The structural approach of a natrex model on equilibrium exchange rates

Following a general macroeconomic approach, this paper sets a closed micro-founded structural model to determine the long run real exchange rate of a developed economy. In particular, the analysis follows the structure of a Natrex model. The main contribution of this research paper is the development of a solid theoretical framework that analyse in depth the basis of the real exchange rate and the details of the equilibrium dynamics after any shock influencing the steady state. In our case, the intertemporal factors derived from the stock-flow relationship will be particularly determinant. The main results of the paper can be summarised as follows. In first place, a complete well-integrated structural model for long-run real exchange rate determination is developed from first principles. Moreover, within the concrete dynamics of the model, it is found that some convergence restrictions will be necessary. On one hand, for the medium run convergence the sensitivity of the trade balance to changes in real exchange rate should be higher that the correspondent one to the investment decisions. On the other hand, and regarding long-run convergence, it is also necessary both that there exists a negative relationship between investment and capital stock accumulation and that the global saving of the economy depends positively on net foreign debt accumulation. In addition, there are also interesting conclusions about the effects that certain shocks over the exogenous variables of the model have on real exchange rates.

Real equilibrium exchange rates. A panel data approach for advanced and emerging economies.

Based on an behavioral equilibrium exchange rate model, this paper examines the determinants of the real effective exchange rate and evaluates the degree of misalignment of a group of currencies since 1980. Within a panel cointegration setting, we estimate the relationship between exchange rate and a set of economic fundamentals, such as traded-nontraded productivity differentials and the stock of foreign assets. Having ascertained the variables are integrated and cointegrated, the long-run equilibrium value of the fundamentals are estimated and used to derive equilibrium exchange rates and misalignments. Although there is statistical homogeneity, some structural differences were found to exist between advanced and emerging economies.

Social Housing Policies in Latin America and Singapore: Lessons for China

This paper addresses the challenges facing China in accelerating the pace of rural-urban migration as part of its on-going economic development programme. It explains the push and pull influences on migration and in particular explains why a continuing focus on urbanisation is justified by the very large gap between rural and urban incomes and the relatively higher income elasticity of demand for urban-based goods and services. The provision of affordable housing is an integral part of this structural shift programme. The paper thus considers the most appropriate ways in which housing finance can be mobilised, and thence how both the quality and the affordability of the housing stock can be increased. Positive and negative lessons for China are offered from the different urbanisation experiences of Latin America (especially Colombia) and Singapore.

Els horts urbans a la ciutat de Barcelona: les experiències d'horts urbans comunitaris com a formes d'intervenció social i ambiental

Aquest estudi presenta la situació actual dels horts urbans (i periurbans) a la ciutat de Barcelona, els quals s'han classificat segons el tipus d'organització desenvolupada a cada projecte. Així, podem trobar horts de gestió: a) individual i autogestionada; b) comunitària i autogestionada; c) individual i supervisada, i d) comunitària i supervisada. Els horts urbans es presenten, en general, com una eina interessant en la millora de la sostenibilitat urbana. A més de tenir una clara funció d'entreteniment, són propostes que consideren la internalització a les ciutats de la producció de part dels aliments que s'hi consumeixen i alhora aprofiten part dels residus que s'hi produeixen. En particular, els horts urbans comunitaris i autogestionats – el centre d'aquest estudi – es plantegen com espais de participació i autogestió d'acord a la complexitat del context local, d'integració social a través de noves formes de relació i de creació, d'educació ambiental i de transmissió i intercanvi de coneixements inter-generacional. A més, es presenten com una alternativa d'organització realment participativa del territori urbà. Finalment, i d'acord amb l'anterior, es destaquen un conjunt de característiques dels projectes d'horts urbans comunitaris, que juguen un rol fonamental en la capacitat d'aquests per intervenir en aspectes socials i ambientals de la ciutat; característiques que s'haurien de tenir en compte a l'hora de promocionar i implementar projectes d'horts urbans de qualsevol tipus.

