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© 2015 by De Gruyter. We investigate the effects of government spending on US output with a threshold structural vector autoregressive model. We consider Bayesian model comparison and generalized impulse response analysis to test for nonlinearities in the responses of output to government spending. Our empirical findings support state-dependent effects of fiscal policy, with the government spending multiplier larger and more persistent whenever there is considerable economic slack. Based on capacity utilization as the preferred threshold variable, the estimated multiplier is large (1.6) for a low-utilization regime that accounts for more than half of the sample observations from 1967 to 2012 according to the estimated threshold level.

We develop an econometric model of consumer panic (or panic buying) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using Google search data on relevant keywords, we construct a daily index of consumer panic for 54 countries from January 1st to April 30th 2020. We also assemble data on government policy announcements and daily COVID-19 cases for all countries. Our panic index reveals widespread consumer panic in most countries, primarily during March, but with significant variation in the timing and severity of panic between countries. Our model implies that both domestic and world virus transmission contribute significantly to consumer panic. But government policy is also important: Internal movement restrictions - whether announced by domestic or foreign governments - generate substantial short run panic that largely vanishes in a week to ten days. Internal movement restrictions announced early in the pandemic generated more panic than those announced later. Stimulus announcements had smaller impacts, and travel restrictions do not appear to generate consumer panic.

Using a laboratory experiment, we study how retirement plan members choose investment options using five information items prescribed by regulators. We found that asset allocation information for pre-mixed investment options - normally presented as a pie chart or a table - had the largest impact on choices. Participants preferred investment options with more, and more evenly weighted, asset class allocations. This novel application of a 1/. n strategy differs significantly from the existing findings of naïve diversification in 'mix-it-yourself' conditions where participants spread resources evenly across funds or categories. When asset allocation information was included, coefficients on return and risk information had unexpected signs, but when asset allocation was omitted, participants preferred options with high Sharpe ratios. We also demonstrate that none of the five prescribed information items was significant in explaining individual choices of more than 35% of participants. These findings highlight that information contained in prescribed investment disclosures might not be used in the manner intended by the regulator. The results raise important methodological questions about the way 'user-friendly' information prescribed by regulators is validated before being legislated.

We exploit a natural experiment in Massachusetts in 2012 to estimate the causal effect of lowering voter registration costs on: voter registration, turnout and voting behavior in presidential elections. Both a within Massachusetts specification and a cross-state specification (utilizing Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire data) find a statistically significant effect on voter registration and turnout that is of a material magnitude. However, conditional on registration we find no material difference in turnout. Finally, we find a large treatment effect on Democrat voteshare. Our results highlight the importance of voter registration costs for electoral participation, especially for citizens from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

© 2015 Elsevier B.V. We develop a small open economy, overlapping-generations model that incorporates non-stationary demographic transition paths to study the dynamic fiscal effects of demographic shift in Australia. Since the recent ageing of Australia's population is projected to exacerbate over the coming decades, there are potentially significant macroeconomic implications and impacts on fiscal commitments for old-age related expenditures. To investigate these implications and fiscal impacts, our model pays special attention to Australia's taxation and retirement schemes, to the age structure of government expenditures, and to population dynamics via fertility, longevity and immigration. Our simulation results demonstrate that population ageing shifts the tax base from labour income towards asset income and consumption, and substantially increases old-age related government expenditures. Significant future adjustments in other government expenditures and taxes will be required to finance these expenditures. Interestingly, the main driving factor behind increased fiscal costs is the increase in survival, not the decline in fertility, rates. Increases in fertility and immigration are not effective solutions to such fiscal challenges.

The impact of teacher pay on school productivity is a central concern for governments worldwide, yet evidence is mixed. In this paper we exploit a feature of teacher labour markets to determine the impact of teacher wages. Teacher wages are commonly set in a manner that results in flat wages across heterogeneous labour markets. This creates an exogenous gap between the outside labour market and inside (regulated) wage for teachers. We use the centralized wage regulation of teachers in England to examine the effect of pay on school performance. We use data on over 3000 schools containing around 200,000 teachers who educate around half a million children per year. We find that teachers respond to pay. A ten percent shock to the wage gap between local labour market and teacher wages results in an average loss of around 2 percent in average school performance in the key exams taken at the end of compulsory schooling in England.

We investigate the effects of discretionary changes in government spending and taxes using a medium-scale nonlinear vector autoregressive model with policy shocks identified via sign restrictions. Tax cuts and spending increases have larger stimulative effects when there is excess slack in the economy, while they are much less effective, especially in the case of government spending increases, when the economy is close to potential. We find that contractionary shocks have larger effects than expansionary shocks across the business cycle, but this is much more pronounced during deep recessions and sluggish recoveries than in robust expansions. Notably, tax increases are highly contractionary and largely self-defeating in reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio when the economy is in a deep recession. The effectiveness of discretionary government spending, including its state dependence, appears to be almost entirely due to the response of consumption. The responses of both consumption and investment to discretionary tax changes are state dependent, but investment plays the larger quantitative role.

