Suchergebnisse

This study revisits the growth-finance nexus using a new econometric approach and unique data set. In particular by employing the smooth transition framework and annual time series data for Brazil from 1890 to 2003, we attempt to address on the one side, what is the relationship between financial development, trade openness, political instability and economic growth and, on the other, how it changes over time. The main finding is that financial development has a mixed positive and negative time-varying impact on economic growth, which significantly depends on jointly estimated trade openness thresholds. Moreover our estimates highlight a positive impact of trade openness on growth but with interesting variation regarding their size and power, whereas the effect of political instability (both formal and informal) on growth is mainly negative. We also find that changes between regimes tend not to be smooth. Finally, our estimates show that in 57% of the years in which financial development has a below the mean effect, we find that trade openness experiences a substantial above the mean change.

We study whether CEO political ideology affected how S&P 500 firms reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic, an exogenous shock to demand and supply. We hypothesize that conservative CEOs are more likely to adopt shareholder-friendly than employee-friendly reactions to the pandemic. Hence, they should be more likely to downsize their workforce while maintaining dividends. In contrast, other CEOs should be less likely to meet dividend expectations and less likely to downsize. We find confirmation of this hypothesis. We also find that CEOs used the dividend forecasts for 2020 as their benchmark rather than the 2019 dividends to make their dividend decision.

AbstractAre institutions a deep cause of economic growth? This paper tries to answer this question in a novel manner by focusing on within-country variation, over long periods of time, using a new hand-collected data set on institutions and the power-ARCH econometric framework. Focusing on the case of Brazil since 1870, our results suggest (a) that both changes in formal political institutions and informal political instability affect economic growth negatively, (b) there are important differences in terms of their short-versuslong-run behaviour, and (c) not all but just a few selected institutions affect economic growth in the long-run.

AbstractArgentina is the only country in the world that was developed in 1900 and developing in 2000. Although there is widespread consensus on the occurrence and uniqueness of this decline, an intense debate remains on its timing and underlying causes. This paper provides a first systematic investigation of the timing of the Argentine debacle. It uses an array of econometric tests for structural breaks and a range of GDP growth series covering 1886–2003. The main conclusion is the dating of two key structural breaks (in 1918 and 1948), which we argue support explanations for the debacle that highlight the slowdown of domestic financial development and trade protectionism (after 1918) and of institutional development (after 1948).