessarily ensues. The lesson that can be derived is that a laissez-faire approach to globalization strengthens asymmetric powers and necessarily leads to overglobalization, as well as to financial and economic instability, rendering it extremely difficult and socially costly for the state to comply with its role as financial guarantor.

  • Working Paper No. 946 | February 2020
    A Comment on Autor and Salomons
    We show that Autor and Salomons’ (2017, 2018) analysis of the impact of technical progress on employment growth is problematic. When they use labor productivity growth as a proxy for technical progress, their regressions are quasi-accounting identities that omit one variable of the identity. Consequently, the coefficient of labor productivity growth suffers from omitted-variable bias, where the omitted variable is known. The use of total factor productivity (TFP) growth as a proxy for technical progress does not solve the problem. Contrary to what the profession has argued for decades, we show that this variable is not a measure of technical progress. This is because TFP growth derived residually from a production function, together with the conditions for producer equilibrium, can also be derived from an accounting identity without any assumption. We interpret TFP growth as a measure of distributional changes. This identity also indicates that Autor and Salomons’ estimates of TFP growth’s impact on employment growth are biased due to the omission of the other variables in the identity. Overall, we conclude that their work does not shed light on the question they address.

  • Working Paper No. 945 | January 2020
    The present paper emphasizes the role of demand, income distribution, endogenous productivity reactions, and other structural changes in the slowdown of the growth rate of output and productivity that has been observed in the United States over the last four decades. In particular, it is explained that weak net export demand, fiscal conservatism, and the increase in income inequality have put downward pressure on demand. Up until the crisis, this pressure was partially compensated for through debt-financed expenditure on behalf of the private sector, especially middle- and lower-income households. This debt overhang is now another obstacle in the way of demand recovery. In turn, as emphasized by the Kaldor-Verdoorn law and the induced technical change approach, the decrease in demand and the stagnation of wages can lead to an endogenous slowdown in productivity growth. Moreover, it is argued that the increasingly oligopolistic and financialized structure of the US economy also contributes to the slowdown. Finally, the paper argues that there is nothing secular about the current stagnation; addressing the aforementioned factors can allow for growth to resume, as has happened in the past.

  • Working Paper No. 944 | January 2020
    Keynes argued that the short-term interest rate is the main driver of the long-term interest rate. This paper empirically models the relationship between short-term interest rates and long-term government securities yields in Canada, after controlling for other important financial variables. The statistical analysis uses high-frequency daily data from 1990 to 2018. It applies both the cointegration technique and Granger causality within the vector error correction (VEC) framework. The empirical results suggest that the action of the monetary authority is an important determinant of Canadian government securities yields, which supports the Keynesian perspective. These findings have important implications for investors, financial analysts, and policymakers.

  • Working Paper No. 943 | January 2020
    Whether China’s low fertility rate is the consequence of the country’s strict population control policy is a puzzling question. This paper attempts to disentangle the Chinese population control policy’s impacts on the fertility rate from socioeconomic factors using the synthetic control method proposed by Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003). The results indicate that the population control policy significantly decreased China’s birth rate after the “Later, Longer, and Fewer” policy came into force, but had little effect on the birth rate in the long run. We estimate that between 164.2 million and 268.3 million prevented births from 1971 to 2016 can be attributed to the Chinese population control policy. In addition, we implement a placebo study to check the validity of the method and confirm the robustness of the paper’s conclusions.

  • Working Paper No. 942 | January 2020
    This paper emphasizes the need for understanding the interdependencies between the real and financial sides of the economy in macroeconomic models. While the real side of the economy is generally well explained in macroeconomic models, the financial side and its interaction with the real economy remains poorly understood. This paper makes an attempt to model the interdependencies between the real and financial sides of the economy in Denmark while adopting a stock-flow consistent approach. The model is estimated using Danish data for the period 1995–2016. The model is simulated to create a baseline scenario for the period 2017–30, against which the effects of two standard shocks (fiscal shocks and interest rate shocks) are analyzed. Overall, our model is able to replicate the stylized facts, as will be discussed. While the model structure is fairly simple due to different constraints, the use of the stock-flow approach makes it possible to explain several transmission mechanisms through which real economic behavior can affect the balance sheets, and at the same time capture the feedback effects from the balance sheets to the real economy. Finally, we discuss certain limitations of our model.

  • Working Paper No. 941 | December 2019
    This paper measures the wage differential between Palestinian non-refugees and Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza over the years 1999–2012. First, the main individual and occupational differences between the two groups in the two regions are presented. Then, the wage differential is decomposed into two components: a “human capital effect, explained part” and a “coefficient effect, unexplained part.” Second, findings suggest that though the wage gap has always existed and favored non-refugees in the West Bank, it has a more substantial impact among low-skilled workers and those in the private sector. Furthermore, most of this gap is attributed to the unexplained part of the wage decomposition model. In Gaza, the wage gap favored refugee workers. Most of this wage gap among unskilled workers is attributed to the endowment/human capital effect, while for skilled workers most of the wage gap is due to the unexplained part—the “coefficient effect”—after 2006.

  • Working Paper No. 940 | November 2019
    A Rejoinder and Some Comments
    The critique by Gahn and González (2019) of the conclusions in Nikiforos (2016) regarding what data should be used to evaluate whether capacity utilization is endogenous to demand is weak for the following reasons: (i) The Federal Reserve Board (FRB) measure of utilization is not appropriate for measuring long-run variations of utilization because of the method and purpose of its construction. Even if its difference from the measures of the average workweek of capital (AWW) were trivial, this would still be the case; if anything, it would show that the AWW is also an inappropriate measure. (ii) Gahn and González choose to ignore the longest available estimate of the AWW produced by Foss, which has a clear long-run trend. (iii) Their econometric results are not robust to more suitable specifications of the unit root tests. Under these specifications, the tests overwhelmingly fail to reject the unit root hypothesis. (iv) Other estimates of the AWW, which were not included in Nikiforos (2016) confirm these conclusions. (v) For the comparison between the AWW series and the FRB series, they construct variables that are not meaningful because they subtract series in different units. When the comparison is done correctly, the results confirm that the difference between the AWW series and the FRB series has a unit root. (vi) A stationary utilization rate is not consistent with any theory of the determination of capacity utilization. Even if demand did not play a role, there is no reason to expect that all the other factors that determine utilization would change in a fashion that would keep utilization constant.

  • Working Paper No. 939 | October 2019
    The Case of Ghana
    Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a widely recognized human rights violation with serious consequences for the health and well-being of women and their families. However, the wider ramifications of VAWG for businesses, communities, economies, and societies are only recently being recognized. Despite this recognition, there are few studies exploring how the economic and social impacts of VAWG affect economic growth, development, and social stability. In this paper, applying the social accounting approach, we outline the ripple effects of VAWG from the individual micro-level impacts to the macroeconomy. Our analysis shows the loss due to VAWG amounts to about 0.94 percent of Ghanaian GDP and is a permanent invisible leakage from the circular flow of the economy. The analysis also shows that the loss due to violence is not just a one-off leakage from the macroeconomic circular flow and explores the potential consequences of the multiplier loss due to VAWG over a period of time. The cumulative loss is sizeable and inflicts a premium on GDP growth over time—in simple terms, inaction today in addressing VAWG for cost considerations will impose a larger cost premium on economic growth, which will constrain tomorrow’s resources.
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    Srinivas Raghavendra Kijong Kim Sinead Ashe Mrinal Chadha Felix Asante Petri T. Piiroinen Nata Duvvury
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  • Working Paper No. 938 | October 2019
    Nominal yields for Japanese government bonds (JGBs) have been remarkably low for several decades. Japanese government debt ratios have continued to increase amid a protracted period of stagnant nominal GDP, low inflation, and deflationary pressures. Many analysts are puzzled by the phenomenon of JGBs’ low nominal yields because Japanese government debt ratios are elevated. However, this paper shows that the Bank of Japan’s (BoJ) highly accommodative monetary policy is primarily responsible for keeping JGB yields low for a protracted period. This is consistent with Keynes’s view that the short-term interest rate is the key driver of the long-term interest rate. This paper also relates the BoJ’s monetary policy and economic developments in Japan to the evolution of JGBs’ long-term interest rates.

  • Working Paper No. 937 | October 2019
    Some Reflections
    There is a growing recognition that fundamental changes are happening in Indian fiscal federalism ex post the abolition of the Planning Commission, the creation of the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog, the constitutional amendment to introduce the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the establishment of the GST Council, and the historically high tax devolution to the states based on the 14th Finance Commission’s recommendations. Recently, policymakers and experts have raised a few issues, including: whether or not to make Finance Commissions “permanent” or to abolish them by making the tax devolution share constant through a constitutional amendment; the need for an institution to redress spatial inequalities in order to fill the vacuum created by abolishing the Planning Commission; and making the case for Article 282 of the constitution to be circumscribed. The debates are also focused on whether there is a need to establish a link between the GST Council and Finance Commissions, and if India should devise a mechanism of transfer that is predominantly based on sharing of grants for equalization of services rather than tax sharing. Creating a plausible framework for debt-deficit dynamics while keeping the fiscal autonomy of states intact and ensuring output gap reduction and public investment at the subnational level without creating disequilibrium were also other matters of concern. These debates are significant, especially when a group of states came together for the first time ever to question the terms of reference of the 15th Finance Commission amid growing tensions in federal-state relations in India.

  • Working Paper No. 936 | September 2019
    The Modern Money Theory Approach
    This paper will present the Modern Money Theory approach to government finance. In short, a national government that chooses its own money of account, imposes a tax in that money of account, and issues currency in that money of account cannot face a financial constraint. It can make all payments as they come due. It cannot be forced into insolvency. While this was well understood in the early postwar period, it was gradually “forgotten” as the neoclassical theory of the household budget constraint was applied to government finance. Matters were made worse by the development of “generational accounting” that calculated hundreds of trillions of dollars of government red ink through eternity due to “entitlements.” As austerity measures were increasingly adopted at the national level, fiscal responsibility was shifted to state and local governments through “devolution.” A “stakeholder” approach to government finance helped fuel white flight to suburbs and produced “doughnut holes” in the cities. To reverse these trends, we need to redevelop our understanding of the fiscal space open to the currency issuer—expanding its responsibility not only for national social spending but also for helping to fund state and local government spending. This is no longer just an academic debate, given the challenges posed by climate change, growing inequality, secular stagnation, and the rise of Trumpism.

  • Working Paper No. 935 | August 2019
    A Liquidity Preference Theoretical Perspective
    This paper investigates the peculiar macroeconomic policy challenges faced by emerging economies in today’s monetary (non)order and globalized finance. It reviews the evolution of the international monetary and financial architecture against the background of Keynes’s original Bretton Woods vision, highlighting the US dollar’s hegemonic status. Keynes’s liquidity preference theory informs the analysis of the loss of policy space and widespread instabilities in emerging economies that are the consequence of financial hyperglobalization. While any benefits promised by mainstream promoters remain elusive, heightened vulnerabilities have emerged in the aftermath of the global crisis.

  • Working Paper No. 934 | August 2019
    This paper analyzes the dynamics of long-term US Treasury security yields from a Keynesian perspective using daily data. Keynes held that the short-term interest rate is the main driver of the long-term interest rate. In this paper, the daily changes in long-term Treasury security yields are empirically modeled as a function of the daily changes in the short-term interest rate and other important financial variables to test Keynes’s hypothesis. The use of daily data provides a long time series. It enables the extension of earlier Keynesian models of Treasury security yields that relied on quarterly and monthly data. Models based on higher-frequency daily data from financial markets—such as the ones presented in this paper—can be valuable to investors, financial analysts, and policymakers because they make it possible for a real-time fundamental assessment of the daily changes in long-term Treasury security yields based on a wide range of financial variables from a Keynesian perspective. The empirical findings of this paper support Keynes’s view by showing that the daily changes in the short-term interest rate are the main driver of the daily changes in the long-term interest rate on Treasury securities. Other financial variables, such as the daily changes in implied volatility of equity prices and the daily changes in the exchange rate, are found to have some influence on Treasury yields.

  • Working Paper No. 933 | July 2019
    Making Sense of the Barro-Ricardo Equivalence in a Financialized World
    The 2008 crisis created a need to rethink many aspects of economic theory, including the role of public intervention in the economy. On this issue, we explore the Barro-Ricardo equivalence, which has played a decisive role in molding the economic policies that fostered the crisis. We analyze the equivalence and its theoretical underpinnings, concluding that: (1) it declares, but then forgets, that it does not matter whether the nature of debt and investment is public or private; (2) its most problematic assumption is the representative agent hypothesis, which does not allow for an explanation of financialization and cannot assess dangers coming from high levels of financial leverage; (3) social wealth cannot be based on any micro-foundation and is linked to the role of the state as provider of financial stability; and (4) default is always the optimal policy for the government, and this remains true even when relaxing many equivalence assumptions. We go on to discuss possible solutions to high levels of public debt in the real world, inferring that no general conclusions are possible and every solution or mix of solutions must be tailored to each specific case. We conclude by connecting different solutions to the political balance of forces in the current era of financialization, using Italy (and, by extension, the eurozone) as a concrete example to better illustrate the discussion.
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    Lorenzo Esposito Giuseppe Mastromatteo
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  • Working Paper No. 932 | June 2019
    Local government debt in China is increasing and presents a great threat to China’s financial stability. In China’s fiscal system, the central government often prioritizes reducing its fiscal deficit and can determine to a great extent the distribution of revenue and expenditure between itself and local governments. There is therefore a tendency for the fiscal burden to be shifted from the central government to the local governments. Resolving China’s local government debt problem requires not only strengthening regulation, but also abandoning the central government’s fiscal balance target, because this target may make regulation hard to sustain in times of economic downturn. This paper discusses central-local fiscal relations in the framework of Modern Money Theory, suggesting that, because a government with currency sovereignty can always afford any spending denominated in its own currency, China’s central government should bear a greater fiscal burden.
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    Zengping He Genliang Jia
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  • Working Paper No. 931 | May 2019
    This paper follows the methodology developed by J. M. Keynes in his How to Pay for the War pamphlet to estimate the “costs” of the Green New Deal (GND) in terms of resource requirements. Instead of simply adding up estimates of the government spending that would be required, we assess resource availability that can be devoted to implementing GND projects. This includes mobilizing unutilized and underutilized resources, as well as shifting resources from current destructive and inefficient uses to GND projects. We argue that financial affordability cannot be an issue for the sovereign US government. Rather, the problem will be inflation if sufficient resources cannot be diverted to the GND. And if inflation is likely, we need to put in place anti-inflationary measures, such as well-targeted taxes, wage and price controls, rationing, and voluntary saving. Following Keynes, we recommend deferred consumption as our first choice should inflation pressures arise. We conclude that it is likely that the GND can be phased in without inflation, but if price pressures do appear, deferring a small amount of consumption will be sufficient to attenuate them.

