This study investigated a behaviour of South Africa's economy towards inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) from Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRICs) economies, during the period 1997 to 2016. The BRICs bloc was coined in 2001 by then chairperson of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Jim O'Neil. According to Goldman Sach (2001), the BRICs group was collectively expected to overtake the major economic powers over the span of a few decades. Their growth is expected to shape a new economic order and replace the currently dominant advanced economies. South Africa joined the BRICs bloc in 2010 as the jeweler of the world and as a gateway to Africa. It joined the BRICs group at the time when economic growth was at a sluggish rate, and the savings and investment were at the lowest rate. The country had a high unemployment rate, high levels of poverty and income inequality. On the other hand, the BRICs economies had limited intra-BRICs flows amongst themselves. It is against this background that this study investigated the long run impact of BRICs FDI inflows on South Africa's economic growth, and the causality relationship between South Africa's economic growth and BRICs FDI inflows. This study contributes to the body of knowledge of economics in South Africa and the literature on foreign direct investment and economic growth in South Africa. The study employed two cointegration methods to investigate the behaviour of South Africa's economy towards inflows of foreign direct investment from BRICs economies. These are fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS). For granger causality, the study employed Stacked and Dumistrescu Hurlin tests. All the models used time series annual data from 1997 to 2016. The Unit root test results confirmed that the variables were stationary at first difference using panel Im, Pesaran, Shin (IPS) and Levin, Lin, Chu (LLC). The research employs four regressions, first, Economic growth and foreign direct investment (i.e. private sector, banking sector and both sectors), human capital, physical capital, household consumption, government expenditure, exports, and arable land; Second, Employment and foreign direct investment, human capital, physical capital, household consumption, government expenditure, exports, and arable land; third, Economic complexity and foreign direct investment, human capital, physical capital, household consumption, government expenditure, exports, and arable land; finally, Unemployment and foreign direct investment, human capital, physical capital, household consumption, government expenditure, exports, and arable land. The cointegration results for private FDI and economic growth, employment, economic complexity, and unemployment. The results show only economic complexity has significant effect on foreign direct investment and other variables show insignificant results. However, this effect is smaller compared to other growth determinants which are included in the regressions. The cointegration results for bank FDI. These results show more similarities with private FDI results and few differences. However, this effect is smaller compared to other growth determinants included in the regressions. These growth determinants, however, show a positive effect of human capital and household consumption on economic growth which is expected. Other interesting results are exports being positively related with economic growth and unemployment but negative with employment and insignificant with economic complexity. Another one is government spending negatively influence economic growth, employment and positively influence unemployment. But insignificant for economic complexity. Total FDI results and other variables. These results are also similar to private and bank FDI results discussed above. Economic complexity shows significant effect with foreign direct investment, yet other variables are insignificant. . Further results show human capital positively related with economic growth, which is expected. However, physical capital and household consumption negatively affects growth. Another one exports show positive influence on economic growth but negatively related with employment. Yet, insignificant with economic complexity and unemployment. Other results government spending shows negative influence with employment but insignificant with economic growth, economic complexity and unemployment. The results for nonlinearity between the variables under review. The results that employment and economic complexity are nonlinear with foreign direct investment and no nonlinearity between unemployment, economic growth and foreign direct investment. For employment, low levels of foreign direct investment (LFDI_private) adversely affects employment but at higher levels (FDI_private_SQ) is insignificant. For economic complexity, low levels of foreign direct investment are insignificant for economic complexity but at higher levels there is a positive effect of squared foreign direct investment on economic complexity. Further results show that economic growth and employment are nonlinear with human capital, physical capital, household consumption and exports. Physical capital and household consumption adversely affect economic growth, yet positively affects employment. Human capital positively affects economic growth, employment, and unemployment. Exports positively affect economic growth, but negatively affect employment. Further results show nonlinearity between employment and government expenditure. Government expenditure adversely affects employment. Also, economic growth and unemployment show nonlinearity with arable land. Arable land adversely affects economic growth but positively affects unemployment. Nonlinear results for economic growth and economic complexity with foreign direct investment but no nonlinearity in other remaining variables. For economic growth, low levels of foreign direct investment there is a positive effect of foreign direct investment on economic growth, however, at higher levels foreign direct investment are insignificant. For economic complexity, low levels of foreign direct investment are insignificant, yet, higher levels of foreign direct investment there is a positive influence of foreign direct investment on economic complexity. Further results show economic growth and employment that are nonlinear with human capital, physical capital, and household consumption. Human capital positively affects both economic growth and employment. Physical capital and household consumption are adversely affecting economic growth, yet positively affects employment. Further results show nonlinearity between economic growth and government expenditure. Government expenditure adversely affects employment. More results, employment, and unemployment show nonlinearity results with exports. Exports adversely affect employment but positively affects unemployment. Results show economic growth and unemployment that are nonlinear with arable land. Arable land adversely affects economic growth, but positively affect unemployment. Nonlinear results for economic complexity only and other variables show no nonlinearity in the regressions. For economic complexity, low levels of foreign direct investment are insignificant, but at higher levels of foreign direct investment there is positive effect of foreign direct investment on economic complexity. More results show economic growth and employment that are nonlinear with human capital, physical capital, household consumption and exports. Human capital and exports positively affect economic growth, employment, and unemployment. Whereas, physical capital and household consumption adversely affects economic growth and unemployment, yet positively affects employment. Further results show nonlinearity between employment and government expenditure. Government spending adversely affects employment. Further results show nonlinearity between economic growth and unemployment with arable land. Arable land positively affects unemployment, yet adversely affects economic growth. The following section discusses granger causality results. This study also employed granger causality tests. The causality results between economic growth, employment, economic complexity, unemployment, and private foreign direct investment. The causality results show that there is granger causality between economic growth and economic complexity with private foreign direct investment. Whereas, between bank foreign direct investment and other variables there is no granger causality. However, between total foreign direct investment and economic growth and employment there is granger causality. There are a number of policy recommendations that can be drawn from the study. The study results in overall revealed that BRICs (private and bank) FDI inflows had a positive impact on South Africa's economic growth between 1997 and 2016. The study results suggest that the policy makers should focus the attention on lobbying foreign direct investment from BRICs economies, since this study shows positive impact and relationship between South Africa's economic growth and BRICs FDI inflows. The BRICs economies should focus on enhancing investment partnership, preventing protectionism, and promoting intra-BRICS flows. In addition, South Africa should eliminate barriers affecting business with BRICs countries. Policy makers should promote the building of new companies (for example Greenfield Investment) so that the economy of South Africa could grow and create employment. ; Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences, Economics, 2021
This dissertation discusses the potentials and pitfalls of empirical economic research. Several pieces of applied research illustrate the discipline's diverse use of statistical methods as well as their applicability to different topics. Empirical economic research uses empirical evidence to test hypotheses and statistical inference to uncover general rules. However, very often several rules or causal mechanisms exist that can equally well explain the investigated outcome. This can be problematic whenever statistical inference does not yield convincing results, i.e. the degree of the study's internal validity is low. Although many different statistical tools and techniques have been developed to increase the degree of internal validity, in practice it remains difficult to claim causality. One reason for this is that the quality of statistical inference depends on the appropriateness of the chosen statistical method. Another reason is that causality requires that competing alternative explanations for an estimated statistical relationship are addressed and at best can be dismissed. Thus, an empirical study's overall quality depends critically on an author's judgement and knowledge of the environment in which the outcome is nested. Given the importance of personal perception it is not surprising that the validity of results in many studies in empirical economics is heatedly discussed in- and outside the community. At the beginning of this dissertation the current status of this academic debate is reproduced, leading to the conclusion that there is no panacea for causal inference. Instead, it is proposed that several equally sensible strategies to strengthen causality exist and that their selection depends on the specific research question and setting. While this still allows the author to base decisions on personal perception it also stresses that justifications are required. Hence, each new study demands a tailored research agenda in which the choice of statistical methods and the existence of alternative explanations are transparently discussed. Subsequently to the discussion, three independent papers illustrate that there is indeed no blueprint procedure to conduct empirical economic research. The first paper addresses the question whether individuals react to natural disasters by adjusting their saving behavior. The study applies statistical tools commonly used in applied microeconomic research. The research design uses quasi-experimental variation in a panel survey to infer a causal relationship between flooding and saving behavior. The study finds that from the flooding affected individuals save less in subsequent years. While the study's internal validity is rather high, the generalizability of the relationship remains to be seen. Several alternative explanations for the observed behavior are discussed and evaluated. The concluding explanation is that unusually high amounts of post-disaster financial aid induces moral-hazard-behavior. Thus, the paper makes a case for policy makers to carefully design post-disaster aid payments so as to minimize the possibility of detrimental reductions in individual precautionary efforts. The second paper investigates the link between foreign education and domestic productivity. The paper uses aggregate data, thus encountering statistical challenges commonly occurring in applied macroeconomic research. The research design focuses on the dynamic structure of the data. The paper finds that the more students a country sends to the U.S., the higher subsequent domestic productivity growth rates will be. Additional analyses show that this effect is driven by developing countries. It is argued that the relationship is causal because foreign students transfer productivity enhancing skills from the U.S. to their home country. However, the data does not reveal whether foreign students indeed return and therefore causal inference is weaker than it could be otherwise. Measures to overcome this shortage are presented and applied. Nonetheless, the extent of the data allows for a certain generalizability of the results. In conclusion, the study suggests that foreign education poses a viable additional strategy for economic development. Finally, the third paper addresses a research question from the field of empirical industrial organization. Specifically, the paper tests whether prices for an abatement technology are influenced by the type of environmental regulation of polluting sources. In order to test this relationship, the paper's research design combines a structural economic model with quasi-experimental empirical evidence. The paper finds that the price of abatement technology is significantly higher for those polluting sources that are participating in a permit trading scheme. Causal inference relies on the quasi-experimental nature of the data and the theoretical derivations from the structural model. However, it remains empirically challenging to exclude alternative explanations as doing so considerably strains the scope of our data. In the end, the study's results should caution policy makers to consider that regulatory instruments can have unintended side-effects hampering the diffusion and adoption of abatement technology by increasing its price. The final section discusses the role of empirical research in the overall process of scientific progress. The importance of diverse and comprehensive empirical economic research is emphasized. Finally, it is concluded that empirical research with all its outgrowth is essential to establish something like an objective truth'' in economic science. ; Die vorliegende Dissertation beschäftigt sich mit den Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der empirischen Wirtschaftsforschung. Anhand mehrerer Forschungsarbeiten verdeutlicht sie die Anwendbarkeit statistischer Verfahren auf verschiedene Fragestellungen aus den Wirtschaftswissenschaften. In der empirischen Wirtschaftsforschung werden Beobachtungen statistisch ausgewertet, um Hypothesen zu testen und allgemeine Regeln aufzudecken. Die Herleitung eines kausalen Zusammenhangs zwischen zwei Ereignissen gilt dabei als ein wichtiges Ziel. In der Praxis erweisen sich kausale Schlussfolgerungen allerdings als überaus schwierig. Ein Grund hierfür ist, dass der Gegenstand empirischer Wirtschaftsforschung - unsere Gesellschaft - ein komplexes und dynamisches System ist. Eine allgemeingütige Blaupause, mithilfe welcher sich kausale Zusammenhänge belegen lassen, lässt sich daher kaum entwickeln. Vielmehr hängt die Herleitung eines kausalen Zusammenhangs von den konkreten Faktoren des Einzelfalls ab. Solche Faktoren sind die Forschungsfrage, die Qualität der Daten und das Umfeld, in welchem diese erhoben wurden. Sie bestimmen anschließend das Forschungsdesign und die Auswahl eines geeigneten statistischen Verfahrens. Eine empirische Studie ist somit in vielerlei Hinsichten einzigartig. – Daher ist es auch nicht verwunderlich, dass Kausalitätsbehauptungen in Bezug auf empirische Ergebnisse in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften häufig kontrovers diskutiert werden. Zu Beginn dieser Dissertation wird eine aktuelle Diskussion zur Herleitung von Kausalität in der empirischen Wirtschaftsforschung wiedergegeben. Aus dieser Diskussion geht hervor, dass es momentan kein Allheilmittel für kausale Inferenz gibt, sondern stattdessen mehrere gleichermaßen sinnvolle Strategien für die Herleitung von Kausalität existieren. An die Wiedergabe und Auswertung der Diskussion schließt sich die Darstellung dreier unabhängiger empirischer Studien an. Jede dieser Studien befasst sich mit einem anderen Themengebiet der Wirtschaftswissenschaften, wobei Forschungsdesign, Auswahl der empirischen Methoden und die Art der kausalen Herleitung variieren. Die drei Studien illustrieren somit mehrere Punkte, die sich aus der Diskussion in der Einleitung ergeben haben. Der erste empirische Beitrag in dieser Dissertation geht der Frage nach, ob Opfer von Naturkatastrophen im Anschluss an ihre Erlebnisse ihr Sparverhalten verändern. In der Studie werden statistische Methoden verwendet, die üblicherweise in der angewandten mikroökonomischen Forschung verwendet werden. Das Forschungsdesign nutzt die durch eine Flut generiete quasi-experimentelle Variation in einer Panelbefragung aus, um einen Kausalzusammenhang zwischen Betroffenheit und Sparverhalten abzuleiten. Die Studie zeigt, dass von den Überschwemmungen Betroffene in den Folgejahren weniger sparen. Während der Grad der kausalen Schlussfolgerung hoch ist, bleibt es abzuwarten, ob sich der Zusammenhang auf andere Situationen übertragen lässt. Es werden mehrere Gründe für das beobachtete Verhalten diskutiert und gegeneinander abgewogen. Die Studie kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass ungewöhnlich hohe Hilfszahlungen zu einem sogenannten Moral Hazard-Verhalten'', also einem verantwortungslosen Verhalten aufgrund von Fehlanreizen, führen können. In dem untersuchten Fall haben die Hilfszahlungen zu einer Verringerung im Vorsorgeverhalten bei Betroffenen geführt. Die Studie plädiert daher dafür, dass politische Entscheidungsträger etwaige Hilfszahlungen nach einer Katastrophe sorgfältig planen, um einen nachteiligen Einfluss auf individuelle Vorsorgemaßnahmen zu vermeiden. In der zweiten Arbeit wird die Verbindung zwischen einem Studium im Ausland und heimischer Produktivität untersucht. Das Papier verwendet dafür aggregierte Daten und befasst sich aus ökonometrischer Sicht mit bestimmten statistischen Herausforderungen, die häufig in der angewandten makroökonomischen Forschung auftreten. Das Forschungsdesign fokussiert sich auf die dynamische Struktur der Daten, um einen kausale Herleitung zu ermöglichen. Gezeigt wird, dass die Anzahl von Studenten, die ein Land in die USA schickt, sich positiv auf die Produktivitätszuwächse dieses Landes in den Folgejahren auswirkt. Des Weiteren kann gezeigt werden, dass dieser positive Zusammenhang nur für Entwicklungsländer gilt. Dies erscheint plausibel, da insbesondere die Bevölkerung aus Entwicklungsländern durch den Transfer produktivitätssteigernder Fähigkeiten aus den USA in ihr Heimatland profitieren sollte. Die Ergebnisse deuten daher an, dass es tatsächlich einen positiven Kausalzusammenhang zwischen Auslandsstudium und heimischer Produktivität gibt. Da die Daten jedoch nicht darüber informieren, ob ausländische Studenten wirklich zurückkehren, ist die kausale Inferenz schwächer, als sie es sonst sein könnte. Hingegen erlaubt der Umfang der Daten eine gewisse Generalisierbarkeit der Ergebnisse. Zusammenfassend lässt sich festhalten, dass die Förderung eines Auslandsstudiums eine sinnvolle zusätzliche Strategie für eine erfolgreiche internationale Entwicklungszusammenarbeit darstellen kann. Das dritte und letzte Papier befasst sich mit einer Forschungsfrage, die dem Bereich der empirischen Industrieökonomik zugeordnet werden kann. Darin wird untersucht, ob die Regulierung von Schwefeldioxidemissionen von Kohlekraftwerken die Preissetzungsstrategie von Herstellern einer geeigneten Vermeidungstechnologie beeinflusst. Um diese Beziehung zu testen, nutzt die Studie ein Forschungsdesign, das auf einem Strukturmodell und Daten mit quasi-experimenteller Variation basiert. Die Ergebnisse der empirischen Untersuchung zeigen, dass die Preise für die Vermeidungstechnologie höher sind, wenn ein Kohlekraftwerk an einem Emissionshandelssystem teilnehmen muss. Diese Entwicklung ist kontraproduktiv, da es den Anreizen eines Emissionshandelssystems, die Verbreitung von Vermeidungstechnologien zu fördern, entgegen wirkt. Die Herleitung eines kausalen Zusammenhangs beruht auf dem quasi-experimentellen Charakter der Daten sowie einem theoretischen Modell, welches den empirischen Befund ebenfalls vorhersagt. Die wichtigsten alternativen Erklärungen für das Ergebnis können ausgeschlossen werden. Einschränkend wirkt hierbei jedoch der Umfang der Daten. Dieser lässt eine rigorose Untersuchung alternativer Erklärungen nur begrenzt zu und schwächt somit den kausalen Zusammenhang etwas ab. Am Ende unterstreichen die Ergebnisse der Studie allerdings, dass politische Entscheidungsträger bei der Ausgestaltung regulatorischer Instrumente umfassend auf unbeabsichtigte Nebenwirkungen achten sollten. Im letzten Abschnitt der Dissertation wird die Rolle empirischer Forschung im Gesamtprozess des wissenschaftlichen Fortschritts diskutiert. Dabei wird die Bedeutung einer umfangreichen und vielfältigen empirischen Wirtschaftsforschung hervorgehoben. Abschließend wird festgestellt, dass die empirische Forschung mit all ihren Ergebnissen und Methoden notwendig ist, um eine objektive Wahrheit'' in der Wirtschaftswissenschaft zu generieren.