MMRF is a dynamic CGE model of Australia's six State and two Territory economies. MMRF is used extensively in contract research. Several features of MMRF make it an ideal tool for policy analysis, including: dynamics, a highly disaggregated regional and sectoral database, a national labour market, and detailed modelling of government financial statistics.

ORANI is an applied general equilibrium (AGE) model of the Australian economy which is widely used by academics and by economists in the government and private sectors. We describe a generic version of the model, ORANI-G, designed both for expository purposes and as a convenient starting-point for those wishing to construct their own AGE model. ORANI-G forms the basis of an annual modelling course, and has been adapted to build models of South Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Fiji, South Korea, Denmark, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and both Chinas. Our description of the model's equations and database is closely integrated with an explanation of how the model is solved. Indeed, the model equations are presented in the syntax, resembling ordinary algebraic notation, used by the GEMPACK modelling system to specify the model. The document includes: an outline of the structure of the model and of the appropriate interpretations of the results of comparative-static and forecasting simulations; a description of the solution procedure; a brief description of the data, emphasising the general features of the data structure required for such a model; a complete description of the theoretical specification of the model framed around the TABLO Input file which implements the model in GEMPACK.

TERM-H2O is a dynamic, multi-regional computable general equilibrium model of the Australian economy with agricultural detail adapted to include regional water accounts. It focuses on the effects of inter-regional water trading. Factors of production are mobile between sectors in farm industries. TERM-H2O includes complementarity conditions that impose constraints on the volume of irrigation water traded between regions. The application detailed here is to the Commonwealth government's water buyback scheme against a background of temporary drought. The buyback scheme provides a windfall gain for holders of water rights by raising the price of irrigation water. The scheme may provide a net benefit to irrigation regions while increasing environmental flows.

Many studies have found that the economic benefits from investment in urban infrastructure are substantial. In Australia, much of the responsibility for the provision of urban infrastructure rests with regional governments. Throughout the1990's many of these governments embarked on a program of fiscal restraint, seeking to restore financial positions weakened by exposure to failed government enterprises. A large proportion of this fiscal adjustment appears to have been borne by spending on public infrastructure. Today, regional government policy attention is again focussing on public infrastructure. In spite of the now robust fiscal positions of Australia's regional governments, they remain reluctant to finance infrastructure through debt, and raising the rates of existing taxes is perceived as politically unpopular. Instead, governments are exploring alternative financing instruments, such as developer charges and public-private partnerships. This paper uses a dynamic multi-regional CGE model (MMRF) to evaluate the regional macroeconomic consequences of four methods of financing a program of regional government infrastructure provision. The methods are developer charges, debt, payroll tax and residential rates. We demonstrate that the net gains from a program of urban infrastructure development are quite sensitive to the chosen financing means. The net gains tend to be greatest under rates and debt financing, and least under developer charges.

Since the economic reforms launched in 1986, the Vietnamese economy has registered impressive economic growth. While foreign investment is providing much needed capital, through the conduct of monetary policy, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), which is an integral part of the government of Vietnam, is also playing an important role in nurturing the economic growth. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the success of the SBV policies. Monetary policy actions affect all sectors of real economies with a significant lag. Without a good understanding of the transmission mechanism, monetary policy actions may not achieve the desired outcomes. Using quarterly data from 1995 to 2010, this paper focuses on monetary policy transmission mechanisms in Vietnam. Specifically, we consider the dynamic response of the Vietnamese economy to interest rate, exchange rate and foreign shocks. The estimated results based on structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) methodology suggest that monetary shocks tend to have a strong influence on Vietnam's output. We find that Vietnam's monetary policy is relatively more susceptible to foreign shocks.

A recent concern in the debate on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in developing countries relates to the tension between demands for CSR compliance found in many global value chains (GVCs) and the search for locally appropriate responses to these pressures. In this context, an emerging and relatively understudied area of interest relates to small firm industrial clusters. Local clusters offer the potential for local joint action, and thus a basis for improving local compliance on CSR through collective monitoring and local governance. This article explores the interrelationship between global governance, exercised through GVC ties, and local governance, via cluster institutions, in ensuring compliance with CSR pressures. It undertakes a comparative analysis of two leading export-oriented football manufacturing clusters in South Asia that have both faced common challenges on child labour. The article shows that both forms vertical and horizontal governance have played a part in shaping the response of the two clusters on child labour. Moreover, these two distinct forms of governance have also led to quite differentiated outcomes in terms of forms of work organization and child labour monitoring. This raises broader questions on how global CSR demands can locally be better embedded and the conditions under which football stitchers labour in these new work forms. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

The EU has consistently struggled to forge a foreign policy narrative which promotes internal cohesion and supports the EU's efforts to exert international influence. The 2016 EU Global Strategy is the latest iteration of collective efforts to tie strategy and purpose to the EU's coherent identity in the world. This study compares the EU's strategic partners of peace and security with narratives about the EU held in the EU's strategic partners in Asia. Whilst we find reasonable coherence in the EU's projection of the international system and its role in it, its identity as an actor, and its response to policy issues on the ground, views from Asia largely contest these claims. This article employs a strategic narrative approach to conceptualize and empirically trace how the formation, projection and reception of EU narratives are part of broader circuits of communication through which EU might be recognized, legitimized and achieve influence.