  • Working Paper No. 930 | May 2019
    This paper describes the application of a semiparametric approach, known as a varying coefficients model (Hastie and Tibshirani 1993), to implement a Oaxaca-Blinder type of decomposition in the presence of self-selection into treatment groups for a continuum of comparison groups. The flexibility of this methodology may allow for detecting heterogeneity of the role of endowment and coefficient effects when analyzing endogenous dose treatments. The methodology is then used to revisit the impact of obesity on wages (Cawley 2004), using body mass index (BMI) as the continuous group variable. The results suggest that body weight does have a negative impact on wages for white women, but the impact decreases for higher BMI levels. For white men, the impact is also negative and significant, but positive for low levels of BMI, which explains why they are not significant in the linear instrumental variables approach.

  • Working Paper No. 929 | May 2019
    Increases in the federal funds rate aimed at stabilizing the economy have inevitably been followed by recessions. Recently, peaks in the federal funds rate have occurred 6–16 months before the start of recessions; reductions in interest rates apparently occurred too late to prevent those recessions. Potential leading indicators include measures of labor productivity, labor utilization, and demand, all of which influence stock market conditions, the return to capital, and changes in the federal funds rate, among many others. We investigate the dynamics of the spread between the 10-year Treasury rate and the federal funds rate in order to better understand “when to ease off the (federal funds) brakes.”

  • Working Paper No. 928 | May 2019
    In the Western interpretation of democracy, governments exist in order to manage relations of property, with absence of property ownership leading to exclusion from participation in governance and, in many cases, absence of equal treatment before the law. Democratizing money will therefore ensure equal opportunity to the ownership of property, and thus full participation in the democratic governance of society, as well as equal access to the banking system, which finances the creation of capital via the creation of money. If the divergence between capital and labor—between rich and poor—is explained by the monopoly access of capitalists to finance, then reducing this divergence is crucially dependent on the democratization of money. Though the role of money and finance in determining inequality between capital and labor transcends any particular understanding of the process by which the creation of money leads to inequity, specific proposals for the democratization of money will depend on the explanation of how money comes into existence and how it supports capital accumulation.

  • Working Paper No. 927 | April 2019
     Methods for Analyzing the Determinants of Poverty and Inequality
    Recentered influence functions (RIFs) are statistical tools popularized by Firpo, Fortin, and Lemieux (2009) for analyzing unconditional partial effects on quantiles in a regression analysis framework (unconditional quantile regressions). The flexibility and simplicity of these tools has opened the possibility of extending the analysis to other distributional statistics using linear regressions or decomposition approaches. In this paper, I introduce three Stata commands to facilitate the use of RIFs in the analysis of outcome distributions: rifvar() is an egen extension used to create RIFs for a large set of distributional statistics;  rifhdreg facilitates the estimation of RIF regressions, enabling the use of high-dimensional fixed effects; and oaxaca_rif to implement  Oaxaca-Blinder type decomposition analysis (RIF decompositions).

  • Working Paper No. 926 | April 2019
    Lessons for Monetary Unions
    The debate about the use of fiscal instruments for macroeconomic stabilization has regained prominence in the aftermath of the Great Recession, and the experience of a monetary union equipped with fiscal shock absorbers, such as the United States, has often been a reference. This paper enhances our knowledge about the degree of macroeconomic stabilization achieved in the United States through the federal budget, providing a detailed breakdown of the different channels. In particular, we investigate the relative importance and stabilization impact of the federal system of unemployment benefits and of its extension as a response to the Great Recession. The analysis shows that in the United States, corporate income taxes collected at the federal level are the single most efficient instrument for providing stabilization, given that even with a smaller size than other instruments they can provide important effects, mainly against common shocks. On the other hand, Social Security benefits and personal income taxes have a greater role in stabilizing asymmetric shocks. A federal system of unemployment insurance, then, can play an important stabilization role, in particular when enhanced by a discretionary program of extended benefits in the event of a large shock, like the Great Recession.

  • Working Paper No. 925 | April 2019
    This paper traces the history of China’s reform of its monetary policy framework and analyzes its success and problems. In the context of financial marketization and the failure of the quantity-targeting framework, the People’s Bank of China transformed its monetary policy framework toward one that targets interest rates. The reform includes two important institutional changes: establishing an interest rate corridor and decreasing the difficulty the Open Market Operations room faces in estimating the market demand for reserves. The new monetary policy framework successfully stabilizes the interbank offered rate. However, this does not mean that the new framework is sufficient. One important problem remaining to be solved is how to manage the effects of fiscal activities on monetary policy operations. This paper analyzes the fiscal effects on reserves in China’s Treasury Single Account system. The missing role of the Treasury in monetary policy operations increases the difficulty for the central bank to achieve its interest rate target. A further reform is therefore needed to provide a coordination mechanism between the Treasury and the People’s Bank of China.
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    Zengping He Genliang Jia
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  • Working Paper No. 924 | February 2019
    The paper builds on the concept of (shifting) involvements, originally proposed by Albert
    Hirschman (2002 [1982]). However, unlike Hirschman, the concept is framed in class terms. A model is presented where income distribution is determined by the involvement of the two classes, capitalists and workers. Higher involvement by capitalists and lower involvement by workers tends to increase the profit share and vice versa. In turn, shifts in involvements are induced by the potential effect of a change in distribution on economic activity and past levels of distribution. On the other hand, as the profit share increases, the economy tends to become more wage led. The dynamics of the resulting model are interesting. The more the two classes prioritize the increase of their income share over economic activity, the more possible it is that the economy is unstable. Under the stable configuration, the most likely outcome is Polanyian predator-prey cycles, which can explain some interesting historical episodes during the 20th century. Finally, the paper discusses the possibility of conflict and cooperation within each of the distribution-led regimes.

  • Working Paper No. 923 | February 2019
    The New Deal and Postwar France Experiments
    By the beginning of the 20th century, the possibility and efficacy of economic planning was believed to have been proven by totalitarian experiments in Germany, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser degree, Fascist Italy; however, the possibilities and limitations of planning in capitalist democracies was unclear. The challenge in the United States in the 1930s and in postwar France was to find ways to make planning work under capitalism and democratic conditions, where private agents were free to not accept its directives.
     
    This paper begins by examining the experience with planning during the first years of the New Deal in the United States, centered on the creation and operation of the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), and continues with a discussion of the French experience with indicative planning in the aftermath of World War II. A digression follows, touching on the proximity between the matters treated in this paper and Keynes’s view that macroeconomic stabilization could require a measure of socialization of investments, following James Tobin’s hunch that French indicative planning, as well as some social democrat experiences in Northern Europe, could be playing precisely that role. The paper concludes by identifying the lessons one can draw from the two experiences.

  • Working Paper No. 922 | February 2019
    Exploring the Causes and Consequences of Education-Occupation Job Mismatch
    With the rapid increase in educational attainment, technological change, and greater job specialization, decisions regarding human capital investment are no longer exclusively about the quantity of education, but rather the type of education to obtain. The skills and knowledge acquired in specific fields of study are more valuable for some jobs compared to others, which suggests the existence of differences in the quality of the education-occupation match in the labor market. With this premise in mind, this paper aims to estimate the effect of the quality of this education-occupation job match on workers’ wages and to explore the factors that contribute to the existence of such mismatch among workers with higher education (college or more). Using data from the American Community Survey 2010–16, we construct two indices that measure the quality of the education-occupation match: based on the predicted and observed distribution of workers using their fields of education and their jobs’ occupation classification. Results suggest there is a wage gap of around 3–4 percent when comparing workers that have good job matches to those who have bad matches. Given the importance of the penalty for mismatched jobs, we find that structural characteristics such as unemployment, and individual characteristics such as gender, race, immigration status, and even homeownership affect the quality of horizontal mismatch as well.
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    Author(s):
    Fernando Rios-Avila Fabiola Saavedra Caballero
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  • Working Paper No. 921 | January 2019
    This paper is a comparison between two programs implemented to combat poverty in Latin America: Prospera (Prosper) in Mexico and Asignación Universal por Hijo (Universal Assignment for Child) in Argentina.
     
    The first section offers a review of the emergence of the welfare state, examining economic and urban development in both countries and the underlying trends of social policy instruments.
     
    The analysis is based on the political nature of social problems and the actions undertaken to confront them. The paper offers a theoretical perspective, often questioning the very foundation of the social policy that serves as the main framework for the social programs, in order to present the policies’ scope, successes, and disadvantages with reference to social equity and the well-being of their participants.

  • Working Paper No. 920 | January 2019
    Efficacy of Gender Budgeting in Asia Pacific
    Gender budgeting is a fiscal approach that seeks to use a country’s national and/or local budget(s) to reduce inequality and promote economic growth and equitable development. While the literature has explored the connection between reducing gender inequality and achieving growth and equitable development, more empirical analysis is needed on whether gender budgeting reduces gender inequality. Our study follows the methodology of Stotsky and Zaman (2016) to investigate the impact of gender budgeting on promoting gender equality across Asia Pacific countries. The study classifies Asia Pacific countries as gender budgeting or non-gender budgeting according to whether they have formalized gender budgeting initiatives in laws and/or budget call circulars. To measure the effect of gender budgeting on reducing inequality, we measure the correlation between gender budgeting and the Gender Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Inequality Index (GII) scores in each country. The data for our gender inequality variables are mainly drawn from the IMF database on gender indicators and the World Development Indicators database over the 1990–2013 period. Our results show that gender budgeting has a significant effect on increasing the GDI and a small but significant potential to reduce the GII, strengthening the rationale for employing gender budgeting to promote inclusive development. However, our empirical results show no prioritization of gender budgeting in the fiscal space of health and education sectors in the region.
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    Author(s):
    Lekha S. Chakraborty Marian Ingrams Yadawendra Singh
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  • Working Paper No. 919 | January 2019
    While the literature on theoretical macroeconomic models adopting the stock-flow-consistent (SFC) approach is flourishing, few contributions cover the methodology for building a SFC empirical model for a whole country. Most contributions simply try to feed national accounting data into a theoretical model inspired by Wynne Godley and Marc Lavoie (2007), albeit with different degrees of complexity.
     
    In this paper we argue instead that the structure of an empirical SFC model should start from a careful analysis of the specificities of a country’s sectoral balance sheets and flow of funds data, given the relevant research question to be addressed. We illustrate our arguments with examples for Greece, Italy, and Ecuador.
     
    We also provide some suggestions on how to consistently use the financial and nonfinancial accounts of institutional sectors, showing the link between SFC accounting structures and national accounting rules.

  • Working Paper No. 918 | December 2018
    Divergent trends, as observed, between growth in the financial and real sectors of the global economy entail the need for further research, especially on the motivations behind investment decisions. Investments in market economies are generally guided by call-put option pricing models—which rely on an ergodic notion of probability that conforms to a normal distribution function. This paper considers critiques of the above models, which include Keynes’s Treatise on Probability (1921) and the General Theory (1936), as well as follow-ups in the post-Keynesian approaches and others dealing with “fundamental uncertainty.” The methodological issues, as can be pointed out, are relevant in the context of policy issues and social institutions, including those subscribed to by the ruling state. As it has been held in variants of institutional economics subscribed to by John Commons, Thorstein Veblen, Geoffrey Hodgeson, and John Kenneth Galbraith, social institutions remain important in their capacity as agencies that influence individual behavior with their “informational-cognitive” functions in society. By shaping business concerns and strategies, social institutions have a major impact on investment decisions in a capitalist system. The role of such institutions in investment decisions via policy making is generally neglected in strategies based on mainstream economics, which continue to rely on optimization of stock market returns based on imprecise estimations of probability.

  • Working Paper No. 917 | October 2018
    Lauchlin Currie and Hyman Minsky on Financial Systems and Crises
    In November 1987, Hyman Minsky visited Bogotá, Colombia, after being invited by a group of professors who at that time were interested in post-Keynesian economics. There, Minsky delivered some lectures, and Lauchlin Currie attended two of those lectures at the National University of Colombia. Although Currie is not as well-known as Minsky in the American academy, both are outstanding figures in the development of non-orthodox approaches to monetary economics. Both alumni of the economics Ph.D. program at Harvard had a debate in Bogotá. Unfortunately, there are no formal records of this, so here a question arises: What could have been their respective positions? The aim of this paper is to discuss Currie’s and Minsky’s perspectives on monetary economics and to speculate on what might have been said during their debate.
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    Author(s):
    Iván D. Velasquez
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  • Working Paper No. 916 | October 2018
    Seigniorage as Fiscal Revenue in the Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis
    This study investigates the evolution of central bank profits as fiscal revenue (or: seigniorage) before and in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008–9, focusing on a select group of central banks—namely the Bank of England, the United States Federal Reserve System, the Bank of Japan, the Swiss National Bank, the European Central Bank, and the Eurosystem (specifically Deutsche Bundesbank, Banca d’Italia, and Banco de España)—and the impact of experimental monetary policies on central bank profits, profit distributions, and financial buffers, and the outlook for these measures going forward as monetary policies are seeing their gradual “normalization.”
     