Climate change has been recognised as a societal challenge demanding transformation in our social and economic systems in order to adapt to expected climatic changes and to mitigate a temperature increase above 2 degrees Celsius. Discussions on mitigating climate change revolve around the question of how to enable low-carbon energy transitions based on renewable-energy technologies such as wind turbines, solar panels, biogas plants or geothermal plants. Such a transition initiates a physical (re)shaping of places and social change in communities. Individual households and communities are increasingly acknowledged as making important contributions in energy transition, driven by the emergence of community wind farms, energy cooperatives and initiatives etc. This growing recognition has led to the fact that citizen's energy and community renewable energy are high on the political agenda. Although 'community renewable energy' emerged as a grassroots-based innovation concept, the local places of energy transition and their underlying social processes and structures are insufficiently studied and often remain underestimated. What place-based social and geographic aspects enable communities to become the places of local energy transition? The present research work encounters this question by applying a place-based perspective on mitigating climate change with renewable-energy technologies, seeking an in-depth understanding of the multifaceted and complex nature of the social phenomenon of community-based renewable energy. In order to analyse and deal with the complexity of the system, the investigation focussed on place, local agents and their relationships and interactions. A place-based approach considers climate change and renewables in people's localities; accounts for places as sources of experiences, memories, knowledge and innovation; and represents local benefits and challenges of mitigating climate change with community renewables. Along four main chapters, several analytical and theoretical concepts have been merged and their interdependencies analysed: these include place attachment (Manzo & Devine-Wright 2014); psychological distance of climate change (Milfont 2010; Spence et al. 2012); climate-change engagement (Lorenzoni et al. 2007; Whitmarsh et al. 2011); locally embedded entrepreneurship (Feldman & Kogler, 2010; Audretsch et al. 2012); adoption behaviour and innovation diffusion (Ajzen 1991; Rogers 2003); and the community benefits of renewables (Rogers et al., 2008; IZES, 2015). This conceptual approach enables the exploration of both climate change as a catalyst and also its materialisation in community renewables. To study the social side of the development of local renewable-energy transition, this research involved empirical research in the district of North Frisia, Germany, with a special focus on the municipality of Reußenköge. North Frisia is a coastal region with both climate-change vulnerability and renewable-energy potential. In the last three decades, the coastal municipality of Reußenköge has developed from an average agricultural centre into a so-called model region for the generation of renewable energy, implying a transformation from agriculturalists into energy-culturalists. Reußenköge represents a recent case study for examining the social processes underlying the implementation of renewable-energy technologies in coastal areas. For this examination do be carried out, a mixed-methods approach was applied in the present research, which allowed the analyses of different facets of the phenomenon of community-based renewables and its interaction with the social system under consideration. Five different research methods were conceptually combined: review and analysis of the literature, policy documents and online news; semi-structured interviews; group discussions; a standardised household survey; and agent-based modelling. The employment of diverse and complementary methods for focusing on specific, emerging and dynamic themes revealed different developmental layers contributing to community renewables. The empirical findings conceptually and empirically demonstrate the relevance of people's socio-geographic embeddedness for how they relate to and engage with climate change and community-based renewable energy. People's individual and shared place meanings are important ingredients bearing a decisive impact on the ways people make sense of climate change and the decisions to adopt or reject renewables. Common interest and participation in community-based renewable-energy projects, as well as the differentiated characteristics of the local entrepreneurs involved, appeared to be highly relevant for the acceptance and support of community-based projects. Recognising the findings, one can assert that an innovative place-based concept of community renewables provides essential benefits to individuals, the municipality and regions offering the potential to overcome social problems and to enhance sustainable regional development. Nevertheless, community-based actions have limitations, and it should be thus highlighted that support of regional and national governments is essential for long-term adaptation to and mitigation of natural and climate-change driven phenomena. Climate and energy policies, funding schemes and administrative structures should essentially recognise local socio-geographic elements, interactions and processes in order to enhance and foster a sustainable, place-based, socially embedded and decentralised energy transition. ; Der Klimawandel stellt eine gesellschaftliche Herausforderung dar, die eine Transformation sozialer und ökonomischer Systeme notwendig macht, um sich an zu erwartende Klimaveränderungen anzupassen und einen Temperaturanstieg über 2 Grad Celsius zu vermeiden. Diskussionen zur Klimawandelabschwächung, der sogenannten Mitigation, verdichten sich zu der Frage, wie eine CO2-arme Energiewende basierend auf Erneuerbaren Energietechnologien, wie Windanlagen, Solaranlagen, Biogasanlagen und Erdwärmepumpen, vorangetrieben werden kann. Eine solche Wende führt in den meisten Fällen zu einer physischen (Um-)Gestaltung von Orten und einem sozialen Wandel in Gemeinden. In diesem Kontext hat die Bedeutung individueller Haushalte und Gemeinden in der Energiewende zunehmende Aufmerksamkeit erlangt, wozu die Entstehung von Bürgerwindparks, Energiegenossenschaften und –initiativen etc. maßgeblich beigetragen haben. Dies führte dazu, dass die Bürgerenergie als auch "Erneuerbare Gemeindeenergie" (community renewable energy) deutlich an politischer Bedeutung gewonnen haben. Obwohl sich die Erneuerbare Gemeindeenergie als Graswurzel-basiertes (grassroots-based) Innovationskonzept etabliert hat, ist das Verständnis für die lokalen Orte der Energiewende und die zugrundeliegenden sozialen Prozesse und Strukturen unzureichend erforscht, so dass ihre Potenziale oftmals unterschätzt werden und unausgeschöpft bleiben. Es stellt sich also die Frage, welche ortbasierten sozialen und geografischen Aspekte es Gemeinden ermöglichen zu den Orten einer lokalen Energiewende zu werden? Die vorliegende Arbeit widmet sich dieser Frage unter Anwendung einer ortsbasierten (place-based) Perspektive zur Vermeidung des Klimawandels mit Erneuerbaren Energietechnologien. Ziel ist es, ein tiefgreifendes Verständnis über die vielseitige und komplexe Natur des sozialen Phänomens der Gemeindebasierten Erneuerbaren Energie zu erlangen. Ortskonzepte, lokale Akteure sowie deren Beziehungen und Interaktionen unter- und miteinander standen als analytische Ansatzpunkte im Fokus der Untersuchung, um die Komplexität des Systems zu verstehen und um mit ihr umzugehen. Insofern konzentriert sich ein ortsbasierter Ansatz auf die Örtlichkeit der Menschen, veranschlagt Orte als Ursprung von Erfahrungen, Erinnerungen, Wissen und Innovation und erforscht lokale Möglichkeiten und Herausforderung, die mit der Klimawandelabschwächung durch Gemeindeenergie einhergehen. Im Rahmen der vorliegenden Arbeit werden theoretische und analytische Konzepte von Ortsbindung (Manzo & Devine-Wright 2014), psychologischen Distanzen von Klimawandel (Milfont 2010; Spence et al. 2012), unterschiedliche Relationen zum Klimawandel (Lorenzoni et al. 2007; Whitmarsh et al. 2011), lokal verankertes Unternehmertum (Feldman & Kogler, 2010; Audretsch et al. 2012), Adaptionsverhalten und Innovationsverbreitung (Ajzen 1991; Rogers 2003) sowie Gemeindenutzen von Erneuerbaren (Rogers et al., 2008; IZES, 2015) konzeptionell zusammengeführt und deren Wechselwirkungen analysiert. Diese Vorgehensweise ermöglichte es Klimawandel als Katalysator und dessen Materialisierung in Erneuerbarer Gemeindeenergie zu erforschen. Um die soziale Dimension der Entwicklung einer lokalen Energiewende zu untersuchen, wurde eine empirische Forschung in Gemeinden im Kreis Nordfriesland, Schleswig-Holstein (Deutschland) und im Speziellen in der Gemeinde Reußenköge durchgeführt. Nordfriesland ist eine Küstenregion zwischen Klimawandelvulnerabilität bzw. -verwundbarkeit und Erneuerbaren Energiepotential. In den letzten drei Jahrzehnten hat sich die Region von einer ursprünglich landwirtschaftlich geprägten zu einer sogenannten Modellregion der Erneuerbaren Energien entwickelt und damit einhergehend einen Wandel von Landwirten zu Energiewirten erfahren. Aus diesem Grund eignet sich Reußenköge dafür, die sozialen Prozesse, die die Umsetzung von Erneuerbaren Energietechnologien in Küstenregionen mitbestimmen und antreiben, zu untersuchen. Ein Methodenmix (Mixed-Methods Approach) ermöglichte es, die diversen Facetten des Phänomens der Gemeindebasierten Erneuerbaren Energien und deren sozialen Aspekte für das System Reußenköge zu analysieren. Fünf verschiedene Forschungsmethoden kamen zum Einsatz und wurden konzeptionell miteinander verknüpft: eine Analyse der Forschungsliteratur, von Politikdokumenten und online Neuigkeiten, semistrukturierte Interviews, Gruppendiskussionen, eine standardisierte Haushaltsbefragung und Agenten-basierte Modellierung. Zur Fokussierung auf im Forschungsprozess sich entwickelnde Themen wurden diverse und komplementäre Methoden verwendet, die verschiedene Entwicklungsebenen erforschen halfen, die zur Gemeindeenergie beitragen. Die empirisch gesättigten und erarbeiteten Ergebnisse belegen die empirische Relevanz des sozial-geografischen Ansatzes für die Beteiligung an der Thematik des Klimawandels und Gemeindebasierten Erneuerbaren Energien. Individuelle und geteilte Ortsbindung sind wichtige Bestandteile, die eine ausschlaggebende Auswirkung darauf haben, wie Menschen Klimawandel wahrnehmen und Entscheidungen für die Einführung oder Ablehnungen von Erneuerbaren treffen. Ein gemeinsames Interesse und eine kollektive Partizipation in Gemeindebasierten Erneuerbare Energieprojekten sowie die differenzierten Eigenschaften von den lokalen involvierten Unternehmern sind – das zeigen die Ergebnisse – von großer Bedeutung für die Akzeptanz und Unterstützung solcher Projekte. Die vorliegenden Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass ein innovatives, ortsbezogenes Konzept von Erneuerbarer Gemeindeenergie einen wichtigen Nutzen für Individuen, die Gemeinden und die Region generiert und das Potential birgt, eine sozial eingebettete und nachhaltige Regionalentwicklung zu fördern. Trotzdem stellen Gemeindeaktivitäten kein Allheilmittel für die Implementierung erneuerbarer Energien da, da eine strukturell administrative und ökonomische Unterstützung durch regionale und nationale Regierungen unabdingbar für eine langfristige Anpassung an und Abschwächung von natürlichen und anthropogenen Phänomenen des Klimawandels ist. Klima- und Energiepolitik, Förderungsmaßnahmen und administrative Strukturen sollten daher insbesondere die lokalen sozialen und geografischen Elemente, Interaktionen und Prozesse genauer in Betracht ziehen, um eine nachhaltige, ortsbezogene, sozial eingebettete und dezentrale Energiewende zu fördern und zu stärken.
"Green cities" offer a systematic approach to a significant part of the nowadays urban complexity. The concept dovetails in the "healthy city" idea launched by the World Health Organization, but is equally associated with "sustainable" and "smart cities". During the past decades planning for "green cities" shifted, incorporating new ideas as sustainable development and IT-driven management instruments for smart cities. Contemporary cities continue to face major environmental challenges. Replying to this dynamic context is a main task for cities during the coming decades of the millennium. As most of the (major) cities worldwide are located at the edge of the continents, supporting water-bound activities, they show a significant "blue economy" aspect. This paper reviews the historical context of the science aspects of "green cities" and the related approaches. Four main challenges for livable (coastal) cities today are discussed, taking into account the continuous changes and the almost permanent transition cities face. Climate change effects as sea level rise and extreme weather conditions, affect directly coastal cities; providing enough drinking water is a long standing and increasing problem; ports face particular and specific environmental problems which are in need of a tailored management; and sufficient accessible green areas remain of primary concern for any green city. Cross cutting through these issues are among others mobility and sustainable urban design.These major challenges will necessitate new processes of decision making. Long term planning is essential. 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his doctoral thesis is focused on the increasing importance of mutual funds as saving vehicles for the finances of individuals in the economies of developed countries over the last half of the twentieth century. Among them, the equity funds that take the form of open-end funds like mutual funds are becoming one of the most relevant instruments. Mutual funds collect money from investors and invest it in stocks, bonds, other funds, and so on, and their performance depends on the mix of the allocated securities. Its main objectives were to contribute to the topic of the Active Share (AS) as applied to mutual funds in Eurozone countries. This investigation was mainly motivated by the need to analyse how both the level of concentration of the benchmarks and the level of concentration of the mutual fund industries in the Eurozone affect active management. Due to the scarce number of studies focused on this topic in Europe our results have relevant implications to investors, market supervisors, and policymakers. In Chapter 1, we analysed how article 52 in Directive 2009/65/EC (UCITS IV) on risk of portfolio diversification could distort the accuracy of AS due to the higher level of concentration in Eurozone domestic benchmarks. In this chapter, we were able to identify truly active management in Eurozone mutual funds. Thus, we developed an algorithm to capture the spurious AS (sAS), which is defined as the minimum AS, that is not a consequence of active decisions made by equity fund managers. The results provide evidence that the Directive negatively influences the accuracy of the AS shown for managers who work with very concentrated domestic Eurozone benchmarks such as the PSI 20 (Portugal), ATX 20 (Austria), and IBEX 35 (Spain). In contrast, the evidence from the sAS for the least concentrated domestic Eurozone benchmarks shows that AS reported by managers who work in France, Germany, and Finland are much more accurate. Hence, these results prove that direct AS comparisons in the Eurozone are not feasible and lead us to obtain three AS thresholds per domestic equity benchmark, which are the minimum values of AS needed to confirm that domestic equity funds are significantly active at 90%, 95%, and 99% confidence levels. We also analysed the level of active management in the domestic equity funds registered in each Eurozone country. Our findings also show that the high concentration level and the heterogeneity present in the domestic equity funds in the Eurozone prevent the direct comparability of the AS. Therefore, we had to consider the level of AS over the spurious level and the characteristics of each market that produces significant and different styles of active management. For that, we formulated an actual active share (aAS) that considered the level of concentration in the domestic equity funds of the Eurozone markets and the limits of the portfolio concentration on European regulation. We define aAS as the difference between the monthly AS obtained for each domestic equity fund minus its monthly AS threshold obtained previously at 90%, 95%, and 99% confidence levels. Focusing on the most relevant mutual fund industries in the Eurozone countries, we find that France is the most active domestic equity fund market. Spanish and Italian markets also show high levels of actual active management despite the large concentration in their domestic benchmarks. Conversely, domestic equity funds registered in Germany show lower levels of active management. Our research results support the hypothesis that aAS corrects the potential bias in the original AS caused by both the domestic benchmark concentration and the EU portfolio diversification rules. In summary, our study is the first to evaluate the consequences of both the assorted characteristics of domestic Eurozone benchmarks and the European regulation that prevents portfolio concentration (UCITS IV) in the appropriate estimation of AS. Furthermore, our study identifies truly active management in domestic equity funds in the Eurozone markets. This chapter has important implications for policymakers and practitioners of the domestic equity funds in the Eurozone. In the strongly regulated European markets, our unbiased approach allows both investors and market supervisors to identify the accurate levels of active management of each industry after considering both the regulation of portfolio diversification and the concentrated domestic equity benchmarks. Market supervisors will have a better picture of the active management map to develop appropriate regulations for the mutual fund industry. In addition, our approach should help practitioners and investors to effectively find out the level of active management of domestic equity funds and therefore provide information for fund management companies to replace actual performing managers. Further, our results should help to reduce the opacity in the management fees that funds charge by providing accurate measures of active management. In Chapter 2, we analysed how some market and fund characteristics play a crucial role in explaining the portfolio concentration default on Directive 2009/65/EC (UCITS IV). This chapter should help market supervisors to improve the monitoring process of defaults by domestic equity funds in the Eurozone mutual fund industries. On the one hand, the origin of UCITS directives was considered the beginning towards market protection and increased transparency in the Eurozone. On the other hand, the structure of mutual funds allows retail investors to access sophisticated active strategies that comply with liquidity and transparency restrictions protected by regulatory oversight. Their rules are based on a certain degree of portfolio diversification with the goal of reducing their vulnerability to portfolio risks. This chapter is the first to analyse how concentrated strategies could lead to non-compliance with article 52 in UCITS IV. First, we analysed several market characteristics that may influence the probability of a fund manager failing to meet the portfolio concentration limits. Using a logic panel data model (fixed effects), we estimated the probability of incurring defaults. Our findings provide evidence that should lead market supervisors to pay attention to concentrated fund industries with concentrated domestic benchmarks to prevent defaults on Eurozone concentration limit. The level of concentration of the domestic equity benchmarks would make the defaults almost twice as likely to occur. The level of concentration of the domestic fund industry also has positive and significant effects on the likelihood of incurring defaults. That is, defaults are approximately 12% to 17% more likely to occur when the level of concentration in the domestic fund industry increases. This evidence is consistent with the findings in the literature that link competition with active management strategies such as concentrated portfolios (see Dyck et al., 2013). Second, in the same line of Chapter 1, we analysed several funds characteristics that may influence the probability of a fund manager failing to meet the portfolio concentration limits. In Eurozone markets, market supervisors should especially monitor the most experienced funds that are solo-managed to prevent portfolio weights over the 10% limit. This finding is in accordance with Goldman et al., (2016) who shows that individual managers have much more concentrated portfolios than management teams. The fund's age has a positive and significant influence on the likelihood of defaults. That is, the probability of incurring defaults is approximately 18% to 26% higher among older funds. Thus, this evidence is in accordance with the literature that links older funds with higher levels of idiosyncratic risk as a consequence of having more concentrated portfolios (see Amihud and Goyenko, 2013). Further, we analysed the characteristics of those stocks that were especially subject to more concentrated strategies and, therefore, more vulnerable to mutual funds' investment policies. For that, we applied a multinomial logic panel data model (fixed effects) and found that the weight of the stocks in their benchmarks had a positive and significant effect on default on the EU portfolio concentration limit. The results show how the probability of a stock being subject to default is approximately 8% to 25% higher when the stock weight in the domestic benchmark increases. Thus, market supervisors should monitor stocks with large weights in domestic equity benchmarks. In addition, we also find how the stocks of domestic benchmarks that have been held longer are likely to be subject to concentration defaults. That is, defaults are approximately 13% to 24% more likely to occur when choosing stocks that belong to the benchmarks during the last 24 months. Thus, this result is consistent with the literature that argues the local advantage of reducing information asymmetry problems. Thus, we find how stocks that present low volatility have a greater likelihood of being subject to non-compliance with EU portfolio concentration limits. In terms of