Social rules govern vocal competition in the barn owl

To resolve the share of limited resources, animals often compete through exchange of signals about their relative motivation to compete. When two competitors are similarly motivated, the resolution of conflicts may be achieved in the course of an interactive process. In barn owls, Tyto alba, in which siblings vocally compete during the prolonged absence of parents over access to the next delivered food item, we investigated what governs the decision to leave or enter a contest, and at which level. Siblings alternated periods during which one of the two individuals vocalized more than the other. Individuals followed turn-taking rules to interrupt each other and momentarily dominate the vocal competition. These social rules were weakly sensitive to hunger level and age hierarchy. Hence, the investment in a conflict is determined not only by need and resource-holding potential, but also by social interactions. The use of turn-taking rules governing individual vocal investment has rarely been shown in a competitive context. We hypothesized that these rules would allow individuals to remain alert to one another's motivation while maintaining the cost of vocalizing at the lowest level.

What Price Salvation? The Exchange of Salvation goods between India and the West

Does Weber's notion of salvation goods, along with the connected one of the religious market, apply to the modern history of yoga? The case study chosen here (the yoga of Pattabhi Jois) clearly shows that these notions highlight many aspects of the expansion of yoga into a global market product. However, the notion of salvation goods resists the new hermeneutical situation of encounter and has to be adapted to the present situation of religious "patchwork". The notion of religious market lacks depth to describe the various understandings and appropriations of yoga in precise historical situations. Other aspects of the current global status of yoga may be highlighted by applying the concept of pilgrimage. La notion de bien de salut que nous lègue Max Weber et la notion de marché religieux qui en découle peuvent-elles s'appliquer à l'histoire moderne du yoga? L'étude de cas que nous consacrons au yoga de Pattabhi Jois montre que ces notions éclairent bien certains aspects de l'expansion du yoga en tant que produit d'un marché globalisé. Cependant la notion de bien de salut résiste à une réflexion de type herméneutique sur les processus de rencontres et doit être adaptée à la situation contemporaine, ou` les religions se présentent comme des ensembles composites. La notion de marché religieux ne permet pas d'expliquer les diverses compréhensions et appropriations du yoga dans des situations historiques précises. D'autres aspects de la situation du yoga sont mieux explicités si on prend le concept de pèlerinage comme point de référence.