    Seigniorage exposes the connections between currency issuance and public finances, and between monetary and fiscal policies. Central banks’ financial independence rests on seigniorage, and in normal times seigniorage largely derives from the note issue supplemented by “own” resources. Essentially, the central bank’s income-earning assets represent fiscal wealth, a national treasure hoard that supports its central banking functionality. This analysis sheds new light on the interdependencies between monetary and fiscal policies.
     
    Just as the size and composition of central bank balance sheets experienced huge changes in the context of experimental monetary policies, this study’s findings also indicate significant changes regarding central banks’ profits, profit distributions, and financial buffers in the aftermath of the crisis, with considerable cross-country variation.

  • Working Paper No. 915 | September 2018
    The Great Recession had a devastating impact on labor force participation and employment. This impact was not unlike other recessions, except in size. The recovery, however, has been unusual not so much for its sluggishness but for the unusual pattern of recovery in employment by race. The black employment–population ratio has increased since bottoming out in 2010, while the white employment–population ratio has remained flat. This paper examines trends in labor force participation and employment by race, sex, and age and determines that the explanation is a combination of an aging white population and an increase in labor force participation among younger black people. It estimates the likelihood of labor force participation and employment among young men and women to control for confounding factors (such as changes in educational characteristics) and decomposes the gaps among groups and the changes over time in labor force participation using a Oaxaca-Blinder-like technique for nonlinear estimations. Findings indicate that much smaller negative impacts of characteristics and greater returns to characteristics among young black men and women than among young white men and women explain the observed trends.

  • Working Paper No. 914 | September 2018
    This paper describes the quality of the statistical matching between the March 2014 supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the 2013 American Time Use Survey (ATUS) and Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), which are used as the basis for the 2013 Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-Being (LIMEW) estimates for the United States. In the first part of the paper, the alignment of the datasets is examined. In the second, various aspects of the match quality are described. The results indicate that the matches are of high quality, with some indication of bias in specific cases.

  • Working Paper No. 913 | August 2018
    There is no disputing Germany’s dominant economic role within the eurozone (EZ) and the broader European Union. Economic leadership, however, entails responsibilities, especially in a world system of monetary production economies that compete with each other according to political and economic interests. In the first section of this paper, historical context is given to the United States’ undisputed leadership of monetary production economies following the end of World War II to help frame the broader discussion developed in the second section on the requirements of the leading nation-state in the new system of states after the war. The second section goes on further to discuss how certain constraints regarding the external balance do not apply to the leader of the monetary production economies. The third section looks at Hyman P. Minsky’s proposal for a shared burden between the hegemon and other core industrial economies in maintaining the stability of the international financial system. Section four looks at Germany’s leadership role within the EZ and how it must emulate some of the United States’ trade policies in order to make the EZ a viable economic bloc. The break up scenario is considered in the fifth section. The last section summarizes and concludes.

  • Working Paper No. 912 | August 2018
    This paper documents the sources of data used in the construction of the estimates of the Levy Institute Measure of Economic Wellbeing (LIMEW) for the years 1959, 1972, 1982, 1989, 1992, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2007, 2010, and 2013. It also documents the methods used to combine the various sources of data into the synthetic dataset used to produce each year’s LIMEW estimates.

  • Working Paper No. 911 | August 2018
    This paper reviews the performance of the euro area since the euro’s launch 20 years ago. It argues that the euro crisis has exposed existential flaws in the euro regime. Intra-area divergences and the corresponding buildup of imbalances had remained unchecked prior to the crisis. As those imbalances eventually imploded, member states were found to be extremely vulnerable to systemic banking problems and abruptly deteriorating public finances. Debt legacies and high unemployment continue to plague euro crisis countries. Its huge current account surplus highlights that the euro currency union, toiling under the German euro and trying to emulate the German model, has become very vulnerable to global developments. The euro regime is flawed and dysfunctional. Europe has to overcome the German euro. Three reforms are essential to turn the euro into a viable European currency. First, divergences in competitiveness positions must be prevented in future. Second, market integration must go hand in hand with policy integration. Third, the euro is lacking a safe footing for as long as the ECB is missing a federal treasury partner. Therefore, establishing the vital treasury–central bank axis that stands at the center of power in sovereign states is essential.

  • Working Paper No. 910 | August 2018
    An Empirical Analysis
    The short-term interest rate is the main driver of the Commonwealth of Australia government bonds’ nominal yields. This paper empirically models the dynamics of government bonds’ nominal yields using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach. Keynes held that the central bank exerts decisive influence on government bond yields because the central bank’s policy rate and other monetary policy actions determine the short-term interest rate, which in turn affects long-term government bonds’ nominal yields. The models estimated here show that Keynes’s conjecture applies in the case of Australian government bonds’ nominal yields. Furthermore, the effect of the budget balance ratio on government bond yields is small but statistically significant. However, there is no statistically discernable effect of the debt ratio on government bond yields.

  • Working Paper No. 909 | July 2018
    Applying Minsky’s Theory of Financial Fragility to International Markets
    This inquiry argues that the successful completion of the transition process in the post-Soviet economies is constrained by the prevailing social structure and low levels of technological progress, both of which require institutional reforms aimed at increasing growth in national income, productivity, and the degree of export competitiveness. Domestic policy implementation has not shown significant improvements on these fronts, given its short-term orientation, but instead resulted in stagnating growth rates, continuously accumulating levels of external debt, and decreasing living standards. The key to a successful completion of the transition process is therefore a combination of policies targeted at the dynamic transformation of production structures within an environment of financial stability and favorable macroeconomic conditions.

  • Working Paper No. 908 | June 2018
    Rethinking the Role of Money and Markets in the Global Economy
    Many of the hopes arising from the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall were still unrealized in 2010 and remain so today, especially in monetary policy and financial supervision. The major players that helped bring on the 2008 financial crisis still exist, with rising levels of moral hazard, including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the too-big-to-fail banks, and even AIG. In monetary policy, the Federal Reserve has only just begun to reduce its vastly increased balance sheet, while the European Central Bank has yet to begin. The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 imposed new conditions on but did not contract the greatly expanded federal safety net and failed to reduce the substantial increase in moral hazard. The larger budget deficits since 2008 were simply decisions to spend at higher levels instead of rational responses to the crisis. Only an increased reliance on market discipline in financial services, avoidance of Federal Reserve market interventions to rescue financial players while doing little or nothing for households and firms, and elimination of the Treasury’s backdoor borrowings that conceal the real costs of increasing budget deficits can enable the American public to achieve the meaningful improvements in living standards that were reasonably expected when the Berlin Wall fell.
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    W. Lee Hoskins Walker F. Todd
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  • Working Paper No. 907 | May 2018
    The paper discusses the Sraffian supermultiplier (SSM) approach to growth and distribution. It makes five points. First, in the short run the role of autonomous expenditure can be appreciated within a standard post-Keynesian framework (Kaleckian, Kaldorian, Robinsonian, etc.). Second, and related to the first, the SSM model is a model of the long run and has to be evaluated as such. Third, in the long run, one way that capacity adjusts to demand is through an endogenous adjustment of the rate of utilization. Fourth, the SSM model is a peculiar way to reach what Garegnani called the “Second Keynesian Position.” Although it respects the letter of the “Keynesian hypothesis,” it makes investment quasi-endogenous and subjects it to the growth of autonomous expenditure. Fifth, in the long run it is unlikely that “autonomous expenditure” is really autonomous. From a stock-flow consistent point of view, this implies unrealistic adjustments after periods of changes in stock-flow ratios. Moreover, if we were to take this kind of adjustment at face value, there would be no space for Minskyan financial cycles. This also creates serious problems for the empirical validation of the model.

  • Working Paper No. 906 | May 2018
    This paper employs a Keynesian perspective to explain why Japanese government bonds’ (JGBs) nominal yields have been low for more than two decades. It deploys several vector error correction (VEC) models to estimate long-term government bond yields. It shows that the low short-term interest rate, induced by the Bank of Japan’s (BoJ) accommodative monetary policy, is mainly responsible for keeping long-term JGBs’ nominal yields exceptionally low for a protracted period. The results also demonstrate that higher government debt and deficit ratios do not exert upward pressure on JGBs’ nominal yields. These findings are relevant to ongoing policy debates in Japan and other advanced countries about government bond yields, fiscal sustainability, fiscal policy, functional finance, monetary policy, and financial stability.

  • Working Paper No. 905 | May 2018
    The Vested Interests, Limits to Reform, and the Meaning of Liberal Democracy
    I subject some aspects of Roosevelt’s “New Deal” to critical analysis, with particular attention to what is termed “liberal democracy.” This analysis demonstrates the limits to reform, given the power of “vested interests” as articulated by Thorstein Veblen.
     
    While progressive economists and others are generally favorably disposed toward the New Deal, a critical perspective casts doubt on the progressive nature of the various programs instituted during the Roosevelt administrations. The main constraint that limited the framing and operation of these programs was that of maintaining liberal democracy. The New Deal was shaped by the institutional forces then dominant in the United States, including the segregationist system of the South. In the end, vested interests dictated what transpired, but what did transpire required a modification of the understanding of liberal democracy.

  • Working Paper No. 904 | May 2018
    This paper provides an empirical analysis of nonfinancial corporate debt in six large Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru), distinguishing between bond-issuing and non-bond-issuing firms, and assessing the debt’s macroeconomic implications. The paper uses a sample of 2,241 firms listed on the stock markets of their respective countries, comprising 34 sectors of economic activity for the period 2009–16. On the basis of liquidity, leverage, and profitability indicators, it shows that bond-issuing firms are in a worse financial position relative to non-bond-issuing firms. Using Minsky’s hedge/speculative/Ponzi taxonomy for financial fragility, we argue that there is a larger share of firms that are in a speculative or Ponzi position relative to the hedge category. Also, the share of hedge bond-issuing firms declines over time. Finally, the paper presents the results of estimating a nonlinear threshold econometric model, which demonstrates that beyond a leverage threshold, firms’ investment contracts while they increase their liquidity positions. This has important macroeconomic implications, since the listed and, in particular, bond-issuing firms (which tend to operate under high leverage levels) represent a significant share of assets and investment. This finding could account, in part, for the retrenchment in investment that the sample of countries included in the paper have experienced in the period under study and highlights the need to incorporate the international bond market in analyses of monetary transmission mechanisms.
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    Esteban Pérez Caldentey Nicole Favreau-Negront Luis Méndez Lobos
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  • Working Paper No. 903 | April 2018
    An Abstract of an Excerpt
    The dominant postwar tradition in economics assumes the utility maximization of economic agents drives markets toward stable equilibrium positions. In such a world there should be no endogenous asset bubbles and untenable levels of private indebtedness. But there are.
     
    There is a competing alternative view that assumes an endogenous behavioral propensity for markets to embark on disequilibrium paths. Sometimes these departures are dangerously far reaching. Three great interwar economists set out most of the economic theory that explains this natural tendency for markets to propagate financial fragility: Joseph Schumpeter, Irving Fisher, and John Maynard Keynes. In the postwar period, Hyman Minsky carried this tradition forward.  Early on he set out a “financial instability hypothesis” based on the thinking of these three predecessors. Later on, he introduced two additional dynamic processes that intensify financial market disequilibria: principal–agent distortions and mounting moral hazard. The emergence of a behavioral finance literature has provided empirical support to the theory of endogenous financial instability. Work by Vernon Smith explains further how disequilibrium paths go to asset bubble extremes. 
     
    The following paper provides a compressed account of this tradition of endogenous financial market instability.

  • Working Paper No. 902 | April 2018
    Design, Jobs, and Implementation
    The job guarantee (JG) is a public option for jobs. It is a permanent, federally funded, and locally administered program that supplies voluntary employment opportunities on demand for all who are ready and willing to work at a living wage. While it is first and foremost a jobs program, it has the potential to be transformative by advancing the public purpose and improving working conditions, people’s everyday lives, and the economy as a whole.
     
    This working paper provides a blueprint for operationalizing the proposal. It addresses frequently asked questions and common concerns. It begins by outlining some of the core propositions in the existing literature that have motivated the JG proposal. These propositions suggest specific design and implementation features. (Some questions are answered in greater detail in appendix III). The paper presents the core objectives and expected benefits of the program, and suggests an institutional structure, funding mechanism, and project design and administration.

  • Working Paper No. 901 | March 2018
    A Critical Assessment
    During the period leading up to the recession of 2007–08, there was a large increase in household debt relative to income, a large increase in measured consumption as a fraction of GDP, and a shift toward more unequal income distribution. It is sometimes claimed that these three developments were closely linked. In these stories, the rise in household debt is largely due to increased borrowing by lower-income households who sought to maintain rising consumption in the face of stagnant incomes; this increased consumption in turn played an important role in maintaining aggregate demand. In this paper, I ask if this story is consistent with the empirical evidence. In particular, I ask five questions: How much household borrowing finances consumption spending? How much has monetary consumption spending by households increased? How much of the rise in household debt-income ratios is attributable to increased borrowing? How is household debt distributed by income? And how has the distribution of consumption spending changed relative to the distribution of income? I conclude that the distribution-debt-demand story may have some validity if limited to the housing boom period of 2002–07, but does not fit the longer-term rise in household debt since 1980.