percentages, the probability approximately lowers between 19% to 27% when stock volatility increases. This finding is in accordance with the commitment to controlled risk strategies (see Huang et al., 2011). Therefore, market supervisors should pay more attention to these stock characteristics to monitor stocks that are more frequently overweighted above EU concentration limits. In summary, this chapter is the first to both analyse and identify the determinants of domestic equity funds' failure to comply with the portfolio concentration limits of EU Directive 2009/65/EC. Furthermore, our study also determines the characteristics of the stocks subject to these non-compliant portfolios in domestic equity funds in the Eurozone. This chapter has important implications for market supervisors and policymakers in the mutual fund industries of the Eurozone. Our approach allows market supervisors with limited resources to identify and control non-compliant domestic equity funds by monitoring only some fund-specific characteristics. The improvement of this monitoring process should contribute to the financial stability of the EU asset management industry in terms of investor protection and market transparency. That is, mutual fund unitholders should be completely certain that their money is allocated to portfolios fulfilling the concentration limits required by the EU. Our findings also show a tool to assist EU market supervisors in identifying some explanatory mechanisms for stock weights that are over the EU concentration limits. Thus, our results may help supervisors identify what kind of domestic equity funds are more inclined to default and what kind of stocks are likely overweighted by these funds. Market supervisors could especially monitor these stocks to verify that domestic equity funds are meeting the concentration limits. Market supervisors should focus their limited resources on these types of stocks held by domestic equity funds to prevent defaults in portfolio concentration. Finally, our approach could also help retail investors control their risk profiles in terms of exceeding portfolio concentration limits. This application is in line with the reinforcement of investor protection of portfolio concentration. Investors could be sure that domestic equity funds fully follow the diversification requirements and market transparency provided by the UCITS directives. Chapter 3 presents a new perspective in the analysis of active management. We introduced dynamism by proposing a new version of AS that considers how the managers deviate their portfolios in two consecutive periods. We define dynamic Active Share (dAS) as a measure to capture over time the actual level of activity by comparing the differences against the benchmark in two consecutive periods. Our measure captures not only the long and short static positions in each stock included in the benchmark but also the previous long (short) positions that have been overweighted (underweighted) in the next period. Thus, dAS allows us to divide between investment decisions driven to spread portfolio weights closer to the benchmark (i.e., decisions that lead to a lower differentiation to the benchmark) and the other which is further from the benchmark (i.e., decisions that lead to a higher differentiation). Focusing on the most relevant fund industries in the Eurozone, we analysed the predictive power of AS first. The best results were found in the Spanish industry and, with less robustness, in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, and Belgium. France only shows this relationship in the long term when we consider the CAPM alpha; while Italy, Finland, Portugal, and Greece fail to offer significant results or even present negative relationships. These results indicate that the prediction ability of AS presents assorted results as this relation is less clear than that presented in the literature (Cremers and Petajisto, 2009) Second, we examined the influence on the prediction power for performance of AS by splitting stocks in the portfolios of our sample into benchmark and non-benchmark . The results allow us to identify how the high proportion of prediction ability for performance of AS is explained by the investment in non-benchmark stocks. Although the AS's share of overweight or underweight benchmark stocks is really related to stock picking ability, investing in overweighted stocks may mean distortions in their performance evaluations that can lead to spurious contributions to portfolio performance. Third, we applied and analysed the predictive power of dAS. The results provided evidence that the performance of non-benchmark stocks in high AS funds did not extend to mutual funds with high dAS. Thus, this measure is less sensitive to the weight of the portfolio that is invested in non-benchmark securities that is very relevant in Eurozone countries where domestic benchmarks are highly concentrated. The main advantage of the dAS compared to the AS is that our measure provides more information and can be split according to different investment decisions. For that reason, we proposed splitting up the dAS to examine which trading decisions add value to the portfolio. Our most interesting results showed that German funds presents a robust relationship between selling investment decisions and subsequently better performance. This relationship was also found for Dutch, Austrian, and Portuguese funds but with actual limited significance. This finding is in accordance with the level of activity showed by these industries in Chapter 1. Further, we analysed the contributions to dAS that was generated by those trading decisions that might be considered as managers' bets. These bets could be those decisions that increased holdings that were already overweighted (buy bets) or decrease those holdings that were already underweighted (sell bets). Our findings show as in Germany and in some cases in the Austrian and Portuguese industries that there is subsequent significantly better performance in buying decisions. Focusing on selling decisions, only Finnish funds show positive and strong beliefs and performance. The results for predicting performance show that those portfolios with a higher concentration of these bets offer subsequent abnormal returns as this prediction ability is even higher than the seminal AS in some of the markets in this study. Accordingly, the results shown in this chapter are an interesting addition to Cohen et al. (2010) who try to identify the trades in which the managers have more confidence. The empirical findings show that those mutual funds with trading decisions with a stronger belief from the manager (i.e., decisions that lead them to deviate even more from the benchmark) outperform the remaining funds, especially when buying decisions are considered. This evidence is consistent with Karoui and Patel (2020) who show that the benefit of AS lies in the selection decision rather than the weighting decision. In summary, Chapter 3 is the first to introduce a dynamic perspective on AS to capture managers' activity and skill. This chapter is relevant for investors who should be interested in knowing whether their fund manager is active and whether their decisions on new investment opportunities add value to the portfolio (i.e., undervalued assets) or on the contrary, the fund manager is passive. The common argument is related to the fees because the management fees charged by these two types of funds should be different. In addition, the chapter is also relevant to regulators in order to adjust the management fees charged by management companies to the actual level of activity carried out by mutual funds. Several fields for further investigation have been identified in this dissertation. Regarding the EU Directive, an extensive test of the level of enforcement that the UCITS IV has implemented in each Eurozone country (including emerging markets) could be useful for making decisions about possible changes in the regulation. Furthermore, a complementary analysis of chapter VII in UCITS IV in terms of its appropriateness with the characteristics of each Eurozone country could allow a more complete assessment of the limits of portfolio concentration and the implementation of the protection to investors. In addition, this dissertation makes an important advance in the topic of active management to help further an analysis in other areas or regions with similar characteristics that could be relevant to the financial literature.
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Yes, I went back to the East Side Gallery my firstweekend, as it was not closed on Sunday most shopping is closed) I have been in Berlin for one week thus far, with nearly three months to go. It has been a very busy week, and it did not just involve getting situated. But, yes, that took some effort and time as well. So, what have been up to in the shadow of the TV tower that is featured in any movie that wants to depict Berlin as a destination? First, yes, getting situated. I am staying near the Hertie School's Center for International Security, which is just off of Alexanderplatz. The apartment has much of what I need, but I had to go out and get a pillow (made in Canada!), a printer, groceries, and a residence permit. Yes, the country of Max Weber is very bureaucratic. Because there is much demand these days for all kinds of paperwork, I was lucky to snare an appointment on the farthest southern edge of Berlin. I got my paperwork stamped, so I can reside in Berlin officially. woot! President of Hertie, the Chinese former VM, and Tobias BundeSecond, it turns out that my timing is good and the Hertie School is a happening place. Tobias Bunde, one of the researchers here, is also a/the organizer of the Munich Security Conference which happened the weekend I arrived. So, he brought a former Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs to a packed room (the Hertie students are from all over and they are keeners) where she presented her take on what happened at Munich and what are the major trends in international relations. I found her to be the best representative of the Chinese government: her English was great, she was not overly polemical, she knew her audience, and so forth. She definitely presented a biased point of view, but a clear one that was well asserted. She noted for instance that only four panels out of a hundred at the conference were on Gaza. She pointed that the discussions on that and on Ukraine were focused on problems, not solutions. But she was not pressed to offer any solutions. She contrasted the threat to freedom of the seas--that it is a problem for commercial shipping in the Red Seas but only a threat to American warships in the South China Sea. Hmmmm. She talked about Asia's long peace, she seems to be omitting the occasional Indo-Pakistan conflict. Speaking of omissions, she argued that occupation never works, and that this something the Americans should have known in 2003 and the Russians should have known two years ago. I was tempted to ask about Tibet or perhaps Chinese intentions towards Taiwan, but the event was for students. It was a great way to jump into things and meet a bunch of folks.No pics of Peter K, but of other important thinkersAnother event was a session with Peter Katztenstein--one of the most important scholars in both International Relations and Comparative Politics for the past fifty years. Required reading, indeed. He was presented his latest book project (no retirement yet) that is pretty complex, raising meta questions about our thinking and about our need to think about uncertainty. It was similar to Debbi Avant's presidential address at the ISA a couple of years ago. He gave us a few chapters, the crowded room had read it, and so it was mostly Q&A. After the talk, he sat near me and we chatted a bit. That he has written books comparing Germany and Japan was not lost on me given my latest projects. Next week, there will be a conference I am crashing at Hertie on the state of Zeitenwende and whether other countries are experiencing it as well. Huh? Oh, this refers to a speech by Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz shortly after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, that we live in a watershed moment, that we need to have a revolution in foreign and defense policy. He committed to a lot more defense spending and ending German dependence on Russian energy. The big questions are: how much of this has and is happening and whether other countries are rethinking their place in the world. I hope to find out next week.Third, I have been getting some work done. I have started arranging interviews for the German case, finalizing the details for a trip to Finland in April to do that case study, doing the same for a research presentation at Central European University in Vienna in a few weeks (and, yes, nailing down the details for an Alps ski trip). I also revised three chapters of the Steve/Dave/Phil book before Dave tries to find some interest at the ISA in April. I hope to do my turn on the rest of the book in the next week. Fourth, I have, of course, been touristing. I spent last weekend and today walking around this part of Berlin. I am far more familiar with west Berlin, as I have been largely based at hotels in west Berlin. My first walks were more targeted as I was looking for grocery stores (and google maps kept lying about where they were). Some observations, which may be due to change over time or may be due to East Berlin being a bit different than West Berlin:Less adherence to the guidance of the little green/red Ampelmännchen, as I saw more people walking despite the red signs. Is this a sign that German society is breaking down?Or is that the walk signals in East Berlin are too damned short? I can't tell you on how many streets I have been stuck in the middle (mostly where the trams go) as the light turns red very quickly.I don't remember this much graffiti all over the place last time. On the bright side, when a store or something has nice wall art, the vandals or artists paint elsewhere.Lots of reconstruction and renovations going on.Lots more Five Guys burger places than I can recall. I haven't tried them yet, as I am mostly doing my own modest cooking (this apartment's kitchen is not well equipped, so no baking and only basic dinners). I did start off my time here with currywurst and chips, but I think my go-to cheap food will be kebabs/shawarma stuff. I did happen to walk past an Indonesian place, so I will be returning to that neighborhood when I am tired of my own cooking.Today's walk was more random, as I would head in one direction and then find something interesting on the map. Which took me to a memorial for those who the East German government killed at the Berlin Wall, which, yes, has been down longer than it has been up. I learned a great deal:I should have realized how dynamic the interplay between Communist government and those seeking to escape would be. The wall such as it was kept evolving as the government learned via the escapes and attempts.Part of the memorial showingwhere the house got built over by the wallIncluding tunneling! 57 people got out through one tunnel--amazing.The wall itself caused more people to want to leave as it signaled more repression.The evolution of the barrier included destruction of a church (one dedicated to Reconciliation!) and the movement of dead bodies from a graveyard, it involved boarding up and then destroying houses. There were a fair amount of German tour groups going through this area, so yes, still much interest even as it recedes in our memories. The other new experience for me is a 21st century gym. I have mostly exercised on ultimate fields, bike rides through neighborhoods, the treadmill in our basement, and the occasional hotel fitness center. There is a spiffy, reasonable place near me that has the stuff I need (treadmills, space to stretch to try to fix my balky knee) and far more stuff. The denizens are in much, much better shape than I am, doing all kinds of exercises that I would not attempt, so that has been a funky distraction while I sweat out the pastries I have been buying. The bakeries here are good, and, yes, they like their donuts. I have resisted mightily but not entirely. Next week, I will report what I learned at zeintenwende-fest. Some random pics from my walks: Vegetarian butcher? Funky signs, not sure there is an actual cafe here.
Regionaler Wirtschaftlicher Integration (RWI) liegt ein doppelter Zielkonflikt ("trade-off") zugrunde. Zum einen besteht dieser trade-off auf räumlicher Ebene da es sich um eine politische und ökonomische Organisationseinheit zwischen dem Lokalen und Globalen handelt. Zum anderen besteht ein trade-off da sowohl Liberalisierungsansätze innerhalb der Region als auch das Aufrechterhalten (oder gar Erweitern) von Protektionismus gegen die Außenwelt Teil von regionalen Ansätzen sind. Darüber hinaus ist RWI ein facettenreiches, polymorphes und idiosynkratisches Phänomen, das (potentiell) eine Vielzahl unterschiedlicher Politkfelder und Politikschlagrichtungen enthält. Traditionell wird RWI nach der Klassifizierung von Balassa (1961) in Präferenzabkommen (PTAs), Freihandelsabkommen (FTAs), Zollunionen (CUs) Gemeinsame Märkte (CMs), Währungsunionen (MUs) und ggf. Politische Unionen (PUs) eingeteilt und meist auch eine zeitliche Abfolge in dieser Reihenfolge unterstellt. In Wahrheit finden solche Prozesse teilweise parallel und in vielen Fällen unvollständig statt. Daher erscheint es sinnvoller, in vier verschiedene Kategorien an Politikfeld0ptionen zu unterschieden, nämlich • Präferentielle Liberalisierung von Güterhandel; • Präferentielle Liberalisierung anderer Produktionsfaktoren; • Koordinierung & Harmonisierung von Regularien und Institutionen; • Koordinierung und gemeinsame Verausgabung von öffentlichen Mitteln. Ein solch vielgestaltiges und janusköpfiges Phänomen bezieht seine Rechtfertigung aus einer großen Anzahl an unterschiedlichen theoretischen Schulen. Wir diskutieren diese Schulen in dieser Arbeit in drei separaten Kapiteln zum Neo-Klassischen Ansatz, zu Ansätzen der Politischen Ökonomie sowie zu Heterodoxen Ansätzen. Dabei lassen sich fünf Gruppen von Effekten unterscheiden. Diese sind • Allokationseffekte; • Akkumulationseffekte; • Lokationseffekte; • Levellingeffekte; • Und Gouvernanz-Effekte. Bei der Analyse von RWI sind darüber hinaus Imperfektionen zu beachten, die insbesondere in Afrika eine entscheidende Rolle spielen. Dies bezieht sich insbesondere auf die teilweise sehr schwache Implementation von beschlossenen RWI Maβnahmen, die sich z.B. im "Spaghetti Bowl" Phänomen, politischen Widerständen auf nationaler Ebene, administrativen Schwächen und massiven Deckungslücken in den Budgets der regionalen Behörden niederschlagen. Auch die Dominanz der Informalität in der Wirtschaft wirft Fragen zur potentiellen Wirkungsmächtigkeit von RWI auf. Während solche "Papiertiger"-Phänomene grundsätzliche Fragen an der Ernsthaftigkeit der jeweiligen Regionalvorhaben aufwerfen, kann die Präsenz solcher Hürden auch Grund für Optimismus sein da die empirisch bislang beobachteten, relativ geringen Wohlfahrtseffekte zu einem substantiellen Anteil auf die geringe Implementierungstiefe zurückgeführt werden können und nicht zwangsläufig ein Beleg für die Ineffektivität von RWI per se gesehen werden muss. Mit anderen Worten, eine wirkliche empirische Überprüfung des Erfolgs oder Versagens von RWI in Entwicklungsländern könnte erst stattfinden, wenn es tatsächlich ordnungsgemäß umgesetzt würde. Der bekannteste und am umfangreichsten entwickelte Ansatz zur Analyse der Effekte von RWI ist fraglos der Neo-klassische Ansatz, der sich grundlegend und ausschlieβlich mit der auf Viner zurückgehenden Gegenüberstellung von Handelsschaffung und Handelsumlenkung. Wir zeigen, dass die neoklassischen empirischen Methoden und Resultate trotz Tausender Studien wenig robust sind und zu einem Gutteil arbiträr gewählt sind. Kleinste Änderungen in Modell-Parametern, der empirischen Strategie oder den Datenquellen führen zu stark abweichenden Resultaten. Grundsätzlich scheint Handelsumlenkung weniger stark ausgeprägt zu sein als Handelsschaffung, der Netto-Effekt für die Regionen scheint also aus dieser Perspektive in den allermeisten Fällen positiv zu sein (dies zeigen sowohl Sekundärstudien als auch eigene Berechnungen). Es gibt sowohl Gewinner als auch Verlierer innerhalb der Regionen. Allerdings scheinen diese nicht wie vom Neoklassischen Ansatz vorhergesagt, durch die anfängliche ökonomische Machtverteilung vorherbestimmt zu sein. Dennoch bleibt die axiomatische Inferiorität von RWI zwischen Entwicklungsländern gegenüber multilateraler Liberalisierung (sowie Nord-Süd Integration und unilateraler Liberalisierung) intakt, solange die Analyse auf diese Perspektive beschränkt bleibt. Dies wirft die Frage auf, warum es dann sein kann, dass Regionalintegration so weit verbreitet ist – sowohl die Analysen aus Politökonomischer Sicht als auch jene aus Heterodoxer Sicht versuchen jeweils Antwort auf dieses scheinbare Rätsel zu geben. Darüber hinaus mündet eine unvoreingenommen und holistische Analyse von Regionalintegration innerhalb des Neoklassischen Ansatzes in einer fundamentale Erkenntnis, die überraschenderweise nur selten in der Literatur diskutiert wird. Ein näherer Blick auf die jeweiligen Schätzungen offenbart, dass selbst die optimistischsten Berechnungen in Größenordnungen enden, die absolut vernachlässigbar sind im Verhältnis zu generellen Wachstumsdynamiken, da es sich bei den Effizienzgewinnen aus Allokationseffekten um Einmal-Effekte in Höhe von unter einem Prozent des BIP handelt. Dies trifft interessanterweise nicht nur auf RWI zu, sondern auch für eine mögliche allumfassende multilaterale Liberalisierung. Diese eklatante Bedeutungslosigkeit der allokationsbedingten Handelsschaffung von sowohl RWI als auch multilateraler Liberalisierung wirft in unseren Augen mehr Fragen bezüglich der Zweckdienlichkeit des Neoklassischen Ansatzes auf, als bezüglich des Entwicklungs- und Wachstumspotentials von Regionalintegration. Allerdings stellt sich die Frage, warum dieser Analyse dann ein solch großer Raum beigemessen wird. Der Hauptgrund scheint, wie in vielen anderen Bereichen der Volkswirtschaft auch, weniger der Umstand zu sein, dass die Einsicht fehlt, dass diese Analysen die Realität nur unzureichend ab- und nachbilden, sondern vielmehr, dass von vielen Autoren mehr Wert auf eine elegante, mathematisch raffinierte und zumindest scheinbar klar quantifizierte und eindeutige Ergebnisse liefernde Methode setzen wollen als auf eine, bei der die Disziplin