Publications

In-progress research by Levy Institute scholars as well as outside contributors

1126 publications found, searching for 'Working Paper '

• Working Paper No. 1057 October 09, 2024

  Rise and Fall of Mexican Super Peso: Heterodox Perspective versus Orthodoxy

  Laura Lisset Montiel-Orozco
  Abstract

  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 […]

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• Working Paper No. 1056 October 07, 2024

  Federal Tax Transfers and Demographic Transition: Balancing Equity and Efficiency

  Lekha S. Chakraborty, and Yadawendra Singh
  Abstract

  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. […]

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• Working Paper No. 1055 September 18, 2024

  The Relation Between Budget Deficits and Growth: Complicated but Clear

  L. Randall Wray, and Eric Lin
  Abstract

  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 […]

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• Working Paper No. 1054 June 28, 2024

  Gender-Responsive Public Financial Management: The Indian Chronology of Gender Budgeting

  Lekha S. Chakraborty
  Abstract

  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 […]

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• Working Paper No. 1053 June 07, 2024

  Foreign Deficit and Economic Policy: The Case of Mexico

  Arturo Huerta G.
  Abstract

  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 […]

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• Working Paper No. 1052 June 05, 2024

  Exchange-Rate Stability Causes Deterioration of the Productive Sphere and Destabilizes Developing Economies

  Arturo Huerta G.
  Abstract

  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 […]

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• Working Paper No. 1051 May 10, 2024

  Euro Interest Rate Swap Yields: Some ARDL Models

  Tanweer Akram, and Khawaja Mamun
  Abstract

  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 […]

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• Working Paper No. 1050 May 07, 2024

  Macroeconomic Effects of a Government Overdraft on Its Central Bank Account

  Tarron Khemraj
  Abstract

  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 […]

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• Working Paper No. 1049 May 07, 2024

  Deindustrialization from the Center Perspective: US Trade and Manufacturing in the Last Two Decades

  Nikolaos Rodousakis, Giuliano Toshiro Yajima, and George Soklis
  Abstract

  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 […]

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• Working Paper No. 1048 April 19, 2024

  An Empirical Analysis of Swedish Government Bond Yields

  Tanweer Akram, and Mahima Yadav
  Abstract

  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 […]

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• Working Paper No. 1047 April 08, 2024

  “Just Transition” in India and Fiscal Stance: Analyzing the Tax Buoyancy of the Extractive Sector

  Lekha S. Chakraborty, and Emmanuel Thomas
  Abstract

  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 […]

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• Working Paper No. 1046 March 07, 2024

  The Aggregate Production Function and Solow’s “Three Denials”

  Jesus Felipe, and John McCombie
  Abstract

  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 […]

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• Working Paper No. 1045 March 07, 2024

  Social Security and Gender Inequality

  Liudmila Malyshava, and B. Oak McCoy
  Abstract

  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 […]

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• Working Paper No. 1044 February 23, 2024

  Empirical Models of Chinese Government Bond Yields

  Tanweer Akram, and Shahida Pervin
  Abstract

  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 […]

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• Working Paper No. 1043 February 14, 2024

  Interest Rate Dynamics: An Examination of Mainstream and Keynesian Empirical Studies

  Tanweer Akram, and Khawaja Mamun
  Abstract

  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 […]

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• Working Paper No. 1042 February 13, 2024

  Saving Social Security

  Edward Lane
  Abstract

  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 […]

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• Working Paper No. 1040 February 02, 2024

  COP28 and Environmental Federalism: Empirical Evidence from an Emerging Economy, India

  Lekha S. Chakraborty, Amandeep Kaur, Ranjan Kumar Mohanty, Divy Rangan, and Sanjana Das
  Abstract

  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 […]

• Working Paper No. 1039 February 02, 2024

  Can the Philippines attain 6.5–8 Percent Growth During 2023–28?

  Jesus Felipe, and Manuel L. Albis
  Abstract

  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 […]

• Working Paper No. 1041 February 02, 2024

  Amazon Green Recovery and Labor Market in Brazil

  Luiza Nassif Pires, Gilberto Tadeu Lima, Pedro Romero Marques, Tainari Taioka, and José Bergamin
  Abstract

  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 […]

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• Working Paper No. 1038 January 29, 2024

  Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren—90 Years Later

  Jörg Bibow
  Abstract

  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; […]

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• Working Paper No. 1037 January 10, 2024

  Markups, Profit Shares, and Cost-Push-Profit-Led Inflation

  Michalis Nikiforos, and Simon Grothe
  Abstract

  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, […]

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• Working Paper No. 1036 January 05, 2024

  The Estimation of Production Functions with Monetary Values

  Jesus Felipe, John McCombie, and Aashish Mehta
  Abstract

  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 […]

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• Working Paper No. 1035 January 04, 2024

  The Swedish Monetary System from a Balance Sheet Perspective

  Dirk Ehnts, and Jussi Ora
  Abstract

  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 […]

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• Working Paper No. 1034 December 08, 2023

  Euro Interest Rate Swap Yields: A GARCH Analysis

  Tanweer Akram, and Khawaja Mamun
  Abstract

  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 […]

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