  • Working Paper No. 900 | January 2018
    A Comparison of the Evolution of the Positions of Hyman Minsky and Abba Lerner
    This paper examines the views of Hyman Minsky and Abba Lerner on the functional finance approach to fiscal policy. It argues that the main principles of functional finance were relatively widely held in the immediate postwar period. However, with the rise of the Phillips curve, the return of the Quantity Theory, the development of the notion of a government budget constraint, and accelerating inflation at the end of the 1960s, functional finance fell out of favor. The paper compares and contrasts the evolution of the views of Minsky and Lerner over the postwar period, arguing that Lerner’s transition went further, as he embraced a version of Monetarism that emphasized the use of monetary policy over fiscal policy. Minsky’s views of functional finance became more nuanced, in line with his Institutionalist approach to the economy. However, Minsky never rejected his early beliefs that countercyclical government budgets must play a significant role in stabilizing the economy. Thus, in spite of some claims that Minsky should not be counted as one of the “forefathers” of Modern Money Theory (MMT), this paper argues that it is Minsky, not Lerner, whose work remains essential for the further development of MMT.

  • Working Paper No. 899 | January 2018
    The goal of this paper is to examine the patterns and movements of the gender pay gaps in the countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU) and to place them in the context of advanced economies. We survey over 30 publications and conduct a meta-analysis of this literature. Gender pay gaps in the region are considerable and above the levels observed in advanced economies. Similar to advanced economies, industrial and occupational segregation widens the gaps in the FSU countries, whereas gender differences in educational attainment tend to shrink them. However, a much higher proportion of the gaps remain unexplained, pointing toward the role of unobserved gender differences related to actual and perceived productivity. Over the last 25 years, the gaps contracted in most FSU countries, primarily due to the reduction in the unexplained portion. Underlying the contraction at the mean are different movements in the gap across the pay distribution. Although the glass-ceiling effect has diminished in some FSU countries, it has persisted in others. We investigate the reasons underlying these findings and argue that the developments in the FSU region shed new light on our understanding of the gender pay gaps.

  • Working Paper No. 898 | October 2017
    The paper attempts to measure the incidence of corporate income tax in India under a general equilibrium setting. Using seemingly uncorrelated regression coefficients and dynamic panel estimates, we tried to analyze both the relative burden of corporate tax borne by capital and labor and the efficiency effects of corporate income tax. The data for the study is compiled from corporate firms listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) for the period 2000–15. Our empirical estimates suggest that in India capital bears more of the burden of corporate taxes than labor. Though it is contrary to the Harberger (1962) hypothesis that the burden of corporate tax is shifted to labor rather than capital, it confirms the existing empirical results in the context of India.
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    Lekha S. Chakraborty Samiksha Agarwal
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  • Working Paper No. 897 | September 2017
    Ever since the Great Recession, central banks have supplemented their traditional policy tool of setting the short-term interest rate with massive buyouts of assets to extend lines of credit and jolt flagging demand. As with many new policies, there have been a range of reactions from economists, with some extolling quantitative easing’s expansionary virtues and others fearing it might invariably lead to overvaluation of assets, instigating economic instability and bubble behavior. To investigate these theories, we combine elements of the models in chapters 5, 10, and 11 of Godley and Lavoie’s (2007) Monetary Economics with equations for quantitative easing and endogenous bubbles in a new model. By running the model under a variety of parameters, we study the causal links between quantitative easing, asset overvaluation, and macroeconomic performance. Preliminary results suggest that rather than being pro- or countercyclical, quantitative easing acts as a sort of phase shift with respect to time.
     

  • Working Paper No. 896 | September 2017
    An Empirical Analysis of Electricity Distribution Companies in Brazil (2007–15)
    The present paper applies Hyman P. Minsky’s insights on financial fragility in order to analyze the behavior of electricity distribution companies in Brazil from 2007 to 2015. More specifically, it builds an analytical framework to classify the firms operating in this sector into Minskyan risk categories and assess how financial fragility evolved over time, in each firm and in the sector as a whole. This work adapts Minsky’s financial fragility indicators and taxonomy to the conditions of the electricity distribution sector and applies them to regulatory accounting data for more than 60 firms. This empirical application of Minsky’s theory for analyzing firms engaged in the provision of public goods and services is a novelty. The results show an increase in the financial fragility of those firms (as well as the sector) throughout the period, especially between 2008 and 2013, even though the number of firms operating at the highest level of financial risk hardly changed.
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    Author(s):
    Ernani Teixeira Torres Filho Norberto Montani Martins Caroline Yukari Miaguti
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  • Working Paper No. 895 | August 2017
    This paper examines two key aspects of unemployment—its propagation mechanism and socioeconomic costs. It identifies a key feature of this macroeconomic phenomenon: it behaves like a disease. A detailed assessment of the transmission mechanism and the existing pecuniary and nonpecuniary costs of unemployment suggests a fundamental shift in the policy responses to tackling joblessness. To stem the contagion effect and its outsized social and economic impact, fiscal policy can be designed around two criteria for successful disease intervention—preparedness and prevention. The paper examines how a job guarantee proposal uniquely meets those two requirements. It is a policy response whose merits include much more than its macroeconomic stabilization features, as discussed in the literature. It is, in a sense, a method of inoculation against the vile effects of unemployment. The paper discusses several preventative features of the program.
     

  • Working Paper No. 894 | August 2017
    This paper undertakes an empirical inquiry concerning the determinants of long-term interest rates on US Treasury securities. It applies the bounds testing procedure to cointegration and error correction models within the autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) framework, using monthly data and estimating a wide range of Keynesian models of long-term interest rates. While previous studies have mainly relied on quarterly data, the use of monthly data substantially expands the number of observations. This in turn enables the calibration of a wide range of models to test various hypotheses. The short-term interest rate is the key determinant of the long-term interest rate, while the rate of core inflation and the pace of economic activity also influence the long-term interest rate. A rise in the ratio of the federal fiscal balance (government net lending/borrowing as a share of nominal GDP) lowers yields on long-term US Treasury securities. The short- and long-run effects of short-term interest rates, the rate of inflation, the pace of economic activity, and the fiscal balance ratio on long-term interest rates on US Treasury securities are estimated. The findings reinforce Keynes’s prescient insights on the determinants of government bond yields.
     

  • Working Paper No. 893 | July 2017
    If Adam Smith Is the Father of Economics, It Is a Bastard Child
    Neoclassical economists of the current era frequently pay lip service to Adam Smith’s theories to certify the validity of natural-laws-based, laissez-faire policies. However, neoclassical theories are fundamentally disconnected from Adam Smith’s notion of value, his understanding of the economic individual and their interactions in society, his methodology, and the field of study he afforded to political economy. Instead, early neoclassical economists parted ways with the theories of Adam Smith in an effort to construct economic laws that would validate the existing capitalist order as universal, natural, and harmonious.
     

  • Working Paper No. 892 | June 2017
    Standing on the Shoulders of Minsky

    Since the death of Hyman Minsky in 1996, much has been written about financialization. This paper explores the issues that Minsky examined in the last decade of his life and considers their relationship to that financialization literature. Part I addresses Minsky’s penetrating observations regarding what he called money manager capitalism. Part II outlines the powerful analytical framework that Minsky used to organize his thinking and that we can use to extend his work. Part III shows how Minsky’s observations and framework represent a major contribution to the study of financialization. Part IV highlights two keys to Minsky’s success: his treatment of economics as a grand adventure and his willingness to step beyond the world of theory. Part V concludes by providing a short recap, acknowledging formidable challenges facing scholars with a Minsky perspective, and calling attention to the glimmer of hope that offers a way forward.

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    Charles J. Whalen
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  • Working Paper No. 891 | May 2017
    A Survey

    The stock-flow consistent (SFC) modeling approach, grounded in the pioneering work of Wynne Godley and James Tobin in the 1970s, has been adopted by a growing number of researchers in macroeconomics, especially after the publication of Godley and Lavoie (2007), which provided a general framework for the analysis of whole economic systems, and the recognition that macroeconomic models integrating real markets with flow-of-funds analysis had been particularly successful in predicting the Great Recession of 2007–9. We introduce the general features of the SFC approach for a closed economy, showing how the core model has been extended to address issues such as financialization and income distribution. We next discuss the implications of the approach for models of open economies and compare the methodologies adopted in developing SFC empirical models for whole countries. We review the contributions where the SFC approach is being adopted as the macroeconomic closure of microeconomic agent-based models, and how the SFC approach is at the core of new research in ecological macroeconomics. Finally, we discuss the appropriateness of the name “stock-flow consistent” for the class of models we survey.

  • Working Paper No. 890 | May 2017
    Linking the State and Credit Theories of Money through a Financial Approach to Money

    The paper presents a financial approach to monetary analysis that links the credit and state theories of money. A premise of the functional approach to money is that “money is what money does.” In this approach, monetary and mercantile mechanics are conflated, which leads to the conclusion that unconvertible monetary instruments are worthless. The financial approach to money strictly separates the two mechanics and argues that major monetary disruptions occurred when the two were conflated. Monetary instruments have always been promissory notes. As such, their financial characteristics are central to their value and liquidity. One of the main financial requirements of any monetary instrument is that it be redeemable at any time. As long as this is the case, the fair value of an unconvertible monetary instrument is its face value. While the functional approach does not recognize the centrality of redemption, the paper shows that redemption plays a critical role in the state and credit views of money. Payments due to issuer and/or convertibility on demand are central to the possibility of par circulation. The paper shows that this has major implications for monetary analysis, both in terms of understanding monetary history and in terms of performing monetary analysis.

  • Working Paper No. 889 | May 2017

    This paper investigates the determinants of nominal yields of government bonds in the eurozone. The pooled mean group (PMG) technique of cointegration is applied on both monthly and quarterly datasets to examine the major drivers of nominal yields of long-term government bonds in a set of 11 eurozone countries. Furthermore, autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) methods are used to address the same question for individual countries. The results show that short-term interest rates are the most important determinants of long-term government bonds’ nominal yields, which supports Keynes’s (1930) view that short-term interest rates and other monetary policy measures have a decisive influence on long-term interest rates on government bonds.

  • Working Paper No. 888 | April 2017

    Using data from the 2003–14 American Time Use Survey (ATUS), this paper examines the relationship between the state unemployment rate and the time that opposite-sex couples with children spend on childcare activities, and how this varies by the socioeconomic status (SES), race, and ethnicity of the mothers and fathers. The time that mothers and fathers spend providing primary and secondary child caregiving, solo time with children, and any time spent as a family are considered. To explore the impact of macroeconomic conditions on the amount of time parents spend with children, the time-use data are combined with the state unemployment rate data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The analysis finds that the time parents spend on child-caregiving activities or with their children varies with the unemployment rate in low-SES households, African-American households, and Hispanic households. Given that job losses were disproportionately high for workers with no college degree, African-Americans, and Hispanics during the Great Recession, the results suggest that the burden of household adjustment during the crisis fell disproportionately on the households most affected by the recession.

  • Working Paper No. 887 | March 2017
    Job Creation in the Midst of Welfare State Sabotage

    President Trump’s faux populism may deliver some immediate short-term benefits to the economy, masking the devastating long-term effects from his overall policy strategy. The latter can be termed “welfare state sabotage” and is a wholesale assault on essential public sector institutions and macroeconomic stabilization features that were built during the New Deal era and ushered in the “golden age” of the American economy. Starting in the late ’70s, many of these institutions were significantly eroded by Republicans and Democrats alike, paving the way for the rise of Trump but paling in comparison with what is to come.

  • Working Paper No. 886 | March 2017

    This paper investigates the (lack of any lasting) impact of John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory on economic policymaking in Germany. The analysis highlights the interplay between economic history and the history of ideas in shaping policymaking in postwar (West) Germany. The paper argues that Germany learned the wrong lessons from its own history and misread the true sources of its postwar success. Monetary mythology and the Bundesbank, with its distinctive anti-inflationary bias, feature prominently in this collective odyssey. The analysis shows that the crisis of the euro today is largely the consequence of Germany’s peculiar anti-Keynesianism.

  • Working Paper No. 885 | February 2017

    This paper presents the quality analysis of the statistical matching conducted for a research study on household consumption behavior, household indebtedness, and inequality for Turkey. The match has been done for four years (2005, 2008, 2009, and 2012) of Household Budget Surveys (HBS) and the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC). The aim of the statistical matching is to transfer household expenditure data from the HBS to the SILC to create synthetic data sets that have information on household consumption expenditures as well as household income and indebtedness. We are following the methodology of constrained statistical matching, using estimated propensity scores developed in Kum and Masterson (2010) to produce the synthetic data sets that we need. The analysis shows that the match is of high quality.

  • Working Paper No. 884 | February 2017
    Evidence from Turkey

    Using data from the 2006 Turkish Time-Use Survey, we examine gender differences in time allocation among married heterosexual couples over the life cycle. While we find large discrepancies in the gender division of both paid and unpaid work at each life stage, the gender gap in paid and unpaid work is largest among parents of infants compared to parents of older children and couples without children. The gender gap narrows as children grow up and parents age. Married women’s housework time remains relatively unchanged across their life cycle, while older men spend more time doing housework than their younger counterparts. Over the course of the life cycle, women’s total work burden increases relative to men’s. Placing our findings within the gendered institutional context in Turkey, we argue that gender-inequitable work-family reconciliation policies that are based on gendered assumptions of women’s role as caregivers exacerbate gender disparities in time use.