methodisch bestenfalls in den Anfangsschuhen steckt, Datengrundlagen in substantiellem Umfang fehlen und Ungewissheiten aufgrund der Komplexität kaum abschließend überwunden werden können. An zweiter Stelle folgt in Bezug auf Popularität und Anzahl an Studien ein spieltheoretischer Ansatz der Politischen Ökonomie. Hierbei wird der Frage nachgegangen, warum Regionalintegration betrieben wird, obwohl der Neoklassische Ansatz (scheinbar) nachweist, das seine multilaterale Lösung zu präferieren wäre. Als Grund wird hierbei der Einfluss von Lobbyisten und anderen Interessengruppen angenommen. Die Diskussion widmet sich im weiteren Verlauf fast ausschließlich der Frage, ob eine solcherart zustande gekommene Regionalintegration weitere, multilaterale Liberalisierungsschritte beflügelt und behindert. Allerdings ist der Erkenntnisgewinn aus den unzähligen Studien und Modellen äußerst überschaubar. Andere wichtige Ansätze für die Analyse von RWI erhalten deutlich weniger Aufmerksamkeit in der wissenschaftlichen Diskussion, obwohl diese heterodoxen Ansätze, die den Fokus auf dynamische Effekte und Strukturwandel legen, in der öffentlichen Debatte eine nicht unbedeutende Rolle spielen. Diesen Ansätzen ist gemein, dass sie einen Fokus auf Marktversagen und Externalitäten legen. Das Triumvirat der Neuen Handelstheorie, der Neuen der Diskussionen, wobei zusätzlich einige Keynesianische Einflüsse, der Neue Institutionalismus (sowie praxisorientierte Aspekte der Öffentlichen Finanzen) und einige radikalere Ansätze mit Ökonomischen Geografie und der Neuen Endogenen Wachstumstheorie bildet hierbei den Kern Fokus auf Arbeitsmärkte und Entwicklungsfallen eine Rolle spielen. Heterodoxe, dynamische Effekte sind sehr komplex und divers und die theoretische und empirische Anwendung auf Regionalismus ist nur sehr schwach entwickelt. Einige heterodoxe Argument ändern die Resultate der Neoklassischen Theorie nur in beschränktem Umfang und zeigen sowohl Vorteile und Nachteile von regionalen und multilateralen Liberalisierungsschritten. Einige andere heterodoxe / dynamische Effekte treten entweder ausschließlich bei RWI auf oder zu einem deutlichen geringeren Maβe auch im Gefolge von Multilateralismus und Nord-Süd Integration. Einige davon haben unserer Einschätzung nach tatsächlich das Potential, die Neoklassischen Argumente zur Dominanz von multilateralen Lösungen komplett ins Gegenteil zu verkehren. Leider ist die empirische Analyse von dynamischen Effekten jedoch sehr schlecht entwickelt. Dennoch erscheinen Schätzungen aufgrund von dynamischen Modellen "sufficiently specified to suggest that the benefits behind the dynamics of integration are potentially large" (Develin & French-Davis, 1998:20). Die Komplexität der heterodoxen Effekte impliziert, dass komplizierte Entscheidungen zur Auswahl von spezifischen Maβnahmen getroffen werden müssen. Auch wenn Regionalismus dynamische Effekte auslösen kann, ist dies keineswegs ein Automatismus, der aus jeglichen regionalen Anstrengungen entspringt. Rodrik's Kommentar zu Industriepolitik paraphrasierend, sollte daher in Zukunft weniger der Frage nachgegangen werden, ob Regionalismus unter Entwicklungsländern eine gute Politikwahl ist, sondern eher, wie Regionalismus ausgebildet werden muss, um erfolgreich Entwicklungsimpulse geben zu können.:1. Introduction 1.1 Regional economic integration: a multi-faceted phenomenon and double trade-off 1.2 Economic theories with application to economic regionalism 1.2.1 Stock-taking of theoretical frameworks 1.2.2 Attempt at a categorisation of potential effects 1.2.3 Structure and approach 1.2.4 Justification and limitations 2. Historical sketch and typical phenomena of African regionalism 2.1 Historical sketch: regionalism in Africa and beyond 2.2 Paper tigers, spaghetti bowl and informality 2.2.1 Illusionary regionalism: the political economy of signing, but not implementing regionalism 2.2.1.1 Concealed political resistance 2.2.1.2 Institutional weaknesses 2.2.1.3 The spaghetti bowl 2.2.1.4 Is regionalism virtual or real? 2.2.2 Regionalism and the informal sector 3. Neo-classic perspectives: is regionalism doomed to failure? 3.1 Neo-classical economics: trade diversion and absolute losses 3.1.1 The destructive effects of trade diversion 3.1.2 Some criticisms on the trade creation / trade diversion calculus 3.2 Winners and losers 3.3 Economic regionalism as a futile undertaking: no way out of the poverty trap? 3.3.1 Size 3.3.2 Homogeneity 3.3.3 Preference erosion 3.4 Empirics I: do RECs promote trade? 3.4.1 Regional trade volumes, shares, intensities and their development 3.4.2 The gravity model 3.4.2.1 Results of the gravity model 3.4.2.2 Factors for the variety and unreliability of the gravity model 3.4.3 Alternative methodological approaches 3.4.3.1 Panel approach 3.4.3.2 Matching estimator 3.4.3.3 REC depth differentiation 3.4.3.4 Bayesian Model Averaging 3.4.3.5 CGE: pseudo empirics or 'could' African RECs promote trade? 3.5 Empirics II: do RECs hurt their members? 3.5.1 Gravity and trade diversion 3.5.2 CGE and welfare effects 3.5.3 Finger-Kreinin index of similarity 3.5.4 ROI and RCA 3.6 Empirics III: winners and losers 3.7 Empirics IV: are African RECs ill-suited for regionalism? 3.7.1 Size 3.7.2 Homogeneity 3.7.2.1 Homogenous Africa? 3.7.2.2 A short digression: Linder or H-O? 3.7.3 Preference erosion 3.8 Empirics V: A closer look at NC aspects for the EAC 3.8.1 Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) 3.8.2 Descriptive statistics on absolute and relative trade growth 3.8.3 Finger-Kreinin index 3.8.4 Revealed comparative advantage approach 3.8.5 Disaggregated effects 3.8.6 Effects of disaggregated changes in preferential margins on relative trade growth 3.8.7 EAC: regional gains or losses? 3.8.8 EAC: winners and losers 3.9 Synopsis: The limits of regionalism or the limitations of NC approaches? 3.9.1 Empirical results 3.9.2 Insufficiency and arbitrariness of empirical instruments 3.9.3 Gains from regionalism in perspective (I): contribution to GDP 3.9.4 Gains from regionalism in perspective (II): extra-regional alternatives 3.9.4.1 North-South integration as alternative? 3.9.4.2 Unilateralism and multilateralism as better alternatives? 3.9.5 The need for looking beyond the Neoclassical Framework 4. Political economy: non-welfare oriented reasons for regionalism and implementation issues 4.1 Framing the 'stepping stone vs. stumbling block' debate: Larry Summers vs. Jagdish Bhagwati 4.1.1 Endogenous bloc formation 4.1.2 Endogenous protection 4.1.3 Institutional and negotiation aspects 4.1.4 Forgone gains vs. political feasibility – a case for 'open regionalism' 4.2 Empirics and synopsis: Regionalism and multilateralism – friends or foes? 5. Heterodox perspectives: what role for regionalism in development and structural change? 5.1 Regionalism as anti-globalism vs. regionalism as tool for structural change 5.2 Relaxed assumptions 5.2.1 Economies of scale 5.2.2 Imperfect competition and product differentiation 5.2.3 Trade costs, factor (im)mobility, diminishing returns and congestion 5.2.4 Technology, skills and (tacit) knowledge 5.2.5 Sector / goods heterogeneity and firm heterogeneity 5.2.6 Dynamism and endogeneity of factors 5.2.7 Non-clearing labour markets 5.2.8 Transaction costs 5.2.9 The importance of the short-run 5.3 Heterodox models and regionalism: catching-up and structural change? 5.3.1 Non-NC allocation effects 5.3.1.1 Love for variety 5.3.1.2 Competition-induced producer rent reductions and rent transfers 5.3.2 Levelling effects and adjustment costs in the short run 5.3.2.1 Is there a case for regionalism as a levelling force? 5.3.2.2 Is regionalism alleviating adjustment costs? 5.3.3 Location and accumulation effects 5.3.3.1 Competition and challenge-response increases in efficiency 5.3.3.2 Trade and investment: is there a case for tariff-jumping FDI? 5.3.3.3 Liberalisation and learning by doing: is there a case for infant industry protection? 5.3.3.4 Protection and competition: is there a case for regional industrial policy? 5.3.3.5 Winners and losers: is there a case for regional compensation? 5.3.3.6 Missing liberalization from the West in a dishonest debate: a case for tit-for-tat? 5.3.3.7 Limits of liberalization and creating a flat world 5.3.3.8 Trade costs vs. agglomeration: a case for regionalisation in the long run? 5.3.4 Governance effects: regionalism and governance/public spending 5.3.4.1 Regionalism as window of opportunity: does regionalism improve governance? 5.3.4.2 Signalling 5.3.4.3 Bargaining position 5.3.4.4 Regionalism and harmonisation: transaction costs and levelling the playing field 5.3.4.5 Regional public spending: regional public goods and economies of scale 5.4 Some attempts at empirical strategies for heterodox approaches 5.4.1 Literature review: heterodox empirical results and their discontents 5.4.1.1 Allocation effects: love for variety and producer rents 5.4.1.2 Levelling effects and adjustment costs 5.4.1.3 Accumulation and location effects 5.4.1.4 Governance effects 5.4.2 Heterodox effect approximations for the EAC 5.4.2.1 Regional export growth and export share growth 5.4.2.2 Directions of trade in the EAC 5.4.2.3 Sectoral disaggregation (I): CIP rankings 5.4.2.4 Sectoral disaggregation (II): Manufacturing exports and technology content 5.4.2.5 Sectoral disaggregation (III): Manufacturing exports and intra-regional trade 5.4.2.6 Sectoral disaggregation (IV): 'complexity' and diversification 5.4.2.7 Sectoral disaggregation (V): diversification and new trade 5.4.2.8 Foreign Direct Investment 5.4.2.9 Governance effects in the EAC: protocols vs. functional cooperation 5.5 Synopsis: are heterodox dynamic effects the saviours of regionalism? 6. Conclusion 6.1 Insights from and debunking of the NC framework 6.2 Insights from and debunking of the political economy framework 6.3 Insights from and current limitations of the heterodox framework Annex Bibliography
This book takes both a global as well as a local perspective in assessing the impacts of climate change on the economy, agricultural sector, and households in three of the MENA countries; Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. The major channels of impact for global climate change are through changing world food (and energy) prices, especially since all the countries under analysis are or have become net importers of oil and petroleum products and many food commodities in recent years. The impacts of local climate change decrease crop yields in the longer run and through them, productivity in the agricultu
The work sheds light on the largely under-investigated puzzle of the distributional impact of EU economic governance on the budget structures of the Member States. The overarching research question is: Is the impact of the Stability and Growth Pact neutral to the composition of domestic public spending? In addressing the EU-MS fiscal puzzle the thesis considers three main research questions: 1. when and how the SGP affects the composition of national budgets. 2. if and how the SGP has affected the domestic composition of public expenditures during the Great Recession and Eurozone crisis. 3. if and how the impact of the SGP changes across different domestic political, institutional and economic conditions. The thesis brings together the literature of the domestic determinants of national fiscal policy with that on the Economic and Monetary Union. Firstly, the disaggregate assessment of where the bite of the EU economic governance framework lands back at home sheds some light on how the Pact fulfils its policy objectives of promoting at the same time fiscal discipline and inclusive growth. Within this context, it contributes to the rich debate on the subordination of social objectives to economic ones at the hand of the EU fiscal surveillance regulatory framework. At the same time, it evaluates the claim of a detrimental effect of the Pact on investment and growth, linked to the lengthening and worsening of the severe downturn in the context of the Great Recession and Eurozone crisis, as well as the divergence between core and periphery. Building on the well-established findings on the interplay between (national) fiscal rules and the political, institutional, and economic context the analysis provides a causal empirical assessment over the panel of the EU28 from 1995 to 2018 of whether and under which conditions the EU economic governance framework impacts the structure of the budgets of the Member States. In considering both a synthetic indicator of changes to the budget structure, disaggregated impact on all budget lines (e.g. health, education, social protection, etc.), and on broad components associated with investments, transfers, and the mitigation of inequalities, the analysis provides a rare comprehensive picture of which elements are affected at all and where comparatively the highest toll emerges within the components of national spending. The main results are the following: • EU economic governance is far from being neutral in affecting the budget structure of the Member States; • Its impact on the national fiscal policy mix is heterogeneous over time - increasing substantially with the latest wave of reform - and scope, limited predominantly to Eurozone countries under EDP surveillance and aligning quite poorly with prescriptions of the CSRs; • Budgetary dynamics do not escape the bind of the EDP in times of crisis, rather the framework is the most impactful in such circumstances, generating substantial spending restructuring which is both pro-cyclical and detrimental for inclusive growth, as well as for geographical convergence; • Heterogeneity in the effect of the Pact extends to domestic circumstances, with political characteristics of the government (e.g. small budget distances, high alternation) and a unitary institutional structure as a precondition for any impact to materialise, while in the economic domain, alike for the crisis, the restraint of the SGP materialises especially in countering expansionary pressures such as those of ageing and unemployment. Findings refute the widespread argument within the literature of a limited impact of the supranational fiscal governance framework given the poor track record of compliance with the deficit targets of the Stability and Growth Pact. Conversely, the work contributes a more sophisticated account of the EU economic governance framework. It distinguishes not only membership to the EMU and the Eurozone but also close supranational budgetary surveillance under the Excessive Deficit Procedure. Additionally, it accounts for the heterogeneous effects of the Pact over its life and two substantial reforms. While an effect that runs against fiscal discipline is somewhat confirmed for EU and Eurozone membership, EDP surveillance emerges as the key driver of a consolidation-driven restructuring effect on national budget structures. Such dynamic, however, is far from homogeneous across time and place: being under the EDP leads to changes in the fiscal policy mix only within the Eurozone and after the 2011 reform when excluding the period of the crisis. Second, the analysis investigates the alignment between the effect on the national budget structure of the supranational fiscal rule and the policy coordination within the Semester comparing the distributive effect of the Pact with the Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs) in selected Member States. Overall, the negative impact of the EDP on inequality mitigating measures and investment and specifically on health, education, and social protection, more often than not clashes with the CSRs in the considered Member States. Heterogeneities both in the impact of the EDP on the budget structure in the post-2011 period across the core and periphery and the CSRs imply, however, a more substantial disconnect between the two arms of the EMU for the Southern Member States, supporting the narrative of a particularly detrimental effect of the Pact on social spending and inequality. Third, a further contribution is the granular analysis of dynamics in times of crisis unveiling whether the escape clauses shield domestic budget structures from any shock at the hands of the supranational fiscal rule or rather instead the national fiscal policy mix is affected. The analysis offers a rare detailed account of the cost of the SGP in times of crisis for specific budget components and their relative penalization at the hands of austerity policies, allowing to pinpoint if investments have been preserved at the expenses of social policies and those mitigating inequality, together with the intergenerational distributions of fiscal discipline. The results contradict the hypothesis of national budgets escaping from the claws of the pact during economic downturns. Rather, during the crisis more marked restructuring of the fiscal policy mixes emerges, as the EDP surveillance has a significant and sizeable impact on the budget structure and some of the key budget lines of interest even before the 2011 reform in times of crisis. The analysis reveals that not all spending is equally affected, as while EDP surveillance acts to (nearly fully) contain the recessionary upward push on spending, for example, in the domains of education and social protection, it more than compensates for the crisis for another key budget line such as health. As a result, divergences emerge in the constraining effect of the Pact on transfers, investment, and inequality mitigation. The first is only negatively impacted by the EDP surveillance in times of crisis, while the remaining categories always feel the constraining influence of the Pact which is further strengthened during the Great Recession. The already bleak picture for an inclusive and growth-enhancing investment rich recovery hides substantial divergences between core and periphery explored in details in the dissertation, as southern countries carry the worst prospect in terms of full containment of transfers and slashing of investments, with an intergenerational cost shouldered especially by youth. Finally, the work considers as well the interplay between the supranational level and the national context, identifying how the characteristics of the governing coalition (i.e. ideology, the range within the government and alternation), the federal- unitary institutional nature, along with fiscal rule strength preferences in the Member States, and the demographic and employment conditions affect the transmission of the supranational commitments within the Stability and Growth Pact onto the domestic budget structure. In doing so it uncovers as well which national configurations and conditions are conducive to a (restraining) impact of the SGP on national spending and the fiscal policy mix. Findings show that national political context facilitating changes to the budget structure (i.e. small coalition ranges and high alternations) are associated with a larger impact of the EDP surveillance on the fiscal policy mix, which loses significance under less favourable political conditions. A similar pattern emerges for ideology, with somewhat moderate governments as a precondition for any impact of the EDP surveillance, which is more sizeable on the left side of the spectrum. In the institutional arena unitary countries are more conducive to restructuring their budgets when falling under EDP surveillance, while conversely, national fiscal rule preferences show a complementarity between the extent to which countries prefer fiscal discipline on their own and the Pact, with EDP surveillance affecting more substantially the Member States with a laxer approach to spending. Finally, the demographic pressure and that of high unemployment stiffen the budget structure increasing the barriers against a restructuring effect of the Pact. However, from the opposite perspective - alike for the crisis - the constraining power of EDP surveillance is quite remarkable, containing their budgetary implications. To that effect, the EDP enacts substantial convergence across various levels of unemployment and old-age dependency rate. As such, the thesis confirms that while effects are heterogeneous and dependent on the national context, the Pact for Eurozone countries under EDP surveillance is far from a minor nuisance but rather a powerful force capable of substantially restraining if not annihilating key pressures such as that of demography, unemployment, and even the crisis. The thesis is structured as follows. After introducing the purpose and relevance of the work in Chapter One, Chapter Two situates the analysis within the extant literature on the domestic determinants of the budget structure, fiscal rules, and the EU economic governance, which inform and ground the research questions and hypotheses presented in Chapter Three. From such premises, the methodological approach and research design are outlined in Chapter Four touching on the key empirical challenges and mitigation strategies deployed in assessing such a complex ecosystem. Four empirical chapters follow. Chapter Five uncovers heterogeneities in the effect of the EU economic governance over its different configurations (e.g. Eurozone, EDP surveillance) and subsequent regulatory framework (i.e. initial, post- 2005, and post-2011), together with the (mis)-alignment across the effect of the Pact on domestic budget structures and the prescriptions of the Country-Specific- Recommendations. Chapter Six and Seven are dedicated to the assessment of the effect of the Pact during the Great Recession and Eurozone crisis, evaluating whether - against the expectations derived from the escape clauses - any impact on the budget structure emerges at all during the crisis, considering as well at a granular level where the bite of the EU economic governance at crisis lands across budget lines. Chapter Seven continues along the same line considering the distributional effects on investments, transfers, and inequality mitigation during the crisis, taking a closer look at the social dimension and how the intergenerational balance of spending is altered. Chapter Eight concludes the empirical analysis evaluating the interaction between the Pact and the national context uncovering which political, institutional, and economic domestic configurations are most conducive to the impact of the SGP. Finally, Chapter Nine situates the key findings of the thesis in the context of the reform debate on the Pact and fiscal governance more in general, considering as well the insights and outlook for the future of political and economic integration which can be drawn for the unprecedented challenge of the Covid-19 crisis and (partial) policy evolution for the pandemic response.