Financial Markets and Real Ecinomy: Four Essays in International Trade

Financial markets play an important role in an economy performing various functions like mobilizing and pooling savings, producing information about investment opportunities, screening and monitoring investments, implementation of corporate governance, diversification and management of risk. These functions influence saving rates, investment decisions, technological innovation and, therefore, have important implications for welfare. In my PhD dissertation I examine the interplay of financial and product markets by looking at different channels through which financial markets may influence an economy.My dissertation consists of four chapters. The first chapter is a co-authored work with Martin Strieborny, a PhD student from the University of Lausanne. The second chapter is a co-authored work with Melise Jaud, a PhD student from the Paris School of Economics. The third chapter is co-authored with both Melise Jaud and Martin Strieborny. The last chapter of my PhD dissertation is a single author paper.Chapter 1 of my PhD thesis analyzes the effect of financial development on growth of contract intensive industries. These industries intensively use intermediate inputs that neither can be sold on organized exchange, nor are reference-priced (Levchenko, 2007; Nunn, 2007). A typical example of a contract intensive industry would be an industry where an upstream supplier has to make investments in order to customize a product for needs of a downstream buyer. After the investment is made and the product is adjusted, the buyer may refuse to meet a commitment and trigger ex post renegotiation. Since the product is customized to the buyer's needs, the supplier cannot sell the product to a different buyer at the original price. This is referred in the literature as the holdup problem. As a consequence, the individually rational suppliers will underinvest into relationship-specific assets, hurting the downstream firms with negative consequences for aggregate growth. The standard way to mitigate the hold up problem is to write a binding contract and to rely on the legal enforcement by the state. However, even the most effective contract enforcement might fail to protect the supplier in tough times when the buyer lacks a reliable source of external financing. This suggests the potential role of financial intermediaries, banks in particular, in mitigating the incomplete contract problem. First, financial products like letters of credit and letters of guarantee can substantially decrease a risk and transaction costs of parties. Second, a bank loan can serve as a signal about a buyer's true financial situation, an upstream firm will be more willing undertake relationship-specific investment knowing that the business partner is creditworthy and will abstain from myopic behavior (Fama, 1985; von Thadden, 1995). Therefore, a well-developed financial (especially banking) system should disproportionately benefit contract intensive industries.The empirical test confirms this hypothesis. Indeed, contract intensive industries seem to grow faster in countries with a well developed financial system. Furthermore, this effect comes from a more developed banking sector rather than from a deeper stock market. These results are reaffirmed examining the effect of US bank deregulation on the growth of contract intensive industries in different states. Beyond an overall pro-growth effect, the bank deregulation seems to disproportionately benefit the industries requiring relationship-specific investments from their suppliers.Chapter 2 of my PhD focuses on the role of the financial sector in promoting exports of developing countries. In particular, it investigates how credit constraints affect the ability of firms operating in agri-food sectors of developing countries to keep exporting to foreign markets.Trade in high-value agri-food products from developing countries has expanded enormously over the last two decades offering opportunities for development. However, trade in agri-food is governed by a growing array of standards. Sanitary and Phytosanitary standards (SPS) and technical regulations impose additional sunk, fixed and operating costs along the firms' export life. Such costs may be detrimental to firms' survival, "pricing out" producers that cannot comply. The existence of these costs suggests a potential role of credit constraints in shaping the duration of trade relationships on foreign markets. A well-developed financial system provides the funds to exporters necessary to adjust production processes in order to meet quality and quantity requirements in foreign markets and to maintain long-standing trade relationships. The products with higher needs for financing should benefit the most from a well functioning financial system. This differential effect calls for a difference-in-difference approach initially proposed by Rajan and Zingales (1998). As a proxy for demand for financing of agri-food products, the sanitary risk index developed by Jaud et al. (2009) is used. The empirical literature on standards and norms show high costs of compliance, both variable and fixed, for high-value food products (Garcia-Martinez and Poole, 2004; Maskus et al., 2005). The sanitary risk index reflects the propensity of products to fail health and safety controls on the European Union (EU) market. Given the high costs of compliance, the sanitary risk index captures the demand for external financing to comply with such regulations.The prediction is empirically tested examining the export survival of different agri-food products from firms operating in Ghana, Mali, Malawi, Senegal and Tanzania. The results suggest that agri-food products that require more financing to keep up with food safety regulation of the destination market, indeed sustain longer in foreign market, when they are exported from countries with better developed financial markets.Chapter 3 analyzes the link between financial markets and efficiency of resource allocation in an economy. Producing and exporting products inconsistent with a country's factor endowments constitutes a serious misallocation of funds, which undermines competitiveness of the economy and inhibits its long term growth. In this chapter, inefficient exporting patterns are analyzed through the lens of the agency theories from the corporate finance literature. Managers may pursue projects with negative net present values because their perquisites or even their job might depend on them. Exporting activities are particularly prone to this problem. Business related to foreign markets involves both high levels of additional spending and strong incentives for managers to overinvest. Rational managers might have incentives to push for exports that use country's scarce factors which is suboptimal from a social point of view. Export subsidies might further skew the incentives towards inefficient exporting. Management can divert the export subsidies into investments promoting inefficient exporting.Corporate finance literature stresses the disciplining role of outside debt in counteracting the internal pressures to divert such "free cash flow" into unprofitable investments. Managers can lose both their reputation and the control of "their" firm if the unpaid external debt triggers a bankruptcy procedure. The threat of possible failure to satisfy debt service payments pushes the managers toward an efficient use of available resources (Jensen, 1986; Stulz, 1990; Hart and Moore, 1995). The main sources of debt financing in the most countries are banks. The disciplining role of banks might be especially important in the countries suffering from insufficient judicial quality. Banks, in pursuing their rights, rely on comparatively simple legal interventions that can be implemented even by mediocre courts. In addition to their disciplining role, banks can promote efficient exporting patterns in a more direct way by relaxing credit constraints of producers, through screening, identifying and investing in the most profitable investment projects. Therefore, a well-developed domestic financial system, and particular banking system, would help to push a country's exports towards products congruent with its comparative advantage.This prediction is tested looking at the survival of different product categories exported to US market. Products are identified according to the Euclidian distance between their revealed factor intensity and the country's factor endowments. The results suggest that products suffering from a comparative disadvantage (labour-intensive products from capital-abundant countries) survive less on the competitive US market. This pattern is stronger if the exporting country has a well-developed banking system. Thus, a strong banking sector promotes exports consistent with a country comparative advantage.Chapter 4 of my PhD thesis further examines the role of financial markets in fostering efficient resource allocation in an economy. In particular, the allocative efficiency hypothesis is investigated in the context of equity market liberalization.Many empirical studies document a positive and significant effect of financial liberalization on growth (Levchenko et al. 2009; Quinn and Toyoda 2009; Bekaert et al., 2005). However, the decrease in the cost of capital and the associated growth in investment appears rather modest in comparison to the large GDP growth effect (Bekaert and Harvey, 2005; Henry, 2000, 2003). Therefore, financial liberalization may have a positive impact on growth through its effect on the allocation of funds across firms and sectors.Free access to international capital markets allows the largest and most profitable domestic firms to borrow funds in foreign markets (Rajan and Zingales, 2003). As domestic banks loose some of their best clients, they reoptimize their lending practices seeking new clients among small and younger industrial firms. These firms are likely to be more risky than large and established companies. Screening of customers becomes prevalent as the return to screening rises. Banks, ceteris paribus, tend to focus on firms operating in comparative-advantage sectors because they are better risks. Firms in comparative-disadvantage sectors finding it harder to finance their entry into or survival in export markets either exit or refrain from entering export markets. On aggregate, one should therefore expect to see less entry, more exit, and shorter survival on export markets in those sectors after financial liberalization.The paper investigates the effect of financial liberalization on a country's export pattern by comparing the dynamics of entry and exit of different products in a country export portfolio before and after financial liberalization.The results suggest that products that lie far from the country's comparative advantage set tend to disappear relatively faster from the country's export portfolio following the liberalization of financial markets. In other words, financial liberalization tends to rebalance the composition of a country's export portfolio towards the products that intensively use the economy's abundant factors.