  • Working Paper No. 883 | February 2017
    An Empirical Analysis of G20 Countries

    This paper analyzes the effectiveness of public expenditures on economic growth within the analytical framework of comprehensive Neo-Schumpeterian economics. Using a fixed-effects model for G20 countries, the paper investigates the links between the specific categories of public expenditures and economic growth, captured in human capital formation, defense, infrastructure development, and technological innovation. The results reveal that the impact of innovation-related spending on economic growth is much higher than that of the other macro variables. Data for the study was drawn from the International Monetary Fund’s Government Finance Statistics database, infrastructure reports for the G20 countries, and the World Development Indicators issued by the World Bank.

  • Working Paper No. 882 | January 2017
    A Distributional Analysis of the Care Economy in Turkey

    This paper examines the aggregate and gender employment impact of expanding the early childhood care and preschool education (ECCPE) sector in Turkey and compares it to the expansion of the construction sector. The authors’ methodology combines input-output analysis with a statistical microsimulation approach. Their findings suggest that the expansion of the ECCPE sector creates more jobs and does so in a more gender-equitable way than an expansion of the construction sector. In particular, it narrows the gender employment and earnings gaps, generates more decent jobs, and achieves greater short-run fiscal sustainability.

  • Working Paper No. 881 | January 2017

    This paper investigates the long-term determinants of Indian government bonds’ (IGB) nominal yields. It examines whether John Maynard Keynes’s supposition that short-term interest rates are the key driver of long-term government bond yields holds over the long-run horizon, after controlling for various key economic factors such as inflationary pressure and measures of economic activity. It also appraises whether the government finance variable—the ratio of government debt to nominal income—has an adverse effect on government bond yields over a long-run horizon. The models estimated here show that in India, short-term interest rates are the key driver of long-term government bond yields over the long run. However, the ratio of government debt and nominal income does not have any discernible adverse effect on yields over a long-run horizon. These findings will help policymakers in India (and elsewhere) to use information on the current trend in short-term interest rates, the federal fiscal balance, and other key macro variables to form their long-term outlook on IGB yields, and to understand the implications of the government’s fiscal stance on the government bond market.

  • Working Paper No. 880 | January 2017
    Evidence from Measures of Economic Well-Being

    The Great Recession had a tremendous impact on low-income Americans, in particular black and Latino Americans. The losses in terms of employment and earnings are matched only by the losses in terms of real wealth. In many ways, however, these losses are merely a continuation of trends that have been unfolding for more than two decades. We examine the changes in overall economic well-being and inequality as well as changes in racial economic inequality over the Great Recession, using the period from 1989 to 2007 for historical context. We find that while racial inequality increased from 1989 to 2010, during the Great Recession racial inequality in terms of the Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-Being (LIMEW) decreased. We find that changes in base income, taxes, and income from nonhome wealth during the Great Recession produced declines in overall inequality, while only taxes reduced between-group racial inequality.

  • Working Paper No. 879 | December 2016

    This paper presents a methodological discussion of two recent “endogeneity” critiques of the Kaleckian model and the concept of distribution-led growth. From a neo-Keynesian perspective, and following Kaldor (1955) and Robinson (1956), the model is criticized because it treats distribution as quasi-exogenous, while in Skott (2016) distribution is viewed as endogenously determined by a series of (exogenous) institutional factors and social norms, and therefore one should focus on these instead of the functional distribution of income per se. The paper discusses how abstraction is used in science and economics, and employs the criteria proposed by Lawson (1989) for what constitutes an appropriate abstraction. Based on this discussion, it concludes that the criticisms are not valid, although the issues raised by Skott provide some interesting directions for future work within the Kaleckian framework.

  • Working Paper No. 878 | December 2016
    A Post-Keynesian/Evolutionist Critique

    This paper provides a critical analysis of expansionary austerity theory (EAT). The focus is on the theoretical weaknesses of EAT—the extreme circumstances and fragile assumptions under which expansionary consolidations might actually take place. The paper presents a simple theoretical model that takes inspiration from both the post-Keynesian and evolutionary/institutionalist traditions. First, it demonstrates that well-designed austerity measures hardly trigger short-run economic expansions in the context of expected long-lasting consolidation plans (i.e., when adjustment plans deal with remarkably high debt-to-GDP ratios), when the so-called “financial channel” is not operative (i.e., in the context of monetarily sovereign economies), or when the degree of export responsiveness to internal devaluation is low. Even in the context of non–monetarily sovereign countries (e.g., members of the eurozone), austerity’s effectiveness crucially depends on its highly disputable capacity to immediately stabilize fiscal variables.

    The paper then analyzes some possible long-run economic dynamics, emphasizing the high degree of instability that characterizes austerity-based adjustments plans. Path-dependency and cumulativeness make the short-run impulse effects of fiscal consolidation of paramount importance to (hopefully) obtaining any appreciable medium-to-long-run benefit. Should these effects be contractionary at the onset, the short-run costs of austerity measures can breed an endless spiral of recession and ballooning debt in the long run. If so, in the case of non–monetarily sovereign countries debt forgiveness may emerge as the ultimate solution to restore economic soundness. Alternatively, institutional innovations like those adopted since mid-2012 by the European Central Bank are required to stabilize the economy, even though they are unlikely to restore rapid growth in the absence of more active fiscal stimuli.

  • Working Paper No. 877 | November 2016

    Against the background of modern-day monetary proposals, ranging from a return to the gold standard to the wholesale abolition of currency, this paper seeks to draw implications from David Ricardo’s Proposals for an Economical and Secure Currency for plans to reform the operation of central banks and extraordinary monetary policy. Although 200 years old, the “Ingot plan,” proposed during a period in which gold convertibility was suspended, appears to be applicable to modern monetary conditions and suggests possible avenues of reform.

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    Jan Kregel
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  • Working Paper No. 876 | October 2016
    The Fed’s Unjustified Rationale

    In December 2015, the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) initiated the process of “normalization,” with the objective of gradually raising the federal funds rate back to “normal”—i.e., levels that are “neither expansionary nor contrary” and are consistent with the established 2 percent longer-run goal for the annual Personal Consumption Expenditures index and the estimated natural rate of unemployment. This paper argues that the urgency and rationale behind the rate hikes are not theoretically sound or empirically justified. Despite policymakers’ celebration of “substantial” labor market progress, we are still short some 20 million jobs. Further, there is no reason to believe that the current exceptionally low inflation rates are transitory. Quite the contrary: without significant fiscal efforts to restore the bargaining power of labor, inflation rates are expected to remain below the Federal Open Market Committee’s long-term goal for years to come. Also, there is little empirical evidence or theoretical support for the FRB’s suggestion that higher interest rates are necessary to counter “excessive” risk-taking or provide a more stable financial environment.

  • Working Paper No. 875 | September 2016
    A Global Cap to Build an Effective Postcrisis Banking Supervision Framework

    The global financial crisis shattered the conventional wisdom about how financial markets work and how to regulate them. Authorities intervened to stop the panic—short-term pragmatism that spoke volumes about the robustness of mainstream economics. However, their very success in taming the collapse reduced efforts to radically change the “big bank” business model and lessened the possibility of serious banking reform—meaning that a strong and possibly even bigger financial crisis is inevitable in the future. We think an overall alternative is needed and at hand: Minsky’s theories on investment, financial stability, the growing weight of the financial sector, and the role of the state. Building on this legacy, it is possible to analyze which aspects of the post-2008 reforms actually work. In this respect, we argue that the only effective solution is to impose a global cap on the absolute size of banks.

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    Giuseppe Mastromatteo Lorenzo Esposito
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  • Working Paper No. 874 | September 2016
    Is There a Case for Gender-sensitive Horizontal Fiscal Equalization?

    This paper seeks to evaluate whether a gender-sensitive formula for the inter se devolution of union taxes to the states makes the process more progressive. We have used the state-specific child sex ratio (the number of females per thousand males in the age group 0–6 years) as one of the criteria for the tax devolution. The composite devolution formula as constructed provides maximum rewards to the state with the most favorable child-sex ratio, and the rewards progressively decline along with the declining sex ratio. In this formulation, the state with the most unfavorable child-sex ratio is penalized the most in terms of its share in the horizontal devolution. It is observed that the inclusion of gender criteria makes the intergovernmental fiscal transfers formula more equitable across states. This is not surprising given the monotonic decline in the sex ratio in some of the most high-income states in India.

  • Working Paper No. 873 | September 2016

    This document presents a description of the quality of match of the statistical matches used in the LIMTCP estimates prepared for Ghana and Tanzania. For Ghana, the statistical match combines the Living Standards Survey Round 6 (GLSS6) with the Ghana Time Use Survey (GTUS) 2009, and for Tanzania it combines the Household Budget Survey (THBS) 2012 with the time-use data obtained from the Integrated Labor Survey Module (ILFS) 2006. In both cases, the alignment of the two datasets is examined, after which various aspects of the match quality are described. Despite the differences in the survey years, the quality of match is high and the synthetic dataset appropriate for the time poverty analysis.

  • Working Paper No. 872 | August 2016
    Do Fiscal Rules Impose Hard Budget Constraints?

    The primary objective of rule-based fiscal legislation at the subnational level in India is to achieve debt sustainability by placing a ceiling on borrowing and the use of borrowed resources for public capital investment by phasing out deficits in the budget revenue account. This paper examines whether the application of fiscal rules has contributed to an increase in fiscal space for public capital investment spending in major Indian states. Our analysis shows that, controlling for other factors, there is a negative relationship between fiscal rules and public capital investment spending at the state level under the rule-based fiscal regime.

  • Working Paper No. 871 | August 2016

    New methodology for producing employment microsimulations is introduced, with a focus on farms and household nonfarm enterprises. Previous simulations have not dealt with the issue of reduced production in farm and nonfarm household enterprises when household members are placed in paid employment. In this paper, we present a method for addressing the tradeoff between paid employment and the farm and nonfarm business activities individuals may already be engaged in. The implementation of the simulations for Ghana and Tanzania is described and the quality of the simulation results is assessed.

  • Working Paper No. 870 | August 2016
    The Effect of Immigration on Unemployment Transitions of Native-born Workers in the United States

    Although one would expect the unemployed to be the population most likely affected by immigration, most of the studies have concentrated on investigating the effects immigration has on the employed population. Little is known of the effects of immigration on labor market transitions out of unemployment. Using the basic monthly Current Population Survey from 2001–13 we match data for individuals who were interviewed in two consecutive months and identify workers who transition out of unemployment. We employ a multinomial model to examine the effects of immigration on the transition out of unemployment, using state-level immigration statistics. The results suggest that immigration does not affect the probabilities of native-born workers finding a job. Instead, we find that immigration is associated with smaller probabilities of remaining unemployed, but it is also associated with higher probabilities of workers leaving the labor force. This effect impacts mostly young and less educated people.

  • Working Paper No. 869 | June 2016
    Phases of Financialization within the 20th Century in the United States

    This paper explores from a historical perspective the process of financialization over the course of the 20th century. We identify four phases of financialization: the first, from the 1900s to 1933 (early financialization); the second, from 1933 to 1940 (transitory phase); the third, between 1945 and 1973 (definancialization); and the fourth period begins in the early 1970s and leads to the Great Recession (complex financialization). Our findings indicate that the main features of the current phase of financialization were already in place in the first period. We closely examine institutions within these distinct financial regimes and focus on the relative size of the financial sector, the respective regulation regime of each period, and the intensity of the shareholder value orientation, as well as the level of financial innovations implemented. Although financialization is a recent term, the process is far from novel. We conclude that its effects can be studied better with reference to economic history.

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    Apostolos Fasianos Diego Guevara Christos Pierros
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  • Working Paper No. 868 | June 2016
    The ECB’s Belated Conversion?

    This paper investigates the European Central Bank’s (ECB) monetary policies. It identifies an antigrowth bias in the bank’s monetary policy approach: the ECB is quick to hike, but slow to ease. Similarly, while other players and institutional deficiencies share responsibility for the euro’s failure, the bank has generally done “too little, too late” with regard to managing the euro crisis, preventing protracted stagnation, and containing deflation threats. The bank remains attached to the euro area’s official competitive wage–repression strategy, which is in conflict with the ECB’s price stability mandate and undermines its more recent, unconventional monetary policy initiatives designed to restore price stability. The ECB needs a “Euro Treasury” partner to overcome the euro regime’s most serious flaw: the divorce between central bank and treasury institutions.

  • Working Paper No. 867 | May 2016

    This paper examines the issue of the Greek public debt from different perspectives. We provide a historical discussion of the accumulation of Greece’s public debt since the 1960s and the role of public debt in the recent crisis. We show that the austerity imposed since 2010 has been unsuccessful in stabilizing the debt while at the same time taking a heavy toll on the Greek economy and society. The experience of the last six years shows that the country’s public debt is clearly unsustainable, and therefore a bold restructuring is needed. An insistence on the current policies is not justifiable either on pragmatic or on moral or any other grounds. The experience of Germany in the early post–World War II period provides some useful hints for the way forward. A solution to the Greek public debt problem is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the solution of the Greek and wider European crisis. A broader agenda that deals with the malaises of the Greek economy and the structural imbalances of the eurozone is of vital importance.