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"They would not agree with one another any more than do the dog that is a heavenly constellation and the dog that is a barking animal." Spinoza"The concept dog doesn't bark." Louis Althusser Ever since reading Margherita Pascucci's Potentia of Poverty I have been thinking about the relation between Marx's thought and Spinoza's common notions. The question I am asking is not did Marx write Capital in and through common notions, as an application of Spinoza's thought. Although I am not entirely discounting such influence. Rather, what would be at stake in reading Marx through the common notions? In case we are unclear on what Spinoza means by common notions, they appear most specifically in a few passages in Part II of the Ethics, the passages dedicated to what could be considered Spinoza's epistemology. Common notions are defined through a series of propositions. As Spinoza writes: EIIP37: "What is common to all things (on this see L2, above) and is equally in the part and in the whole, does not constitute the essence of any singular thing. And in EIIP38: "Those things which are common to all, and which are equally in the part and in the whole, can only be conceived adequately."What is at stake in this odd formulation, equally "in the part and in the whole" can be seen in the contrast Spinoza draws between common notions, transcendentals and universals in the long scholium to Proposition 40. As Spinoza argues transcendentals and universals stem from a confusions of parts and wholes, a confusion brought about by the confusion of images in the body. The first, transcendentals, stem from an overwhelming number of images, while the second, universals retain one image, one part, that then is used to define the universal. As Spinoza writes, "But when the images in the body are completely confused, the mind also will imagine all the bodies confusedly, without any distinction, and comprehend them as if under one attribute, namely, under the attribute of Being, Thing, and so forth. This can also be deduced from the fact that images are not always equally vigorous and from other causes like these, which it is not necessary to explain here. For our purpose it is sufficient to consider only one. For they all reduce to this: these terms signify ideas that are confused in the highest degree. Those notions they call Universal, like Man, Horse, Dog, and the like, have arisen from similar causes, namely, because so many images (e.g., of men) are formed at one time in the human body that they surpass the power of imagining-not entirely, of course, but still to the point where the mind can imagine neither slight differences of the singular [men] (such as the color and size of each one, etc.) nor their determinate number, and imagines distinctly only what they all agree in, insofar as they affect the body. For the body has been affected most [NS: forcefully] by [what is common], since each singular has affected it [by this property]. And [NS: the mind] expresses this by the word man, and predicates it of infinitely many singulars. For as we have said, it cannot imagine a determinate number of singulars. "A transcendental would then be a whole without parts and a universal would be a part without whole, or a part that takes itself for the whole, as an aspect of humanity, featherless biped, rational, or speech is taken for the entirety. A common notion then is neither the whole nor the part, neither a singular thing nor a totality, but what is common for each. What then would be at stake in reading Marx through such a concept of a concept? As I said I have been wondering about this question. It turns out that I did not have to wonder because Nick Nesbitt has answered this question in his recently published book, Reading Capital's Materialist Dialectic: Marx, Spinoza, and the Althusserians. Nesbitt's book joins several recent books in trying to return to what could be considered peak Althusser, or peak Althusserians, the interventions of 1965 (I am thinking here of Estop's and Matthys' books). It is also, much to my delight, a recent book reconsidering Macherey's contribution, reading Macherey's contribution through his later works on Spinoza. I am not going to do justice to the book here (and will be writing a longer review as well as discussing it at Red May tomorrow), but I want to jump in where it considers this question of common notions. As Nesbitt writes, "What then is the nature of such common notions? For Spinoza, the crucial distinction between the inadequate, imaginary ideas we necessarily form from sense impressions, and common notions, is that the latter are ideas not about any given, actually existing singular thing (such as coats and linen or bakers and cotton spinners, among Marx's examples), but about certain qualities common to all things in general. In the wake of Galileo, who died in 1642, Spinoza's privileged example in these propositions is that of physical bodies as such, universally existing in space and following the general laws that govern their relations. If it is the case that 'all bodies agree in certain things' –i.e., that aside from their particular existences, they possess common characteristics, which is to say their extension – then they therefore have in common that 'they are determinations of extension, and are universally and identically subject to the same laws of movement and rest'. For Spinoza, this common nature is what allows for the development of a general science of bodies, one that is founded on purely mathematical principles. The essential characteristic of this scientific understanding of the physical, material world, Macherey observes, is that it does not 'take into consideration the existence of any specific body in particular, and is thus completely abstract'. This immediately recalls Marx's famous defence of the powers of abstraction for the analysis and critique of political economy: 'In the analysis of economic forms neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of assistance. The power of abstraction must replace both'.Like Marx's scientific critique of political economy ('The ultimate aim of this work [i.e., Capital, is] to reveal the economic law of motion of modern society'), Spinoza's 'science', as Macherey reads him, 'determines figures of regularity that, despite the perpetual variations impressed on [actually existing, singular] bodies due to the fact that they exist en acte, constitute the manifestation of a permanence regarding which laws can be formulated independently of the existence of any particular body'."Macherey's five volume on Spinoza remain a crucial sourceOne of the thing that Nesbitt stresses, as the paragraphs above indicate, is that the source of illusion, of inadequate ideas is the image, the impression on the body, an image of a specific thing. Inadequate ideas are representations and as such they are confused mixtures of the thing that affects a body and the body being affected. In contrast to this common notions are common to all things in general. There is no singular experience of motion and rest, no experience of motion or rest as such, even as motion and rest are part of all experience, of all our relations with things in the world.What would this mean for a reading of Marx? As Nesbitt argues, Marx often stressed the abstract nature of his own concepts, replacing wealth, an empirical concept with value (and surplus value) and thinking labor as both concrete and abstract labor. Following Nesbitt, we could then read all of the concepts of Capital, especially the first part, use value, exchange value, concrete labor, and abstract labor as common notions, as common to all existence under capitalism and in the part and in the whole. Such a reading is faithful to Marx's critique of political economy, in which the critique demonstrated how much of political economy remained tied to its own universals of labor, exchange, and self-interest, universals determined by a particular empirical content. I would argue that such a reading helps us deal with a tendency, one tied to our own particular finitude, a version of "seeing the better and doing the worse" to fill these concepts in with their own empirical or even phenomenological content.There is an entire history of readings, or misreadings of Marx, that are basically attempts to tie the concept of use value to some real use, or concrete labor to some real specific and singular labor. Is there a question more persistent or more annoying than that of who or is not a real worker? Or what real usefulness or real utility is in the face of exchange. What is funny about the latter is that Marx addresses it in the second paragraph of Capital when he writes "The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference. Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of production." Yet, readers, even sophisticated readers such as Baudrillard and Derrida have insisted that Marx means use value as tied to some anthropological coordinates of utility. A similar thing could be said about work. Many readers of work have imbued the concept, or concepts of labor, concrete, abstract, etc., with some kind of specific and particular meaning, some idea of what work looks like or feels like. (and I should mention that Nesbitt stresses that the concepts of concrete and abstract labor only work in and through their relations that constitute a positive dialectic). Such attempts are always going to be refracted through one's own particular experience of work. As I have noted elsewhere, they are not too different from trying to make sense of hoof prints in the mud. They are an attempt to make sense of what only exists in relation, in common, through a singular experience. These universals, universals tainted by a particular empirical image of making things, or of phenomenological experiences of being exhausted, can only lead to an endless debate and discussions, debate and discussions that miss the common, which is to say structural condition, of exploitation. The inevitable discussion of real work: Or, never read the commentsThere is more, much more, that can be said about Nesbitt's book and I am looking forward to our conversation, which I will link to here (assuming that you are reading this after it takes place on May 9th). To close, I will just cite a few more passages from Nesbitt what is at stake in thinking through common notions: "This political epistemology of common notions is grounded in what Macherey terms 'a dynamic of rational knowledge', via the perfecting and emendation of the capacity to grasp the real by means of ideas, in which the intellect is led 'from the activity of [sensuous] perception, in which it is at its most passive, to that of conception, in which it is the most active … passing from the particular to the general through a progressive process of abstraction'. The common notion as such thus possesses an inherent ethical and political dimension: ideas that express properties common to all things are as such necessarily 'common to all humans', Macherey comments, 'which is to say that they compose a common knowledge that can be universally shared'. This common knowledge, accessible to all humans and necessarily identically conceived by all who follow this democratic path, thus constitutes 'the condition for a mental community among all people …. In so far as people form common notions that are necessarily adequate, they are actually united, and constitute as such a single intellect and a single body'. Macherey insists above all on the real actuality of this intellectual commons of theoretical practice: 'In the intellect of man, whoever he or she may be, there always exist common notions [such as, I suggested above, a minimal idea of the nature of capitalism such as Marx expresses in the first sentence of Capital] through which can be established the forms of their union with other people, which is to say, with the maximum possible others, and tendentially, with all"The video of the entire panel can be seen here:
1. Contextual outline of the PhD Research Climate change is today often seen as one of the most challenging issue that our civilisation will have to face during the 21st century. This is especially so now that the most recent scientific data have led to the conclusion that the globally averaged net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming (IPCC 2007, p. 5) and that continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming (IPCC, 2007 p. 13). This unequivocal link between climate change and anthropogenic activities requires an urgent, world-wide shift towards a low carbon economy (STERN 2006 p. iv) and coordinated policies and measures to manage this transition. The climate issue is undoubtedly a typical policy question and as such, is considered amenable to economic scrutiny. Indeed, in today's world economics is inevitable when it comes to arbitrages in the field of policy making. From the very beginning of international talks on climate change, up until the most recent discussions on a post-Kyoto international framework, economic arguments have turned out to be crucial elements of the analysis that shapes policy responses to the climate threat. This can be illustrated by the prominent role that economics has played in the different analyses produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to assess the impact of climate change on society. The starting point and the core idea of this PhD research is the long-held observation that the threat of climate change calls for a change of climate in economics. Borrowing from the jargon used in climate policy, adaptation measures could also usefully target the academic discipline of economics. Given that inherent characteristics of the climate problem (e.g. complexity, irreversibility, deep uncertainty, etc.) challenge core economic assumptions, mainstream economic theory does not appear as appropriately equipped to deal with this crucial issue. This makes that new assumptions and analyses are needed in economics in order to comprehend and respond to the problem of climate change. In parallel (and without environmental considerations being specifically the driving force to it), the mainstream model in economics has also long been (and still is) strongly criticised and disputed by numerous scholars - both from within and outside the field of economics. For the sake of functionality, these criticisms - whether they relate to theoretical inconsistencies or are empirically-based - can be subsumed as all challenging part of the Cartesian/Newtonian legacy of economics. This legacy can be shown to have led to a model imprinted with what could be called "mechanistic reductionism". The mechanistic side refers to the Homo oeconomicus construct while reductionism refers to the quest for micro-foundations materialised with the representative agent hypothesis. These two hypotheses constitute, together with the conjecture of perfect markets, the building blocks of the framework of general equilibrium economics. Even though it is functional for the purpose of this work to present them separately, the flaws of economics in dealing with the specificities of the climate issue are not considered independent from the fundamental objections made to the theoretical framework of mainstream economics. The former only make the latter seem more pregnant while the current failure of traditional climate policies informed by mainstream economics render the need for complementary approaches more urgent. 2. Overview of the approach and its main insights for climate policy Starting from this observation, the main objective of this PhD is thus to assess the implications for climate policy that arise from adopting an alternative analytical economic framework. The stance is that the coupling of insights from the framework of evolutionary economics with the perspective of ecological economics provides a promising way forward both theoretically as well as on a more applied basis with respect to a better comprehension of the socioeconomic aspects related to the climate problem. As claimed in van den Bergh (2007, p. 521), ecological economics and evolutionary economics "share many characteristics and can be combined in a fruitful way" - which renders the coupling approach both legitimate and promising. The choice of an evolutionary line of thought initially stems from its core characteristic: given its focus on innovation and system change it provides a useful approach to start with for assessing and managing the needed transition towards a low carbon economy. Besides, its shift of focus towards a better understanding of economic dynamics together with its departure from the perfect rationality hypothesis renders evolutionary economics a suitable theoretical complement for designing environmental policies. The notions of path-dependence and lock-in can be seen as the core elements from this PhD research. They arise from adopting a framework which is founded on a different view of individual rationality and that allows for richer and more complex causalities to be accounted for. In a quest for surmounting the above-mentioned problem of reductionism, our framework builds on the idea of 'multi-level selection'. This means that our analytical framework should be able to accommodate not only for upward but also for downward causation, without giving analytical priority to any level over the other. One crucial implication of such a framework is that the notion of circularity becomes the core dynamic, highlighting the importance of historicity, feedbacks and emergent properties. More precisely, the added value of the perspective adopted in this PhD research is that it highlights the role played by inertia and path-dependence. Obviously, it is essential to have a good understanding of the underlying causes of that inertia prior to devising on how to enforce a change. Providing a clear picture of the socio-economic processes at play in shaping socio-technical systems is thus a necessary first step in order to usefully complement policy-making in the field of energy and climate change. In providing an analytical basis for this important diagnosis to be performed, the use of the evolutionary framework sheds a new light on the transition towards low-carbon socio-technical systems. The objective is to suggest strategies that could prove efficient in triggering the needed transition such as it has been the case in past "lock-in" stories. Most notably, the evolutionary framework allows us to depict the presence of two sources of inertia (i.e at the levels of individuals through "habits" and at the level of socio-technical systems) that mutually reinforce each other in a path-dependent manner. Within the broad perspective on path dependence and lock-in, this PhD research has first sketched the implications for climate policy of applying the concept of 'technological lock-in' in a systemic perspective. We then investigated in more details the notion of habits. This is important as the 'behavioural' part of the lock-in process, although explicitly acknowledged in the pioneer work of Paul David (David, 1985, p. 336), has been neglected in most of subsequent analyses. Throughout this study, the notion of habits has been studied at both the theoretical and applied level of analysis as well as from an empirical perspective. As shown in the first chapters of the PhD, the advantage of our approach is that it can incorporate theories that so far have been presented opposite, partial and incomplete perspectives. For instance, it is shown that our evolutionary approach not only is able to provide explanation to some of the puzzling questions in economics (e.g. the problem of strong reciprocity displayed by individual in anonymous one-shot situations) but also is very helpful in bringing a complementary explanation with respect to the famous debate on the 'no-regret' emission reduction potential which agitates the experts of climate policy. An emission reduction potential is said to be "no regret" when the costs of implementing a measure are more than offset by the benefits it generates such as, for instance, reduced energy bills. In explaining why individuals do not spontaneously implement those highly profitable energy-efficient investments , it appears that most prior analyses have neglected the importance of non-economic obstacle. They are often referred to as "barriers" and partly relate to the 'bounded rationality' of economic agent. As developed in the different chapters of this PhD research, the framework of evolutionary economics is very useful in that it is able to provide a two-fold account (i.e. relying on both individual and socio-technical sources of inertia) of this limited rationality that prevent individuals to act as purely optimising agents. Bearing this context in mind, the concept of habits, as defined and developed in this study, is essential in analysing the determinants of energy consumption. Indeed, this concept sheds an insightful light on the puzzling question of why energy consumption keeps rising even though there is an evident increase of awareness and concern about energy-related environmental issues such as climate change. Indeed, if we subscribe to the idea that energy-consuming behaviours are often guided by habits and that deeply ingrained habits can become "counter-intentional", it then follows that people may often display "locked-in" practices in their daily energy consumption behaviour. This hypothesis has been assessed in our empirical analysis whose results show how the presence of strong energy-consuming habitual practices can reduce the effectiveness of economic incentives such as energy subsidies. One additional delicate factor that appears crucial for our purpose is that habits are not fully conscious forms of behaviours. This makes that individuals do not really see habits as a problem given that it is viewed as easily changed. In sum, based on our evolutionary account of the situation, it follows that, to be more efficient, climate policies would have to both shift the incumbent carbon-based socio-technical systems (for it to shape decisions towards a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions) and also deconstruct habits that this same socio-technical has forged with time (as increased environmental awareness and intentions formulated accordingly are not sufficient in the presence of strong habits). Accordingly, decision-makers should design measures (e.g. commitment strategies, niche management, etc.) that, as explained in this research, specifically target those change-resisting factors and their key features. This is essential as these factors tend to reduce the efficiency of traditional instruments. Micro-level interventions are thus needed as much as macro-level ones. For instance, it is often the case that external improvements of energy efficiency do not lead to lower energy consumption due to the rebound effect arising from unchanged energy-consuming habits. Bearing this in mind and building