Essays on Consequences and Responses to Economic Shocks

Essays on Consequences and Responses to Economic Shocks PDF Author: Armand Arief Sim
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
This dissertation consists of three chapters that study the consequences of income or price shocks on important economic dimensions of villages, households, and individuals, and how they respond to these shocks. The first chapter investigates whether local governments respond to local economic shocks. I use heterogeneity in the effects of rice import restriction on rice price shocks across Indonesian villages to investigate public resources provision responses to local price shock. To this end, I combine village agro-climatic conditions for growing rice with provincial rice price over time to construct plausibly exogenous price shocks at the village level. Using a comprehensive longitudinal dataset of 53,000 villages, I find that an increase in rice price is associated with negative income growth in villages less suited for growing rice, and local governments responded to it by increasing public resources -- public health facilities and financial capital assistance -- towards those villages. The effects on public health facilities (financial assistance) are only significant in high (low)-inequality villages. Increased social capital only in low-equality villages can provide a plausible explanation for the heterogeneous result on financial assistance projects. I also show that an increase in public health facilities was associated with a reduction in infant mortality suggesting evidence of good targeting by local governments. The second chapter (co-authored with Patrick Asuming and Hyuncheol Bryant Kim) investigates the long-run effects of a health insurance subsidy in Ghana, where mandates are not enforceable. We randomly provide different levels of subsidy (1/3, 2/3, and full), with follow-up surveys seven months and three years after the intervention. We find that a one-time subsidy promotes insurance enrollment for all treatment groups, but long-run health care service utilization increases only for the partial subsidy groups. Selection explains this pattern: those who were enrolled due to the subsidy, especially the partial subsidy, are more ill and have greater health care utilization. A careful enforcement of mandatory enrollment is necessary to prevent selection. The third chapter (co-authored with Asep Suryahadi and Daniel Suryadarma) measures the effect of child market work on the long-term growth of human capital, focusing on the output of the human capital production: mathematics skills, cognitive skills, pulmonary function, and educational attainment. Our full sample is drawn from a rich longitudinal dataset Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS). We address endogeneity of child market work using provincial legislated minimum wage as the instrument. Our instrumental variable estimation shows that child labor negatively affects mathematics skills and pulmonary function, but not cognitive skills and educational attainment. We find heterogeneities in type of work. Those who work outside of family business have lower educational attainment than those working for family business.

Essays on Consequences and Responses to Economic Shocks

Essays on Consequences and Responses to Economic Shocks PDF Author: Armand Arief Sim
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
This dissertation consists of three chapters that study the consequences of income or price shocks on important economic dimensions of villages, households, and individuals, and how they respond to these shocks. The first chapter investigates whether local governments respond to local economic shocks. I use heterogeneity in the effects of rice import restriction on rice price shocks across Indonesian villages to investigate public resources provision responses to local price shock. To this end, I combine village agro-climatic conditions for growing rice with provincial rice price over time to construct plausibly exogenous price shocks at the village level. Using a comprehensive longitudinal dataset of 53,000 villages, I find that an increase in rice price is associated with negative income growth in villages less suited for growing rice, and local governments responded to it by increasing public resources -- public health facilities and financial capital assistance -- towards those villages. The effects on public health facilities (financial assistance) are only significant in high (low)-inequality villages. Increased social capital only in low-equality villages can provide a plausible explanation for the heterogeneous result on financial assistance projects. I also show that an increase in public health facilities was associated with a reduction in infant mortality suggesting evidence of good targeting by local governments. The second chapter (co-authored with Patrick Asuming and Hyuncheol Bryant Kim) investigates the long-run effects of a health insurance subsidy in Ghana, where mandates are not enforceable. We randomly provide different levels of subsidy (1/3, 2/3, and full), with follow-up surveys seven months and three years after the intervention. We find that a one-time subsidy promotes insurance enrollment for all treatment groups, but long-run health care service utilization increases only for the partial subsidy groups. Selection explains this pattern: those who were enrolled due to the subsidy, especially the partial subsidy, are more ill and have greater health care utilization. A careful enforcement of mandatory enrollment is necessary to prevent selection. The third chapter (co-authored with Asep Suryahadi and Daniel Suryadarma) measures the effect of child market work on the long-term growth of human capital, focusing on the output of the human capital production: mathematics skills, cognitive skills, pulmonary function, and educational attainment. Our full sample is drawn from a rich longitudinal dataset Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS). We address endogeneity of child market work using provincial legislated minimum wage as the instrument. Our instrumental variable estimation shows that child labor negatively affects mathematics skills and pulmonary function, but not cognitive skills and educational attainment. We find heterogeneities in type of work. Those who work outside of family business have lower educational attainment than those working for family business.