  • Working Paper No. 866 | May 2016
    Proposals for the Eurozone Crisis

    After reviewing the main determinants of the current eurozone crisis, this paper discusses the feasibility of introducing fiscal currencies as a way to restore fiscal space in peripheral countries, like Greece, that have so far adopted austerity measures in order to abide by their commitments to eurozone institutions and the International Monetary Fund. We show that the introduction of fiscal currencies would speed up the recovery, without violating the rules of eurozone treaties. At the same time, these processes could help transition the euro from its current status as the single currency to the status of “common clearing currency,” along the lines proposed by John Maynard Keynes at Bretton Woods as a system of international monetary payments. Eurozone countries could therefore move from “Plan B,” aimed at addressing member-state domestic problems, to a “Plan A” for a better European monetary system.

  • Working Paper No. 865 | May 2016
    Why Time Deficits Matter

    We describe the production of estimates of the Levy Institute Measure of Time and Income Poverty (LIMTIP) for Buenos Aires, Argentina, and use it to analyze the incidence of time and income poverty. We find high numbers of hidden poor—those who are not poor according to the official measure but are found to be poor when using our time-adjusted poverty line. Large time deficits for those living just above the official poverty line are the reason for this hidden poverty. Time deficits are unevenly distributed by employment status, family type, and especially gender. Simulations of the impact of full-time employment on those households with nonworking (for pay) adults indicate that reductions in income poverty can be achieved, but at the cost of increased time poverty. Policy interventions that address the lack of both income and time are discussed.

  • Working Paper No. 864 | April 2016

    In this paper we analyze options for the European Central Bank (ECB) to achieve its single mandate of price stability. Viable options for price stability are described, analyzed, and tabulated with regard to both short- and long-term stability and volatility. We introduce an additional tool for promoting price stability and conclude that public purpose is best served by the selection of an alternative buffer stock policy that is directly managed by the ECB.

  • Working Paper No. 863 | March 2016

    US government indebtedness and fiscal deficits increased notably following the global financial crisis. Yet long-term interest rates and US Treasury yields have remained remarkably low. Why have long-term interest rates stayed low despite the elevated government indebtedness? What are the drivers of long-term interest rates in the United States? John Maynard Keynes holds that the central bank’s actions are the main determinants of long-term interest rates. A simple model is presented where the central bank’s actions are the key drivers of long-term interest rates through short-term interest rates and various monetary policy measures. The empirical findings reveal that short-term interest rates, after controlling for other crucial variables such as the rate of inflation, the rate of economic activity, fiscal deficits, government debts, and so forth, are the most important determinants of long-term interest rates in the United States. Public finance variables, such as government fiscal balances or government indebtedness, as a share of nominal GDP appear not to have any discernable effect on long-term interest rates.

  • Working Paper No. 862 | March 2016

    Japan has experienced stagnation, deflation, and low interest rates for decades. It is caught in a liquidity trap. This paper examines Japan’s liquidity trap in light of the structure and performance of the country’s economy since the onset of stagnation. It also analyzes the country’s liquidity trap in terms of the different strands in the theoretical literature. It is argued that insights from a Keynesian perspective are still quite relevant. The Keynesian perspective is useful not just for understanding Japan’s liquidity trap but also for formulating and implementing policies that can overcome the liquidity trap and foster renewed economic growth and prosperity. Paul Krugman (1998a, b) and Ben Bernanke (2000; 2002) identify low inflation and deflation risks as the cause of a liquidity trap. Hence, they advocate a credible commitment by the central bank to sustained monetary easing as the key to reigniting inflation, creating an exit from a liquidity trap through low interest rates and quantitative easing. In contrast, for John Maynard Keynes (2007 [1936]) the possibility of a liquidity trap arises from a sharp rise in investors’ liquidity preference and the fear of capital losses due to uncertainty about the direction of interest rates. His analysis calls for an integrated strategy for overcoming a liquidity trap. This strategy consists of vigorous fiscal policy and employment creation to induce a higher expected marginal efficiency of capital, while the central bank stabilizes the yield curve and reduces interest rate volatility to mitigate investors’ expectations of capital loss. In light of Japan’s experience, Keynes’s analysis and proposal for generating effective demand might well be a more appropriate remedy for the country’s liquidity trap.

  • Working Paper No. 861 | March 2016

    Money, in this paper, is defined as a power relationship of a specific kind, a stratified social debt relationship, measured in a unit of account determined by some authority. A brief historical examination reveals its evolving nature in the process of social provisioning. Money not only predates markets and real exchange as understood in mainstream economics but also emerges as a social mechanism of distribution, usually by some authority of power (be it an ancient religious authority, a king, a colonial power, a modern nation state, or a monetary union). Money, it can be said, is a “creature of the state” that has played a key role in the transfer of real resources between parties and the distribution of economic surplus.

    In modern capitalist economies, the currency is also a simple public monopoly. As long as money has existed, someone has tried to tamper with its value. A history of counterfeiting, as well as that of independence from colonial and economic rule, is another way of telling the history of “money as a creature of the state.” This historical understanding of the origins and nature of money illuminates the economic possibilities under different institutional monetary arrangements in the modern world. We consider the so-called modern “sovereign” and “nonsovereign” monetary regimes (including freely floating currencies, currency pegs, currency boards, dollarized nations, and monetary unions) to examine the available policy space in each case for pursuing domestic policy objectives.

    This working paper is also available in Spanish and Catalan.

  • Working Paper No. 860 | February 2016
    Brazil at the Mid-2010s

    The Brazilian economy in 2015 was afflicted by a lethal combination of decelerating activity and accelerating inflation. Expectations for 2016 are equally or even more adverse, since the effects of rising unemployment emerge only after a lag. The domestic debate has pitted analysts who believe the crisis is due exclusively to past policy mistakes against those who believe that all was well until the government decided to implement austerity policies in 2015. A closer examination of the evidence shows that, in fact, both causes contributed to the crisis. But it also suggests that its depth has a more proximate cause in the political collapse of the federal government in 2015, which led Brazilian society to an impasse for which one cannot yet visualize the solution.

  • Working Paper No. 859 | February 2016
    A Technical Articulation for Asia-Pacific

    Against the backdrop of the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development, this paper analyzes the measurement issues in gender-based indices constructed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and suggests alternatives for choice of variables, functional form, and weights. While the UNDP Gender Inequality Index (GII) conceptually reflects the loss in achievement due to inequality between men and women in three dimensions—health, empowerment, and labor force participation—we argue that the assumptions and the choice of variables to capture these dimensions remain inadequate and erroneous, resulting in only the partial capture of gender inequalities. Since the dimensions used for the GII are different from those in the UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI), we cannot say that a higher value in the GII represents a loss in the HDI due to gender inequalities. The technical obscurity remains how to interpret GII by combining women-specific indicators with indicators that are disaggregated for both men and women. The GII is a partial construct, as it does not capture many significant dimensions of gender inequality. Though this requires a data revolution, we tried to reconstruct the GII in the context of Asia-Pacific using three scenarios: (1) improving the set of variables incorporating unpaid care work, pay gaps, intrahousehold decision making, exposure to knowledge networks, and feminization of governance at local levels; (2) constructing a decomposed index to specify the direction of gender gaps; and (3) compiling an alternative index using Principal Components Index for assigning weights. The choice of countries under the three scenarios is constrained by data paucity. The results reveal that the UNDP GII overestimates the gap between the two genders, and that using women-specific indicators leads to a fallacious estimation of gender inequality. The estimates are illustrative. The implication of the results broadly suggests a return to the UNDP Gender Development Index for capturing gender development, with an improvised set of choices and variables.

  • Working Paper No. 858 | January 2016

    The collapse of the Soviet Union initiated an unprecedented social and economic transformation of the successor countries and altered the gender balance in a region that counted gender equality as one of the key legacies of its socialist past. The transition experience of the region has amply demonstrated that the changes in the gender balance triggered by economic shifts are far from obvious, and that economic expansion and women’s economic empowerment do not always go hand in hand. Therefore, active measures to enhance women’s economic empowerment should be of central concern to the policy dialogue aimed at poverty and inequality reduction and inclusive growth. In this paper, we establish the current state of various dimensions of gender inequalities and their past dynamics in the countries of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), South Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia), and Western CIS (Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine), and propose steps aimed at reducing those inequalities in the context of inclusive growth, decent job creation, and economic empowerment.

  • Working Paper No. 857 | December 2015

    This paper describes the transformations in federal classification of ethno-racial information since the civil rights era of the 1960s. These changes were introduced in the censuses of 1980 and 2000, and we anticipate another major change in the 2020 Census. The most important changes in 1980 introduced the Hispanic Origin and Ancestry questions and the elimination of two questions on parental birthplace. The latter decision has made it impossible to adequately track the progress of the new second generation. The change in 2000 allowed respondents to declare origins in more than one race; the anticipated change for 2020 will create a single question covering race and Hispanic Origin—or, stated more broadly, race and ethnic origin. We show that the 1980 changes created problems in race and ethnic classification that required a “fix,” and the transformation anticipated for 2020 will be that fix. Creating the unified question in the manner the Census Bureau is testing will accomplish by far the hardest part of what we believe should be done. However, we suggest two additional changes of a much simpler nature: restoring the parental birthplace questions (to the annual American Community Survey) and possibly eliminating the Ancestry question (the information it gathered will apparently now be obtained in the single race-and-ethnicity question). The paper is historical in focus. It surveys how the classification system prior to 1980 dealt with the tension between ethno-racial continuity and assimilation (differently for each major type of group); how the political pressures producing the changes of 1980 and 2000 changed the treatment of that tension; and, finally, the building pressure for a further change.

  • Working Paper No. 856 | December 2015
    Evidence from Europe, 2006–13

    We examine the relationship between changes in a country’s public sector fiscal position and inequality at the top and bottom of the income distribution during the age of austerity (2006–13). We use a parametric Lorenz curve model and Gini-like indices of inequality as our measures to assess distributional changes. Based on the EU’s Statistics on Income and Living Conditions SLIC and International Monetary Fund data for 12 European countries, we find that more severe adjustments to the cyclically adjusted primary balance (i.e., more austerity) are associated with a more unequal distribution of income driven by rising inequality at the top. The data also weakly suggest a decrease in inequality at the bottom. The distributional impact of austerity measures reflects the reliance on regressive policies, and likely produces increased incentives for rent seeking while reducing incentives for workers to increase productivity.

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    Markus P.A. Schneider Stephen Kinsella Antoine Godin
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  • Working Paper No. 855 | November 2015
    Debt, Central Banks, and Functional Finance

    The scientific reassessment of the economic role of the state after the crisis has renewed interest in Abba Lerner’s theory of functional finance (FF). A thorough discussion of this concept is helpful in reconsidering the debate on the nature of money and the origin of the business cycle and crises. It also allows a reevaluation of many policy issues, such as the Barro–Ricardo equivalence, the cause of inflation, and the role of monetary policy.

    FF, throwing a different light on these issues, can provide a sound foundation for discussing income, fiscal, and monetary policy rules in the right context of flexibility in the management of national budgets, assessing what kind of policies should be awarded priority, and the effectiveness of tackling the crisis with the different part of public budget. It also allows us to understand ways of increasing efficiency through public investment while reducing the total operational costs of firms. In the specific context of the eurozone, FF is useful for assessing the institutional framework of the euro and how to improve it in the face of protracted low growth, deflation, and weak public finances.

  • Working Paper No. 854 | November 2015
    Graph Theory and Macroeconomic Regimes in Stock-flow Consistent Modeling

    Standard presentations of stock-flow consistent modeling use specific Post Keynesian closures, even though a given stock-flow accounting structure supports various different economic dynamics. In this paper we separate the dynamic closure from the accounting constraints and cast the latter in the language of graph theory. The graph formulation provides (1) a representation of an economy as a collection of cash flows on a network and (2) a collection of algebraic techniques to identify independent versus dependent cash-flow variables and solve the accounting constraints. The separation into independent and dependent variables is not unique, and we argue that each such separation can be interpreted as an institutional structure or policy regime. Questions about macroeconomic regime change can thus be addressed within this framework.

    We illustrate the graph tools through application of the simple stock-flow consistent model, or “SIM model,” found in Godley and Lavoie (2007). In this model there are eight different possible dynamic closures of the same underlying accounting structure. We classify the possible closures and discuss three of them in detail: the “standard” Godley–Lavoie closure, where government spending is the key policy lever; an “austerity” regime, where government spending adjusts to taxes that depend on private sector decisions; and a “colonial” regime, which is driven by taxation.

  • Working Paper No. 853 | November 2015
    The Case of Colombia

    In recent years, Colombia has grown relatively rapidly, but it has been a biased growth. The energy sector (the “locomotora minero-energetica,” to use the rhetorical expression of President Juan Manuel Santos) grew much faster than the rest of the economy, while the manufacturing sector registered a negative rate of growth. These are classic symptoms of the well-known “Dutch disease,” but our purpose here is not to establish whether or not the Dutch disease exists, but rather to shed some light on the financial viability of several, simultaneous dynamics: (1) the existence of a traditional Dutch disease being due to a large increase in mining exports and a significant exchange rate appreciation; (2) a massive increase in foreign direct investment, particularly in the mining sector; (3) a rather passive monetary policy, aimed at increasing purchasing power via exchange rate appreciation; (4) and more recently, a large distribution of dividends from Colombia to the rest of the world and the accumulation of mounting financial liabilities. The paper shows that these dynamics constitute a potential danger for the stability of the Colombian economy. Some policy recommendations are also discussed.