on the insights from the evolutionary approach, policy-makers should go beyond the mere subsidisation of technologies. They should instead create conditions enabling the use of the multi-layered, cumulative and self-reinforcing character of economic change highlighted by evolutionary analyses. This means supporting both social and physical technologies with the aim of influencing the selection environment so that only the low-carbon technologies and practices will survive. ; De nos jours, la science économique est devenue une discipline incontournable dans le domaine de l'analyse politique. Les politiques environnementales, et notamment la politique de lutte contre le réchauffement climatique, n'échappent pas à la règle. Or, la théorie économique traditionnelle repose sur des postulats fortement contestés par de nombreux auteurs, tant du point de vue théorique que du point de vue empirique. Dans ce contexte, l'idée de la thèse est de voir quelles seraient les implications de l'adoption d'une grille de lecture économique alternative sur le processus de décision dans le domaine de la politique climatique. Le choix d'un autre modèle s'est porté logiquement sur l'économie évolutionniste dans la mesure où, d'une part, ce courant s'est construit sur l'idée qu'il fallait réconcilier la caractérisation de l'agent économique avec l'abondante littérature empirique et, d'autre part, il a opté pour la logique biologique, plus en phase les rythmes écologiques, comme métaphore inspiratrice. De par la nature même de la réflexion sous-tendant ses fondements théoriques, l'économie évolutionniste s'intéresse aux dynamiques économiques résultant des processus d'innovation, sélection et accumulation. En fait, ce qui est considéré comme exogène dans le modèle traditionnel, constitue le « cœur conceptuel » du modèle évolutionniste. Le choix de cette nouvelle grille de lecture a inévitablement comme conséquence d'envisager d'une autre manière l'économie politique portant sur les questions environnementales. La première partie de la recherche est consacrée à une analyse approfondie des critiques formulées à l'encontre du modèle économique traditionnel. Cette analyse, dont l'objectif est de contribuer à l'élaboration du cadre conceptuel de la thèse, consiste en l'exploration parallèle du champ de recherche concernant le fonctionnement des agents économiques et de la philosophie évolutionniste en général. Cette investigation conjointe, doublée d'un cadrage portant sur l'histoire et l'évolution de la science économique, permet d'aborder de front les deux faiblesses principales du modèle traditionnel, à savoir l'irréalisme empirique du paradigme de l'Homo Oeconomicus et le problème de la simple agrégation sous la forme de l'agent représentatif. Cette phase aboutit à la formulation d'un schéma analytique alternatif fondé sur le concept de « rationalité limitée » articulé dans un cadre reposant sur la notion d'évolution, définie comme un processus à causalité cumulative, double (ascendante et descendante) et interactive illustrant l'importance jouée par le niveau de groupe pour expliquer le fonctionnement des individus. Ce cadre et les préceptes qui en découlent seront utilisés d'une part, pour tenter d'apporter un éclairage différent sur la question du « paradoxe énergétique » et, d'autre part, pour analyser l'évolution technologique, élément central de la problématique du climat. Par exemple, la notion de causalité cumulative et interactive appliquée à la question de l'évolution technologique met lumière celle de « dépendance du sentier » qui exprime l'idée selon laquelle des évènements aléatoires insignifiants influencent fortement la direction et l'orientation d'une trajectoire technologique. De même, l'importance de la contingence historique et des interdépendances systémiques, qui découlent de notre choix d'adopter une approche évolutionniste, servent à expliquer le processus via lequel on a abouti à ce que l'on peut appeler le « carbon lock-in », selon lequel notre économie serait enfermée dans un régime sociotechnique « carbone » tant nos habitudes, nos institutions et nos réseaux technologiques sont adaptés à l'utilisation de combustibles fossiles (principale cause du problème de l'effet de serre). Cette notion d'enfermement technologique à laquelle notre analyse a mené est importante dans le sens où elle requiert des décideurs politiques de mettre en œuvre des mesures propres à déverrouiller nos trajectoires technologiques, si on veut respecter les engagements pris dans le cadre du Protocole de Kyoto. En conclusion, l'adoption d'une approche évolutionniste est susceptible de faire évoluer sensiblement le type de politiques et instrument utilisés pour lutter contre le problème du réchauffement. Notamment, elle questionne la pertinence des instruments économiques actuels, comme l'échange de quotas d'émissions, qui proviennent du modèle traditionnel (mettant l'accent sur l'efficience et reposant sur la parfaite rationalité des acteurs), dans la mesure où ils ne traitent pas des barrières structurelles responsables de l'enfermement technologique dans la filière fossile. Comme le souligne notre recherche, les politiques climatiques devraient plutôt créer un environnement permettant d'utiliser la nature cumulative et auto-renforçante de l'évolution des technologies.
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(This post continues part 1 which just looked at the data. Part 3 on theory is here) When the Fed raises interest rates, how does inflation respond? Are there "long and variable lags" to inflation and output? There is a standard story: The Fed raises interest rates; inflation is sticky so real interest rates (interest rate - inflation) rise; higher real interest rates lower output and employment; the softer economy pushes inflation down. Each of these is a lagged effect. But despite 40 years of effort, theory struggles to substantiate that story (next post), it's had to see in the data (last post), and the empirical work is ephemeral -- this post. The vector autoregression and related local projection are today the standard empirical tools to address how monetary policy affects the economy, and have been since Chris Sims' great work in the 1970s. (See Larry Christiano's review.) I am losing faith in the method and results. We need to find new ways to learn about the effects of monetary policy. This post expands on some thoughts on this topic in "Expectations and the Neutrality of Interest Rates," several of my papers from the 1990s* and excellent recent reviews from Valerie Ramey and Emi Nakamura and Jón Steinsson, who eloquently summarize the hard identification and computation troubles of contemporary empirical work.Maybe popular wisdom is right, and economics just has to catch up. Perhaps we will. But a popular belief that does not have solid scientific theory and empirical backing, despite a 40 year effort for models and data that will provide the desired answer, must be a bit less trustworthy than one that does have such foundations. Practical people should consider that the Fed may be less powerful than traditionally thought, and that its interest rate policy has different effects than commonly thought. Whether and under what conditions high interest rates lower inflation, whether they do so with long and variable but nonetheless predictable and exploitable lags, is much less certain than you think. Here is a replication of one of the most famous monetary VARs, Christiano Eichenbaum and Evans 1999, from Valerie Ramey's 2016 review: Fig. 1 Christiano et al. (1999) identification. 1965m1–1995m6 full specification: solid black lines; 1983m1–2007m12 full specification: short dashed blue (dark gray in the print version) lines; 1983m1–2007m12, omits money and reserves: long-dashed red (gray in the print version) lines. Light gray bands are 90% confidence bands. Source: Ramey 2016. Months on x axis. The black lines plot the original specification. The top left panel plots the path of the Federal Funds rate after the Fed unexpectedly raises the interest rate. The funds rate goes up, but only for 6 months or so. Industrial production goes down and unemployment goes up, peaking at month 20. The figure plots the level of the CPI, so inflation is the slope of the lower right hand panel. You see inflation goes the "wrong" way, up, for about 6 months, and then gently declines. Interest rates indeed seem to affect the economy with long lags. This was the broad outline of consensus empirical estimates for many years. It is common to many other studies, and it is consistent with the beliefs of policy makers and analysts. It's pretty much what Friedman (1968) told us to expect. Getting contemporary models to produce something like this is much harder, but that's the next blog post. What's a VAR?I try to keep this blog accessible to nonspecialists, so I'll step back momentarily to explain how we produce graphs like these. Economists who know what a VAR is should skip to the next section heading. How do we measure the effect of monetary policy on other variables? Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz kicked it off in the Monetary History by pointing to the historical correlation of money growth with inflation and output. They knew as we do that correlation is not causation, so they pointed to the fact that money growth preceeded inflation and output growth. But as James Tobin pointed out, the cock's crow comes before, but does not cause, the sun to rise. So too people may go get out some money ahead of time when they see more future business activity on the horizon. Even correlation with a lead is not causation. What to do? Clive Granger's causality and Chris Sims' VAR, especially "Macroeconomics and Reality" gave today's answer. (And there is a reason that everybody mentioned so far has a Nobel prize.) First, we find a monetary policy "shock," a movement in the interest rate (these days; money, then) that is plausibly not a response to economic events and especially to expected future economic events. We think of the Fed setting interest rates by a response to economic data plus deviations from that response, such as interest rate = (#) output + (#) inflation + (#) other variables + disturbance. We want to isolate the "disturbance," movements in the interest rate not taken in response to economic events. (I use "shock" to mean an unpredictable variable, and "disturbance" to mean deviation from an equation like the above, but one that can persist for a while. A monetary policy "shock" is an unexpected movement in the disturbance.) The "rule" part here can be but need not be the Taylor rule, and can include other variables than output and inflation. It is what the Fed usually does given other variables, and therefore (hopefully) controls for reverse causality from expected future economic events to interest rates. Now, in any individual episode, output and inflation and inflation following a shock will be influenced by subsequent shocks to the economy, monetary and other. But those average out. So, the average value of inflation, output, employment, etc. following a monetary policy shock is a measure of how the shock affects the economy all on its own. That is what has been plotted above. VARs were one of the first big advances in the modern empirical quest to find "exogenous" variation and (somewhat) credibly find causal relationships. Mostly the huge literature varies on how one finds the "shocks." Traditional VARs use regressions of the above equations and the residual is the shock, with a big question just how many and which contemporaneous variables one adds in the regression. Romer and Romer pioneered the "narrative approach," reading the Fed minutes to isolate shocks. Some technical details at the bottom and much more discussion below. The key is finding shocks. One can just regress output and inflation on the shocks to produce the response function, which is a "local projection" not a "VAR," but I'll use "VAR" for both techniques for lack of a better encompassing word. Losing faithShocks, what shocks?What's a "shock" anyway? The concept is that the Fed considers its forecast of inflation, output and other variables it is trying to control, gauges the usual and appropriate response, and then adds 25 or 50 basis points, at random, just for the heck of it. The question VARS try to answer is the same: What happens to the economy if the Fed raises interest rates unexpectedly, for no particular reason at all? But the Fed never does this. Ask them. Read the minutes. The Fed does not roll dice. They always raise or lower interest rates for a reason, that reason is always a response to something going on in the economy, and most of the time how it affects forecasts of inflation and employment. There are no shocks as defined.I speculated here that we might get around this problem: If we knew the Fed was responding to something that had no correlation with future output, then even though that is an endogenous response, then it is a valid movement for estimating the effect of interest rates on output. My example was, what if the Fed "responds" to the weather. Well, though endogenous, it's still valid for estimating the effect on output. The Fed does respond to lots of things, including foreign exchange, financial stability issues, equity, terrorist attacks, and so forth. But I can't think of any of these in which the Fed is not thinking of these events for their effect on output and inflation, which is why I never took the idea far. Maybe you can. Shock isolation also depends on complete controls for the Fed's information. If the Fed uses any information about future output and inflation that is not captured in our regression, then information about future output and inflation remains in the "shock" series. The famous "price puzzle" is a good example. For the first few decades of VARs, interest rate shocks seemed to lead to higher inflation. It took a long specification search to get rid of this undesired result. The story was, that the Fed saw inflation coming in ways not completely controlled for by the regression. The Fed raised interest rates to try to forestall the inflation, but was a bit hesitant about it so did not cure the inflation that was coming. We see higher interest rates followed by higher inflation, though the true causal effect of interest rates goes the other way. This problem was "cured" by adding commodity prices to the interest rate rule, on the idea that fast-moving commodity prices would capture the information the Fed was using to forecast inflation. (Interestingly these days we seem to see core inflation as the best forecaster, and throw out commodity prices!) With those and some careful orthogonalization choices, the "price puzzle" was tamped down to the one year or so delay you see above. (Neo-Fisherians might object that maybe the price puzzle was trying to tell us something all these years!) Nakamura and Steinsson write of this problem: "What is being assumed is that controlling for a few lags of a few variables captures all endogenous variation in policy... This seems highly unlikely to be true in practice. The Fed bases its policy decisions on a huge amount of data. Different considerations (in some cases highly idiosyncratic) affect policy at different times. These include stress in the banking system, sharp changes in commodity prices, a recent stock market crash, a financial crisis in emerging markets, terrorist attacks, temporary investment tax credits, and the Y2K computer glitch. The list goes on and on. Each of these considerations may only affect policy in a meaningful way on a small number of dates, and the number of such influences is so large that it is not feasible to include them all in a regression. But leaving any one of them out will result in a monetary policy "shock" that the researcher views as exogenous but is in fact endogenous." Nakamura and Steinsson offer 9/11 as another example summarizing my "high frequency identification" paper with Monika Piazzesi: The Fed lowered interest rates after the terrorist attack, likely reacting to its consequences for output and inflation. But VARs register the event as an exogenous shock.Romer and Romer suggested that we use Fed Greenbook forecasts of inflation and output as controls, as those should represent the Fed's complete information set. They provide narrative evidence that Fed members trust Greenback forecasts more than you might suspect. This issue is a general Achilles heel of empirical macro and finance: Does your procedure assume agents see no more information than you have included in the model or estimate? If yes, you have a problem. Similarly, "Granger causality" answers the cock's crow-sunrise problem by saying that if unexpected x leads unexpected y then x causes y. But it's only real causality if the "expected" includes all information, as the price puzzle counterexample shows. Just what properties do we need of a shock in order to measure the response to the question, "what if the Fed raised rates for no reason?" This strikes me as a bit of an unsolved question -- or rather, one that everyone thinks is so obvious that we don't really look at it. My suggestion that the shock only need be orthogonal to the variable whose response we're estimating is informal, and I don't know of formal literature that's picked it up. Must "shocks" be unexpected, i.e. not forecastable from anything in the previous time information set? Must they surprise people? I don't think so -- it is neither necessary nor sufficient for shock to be unforecastable for it to identify the inflation and output responses. Not responding to expected values of the variable whose response you want to measure should be enough. If bond markets found out about a random funds rate rise one day ahead, it would then be an "expected" shock, but clearly just as good for macro. Romer and Romer have been criticized that their shocks are predictable, but this may not matter. The above Nakamura and Steinsson quote says leaving out any information leads to a shock that is not strictly exogenous. But strictly exogenous may not be necessary for estimating, say, the effect of interest rates on inflation. It is enough to rule out reverse causality and third effects. Either I'm missing a well known econometric literature, as is everyone else writing the VARs I've read who don't cite it, or there is a good theory paper to be written.Romer and Romer, thinking deeply about how to read "shocks" from the Fed minutes, define shocks thus to circumvent the "there are no shocks" problem:we look for times when monetary policymakers felt the economy was roughly at potential (or normal) output, but decided that the prevailing rate of inflation was too high. Policymakers then chose to cut money growth and raise interest rates, realizing that there would be (or at least could be) substantial negative consequences for aggregate output and unemployment. These criteria are designed to pick out times when policymakers essentially changed their tastes about the acceptable level of inflation. They weren't just responding to anticipated movements in the real economy and inflation. [My emphasis.] You can see the issue. This is not an "exogenous" movement in the funds rate. It is a response to inflation, and to expected inflation, with a clear eye on expected output as well. It really is a nonlinear rule, ignore inflation for a while until it gets really bad then finally get serious about it. Or, as they say, it is a change in rule, an increase in the sensitivity of the short run interest rate response to inflation, taken in response to inflation seeming to get out of control in a longer run sense. Does this identify the response to an "exogenous" interest rate increase? Not really. But maybe it doesn't matter. Are we even asking an interesting question? The whole question, what would happen if the Fed raised interest rates for no reason, is arguably besides the point. At a minimum, we should be clearer about what question we are asking, and whether the policies we analyze are implementations of that question. The question presumes a stable "rule," (e.g. \(i_t = \rho i_{t-1} + \phi_\pi \pi_t + \phi_x x_t + u_t\)) and asks what happens in response to a deviation \( +u_t \) from the rule. Is that an interesting question? The standard story for 1980-1982 is exactly not such an event. Inflation was not conquered by a big "shock," a big deviation from 1970s practice, while keeping that practice intact. Inflation was conquered (so the story goes) by a change in the rule, by a big increase in $\phi_\pi$. That change raised interest rates, but arguably without any deviation from the new rule \(u_t\) at all. Thinking in terms of the Phillips curve \( \pi_t = E_t \pi_{t+1} + \kappa x_t\), it was not a big negative \(x_t\) that brought down inflation, but the credibility of the new rule that brought down \(E_t \pi_{t+1}\). If the art of reducing inflation is to convince people that a new regime has arrived, then the response to any monetary policy "shock" orthogonal to a stable "rule" completely misses that policy. Romer and Romer are almost talking about a rule-change event. For 2022, they might be looking at the Fed's abandonment of flexible average inflation targeting and its return to a Taylor rule. However, they don't recognize the importance of the distinction, treating changes in rule as equivalent to a residual. Changing the rule changes expectations in quite different ways from a residual of a stable rule. Changes with a bigger commitment should have bigger effects, and one should standardize somehow by the size and permanence of the rule change, not necessarily the size of the interest rate rise. And, having asked "what if the Fed changes rule to be more serious about inflation," we really cannot use the analysis to estimate what happens if the Fed shocks interest rates and does not change the rule. It takes some mighty invariance result from an economic theory that a change in rule has the same effect as a shock to a given rule. There is no right and wrong, really. We just need to be more careful about what question the empirical procedure asks, if we want to ask that question, and if our policy analysis actually asks the same question. Estimating rules, Clarida Galí and Gertler. Clarida, Galí, and Gertler (2000) is a justly famous paper, and in this context for doing something totally different to evaluate monetary policy. They estimate rules, fancy versions of \(i_t = \rho i_{t-1} +\phi_\pi \pi_t + \phi_x x_t + u_t\), and they estimate how the \(\phi\) parameters change over time. They attribute the end of 1970s inflation to a change in the rule, a rise in \(\phi_\pi\) from the 1970s to the 1980s. In their model, a higher \( \phi_\pi\) results in less volatile inflation. They do not estimate any response functions. The rest of us were watching the wrong thing all along. Responses to shocks weren't the interesting quantity. Changes in the rule were the interesting quantity. Yes, I criticized the paper, but for issues that are irrelevant