Decision-Making in Social Enterprises: Exploring the Link between Employee Participation and Organizational Commitment

This article studies the influence of the procedural justice resulting from participation in decision-making on employees' affective commitment in social enterprises. It also examines whether any potential link between participation and commitment is due to social exchange, as is the case with for-profit companies. The study is based on data from employees of French work integration social enterprises. The results confirm the positive relationship between procedural justice and affective commitment and the mediating role of perceived organizational support and leader-member exchanges. Managerial recommendations are then given to best maintain or increase employees' involvement in the decision-making processes of social enterprises.

A comparison of stock market mechanisms

This paper studies the relationship between the amount of publicinformation that stock market prices incorporate and the equilibriumbehavior of market participants. The analysis is framed in a static, NREEsetup where traders exchange vectors of assets accessing multidimensionalinformation under two alternative market structures. In the first(the unrestricted system), both informed and uninformed speculators cancondition their demands for each traded asset on all equilibrium prices;in the second (the restricted system), they are restricted to conditiontheir demand on the price of the asset they want to trade. I show thatinformed traders incentives to exploit multidimensional privateinformation depend on the number of prices they can condition upon whensubmitting their demand schedules, and on the specific price formationprocess one considers. Building on this insight, I then give conditionsunder which the restricted system is more efficient than the unrestrictedsystem.

With a bang, not a whimper: Pricking Germany's "stock market bubble" in 1927 and the slide into depression

In May 1927, the German central bank intervenedindirectly to reduce lending to equity investors.The crash that followed ended the only stockmarket boom during Germany s relative stabilization 1924-28. This paper examines thefactors that lead to the intervention as well asits consequences. We argue that genuine concernabout the exuberant level of the stock market,in addition to worries about an inflow offoreign funds, tipped the scales in favour ofintervention. The evidence strongly suggeststhat the German central bank under HjalmarSchacht was wrong to be concerned aboutstockprices-there was no bubble. Also, theReichsbank was mistaken in its belief thata fall in the market would reduce theimportance of short-term foreign borrowing,and help to ease conditions in the money market.The misguided intervention had important realeffects. Investment suffered, helping to tipGermany into depression.

Stock returns, term structure, inflation and real activity: An international perspective

This paper analyses the empirical interdependences among assetreturns, real activity and inflation from a multicountry and internationalpoint of view. We find that nominal stock returns are significantly relatedto inflation only in the US, that the US term structure of interest ratespredicts both domestic and foreign inflation rates while foreign termstructures do not have this predictive power and that innovations in inflationand exchange rates induce insignificant responses of real and financialvariables. An interpretation of the dynamics and some policy implicationsof the results are provided.

Is altruism important for understanding the long-run effects of social security?

This paper quantifies the effects of social security on capital accumulation and wealth distribution in a life cycle framework with altruistic individuals. The main findings of this paper are that the current U.S. social security system has a significant impact on capital accumulation and wealth distribution. I find that social security crowds out 8\% of the capital stock of an economy without social security. This effect is driven by the distortions of labor supply due to the taxation of labor income rather than by the intergenerational redistribution of income imposed by the social security system. In contrast to previous analysis of social security, I found that social security does not affect the savings rate of the economy. Another interesting finding is that even though the current U.S. social security system is progressive in its benefits, it may lead to a more disperse distribution of wealth.