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    Alberto Botta Antoine Godin Marco Missaglia
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  • Working Paper No. 852 | October 2015

    Long-term interest rates in advanced economies have been low since the global financial crisis. However, in the United States the Federal Reserve could begin to hike its policy rate, the federal funds target rate, before the end of the year. In the United Kingdom, the Bank of England could follow suit. What is the outlook for global long-term interest rates? What are the risks around interest rates? What can policymakers do to cure the malady of low interest rates? It is argued that global interest rates are likely to stay low in the remainder of this year and the first half of next year due to a combination of domestic and international factors, even if a few central banks gradually begin to tighten monetary policy. The cure for this malady lies in proactive fiscal policy and measures to support job growth. Boosting effective demand and promoting higher wages and real disposable income would help lift inflation rates close to their targets and raise long-term interest rates.

  • Working Paper No. 851 | October 2015
    A Stock-flow Consistent Model

    This paper presents a stock-flow consistent model+ of full-reserve banking. It is found that in a steady state, full-reserve banking can accommodate a zero-growth economy and provide both full employment and zero inflation. Furthermore, a money creation experiment is conducted with the model. An increase in central bank reserves translates into a two-thirds increase in demand deposits. Money creation through government spending leads to a temporary increase in real GDP and inflation. Surprisingly, it also leads to a permanent reduction in consolidated government debt. The claims that full-reserve banking would precipitate a credit crunch or excessively volatile interest rates are found to be baseless.

  • Working Paper No. 850 | October 2015

    We describe the medium-run macroeconomic effects and long-run development consequences of a financial Dutch disease that may take place in a small developing country with abundant natural resources. The first move is in financial markets. An initial surge in foreign direct investment targeting natural resources sets in motion a perverse cycle between exchange rate appreciation and mounting short- and medium-term capital flows. Such a spiral easily leads to exchange rate volatility, capital reversals, and sharp macroeconomic instability. In the long run, macroeconomic instability and overdependence on natural resource exports dampen the development of nontraditional tradable goods sectors and curtail labor productivity dynamics. We advise the introduction of constraints to short- and medium-term capital flows to tame exchange rate/capital flows boom-and-bust cycles. We support the implementation of a developmentalist monetary policy targeting competitive nominal and real exchange rates in order to encourage product and export diversification.

  • Working Paper No. 849 | October 2015
    A Micro- and Macroprudential Perspective

    Bank leverage ratios have made an impressive and largely unopposed return; they are mostly used alongside risk-weighted capital requirements. The reasons for this return are manifold, and they are not limited to the fact that bank equity levels in the wake of the global financial crisis (GFC) were exceptionally thin, necessitating a string of costly bailouts. A number of other factors have been equally important; these include, among others, the world’s revulsion with debt following the GFC and the eurozone crisis, and the universal acceptance of Hyman Minsky’s insights into the nature of the financial system and its role in the real economy. The best examples of the causal link between excessive debt, asset bubbles, and financial instability are the Spanish and Irish banking crises, which resulted from nothing more sophisticated than straightforward real estate loans. Bank leverage ratios are primarily seen as a microprudential measure that intends to increase bank resilience. Yet in today’s environment of excessive liquidity due to very low interest rates and quantitative easing, bank leverage ratios should also be viewed as a key part of the macroprudential framework. In this context, this paper discusses the role of leverage ratios as both microprudential and macroprudential measures. As such, it explains the role of the leverage cycle in causing financial instability and sheds light on the impact of leverage restraints on good bank governance and allocative efficiency.

  • Working Paper No. 848 | October 2015
    A Case Study of the Canadian Economy, 1935–75

    Historically high levels of private and public debt coupled with already very low short-term interest rates appear to limit the options for stimulative monetary policy in many advanced economies today. One option that has not yet been considered is monetary financing by central banks to boost demand and/or relieve debt burdens. We find little empirical evidence to support the standard objection to such policies: that they will lead to uncontrollable inflation. Theoretical models of inflationary monetary financing rest upon inaccurate conceptions of the modern endogenous money creation process. This paper presents a counter-example in the activities of the Bank of Canada during the period 1935–75, when, working with the government, it engaged in significant direct or indirect monetary financing to support fiscal expansion, economic growth, and industrialization. An institutional case study of the period, complemented by a general-to-specific econometric analysis, finds no support for a relationship between monetary financing and inflation. The findings lend support to recent calls for explicit monetary financing to boost highly indebted economies and a more general rethink of the dominant New Macroeconomic Consensus policy framework that prohibits monetary financing.

  • Working Paper No. 847 | October 2015
    A Post-Keynesian Interpretation of the Spanish Crisis

    The Spanish crisis is generally portrayed as resulting from excessive spending by households, associated with a housing bubble and/or excessive welfare spending beyond the economic possibilities of the country. We put forward a different hypothesis. We argue that the Spanish crisis resulted, in the main, from a widening deficit position in the nonfinancial corporate sector—the most important explanatory factor behind the country’s rising external imbalance—and a declining trend in profitability under a regime of financial liberalization and loose and unregulated lending practices. This paper argues that the central cause of the crisis is related to the nonfinancial corporate sector’s increasingly fragile financial position, which originated from the financial convergence that followed adoption of the euro.

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    Esteban Pérez Caldentey Matías Vernengo
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  • Working Paper No. 846 | October 2015
    Steindl after Summers

    The current debate on secular stagnation is suffering from some vagueness and several shortcomings. The same is true for the economic policy implications. Therefore, we provide an alternative view on stagnation tendencies based on Josef Steindl’s contributions. In particular, Steindl (1952) can be viewed as a pioneering work in the area of stagnation in modern capitalism. We hold that this work is not prone to the problems detected in the current debate on secular stagnation: It does not rely on the dubious notion of an equilibrium real interest rate as the equilibrating force of saving and investment at full employment levels, in principle, with the adjustment process currently blocked by the unfeasibility of a very low or even negative equilibrium rate. It is based on the notion that modern capitalist economies are facing aggregate demand constraints, and that saving adjusts to investment through income growth and changes in capacity utilization in the long run. It allows for potential growth to become endogenous to actual demand-driven growth. And it seriously considers the role of institutions and power relationships for long-run growth—and for stagnation.

  • Working Paper No. 845 | September 2015
    Assessing the ECB’s Crisis Management Performance and Potential for Crisis Resolution
    This study assesses the European Central Bank’s (ECB) crisis management performance and potential for crisis resolution. The study investigates the institutional and functional constraints that delineate the ECB’s scope for policy action under crisis conditions, and how the bank has actually used its leeway since 2007—or might do so in the future. The study finds that the ECB may well stand out positively when compared to other important euro-area or national authorities involved in managing the euro crisis, but that in general the bank did “too little, too late” to prevent the euro area from slipping into recession and protracted stagnation. The study also finds that expectations regarding the ECB’s latest policy initiatives may be excessively optimistic, and that proposals featuring the central bank as the euro’s savior through even more radical employment of its balance sheet are misplaced hopes. Ultimately, the euro’s travails can only be ended and the euro crisis resolved by shifting the emphasis toward fiscal policy; specifically, by partnering the ECB with a “Euro Treasury” that would serve as a vehicle for the central funding of public investment through the issuance of common Euro Treasury debt securities. 

  • Working Paper No. 844 | July 2015

    We present a model where the saving rate of the household sector, especially households at the bottom of the income distribution, becomes the endogenous variable that adjusts in order for full employment to be maintained over time. An increase in income inequality and the current account deficit and a consolidation of the government budget lead to a decrease in the saving rate of the household sector. Such a process is unsustainable because it leads to an increase in the household debt-to-income ratio, and maintaining it depends on some sort of asset bubble. This framework allows us to better understand the factors that led to the Great Recession and the dilemma of a repeat of this kind of unsustainable process or secular stagnation. Sustainable growth requires a decrease in income inequality, an improvement in the external position, and a relaxation of the fiscal stance of the government.

  • Working Paper No. 843 | July 2015

    This paper has two main objectives. The first is to propose a policy architecture that can prevent a very high public debt from resulting in a high tax burden, a government default, or inflation. The second objective is to show that government deficits do not face a financing problem. After these deficits are initially financed through the net creation of base money, the private sector necessarily realizes savings, in the form of either government bond purchases or, if a default is feared, “acquisitions” of new money.

  • Working Paper No. 842 | July 2015
    The Euro Treasury Plan

    The euro crisis remains unresolved and the euro currency union incomplete and extraordinarily vulnerable. The euro regime’s essential flaw and ultimate source of vulnerability is the decoupling of central bank and treasury institutions in the euro currency union. We propose a “Euro Treasury” scheme to properly fix the regime and resolve the euro crisis. This scheme would establish a rudimentary fiscal union that is not a transfer union. The core idea is to create a Euro Treasury as a vehicle to pool future eurozone public investment spending and to have it funded by proper eurozone treasury securities. The Euro Treasury could fulfill a number of additional purposes while operating mainly on the basis of a strict rule. The plan would also provide a much-needed fiscal boost to recovery and foster a more benign intra-area rebalancing.

  • Working Paper No. 841 | July 2015

    Marx’s theory of money is critiqued relative to the advent of fiat and electronic currencies and the development of financial markets. Specific topics of concern include (1) today’s identity of the money commodity, (2) possible heterogeneity of the money commodity, (3) the categories of land and rent as they pertain to the financial economy, (4) valuation of derivative securities, and (5) strategies for modeling, predicting, and controlling production and exchange of the money commodity and their interface with the real economy.

  • Working Paper No. 840 | July 2015

    A technical analysis shows that the doomsayers who support the euro at all costs and those who naively theorize that a single currency is the root of all evil are both wrong. A euro exit could be a way of getting back to growth, but at the same time it would entail serious risks, especially for wage earners. The most important lesson we can learn from the experience of the past is that the outcome, in terms of growth, distribution, and employment, depends on how a country remains in the euro; or, in the case of a euro exit, on the quality of the economic policies that are put in place once the country regains control of monetary and fiscal matters, rather than on abandoning the old exchange system as such. It all depends on how a country stays in the eurozone, or on how it leaves if need be.

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    Author(s):
    Riccardo Realfonzo Angelantonio Viscione
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  • Working Paper No. 839 | June 2015
    The Unit of Account, Inflation, Leverage, and Financial Fragility

    We hope to model financial fragility and money in a way that captures much of what is crucial in Hyman Minsky’s financial fragility hypothesis. This approach to modeling Minsky may be unique in the formal Minskyan literature. Namely, we adopt a model in which a psychological variable we call financial prudence (P) declines over time following a financial crash, driving a cyclical buildup of leverage in household balance sheets. High leverage or a low safe-asset ratio in turn induces high financial fragility (FF). In turn, the pathways of FF and capacity utilization (u) determine the probabilistic risk of a crash in any time interval. When they occur, these crashes entail discrete downward jumps in stock prices and financial sector assets and liabilities. To the endogenous government liabilities in Hannsgen (2014), we add common stock and bank loans and deposits. In two alternative versions of the wage-price module in the model (wage–Phillips curve and chartalist, respectively), the rate of wage inflation depends on either unemployment or the wage-setting policies of the government sector. At any given time t, goods prices also depend on endogenous markup and labor productivity variables. Goods inflation affects aggregate demand through its impact on the value of assets and debts. Bank rates depend on an endogenous markup of their own. Furthermore, in light of the limited carbon budget of humankind over a 50-year horizon, goods production in this model consumes fossil fuels and generates greenhouse gases.

    The government produces at a rate given by a reaction function that pulls government activity toward levels prescribed by a fiscal policy rule. Subcategories of government spending affect the pace of technical progress and prudence in lending practices. The intended ultimate purpose of the model is to examine the effects of fiscal policy reaction functions, including one with dual unemployment rate and public production targets, testing their effects on numerically computed solution pathways. Analytical results in the penultimate section show that (1) the model has no equilibrium (steady state) for reasons related to Minsky’s argument that modern capitalist economies possess a property that he called “the instability of stability,” and (2) solution pathways exist and are unique, given vectors of initial conditions and parameter values and realizations of the Poisson model of financial crises.

  • Working Paper No. 838 | May 2015
    Linkages and Their Implications

    Unpaid work, which falls outside of the national income accounts but within the general production boundary, is viewed as either “care” or as “work” by experts. This work is almost always unequally distributed between men and women, and if one includes both paid and unpaid work, women carry much more of the burden of work than men. This unequal distribution of work is unjust, and it implies a violation of the basic human rights of women. The grounds on which it is excluded from the boundary of national income accounts do not seem to be logical or valid. This paper argues that the exclusion reflects the dominance of patriarchal values and brings male bias into macroeconomics.

    This paper shows that there are multiple linkages between unpaid work and the conventional macroeconomy, and this makes it necessary to expand the boundary of conventional macroeconomics so as to incorporate unpaid work. The paper presents the two approaches: the valuation of unpaid work into satellite accounts, and the adoption of the triple “R” approach of recognition, reduction, and reorganization of unpaid work, recommended by experts. However, there is a need to go beyond these approaches to integrate unpaid work into macroeconomics and macroeconomic policies. Though some empirical work has been done in terms of integrating unpaid work into macro policies (for example, understanding the impacts of macroeconomic policy on paid and unpaid work), some sound theoretical work is needed on the dynamics of the linkages between paid and unpaid work, and how these dynamics change over time and space. The paper concludes that the time has come to recognize that unless unpaid work is included in macroeconomic analyses, they will remain partial and wrong. The time has also come to incorporate unpaid work into labor market analyses, and in the design of realistic labor and employment policies.