here. (In the new Keynesian model, the parameter that reduces inflation isn't the one they estimate.) The important point here is that they are doing something completely different, and offer us a roadmap for how else we might evaluate monetary policy if not by impulse-response functions to monetary policy shocks. Fiscal theoryThe interesting question for fiscal theory is, "What is the effect of an interest rate rise not accompanied by a change in fiscal policy?" What can the Fed do by itself? By contrast, standard models (both new and old Keynesian) include concurrent fiscal policy changes when interest rates rise. Governments tighten in present value terms, at least to pay higher interest costs on the debt and the windfall to bondholders that flows from unexpected disinflation. Experience and estimates surely include fiscal changes along with monetary tightening. Both fiscal and monetary authorities react to inflation with policy actions and reforms. Growth-oriented microeconomic reforms with fiscal consequences often follow as well -- rampant inflation may have had something to do with Carter era trucking, airline, and telecommunications reform. Yet no current estimate tries to look for a monetary shock orthogonal to fiscal policy change. The estimates we have are at best the effects of monetary policy together with whatever induced or coincident fiscal and microeconomic policy tends to happen at the same time as central banks get serious about fighting inflation. Identifying the component of a monetary policy shock orthogonal to fiscal policy, and measuring its effects is a first order question for fiscal theory of monetary policy. That's why I wrote this blog post. I set out to do it, and then started to confront how VARs are already falling apart in our hands. Just what "no change in fiscal policy" means is an important question that varies by application. (Lots more in "fiscal roots" here, fiscal theory of monetary policy here and in FTPL.) For simple calculations, I just ask what happens if interest rates change with no change in primary surplus. One might also define "no change" as no change in tax rates, automatic stabilizers, or even habitual discretionary stimulus and bailout, no disturbance \(u_t\) in a fiscal rule \(s_t = a + \theta_\pi \pi_t + \theta_x x_t + ... + u_t\). There is no right and wrong here either, there is just making sure you ask an interesting question. Long and variable lags, and persistent interest rate movementsThe first plot shows a mighty long lag between the monitor policy shock and its effect on inflation and output. That does not mean that the economy has long and variable lags. This plot is actually not representative, because in the black lines the interest rate itself quickly reverts to zero. It is common to find a more protracted interest rate response to the shock, as shown in the red and blue lines. That mirrors common sense: When the Fed starts tightening, it sets off a year or so of stair-step further increases, and then a plateau, before similar stair-step reversion. That raises the question, does the long-delayed response of output and inflation represent a delayed response to the initial monetary policy shock, or does it represent a nearly instantaneous response to the higher subsequent interest rates that the shock sets off? Another way of putting the question, is the response of inflation and output invariant to changes in the response of the funds rate itself? Do persistent and transitory funds rate changes have the same responses? If you think of the inflation and output responses as economic responses to the initial shock only, then it does not matter if interest rates revert immediately to zero, or go on a 10 year binge following the initial shock. That seems like a pretty strong assumption. If you think that a more persistent interest rate response would lead to a larger or more persistent output and inflation response, then you think some of what we see in the VARs is a quick structural response to the later higher interest rates, when they come. Back in 1988, I posed this question in "what do the VARs mean?" and showed you can read it either way. The persistent output and inflation response can represent either long economic lags to the initial shock, or much less laggy responses to interest rates when they come. I showed how to deconvolute the response function to the structural effect of interest rates on inflation and output and how persistently interest rates rise. The inflation and output responses might be the same with shorter funds rate responses, or they might be much different. Obviously (though often forgotten), whether the inflation and output responses are invariant to changes in the funds rate response needs a model. If in the economic model only unexpected interest rate movements affect output and inflation, though with lags, then the responses are as conventionally read structural responses and invariant to the interest rate path. There is no such economic model. Lucas (1972) says only unexpected money affects output, but with no lags, and expected money affects inflation. New Keynesian models have very different responses to permanent vs. transitory interest rate shocks. Interestingly, Romer and Romer do not see it this way, and regard their responses as structural long and variable lags, invariant to the interest rate response. They opine that given their reading of a positive shock in 2022, a long and variable lag to inflation reduction is baked in, no matter what the Fed does next. They argue that the Fed should stop raising interest rates. (In fairness, it doesn't look like they thought about the issue much, so this is an implicit rather than explicit assumption.) The alternative view is that effects of a shock on inflation are really effects of the subsequent rate rises on inflation, that the impulse response function to inflation is not invariant to the funds rate response, so stopping the standard tightening cycle would undo the inflation response. Argue either way, but at least recognize the important assumption behind the conclusions. Was the success of inflation reduction in the early 1980s just a long delayed response to the first few shocks? Or was the early 1980s the result of persistent large real interest rates following the initial shock? (Or, something else entirely, a coordinated fiscal-monetary reform... But I'm staying away from that and just discussing conventional narratives, not necessarily the right answer.) If the latter, which is the conventional narrative, then you think it does matter if the funds rate shock is followed by more funds rate rises (or positive deviations from a rule), that the output and inflation response functions do not directly measure long lags from the initial shock. De-convoluting the structural funds rate to inflation response and the persistent funds rate response, you would estimate much shorter structural lags. Nakamura and Steinsson are of this view: While the Volcker episode is consistent with a large amount of monetary nonneutrality, it seems less consistent with the commonly held view that monetary policy affects output with "long and variable lags." To the contrary, what makes the Volcker episode potentially compelling is that output fell and rose largely in sync with the actions [interest rates, not shocks] of the Fed. And that's a good thing too. We've done a lot of dynamic economics since Friedman's 1968 address. There is really nothing in dynamic economic theory that produces a structural long-delayed response to shocks, without the continued pressure of high interest rates. (A correspondent objects to "largely in sync" pointing out several clear months long lags between policy actions and results in 1980. It's here for the methodological point, not the historical one.) However, if the output and inflation responses are not invariant to the interest rate response, then the VAR directly measures an incredibly narrow experiment: What happens in response to a surprise interest rate rise, followed by the plotted path of interest rates? And that plotted path is usually pretty temporary, as in the above graph. What would happen if the Fed raised rates and kept them up, a la 1980? The VAR is silent on that question. You need to calibrate some model to the responses we have to infer that answer. VARs and shock responses are often misread as generic theory-free estimates of "the effects of monetary policy." They are not. At best, they tell you the effect of one specific experiment: A random increase in funds rate, on top of a stable rule, followed by the usual following path of funds rate. Any other implication requires a model, explicit or implicit. More specifically, without that clearly false invariance assumption, VARs cannot directly answer a host of important questions. Two on my mind: 1) What happens if the Fed raises interest rates permanently? Does inflation eventually rise? Does it rise in the short run? This is the "Fisherian" and "neo-Fisherian" questions, and the answer "yes" pops unexpectedly out of the standard new-Keynesian model. 2) Is the short-run negative response of inflation to interest rates stronger for more persistent rate rises? The long-term debt fiscal theory mechanism for a short-term inflation decline is tied to the persistence of the shock and the maturity structure of the debt. The responses to short-lived interest rate movements (top left panel) are silent on these questions. Directly is an important qualifier. It is not impossible to answer these questions, but you have to work harder to identify persistent interest rate shocks. For example, Martín Uribe identifies permanent vs. transitory interest rate shocks, and finds a positive response of inflation to permanent interest rate rises. How? You can't just pick out the interest rate rises that turned out to be permanent. You have to find shocks or components of the shock that are ex-ante predictably going to be permanent, based on other forecasting variables and the correlation of the shock with other shocks. For example, a short-term rate shock that also moves long-term rates might be more permanent than one which does not do so. (That requires the expectations hypothesis, which doesn't work, and long term interest rates move too much anyway in response to transitory funds rate shocks. So, this is not directly a suggestion, just an example of the kind of thing one must do. Uribe's model is more complex than I can summarize in a blog.) Given how small and ephemeral the shocks are already, subdividing them into those that are expected to have permanent vs. transitory effects on the federal funds rate is obviously a challenge. But it's not impossible. Monetary policy shocks account for small fractions of inflation, output and funds rate variation. Friedman thought that most recessions and inflations were due to monetary mistakes. The VARs pretty uniformly deny that result. The effects of monetary policy shocks on output and inflation add up to less than 10 percent of the variation of output and inflation. In part the shocks are small, and in part the responses to the shocks are small. Most recessions come from other shocks, not monetary mistakes. Worse, both in data and in models, most inflation variation comes from inflation shocks, most output variation comes from output shocks, etc. The cross-effects of one variable on another are small. And "inflation shock" (or "marginal cost shock"), "output shock" and so forth are just labels for our ignorance -- error terms in regressions, unforecasted movements -- not independently measured quantities. (This and old point, for example in my 1994 paper with the great title "Shocks." Technically, the variance of output is the sum of the squares of the impulse-response functions -- the plots -- times the variance of the shocks. Thus small shocks and small responses mean not much variance explained.)This is a deep point. The exquisite attention put to the effects of monetary policy in new-Keynesian models, while interesting to the Fed, are then largely beside the point if your question is what causes recessions. Comprehensive models work hard to match all of the responses, not just to monetary policy shocks. But it's not clear that the nominal rigidities that are important for the effects of monetary policy are deeply important to other (supply) shocks, and vice versa. This is not a criticism. Economics always works better if we can use small models that focus on one thing -- growth, recessions, distorting effect of taxes, effect of monetary policy -- without having to have a model of everything in which all effects interact. But, be clear we no longer have a model of everything. "Explaining recessions" and "understanding the effects of monetary policy" are somewhat separate questions. Monetary policy shocks also account for small fractions of the movement in the federal funds rate itself. Most of the funds rate movement is in the rule, the reaction to the economy term. Like much empirical economics, the quest for causal identification leads us to look at a tiny causes with tiny effects, that do little to explain much variation in the variable of interest (inflation). Well, cause is cause, and the needle is the sharpest item in the haystack. But one worries about the robustness of such tiny effects, and to what extent they summarize historical experience. To be concrete, here is a typical shock regression, 1960:1-2023:6 monthly data, standard errors in parentheses: ff(t) = a + b ff(t-1) + c[ff(t-1)-ff(t-2)] + d CPI(t) + e unemployment(t) + monetary policy shock, Where "CPI" is the percent change in the CPI (CPIAUCSL) from a year earlier. ff(t-1)ff(t-1)-ff(t-2)CPIUnempR20.970.390.032-0.0170.985(0.009)(0.07)(0.013)(0.009)The funds rate is persistent -- the lag term (0.97) is large. Recent changes matter too: Once the Fed starts a tightening cycle, it's likely to keep raising rates. And the Fed responds to CPI and unemployment. The plot shows the actual federal funds rate (blue), the model or predicted federal funds rate (red), the shock which is the difference between the two (orange) and the Romer and Romer dates (vertical lines). You can't see the difference between actual and predicted funds rate, which is the point. They are very similar and the shocks are small. They are closer horizontally than vertically, so the vertical difference plotted as shock is still visible. The shocks are much smaller than the funds rate, and smaller than the rise and fall in the funds rate in a typical tightening or loosening cycle. The shocks are bunched, with by far the biggest ones in the early 1980s. The shocks have been tiny since the 1980s. (Romer and Romer don't find any shocks!) Now, our estimates of the effect of monetary policy look at the average values of inflation, output, and employment in the 4-5 years after a shock. Really, you say, looking at the graph? That's going to be dominated by the experience of the early 1980s. And with so many positive and negative shocks close together, the average value 4 years later is going to be driven by subtle timing of when the positive or negative shocks line up with later events. Put another way, here is a plot of inflation 30 months after a shock regressed on the shock. Shock on the x axis, subsequent inflation on the y axis. The slope of the line is our estimate of the effect of the shock on inflation 30 months out (source, with details). Hmm. One more graph (I'm having fun here):This is a plot of inflation for the 4 years after each shock, times that shock. The right hand side is the same graph with an expanded y scale. The average of these histories is our impulse response function. (The big lines are the episodes which multiply the big shocks of the early 1980s. They mostly converge because, either multiplied by positive or negative shocks, inflation wend down in the 1980s.) Impulse response functions are just quantitative summaries of the lessons of history. You may be underwhelmed that history is sending a clear story. Again, welcome to causal economics -- tiny average responses to tiny but identified movements is what we estimate, not broad lessons of history. We do not estimate "what is the effect of the sustained high real interest rates of the early 1980s," for example, or "what accounts for the sharp decline of inflation in the early 1980s?" Perhaps we should, though confronting endogeneity of the interest rate responses some other way. That's my main point today. Estimates disappear after 1982Ramey's first variation in the first plot is to use data from 1983 to 2007. Her second variation is to also omit the monetary variables. Christiano Eichenbaum and Evans were still thinking in terms of money supply control, but our Fed does not control money supply. The evidence that higher interest rates lower inflation disappears after 1983, with or without money. This too is a common finding. It might be because there simply aren't any monetary policy shocks. Still, we're driving a car with a yellowed AAA road map dated 1982 on it. Monetary policy shocks still seem to affect output and employment, just not inflation. That poses a deeper problem. If there just aren't any monetary policy shocks, we would just get big standard errors on everything. That only inflation disappears points to the vanishing Phillips curve, which will be the weak point in the theory to come. It is the Phillips curve by which lower output and employment push down inflation. But without the Phillips curve, the whole standard story for interest rates to affect inflation goes away. Computing long-run responsesThe long lags of the above plot are already pretty long horizons, with interesting economics still going on at 48 months. As we get interested in long run neutrality, identification via long run sign restrictions (monetary policy should not permanently affect output), and the effect of persistent interest rate shocks, we are interested in even longer run responses. The "long run risks" literature in asset pricing is similarly crucially interested in long run properties. Intuitively, we should know this will be troublesome. There aren't all that many nonoverlapping 4 year periods after interest rate shocks to measure effects, let alone 10 year periods.VARs estimate long run responses with a parametric structure. Organize the data (output, inflation, interest rate, etc) into a vector \(x_t = [y_t \; \pi_t \; i_t \; ...]'\), then the VAR can be written \(x_{t+1} = Ax_t + u_t\). We start from zero, move \(x_1 = u_1\) in an interesting way, and then the response function just simulates forward, with \(x_j = A^j x_1\). But here an oft-forgotten lesson of 1980s econometrics pops up: It is dangerous to estimate long-run dynamics by fitting a short run model and then finding its long-run implications. Raising matrices to the 48th power \(A^{48}\) can do weird things, the 120th power (10 years) weirder things. OLS and maximum likelihood prize one step ahead \(R^2\), and will happily accept small one step ahead mis specifications that add up to big misspecification 10 years out. (I learned this lesson in the "Random walk in GNP.") Long run implications are driven by the maximum eigenvalue of the \(A\) transition matrix, and its associated eigenvector. \(A^j = Q \Lambda^j Q^{-1}\). This is a benefit and a danger. Specify and estimate the dynamics of the combination of variables with the largest eigenvector right, and lots of details can be wrong. But standard estimates aren't trying hard to get these right. The "local projection" alternative directly estimates long run responses: Run regressions of inflation in 10 years on the shock today. You can see the tradeoff: there aren't many non-overlapping 10 year intervals, so this will be imprecisely estimated. The VAR makes a strong parametric assumption about long-run dynamics. When it's right, you get better estimates. When it's wrong, you get misspecification. My experience running lots of VARs is that monthly VARs raised to large powers often give unreliable responses. Run at least a one-year VAR before you start looking at long run responses. Cointegrating vectors are the most reliable variables to include. They are typically the state variable that most reliably carries long - run responses. But pay attention to getting them right. Imposing integrating and cointegrating structure by just looking at units is a good idea. The regression of long-run returns on dividend yields is a good example. The dividend yield is a cointegrating vector, and is the slow-moving state variable. A one period VAR \[\left[ \begin{array}{c} r_{t+1} \\ dp_{t+1} \end{array} \right] = \left[ \begin{array}{cc} 0 & b_r \\ 0 & \rho \end{array}\right] \left[ \begin{array}{c} r_{t} \\ dp_{t} \end{array}\right]+ \varepsilon_{t+1}\] implies a long horizon regression \(r_{t+j} = b_r \rho^j dp_{t} +\) error. Direct regressions ("local projections") \(r_{t+j} = b_{r,j} dp_t + \) error give about the same answers, though the downward bias in \(\rho\) estimates is a bit of an issue, but with much larger standard errors. The constraint \(b_{r,j} = b_r \rho^j\) isn't bad. But it can easily go wrong. If you don't impose that dividends and price are cointegrated, or with vector other than 1 -1, if you allow a small sample to estimate \(\rho>1\), if you don't put in dividend yields at all and just a lot of short-run forecasters, it can all go badly. Forecasting bond returns was for me a good counterexample. A VAR forecasting one-year bond returns from today's yields gives very different results from taking a monthly VAR, even with several lags, and using \(A^{12}\) to infer the one-year return forecast. Small pricing errors or microstructure dominate the monthly data, which produces junk when raised to the twelfth power. (Climate regressions are having fun with the same issue. Small estimated effects of temperature on growth, raised to the 100th power, can produce nicely calamitous results. But use basic theory to think about units.) Nakamura and Steinsson (appendix) show how sensitive some standard estimates of impulse response functions are to these questions. Weak evidenceFor the current policy question, I hope you get a sense of how weak the evidence is for the "standard view" that higher interest rates reliably lower inflation, though with a long and variable lag, and the Fed has a good deal of control over inflation. Yes, many estimates look the same, but there is a pretty strong prior going in to that. Most people don't publish papers that don't conform to something like the standard view. Look how long it took from Sims (1980) to Christiano Eichenbaum and Evans (1999) to produce a response function that does conform to the standard view, what Friedman told us to expect in (1968). That took a lot of playing with different orthogonalization, variable inclusion, and other specification assumptions. This is not criticism: when you have a strong prior, it makes sense to see if the data can be squeezed in to the prior. Once authors like Ramey and Nakamura and Steinsson started to look with a critical eye, it became clearer just how weak the evidence is. Standard errors are also wide, but the variability in results due to changes in sample and specification are much larger than formal standard errors. That's why I don't stress that statistical aspect. You play with 100 models, try one variable after another to tamp down the price puzzle, and then compute standard errors as if the 100th model were written in stone. This post is already too long, but showing how results change with different specifications would have been a good addition. For example, here are a few more Ramey plots of inflation responses, replicating various previous estimatesTake your pick. What should we do instead? Well, how else should we measure the effects of monetary policy? One natural approach turns to the analysis of historical episodes and changes in regime, with specific models in mind. Romer and Romer pass on thoughts on this approach: ...some macroeconomic behavior may be fundamentally episodic in nature. Financial crises, recessions, disinflations, are all events that seem to play out in an identifiable pattern. There may be long periods where things are basically fine, that are then interrupted by short periods when they are not. If this is true, the best way to understand them may be to focus on episodes—not a cross-section proxy or a tiny sub-period. In addition, it is valuable to know when the episodes were and what happened during them. And, the identification and understanding of episodes may require using sources other than conventional data.A lot of my and others' fiscal theory writing has taken a similar view. The long quiet zero bound is a test of theories: old-Keynesian models predict a delation spiral, new-Keynesian models predicts sunspot volatility, fiscal theory is consistent with stable quiet inflation. The emergence of inflation in 2021 and its easing despite interest rates below inflation likewise validates fiscal vs. standard theories. The fiscal implications of abandoning the gold standard in 1933 plus Roosevelt's "emergency" budget make sense of that episode. The new-Keynesian reaction parameter \(\phi_\pi\) in \(i_t - \phi_\pi \pi_t\), which leads to unstable dynamics for ](\phi_\pi>1\) is not identified by time series data. So use "other sources," like plain statements on the Fed website about how they react to inflation. I already cited Clarida Galí and Gertler, for measuring the rule not the response to the shock, and explaining the implications of that rule for their model. Nakamura and Steinsson likewise summarize Mussa's (1986) classic study of what happens when countries switch from fixed to floating exchange rates: "The switch from a fixed to a flexible exchange rate is a purely monetary action. In a world where monetary policy has no real effects, such a policy change would not affect real variables like the real exchange rate. Figure 3 demonstrates dramatically that the world we live in is not such a world."Also, analysis of particular historical episodes is enlightening. But each episode has other things going on and so invites alternative explanations. 