Why the World Economy Needs a Financial Crash and Other Critical Essays on Finance and Financial Economics

Why the World Economy Needs a Financial Crash and Other Critical Essays on Finance and Financial Economics PDF Author: Jan Toporowski
Publisher: Anthem Press
ISBN: 0857286544
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
The essays in this volume explain the key structural features of financial inflation that give rise to financial crisis. These features include excessive reliance on finance to maintain economic activity through rising asset prices. Reliance on asset inflation induces a preoccupation with property values and a new social divide between the asset-rich and the asset-poor that undermines the culture of the welfare state. When debt can no longer be supported by cash flow from asset markets, excess debt plunges economies into economic depression.

Essays on the Impact of Economic Shocks in the Local Labor Markets

Essays on the Impact of Economic Shocks in the Local Labor Markets PDF Author: Jan Peter aus dem Moore
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description


Three Essays on Economics and Information Shocks

Three Essays on Economics and Information Shocks PDF Author: Kyle I. Carlson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic dissertations
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
A person living in an industrialized society has almost no choice but to receive information daily with negative implications for himself or others. His attention will often be drawn to the ups and downs of economic indicators or the alleged misdeeds of leaders and organizations. Reacting to new information is central to economics, but economics typically ignores the affective aspect of the response, for example, of stress or anger. These essays present the results of considering how the affective aspect of the response can influence economic outcomes. The first chapter presents an experiment in which individuals were presented with information about various non-profit organizations and allowed to take actions that rewarded or punished those organizations. When social interaction was introduced into this environment an asymmetry between rewarding and punishing appeared. The net effects of punishment became greater and more variable, whereas the effects of reward were unchanged. The individuals were more strongly influenced by negative social information and used that information to target unpopular organizations. These behaviors contributed to an increase in inequality among the outcomes of the organizations. The second and third chapters present empirical studies of reactions to negative information about local economic conditions. Economic factors are among the most prevalent stressors, and stress is known to have numerous negative effects on health. These chapters document localized, transient effects of the announcement of information about large-scale job losses. News of mass layoffs and shut downs of large military bases are found to decrease birth weights and gestational ages among babies born in the affected regions. The effect magnitudes are close to those estimated in similar studies of disasters.

Three Essays on Economics and Information Shocks

Three Essays on Economics and Information Shocks PDF Author: Kyle I. Carlson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A person living in an industrialized society has almost no choice but to receive information daily with negative implications for himself or others. His attention will often be drawn to the ups and downs of economic indicators or the alleged misdeeds of leaders and organizations. Reacting to new information is central to economics, but economics typically ignores the affective aspect of the response, for example, of stress or anger. These essays present the results of considering how the affective aspect of the response can influence economic outcomes. The first chapter presents an experiment in which individuals were presented with information about various non-profit organizations and allowed to take actions that rewarded or punished those organizations. When social interaction was introduced into this environment an asymmetry between rewarding and punishing appeared. The net effects of punishment became greater and more variable, whereas the effects of reward were unchanged. The individuals were more strongly influenced by negative social information and used that information to target unpopular organizations. These behaviors contributed to an increase in inequality among the outcomes of the organizations. The second and third chapters present empirical studies of reactions to negative information about local economic conditions. Economic factors are among the most prevalent stressors, and stress is known to have numerous negative effects on health. These chapters document localized, transient effects of the announcement of information about large-scale job losses. News of mass layoffs and shut downs of large military bases are found to decrease birth weights and gestational ages among babies born in the affected regions. The effect magnitudes are close to those estimated in similar studies of disasters.