  • Working Paper No. 837 | May 2015
    A Keynes-Schumpeter-Minsky Synthesis

    This paper discusses the role that finance plays in promoting the capital development of the economy, with particular emphasis on the current situation of the United States and the United Kingdom. We define both “finance” and “capital development” very broadly. We begin with the observation that the financial system evolved over the postwar period, from one in which closely regulated and chartered commercial banks were dominant to one in which financial markets dominate the system. Over this period, the financial system grew rapidly relative to the nonfinancial sector, rising from about 10 percent of value added and a 10 percent share of corporate profits to 20 percent of value added and 40 percent of corporate profits in the United States. To a large degree, this was because finance, instead of financing the capital development of the economy, was financing itself. At the same time, the capital development of the economy suffered perceptibly. If we apply a broad definition—to include technological advances, rising labor productivity, public and private infrastructure, innovations, and the advance of human knowledge—the rate of growth of capacity has slowed.

    The past quarter century witnessed the greatest explosion of financial innovation the world had ever seen. Financial fragility grew until the economy collapsed into the global financial crisis. At the same time, we saw that much (or even most) of the financial innovation was directed outside the sphere of production—to complex financial instruments related to securitized mortgages, to commodities futures, and to a range of other financial derivatives. Unlike J. A. Schumpeter, Hyman Minsky did not see the banker merely as the ephor of capitalism, but as its key source of instability. Furthermore, due to “financialisation of the real economy,” the picture is not simply one of runaway finance and an investment-starved real economy, but one where the real economy itself has retreated from funding investment opportunities and is instead either hoarding cash or using corporate profits for speculative investments such as share buybacks. As we will argue, financialization is rooted in predation; in Matt Taibbi’s famous phrase, Wall Street behaves like a giant, blood-sucking “vampire squid.”

    In this paper we will investigate financial reforms as well as other government policy that is necessary to promote the capital development of the economy, paying particular attention to increasing funding of the innovation process. For that reason, we will look not only to Minsky’s ideas on the financial system, but also to Schumpeter’s views on financing innovation.

  • Working Paper No. 836 | April 2015

    This paper evaluates the presence of heterogeneity, by household type, in the elasticity of substitution between food expenditures and time and in the goods intensity parameter in the household food and eating production functions. We use a synthetic dataset constructed by statistically matching the American Time Use Survey and the Consumer Expenditure Survey. We establish the presence of heterogeneity in the elasticity of substitution and in the intensity parameter. We find that the elasticity of substitution is low for all household types.

  • Working Paper No. 835 | March 2015

    In recent years, Bolivia has experienced a series of economic and political transformations that have directly affected the labor markets, particularly the salaried urban sector. Real wages have shown strong increases across the distribution, while also presenting a decrease in inequality. Using an intertemporal decomposition approach, we find evidence that changes in demographic and labor market characteristics can explain only a small portion of the observed inequality decline. Instead, the results indicate that the decline in wage inequality was driven by the faster wage growth of usually low-paid jobs, and wage stagnation of jobs that require higher education or are in traditionally highly paid fields. While the evidence shows that the reduction in inequality is significant, we suggest that such an improvement might not be sustainable in the long run, since structural factors associated with productivity, such as workers’ level of education, explain only a small portion of these wage changes.

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    Gustavo Canavire-Bacarreza Fernando Rios-Avila
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  • Working Paper No. 834 | March 2015

    John Maynard Keynes held that the central bank’s actions determine long-term interest rates through short-term interest rates and various monetary policy measures. His conjectures about the determinants of long-term interest rates were made in the context of advanced capitalist economies, and were based on his views on ontological uncertainty and the formation of investors’ expectations. Are these conjectures valid in emerging markets, such as India? This paper empirically investigates the determinants of changes in Indian government bonds’ nominal yields. Changes in short-term interest rates, after controlling for other crucial variables such as changes in the rates of inflation and economic activity, take a lead role in driving changes in the nominal yields of Indian government bonds. This vindicates Keynes’s theories, and suggests that his views on long-term interest rates are also applicable to emerging markets. Higher fiscal deficits do not appear to raise government bond yields in India. It is further argued that Keynes’s conjectures about investors’ outlooks, views, and expectations are fairly robust in a world of ontological uncertainty.

  • Working Paper No. 833 | February 2015
    A Blueprint for Reform
    If emerging markets are to achieve their objective of joining the ranks of industrialized, developed countries, they must use their economic and political influence to support radical change in the international financial system. This working paper recommends John Maynard Keynes’s “clearing union” as a blueprint for reform of the international financial architecture that could address emerging market grievances more effectively than current approaches.
     
    Keynes’s proposal for the postwar international system sought to remedy some of the same problems currently facing emerging market economies. It was based on the idea that financial stability was predicated on a balance between imports and exports over time, with any divergence from balance providing automatic financing of the debit countries by the creditor countries via a global clearinghouse or settlement system for trade and payments on current account. This eliminated national currency payments for imports and exports; countries received credits or debits in a notional unit of account fixed to national currency. Since the unit of account could not be traded, bought, or sold, it would not be an international reserve currency. The credits with the clearinghouse could only be used to offset debits by buying imports, and if not used for this purpose they would eventually be extinguished; hence the burden of adjustment would be shared equally—credit generated by surpluses would have to be used to buy imports from the countries with debit balances. Emerging market economies could improve upon current schemes for regionally governed financial institutions by using this proposal as a template for the creation of regional clearing unions using a notional unit of account. 

  • Working Paper No. 832 | February 2015
    The Contributions of John F. Henry
    This paper explores the rise of money and class society in ancient Greece, drawing historical and theoretical parallels to the case of ancient Egypt. In doing so, the paper examines the historical applicability of the chartalist and metallist theories of money. It will be shown that the origins and the evolution of money were closely intertwined with the rise and consolidation of class society and inequality. Money, class society, and inequality came into being simultaneously, so it seems, mutually reinforcing the development of one another. Rather than a medium of exchange in commerce, money emerged as an “egalitarian token” at the time when the substance of social relations was undergoing a fundamental transformation from egalitarian to class societies. In this context, money served to preserve the façade of social and economic harmony and equality, while inequality was growing and solidifying. Rather than “invented” by private traders, money was first issued by ancient Greek states and proto-states as they aimed to establish and consolidate their political and economic power. Rather than a medium of exchange in commerce, money first served as a “means of recompense” administered by the Greek city-states as they strived to implement the civic conception of social justice. While the origins of money are to be found in the origins of inequality, a well-functioning democratic society has the power to subvert the inequality-inducing characteristic of money via the use of money for public purpose, following the principles of Modern Money Theory (MMT). When used according to the principles of MMT, the inequality-inducing characteristic of money could be undermined, while the current trends in rising income and wealth disparities could be contained and reversed. 

  • Working Paper No. 831 | January 2015
    The Market Creating and Shaping Roles of State Investment Banks

    Recent decades witnessed a trend whereby private markets retreated from financing the real economy, while, simultaneously, the real economy itself became increasingly financialized. This trend resulted in public finance becoming more important for investments in capital development, technical change, and innovation. Within this context, this paper focuses on the roles played by a particular source of public finance: state investment banks (SIBs). It develops a conceptual typology of the different roles that SIBs play in the economy, which together show the market creation/shaping process of SIBs rather than their mere “market fixing” roles. This paper discusses four types of investments, both theoretically and empirically: countercyclical, developmental, venture capitalist, and challenge led. To develop the typology, we first discuss how standard market failure theory justifies the roles of SIBs, the diagnostics and evaluation toolbox associated with it, and resulting criticisms centered on notions of “government failures.” We then show the limitations of this approach based on insights from Keynes, Schumpeter, Minsky, and Polanyi, as well as other authors from the evolutionary economics tradition, which help us move toward a framework for public investments that is more about market creating/shaping than market fixing. As frameworks lead to evaluation tools, we use this new lens to discuss the increasingly targeted investments that SIBs are making, and to shed new light on the usual criticisms that are made about such directed activity (e.g., crowding out and picking winners). The paper ends with a proposal of directions for future research.

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    Author(s):
    Mariana Mazzucato Caetano C.R. Penna
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  • Working Paper No. 830 | January 2015

    This paper describes the quality of the statistical match between the Current Population Survey (CPS) March 2011 supplement and the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) 2011, which are used for the integrated inequality assessment model for the United States. In the first part of this paper, the alignment of the datasets is examined. In the second, various aspects of the match quality are described. The results show appropriate balance across different characteristics, with some imbalances within narrow characteristics.

  • Working Paper No. 829 | January 2015

    Before the global financial crisis, the assistance of a lender of last resort was traditionally thought to be limited to commercial banks. During the crisis, however, the Federal Reserve created a number of facilities to support brokers and dealers, money market mutual funds, the commercial paper market, the mortgage-backed securities market, the triparty repo market, et cetera. In this paper, we argue that the elimination of specialized banking through the eventual repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (GSA) has played an important role in the leakage of the public subsidy intended for commercial banks to nonbank financial institutions. In a specialized financial system, which the GSA had helped create, the use of the lender-of-last-resort safety net could be more comfortably limited to commercial banks.

    However, the elimination of GSA restrictions on bank-permissible activities has contributed to the rise of a financial system where the lines between regulated and protected banks and the so-called shadow banking system have become blurred. The existence of the shadow banking universe, which is directly or indirectly guaranteed by banks, has made it practically impossible to confine the safety to the regulated banking system. In this context, reforming the lender-of-last-resort institution requires fundamental changes within the financial system itself.

  • Working Paper No. 828 | January 2015
    The Indian Case

    Financialization creates space for the financial sector in economies, and in doing so helps to raise the share of financial assets in the portfolios held by market participants. Largely driven by deregulation, the process works to make financial assets relatively attractive as compared to other assets, by offering both better returns and potential capital gains. Both the trend toward a more financialized economy and the expected returns on financial investments have provided incentives to corporate managers to invest larger sums in financial assets, resulting in growth of the share of financial assets relative to other assets held in portfolios. Assets held in the financial sector, however, failed to generate asset growth for the corporates. The need to obtain resources by borrowing in order to meet current liabilities reflects a pattern of Ponzi finance on their part. This paper traces the above pattern in corporate holdings of assets and its implications, with emphasis on the Indian economy.

  • Working Paper No. 827 | January 2015
    Early Work on Endogenous Money and the Prudent Banker

    In this paper, I examine whether Hyman P. Minsky adopted an endogenous money approach in his early work—at the time that he was first developing his financial instability approach. In an earlier piece (Wray 1992), I closely examined Minsky’s published writings to support the argument that, from his earliest articles in 1957 to his 1986 book (as well as a handout he wrote in 1987 on “securitization”), he consistently held an endogenous money view. I’ll refer briefly to that published work. However, I will devote most of the discussion here to unpublished early manuscripts in the Minsky archive (Minsky 1959, 1960, 1970). These manuscripts demonstrate that in his early career Minsky had already developed a deep understanding of the nature of banking. In some respects, these unpublished pieces are better than his published work from that period (or even later periods) because he had stripped away some institutional details to focus more directly on the fundamentals. It will be clear from what follows that Minsky’s approach deviated substantially from the postwar “Keynesian” and “monetarist” viewpoints that started from a “deposit multiplier.” The 1970 paper, in particular, delineates how Minsky’s approach differs from the “Keynesian” view as presented in mainstream textbooks. Further, Minsky’s understanding of banking in those years appears to be much deeper than that displayed three or four decades later by much of the post-Keynesian endogenous-money literature.

  • Working Paper No. 826 | January 2015

    Following a methodology proposed by Jantzen and Volpert (2012), we use IRS Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) data for the United States (1921–2012) to estimate two Gini-like indices representing inequality at the bottom and the top of the income distribution. We also calculate the overall Gini index as a function of the parameters underlying the two indices. Our findings can be summarized as follows. First, we find that the increase in the Gini index from the mid 1940s to the late 1970s seems to be mostly explained by an increase in inequality at the bottom of the income distribution, which more than offsets the decrease in inequality at the top. The implication is that middle incomes gained relative to high incomes, but especially relative to low incomes. Conversely, it is rising inequality at the top that appears to drive the rise in the Gini index since 1981. Second, inequality at the top of the income distribution follows a U-shaped trajectory over time, similar to the pattern of the share of top incomes documented by Piketty and Saez (2003, 2006) and Atkinson, Piketty, and Saez (2011). Third, the welfare effects of the different forces behind an increasing Gini index can be evaluated in light of the Lorenz-dominance criterion proposed by Atkinson (1970): both top-driven and bottom-driven increases in the index appear not to imply strict Lorenz dominance by previous income distributions, and therefore are not associated with lower welfare in an absolute sense. In a relative sense, however, once average growth rates over the two periods are taken into account, the top-driven increase in inequality since 1981 appears to have been welfare reducing.

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    Author(s):
    Markus P.A. Schneider Daniele Tavani
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  • Working Paper No. 825 | January 2015
    What Should BNDES Do?

    The 2007–8 global financial crisis has shown the failure of private finance to efficiently allocate capital to finance real capital development. The resilience and stability of Brazil’s financial system has received attention, since it navigated relatively smoothly through the Great Recession and the collapse of the shadow banking system. This raises the question of whether it is possible that the alternative approaches followed by some developing countries might provide an indication of more stable regulatory approaches generally. There has been much discussion about how to support private long-term finance in order to meet Brazil’s growing infrastructure and investment needs. One of the essential functions of the financial system is to provide the long-term funding needed for long-lived and expensive capital assets. However, one of the main difficulties of the current private financial system is its failure to provide long-term financing, as the short-termism in Brazil’s financial market is a major obstacle to financing long-term assets. In its current form, the National Economic and Social Development Bank (BNDES) is the main source of long-term funding in the country. However, BNDES has been subject to a range of criticisms, such as crowding out private sector bank lending, and it is said to be hampering the development of the local capital market. This paper argues that, rather than following the traditional approach to justify the existence of public banks—and BNDES in particular, based on market failures—finding an effective answer to this question requires a theory of financial instability.

  • Working Paper No. 824 | January 2015