90 years later, we're still fighting about what caused the Great Depression. 1980 is the poster child for monetary disinflation, yet as Nakamura and Steinsson write, Many economists find the narrative account above and the accompanying evidence about output to be compelling evidence of large monetary nonneutrality. However, there are other possible explanations for these movements in output. There were oil shocks both in September 1979 and in February 1981.... Credit controls were instituted between March and July of 1980. Anticipation effects associated with the phased-in tax cuts of the Reagan administration may also have played a role in the 1981–1982 recession ....Studying changes in regime, such as fixed to floating or the zero bound era, help somewhat relative to studying a particular episode, in that they have some of the averaging of other shocks. But the attraction of VARs will remain. None of these produces what VARs seemed to produce, a theory-free qualitative estimate of the effects of monetary policy. Many tell you that prices are sticky, but not how prices are sticky. Are they old-Keynesian backward looking sticky or new-Keynesian rational expectations sticky? What is the dynamic response of relative inflation to a change in a pegged exchange rate? What is the dynamic response of real relative prices to productivity shocks? Observations such as Mussa's graph can help to calibrate models, but does not answer those questions directly. My observations about the zero bound or the recent inflation similarly seem (to me) decisive about one class of model vs. another, at least subject to Occam's razor about epicycles, but likewise do not provide a theory-free impulse response function. Nakamura and Steinsson write at length about other approaches; model-based moment matching and use of micro data in particular. This post is going on too long; read their paper. Of course, as we have seen, VARs only seem to offer a model-free quantitative measurement of "the effects of monetary policy," but it's hard to give up on the appearance of such an answer. VARs and impulse responses also remain very useful ways of summarizing the correlations and cross correlations of data, even without cause and effect interpretation. In the end, many ideas are successful in economics when they tell researchers what to do, when they offer a relatively clear recipe for writing papers. "Look at episodes and think hard is not such recipe." "Run a VAR is." So, as you think about how we can evaluate monetary policy, think about a better recipe as well as a good answer. (Stay tuned. This post is likely to be updated a few times!) VAR technical appendixTechnically, running VARs is very easy, at least until you start trying to smooth out responses with Bayesian and other techniques. Line up the data in a vector, i.e. \(x_t = [i_t \; \pi_t\; y_t]'\). Then run a regression of each variable on lags of the others, \[x_t = Ax_{t-1} + u_t.\] If you want more than one lag of the right hand variables, just make a bigger \(x\) vector, \(x_t = [i_t\; \pi_t \; y_t \; i_{t-1}\; \pi_{t-1} \;y_{t-1}]'.\) The residuals of such regressions \(u_t\) will be correlated, so you have to decide whether, say, the correlation between interest rate and inflation shocks means the Fed responds in the period to inflation, or inflation responds within the period to interest rates, or some combination of the two. That's the "identification" assumption issue. You can write it as a matrix \(C\) so that \(u_t = C \varepsilon_t\) and cov\((\varepsilon_t \varepsilon_t')=I\) or you can include some contemporaneous values into the right hand sides. Now, with \(x_t = Ax_{t-1} + C\varepsilon_t\), you start with \(x_0=0\), choose one series to shock, e.g. \(\varepsilon_{i,1}=1\) leaving the others alone, and just simulate forward. The resulting path of the other variables is the above plot, the "impulse response function." Alternatively you can run a regression \(x_t = \sum_{j=0}^\infty \theta_j \varepsilon_{t-j}\) and the \(\theta_j\) are (different, in sample) estimates of the same thing. That's "local projection". Since the right hand variables are all orthogonal, you can run single or multiple regressions. (See here for equations.) Either way, you have found the moving average representation, \(x_t = \theta(L)\varepsilon_t\), in the first case with \(\theta(L)=(I-AL)^{-1}C\) in the second case directly. Since the right hand variables are all orthogonal, the variance of the series is the sum of its loading on all of the shocks, \(cov(x_t) = \sum_{j=0}^\infty \theta_j \theta_j'\). This "forecast error variance decomposition" is behind my statement that small amounts of inflation variance are due to monetary policy shocks rather than shocks to other variables, and mostly inflation shocks. Update:Luis Garicano has a great tweet thread explaining the ideas with a medical analogy. Kamil Kovar has a nice follow up blog post, with emphasis on Europe. He makes a good point that I should have thought of: A monetary policy "shock" is a deviation from a "rule." So, the Fed's and ECB's failure to respond to inflation as they "usually" do in 2021-2022 counts exactly the same as a 3-5% deliberate lowering of the interest rate. Lowering interest rates for no reason, and leaving interest rates alone when the regression rule says raise rates are the same in this methodology. That "loosening" of policy was quickly followed by inflation easing, so an updated VAR should exhibit a strong "price puzzle" -- a negative shock is followed by less, not more inflation. Of course historians and practical people might object that failure to act as usual has exactly the same effects as acting. * Some Papers: Comment on Romer and Romer What ends recessions? Some "what's a shock?"Comment on Romer and Romer A new measure of monetary policy. The greenbook forecasts, and beginning thoughts that strict exogeneity is not necessary. Shocks monetary shocks explain small fractions of output variance.Comments on Hamilton, more thoughts on what a shock is.What do the VARs mean? cited above, is the response to the shock or to persistent interest rates?The Fed and Interest Rates, with Monika Piazzesi. Daily data and interest rates to identify shocks. Decomposing the yield curve with Monika Piazzesi. Starts with a great example of how small changes in specification lead to big differences in long run forecasts. Time seriesA critique of the application of unit root tests pretesting for unit roots and cointegration is a bad ideaHow big is the random walk in GNP? lessons in not using short run dynamics to infer long run properties. Permanent and transitory components of GNP and stock prices a favorite of cointegration really helps on long run propertiesTime series for macroeconomics and finance notes that never quite became a book. Explains VARs and responses.
Collected data and research material presented in the monograph are a result of financing of the Polish science budget in the years 2011−14; the research project was financed by the National Science Centre according to decision no. DEC-2011/01/B/HS4/04744. The project that resulted in this monograph was financed from public funds for education for 2011 − 2014, the National Science Center under Contract No. DEC-2011/01/B/HS4/04744. ; Value-Based Working Capital Management analyzes the causes and effects of improper cash flow management between entrepreneurial organizations with varying levels of risk. This work looks at the motives and criteria for decision-making by entrepreneurs in their efforts to protect the financial security of their businesses and manage financial liquidity. Michalski argues that businesses exposed to greater risk need a different approach to managing liquidity levels. The scientific aim of this monograph is to present the essence of financial liquidity management under specific conditions faced by enterprises with risk and uncertainty. Enterprises differ from one another in risk sensitivity. This difference affects the area of taking decisions by the managers of those enterprises. The result of interactions between levels of liquidity and sensitivity to risk affects the managers of such enterprises (Altman 1984; Tobin 1958; Back 2001; Tobin 1969). In this monograph the research hypothesis is the claim that enterprises with a higher sensitivity to risk are very different from enterprises with a lower sensitivity to risk, resulting in a different approach to managing their working capital. Enterprise managing teams react to risk, and this reaction is adjusted by an enterprise's sensitivity to risk. Because of its subject area, the book will address the issues of corporate finance. The monograph discusses the behavior of enterprises and the relationships between them and other factors in the market occurring in the management process under the conditions of limited resources. As a result of these interactions with the market and the environment in which individuals who manage enterprises operate, there is an interaction between money and real processes that in the end are the cornerstone of wealth building. This chapter discusses the objectives and nature of enterprises in the context of their risk sensitivity, as well as the relationships between the objectives of enterprises and the characteristic features of their businesses. Enterprises operate in various business environments, but generally speaking, they all have one main aim: wealth creation for their owners. The realization of that aim depends on an idea of business in which the enterprise is an instrument to collect money from clients of the enterprise's services and products. Business environment is crucial not only for future enterprise cash inflows from the market but also for risk and uncertainty (Asch, and Kaye 1997; Copeland, and Weston 1988; Fazzari, and Petersen 1993). According to the author, it is necessary to include an understanding of that risk and uncertainty of future in the rate that reduces the net size of free cash flows for the enterprise owners, beneficiaries, or more generally stakeholders. Enterprise value creation is the main financial aim of the firm in relation to working capital components (Graber 1948; Jensen, and Meckling 1976; Lazaridis, and Trifonidis 2006). Working capital management is a part of a general enterprise strategy to its value maximization (Laffer 1970; Kieschnick, Laplante, and Moussawi 2009; Lyland, and Pyle 1977). This chapter presents a definition of financial liquidity and liquidity-level measurements. This chapter contains four subchapters that address the specific role of short-term financial decisions, a classification of definitions of financial liquidity, sources of information about liquidity level, and liquidity-level measurements (Lazaridis and Tryfonidis 2006; Long, Malitz, and Ravid 1993; Kieschnick, Laplante, and Moussawi 2009). Financial liquidity definition and liquidity-level measurements Here we have an opportunity to present the author's opinion on what assets should be financed with short-term funds and what the level of liquidity is in an enterprise (Michalski 2012a). The discussion also pertains to the issue of the dividing line between long-term and short-term decisions, with greater emphasis on the durability of their effects, rather than the decision-making speed. This section also attempts to answer the question: What are the short-term effects of operations under conditions of uncertainty and risk? The reason for the considerations in this section is the need to characterize the decisions that affect the level of enterprise liquidity. The research hypothesis of this monograph assumes that differences between more risk sensitive and less risk sensitive enterprises are seen in liquidity management. Simply because the enterprises, during financial liquidity management, take into account the differences in their risk sensitivity. This chapter discusses the relationship between firm value and business risk sensitivity. The chapter starts with a presentation of intrinsic liquidity value and firm reactions to market liquidity value. This is the basis for target liquidity level in the enterprise. Liquid assets are the main part of working capital assets, so the next part of the chapter focuses on working capital investment strategies and strategies of financing such investments in working capital in the context of firm value creation. The chapter concludes that, from a firm-value-creation point of view, more risk-sensitive entities should use flexible-conservative strategies, while less risk-sensitive entities have the freedom to use restrictive-aggressive strategies. In the context of a crisis, this is the clear answer and explanation for higher levels of working capital investments observed empirically during and after a crisis. The determinants of intrinsic value of liquidity are attributed to liquidity by enterprise management. Enterprises in which financial liquidity has a high internal value will have a tendency to maintain reasonable liquid resource assets at a higher level. The levels of stocks of funds maintained by enterprises are also the result of the relationship between the liquidity market value and the intrinsic value of liquidity. It demonstrates how to approach the estimation of liquidity and presents the market value of liquidity. Having connected this information with the knowledge of manifestations of the internal liquidity, we can offer an explanation as to why the target (and also probably the optimal) level of liquidity for enterprises with higher-than-average risk sensitivity is at a higher level than the corresponding target (optimal) level for enterprises with a lower level of risk sensitivity. Working capital value-based management models In this part of the monograph we discuss the items contained within the cost of maintaining inventory. Using this approach, a model of managing inventories is presented. Theoretically, the value-maximizing optimal level of inventory is determined to be the modified EOQ model, presented as VBEOQ model. We also present an outline of issues associated with the risk of inventory management and its impact on the value of the enterprise for its owner. We also discuss the principle of the optimal batch production model and how the size of the production batch affects the value of the enterprise for its owner. Here also is demonstrated a modification of the POQ model: VBPOQ. The proposed modification takes into account the rate of the cost of capital financing and the measures involved in inventory when determining the optimal batch production. When managing the commitment of the inventory, it is crucial to take into account the impact of such decisions on the long-term effectiveness of the enterprise. This chapter also discusses the relationships between the management of accounts receivables and the value of a business. A modified (considering the value of a business) model of incremental analysis of receivables is presented, as is a discussion of the importance of capacity utilization by an enterprise for making management decisions pertaining to accounts receivables. Issues related to the management of working capital and enterprise liquidity are and will be an area of research. The analysis in this study focused primarily on working capital and liquidity management; understanding its specifics will facilitate the management of liquidity in any type of organization. Working capital as a specific buffer against risk has its special role during a crisis and can serve as a good forecasting indicator about future economic problems in the economy if a whole business environment notices higher levels of working capital and its components, like cash, inventories, and accounts receivables. The scientific value of the issues discussed in the book is associated with the issue of working capital and liquidity management in enterprises. It is also a result of the exploration and definition of the main financial objective of businesses and the relationship between the objective and the management of working capital and enterprise liquidity. The choice of topic and the contents of research resulted also from empirical observation. Empirical data on enterprises that operate in countries touched by the last crisis document higher-than-average levels of working capital before, during, and after the crisis in these enterprises. These conditions provided the means for a "natural experiment" of sorts. From that point, working capital management theory faced a necessity of even wider development. ; Collected data and research material presented in the monograph are a result of financing of the Polish science budget in the years 2011−14; the research project was financed by the National Science Centre according to decision no. DEC-2011/01/B/HS4/04744. The project that resulted in this monograph was financed from public funds for education for 2011 − 2014, the National Science Center under Contract No. DEC-2011/01/B/HS4/04744. ; How to Cite this Book Harvard Grzegorz Michalski . (April 2014). Value-Based Working Capital Management . [Online] Available at: http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9781137391834. (Accessed: 28 May 2014). APA Grzegorz Michalski . (April 2014). Value-Based Working Capital Management . Retrieved from http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9781137391834 MLA Grzegorz Michalski . Value-Based Working Capital Management . (April 2014) Palgrave Macmillan. 28 May 2014. Vancouver Grzegorz Michalski . Value-Based Working Capital Management [internet]. New York: Palgrave Macmillan; April 2014. [cited 2014 May 28]. Available from: http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9781137391834 OSCOLA Grzegorz Michalski , Value-Based Working Capital Management , Palgrave Macmillan April 2014 ; Author Biography Grzegorz Michalski is Assistant Professor of Corporate Finance at the Wroclaw University of Economics, Poland. His main areas of research are Business Finance and Financial Liquidity Management. He is currently studying the liquidity decisions made by organizations. He is the author or co-author of over 80 papers and 10 books, and sits on the editorial board of international conferences and journals. Reviews 'Due to the recent financial crisis, interest in the topic of working capital has grown significantly to both theory and practice. The research results presented by Grzegorz Michalski contribute to the development of a comprehensive theory of liquidity management and the creation of an integrated working capital and liquidity for different types of business model. The job is processed on a high quality level." -Marek Panfil, Ph.D, Director of Business Valuation Department Warsaw School of Economics 'The book of Grzegorz Michalski is a very good publication that has found the right balance between theory and practical aspects of financial liquidity management. It is extremely timely and valuable, and should be required reading for all corporate finance practitioners, academicians, and students of finance. Value-Based Working Capital Management is comprehensive, highly readable publication, and replete with useful practical examples. It has also enabled corporate leaders to make better-informed decisions in their efforts to protect the financial security of their businesses and manage financial liquidity.' -Petr Polak, Author of Centralization of Treasury Management, and Associate Professor of Finance, University of Brunei Darussalam ; REFERENCES Introduction Adner, R., and D. A. Levinthal (2004). "What Is Not a Real Option: Considering Boundaries for the Application of Real Options to Business Strategy." Academy of Management Review 29(1). Altman, E. (1984). "A Further Empirical Investigation of the Bankruptcy Cost Question." Journal of Finance 39. Back, P. (2001). "Testing Liquidity Measures as Bankruptcy Prediction Variables." 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