Breeding system and genetic variance in the monogamous, semi-social shrew, Crocidura russula

The population-genetic consequences of monogamy and male philopatry (a rare breeding system in mammals) were investigated using microsatellite markers in the semisocial and anthropophilic shrew Crocidura russula. A hierarchical sampling design over a 16-km geographical transect revealed a large genetic diversity (h = 0.813) with significant differentiation among subpopulations (F-ST = 5-6%), which suggests an exchange of 4.4 migrants per generation. Demic effective-size estimates were very high, due both to this limited gene inflow and to the inner structure of subpopulations. These were made of 13-20 smaller units (breeding groups), comprising an estimate of four breeding pairs each. Members of the same breeding groups displayed significant coancestries (F-LS = 9-10%), which was essentially due to strong male kinship: syntopic males were on average related at the half-sib level. Female dispersal among breeding groups was not complete (similar to 39%), and insufficient to prevent inbreeding. From our results, the breeding strategy of C. russula seems less efficient than classical mammalian systems (polygyny and male dispersal) in disentangling coancestry from inbreeding, but more so in retaining genetic variance.

Responsibility-allevation and effort provision in a gift-exchange experiment

Previous indirect evidence suggests that impulses towards pro-socialbehavior are diminished when an external authority is responsiblefor an outcome. The responsibility-alleviation effect states that ashift of responsibility to an external authority dampens internalimpulses toward honesty, loyalty, or generosity. In a gift-exchangeexperiment, we find that subjects respond with more generosity(higher effort) when a wage is determined by a random process thanwhen it is assigned by a third party, indicating that even a slightshift in perceived responsibility for the final payoffs can changebehavior. Responsibility-alleviation is a factor in economicenvironments featuring substantial personal interaction.

Modelo de control viable para el manejo sostenible del stock de anchoveta peruana (Engraulis ringens)

El manejo sostenible de pesquerías es todavía un problema abierto y la teoría de viabilidad ofrece una alternativa para determinar políticas de manejo de los recursos que garanticen la sostenibilidad, una vez definidas las restricciones que determinan los estados sostenibles del sistema. La dinámica poblacional de la anchoveta peruana se modeló usando un modelo estructurado por edades tipo Thomson–Bell con capturas discretas acoplado con el modelo de reclutamiento de Ricker, con pasos semestrales entre los años 1963–1984. Se definió además un conjunto deseable de estados sostenibles, asociado a los niveles del stock y capturas que satisfacen restricciones ecológicas, económicas y sociales previamente definidas. En base a esto se calculó el conjunto de los estados del stock para los que existe un sucesión de capturas que permiten mantenerlo en un estado sostenible (conjunto denominado núcleo de viabilidad) y una familia de conjuntos de capturas viables, que corresponden a todos los niveles de captura que se puedan aplicar sobre cada estado del stock de manera tal que éste se mantenga dentro del núcleo de viabilidad, es decir, permanezca en un estado sostenible. Se encontró una condición suficiente para la existencia de un núcleo de viabilidad no vacío: que la cuota social (captura mínima para mantener en funcionamiento la pesquería) sea menor a un desembarque de 915 800 t semestrales. Se comparó la serie histórica de capturas con las obtenidas a partir de la teoría de viabilidad para el periodo 1963 - 1984, encontrándose que hubo sobrepesca desde finales de 1968, lo que conllevó al colapso de la pesquería durante El Niño de 1972-1973. A partir de los resultados de viabilidad, se definieron 5 estrategias de manejo pesquero (E1–E5) para la anchoveta peruana, concluyéndose que la estrategia precautoria viable media (E5) hubiera podido evitar el colapso de la pesquería de anchoveta, manteniendo además niveles aceptables de pesca. Además, la estrategia precautoria del ICES (E2) no aseguró la sostenibilidad del stock durante los periodos El Niño. Además, se concluye que hubiera sido necesaria una veda de un año después del colapso de la pesquería para que el stock regresara al núcleo de viabilidad, posibilitando un manejo sostenible en adelante. La teoría de la viabilidad, con el núcleo de viabilidad y las capturas viables asociadas, resultaron ser herramientas útiles para el diseño de estrategias de manejo que aseguran la sostenibilidad de los recursos pesqueros.