Essays on Financial Crisis and Institutions

Essays on Financial Crisis and Institutions PDF Author: Sharon Leona Poczter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
Abstract Essays on Financial Crisis and Institutions by Sharon Leona Poczter Doctor of Philosophy in Business Administration University of California, Berkeley Professor Paul Gertler, Chair In late 2008, economies worldwide underwent close to complete economic paralysis in what has now been established as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. In response, economic research focused on understanding how a well-developed financial market such as the U.S. could fall victim to a severe financial crisis, behavior typically associated with less-developed economies. While important, the examination of the Great Recession is in some respects limited, as it is impossible to understand the long-term effects of the crisis and subsequent government response without post-crisis data. Further, information regarding the details of the implementation of government policy is typically politically sensitive and therefore not readily available to researchers. For these reasons, the empirical economic literature leaves several first order questions regarding the long term effects of financial crisis and subsequent government response unanswered. This dissertation hopes to fill that gap. Using micro-level longitudinal data from the Asian financial crisis of 1997 in Indonesia, I closely examine the long term effects of financial crisis and several government policy responses on firms in the financial and real side sectors. While the economic and institutional environment in Indonesia at that time had unique characteristics, similar reforms were carried not only then in other Asian countries, but during the Great Recession in economies worldwide. In particular, I carry out to my knowledge the first empirical assessment of the long term effects of a bank bailout program. This dissertation, therefore, hopes to provide general insight for economies undergoing severe financial distress, not only those in other emerging markets. Chapter 1 of this dissertation analyzes the long term effects of a bank bailout program on two central policy variables; lending and risk-taking. Using confidential information regarding the selection process of banks for government support, I show that the program was successful at increasing lending but not without increasing the riskiness of investment, even controlling for the amount of lending. This result provides evidence that a bailout policy aimed at simultaneously increasing lending while not engendering increased risk-taking is untenable. Chapter 2 focuses on how patterns of industry evolution in the manufacturing sector change over a financial crisis. As productivity is seen as key for economic growth, it is important for policymakers to understand which firms survive over a financial crisis, and how survivorship impacts long term industry productivity. If financial crisis facilitates "creative destruction", governments may not want to interfere by financially supporting failing firms. However, if gains to productivity following a crisis are not a direct result of creative destruction, other modes of government intervention may be favorable. Using industry decompositions for the population of manufacturing firms over a fifteen year period, I find that the crisis coincided with dramatic changes in productivity patterns within the manufacturing sector and that many of these changes were sustained in the long run. Further, results indicate that post-crisis growth was largely driven by new entry, providing preliminary evidence that reforms aimed at financially supporting lower productivity firms may be misplaced. The final chapter looks at the impact of privatization, another policy reform implemented as a response to the crisis, on firm-level productivity. This paper aims to understand if privatization is successful at increasing productivity in the Indonesian context, and also the mechanisms through which privatization leads to changes in efficiency. I find that privatization increases productivity via change in ownership per se, and that an increase in the competitiveness of the environment does not have a significant effect on changes to the efficiency of firms.

The Causes of the Economic Crisis

The Causes of the Economic Crisis PDF Author: Ludwig Von Mises
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781610166829
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Stimulus or laissez-faire? That's the essential debate about what to about financial crisis in our time. It was the same in the 1930s. In this world before and after the Great Depression, there was a lone voice for sanity and freedom: Ludwig von Mises. He speaks in The Causes of the Economic Crisis, a collection of newly in print essays by Mises that have been very hard to come by, and are published for the first time in this format. Here we have the evidence that the master economist foresaw and warned against the breakdown of the German mark, as well as the market crash of 1929 and the depression that followed. He presents his business cycle theory in its most elaborate form, applies it to the prevailing conditions, and discusses the policies that governments undertake that make recessions worse. He recommends a path for monetary reform that would eliminate business cycles and provide the basis for a sustainable prosperity. In foreseeing the interwar economic breakdown, Mises was nearly alone among his contemporaries. In 1923, he warned that central banks will not "stabilize" money; they will distort credit markets and generate booms and busts. In 1928, he departed dramatically from the judgment of his contemporaries and sounded an alarm: "every boom must one day come to an end." Then after the Great Depression hit, he wrote again in 1931. His essay was called: "The Causes of the Economic Crisis." And the essays kept coming, in 1933 and 1946, each explaining that the business cycle results from central-bank generated loose money and cheap credit, and that the cycle can only be made worse by intervention. Credit expansion cannot increase the supply of real goods. It merely brings about a rearrangement. It diverts capital investment away from the course prescribed by the state of economic wealth and market conditions. It causes production to pursue paths which it would not follow unless the economy were to acquire an increase in material goods. As a result, the upswing lacks a solid base. It is not real prosperity. It is illusory prosperity. It did not develop from an increase in economic wealth. Rather, it arose because the credit expansion created the illusion of such an increase. Sooner or later it must become apparent that this economic situation is built on sand. Did the world listen? The German-speaking world knew his essays well, and he was considered a prophet, until the Nazis came to power and wiped out his legacy. In England, his student F.A. Hayek made the Austrian theory a presence in academic life. In the popular mind, the media, and politics, however, it was Keynes who held sway, with his claim that the depression was the fault of the market, and that it can only be solved through government planning. Just at the time he wanted to be fighting, Mises had to leave Austria, forced out by political events and the rising of the Nazis. He wrote from Geneva, his writings accessible to too few people. They were never translated into English until after his death. Even then, they were not circulated widely. The sad result is that Mises is not given the credit he deserves for having warned about the coming depression, and having seen the solution. His writings were prolific and profound, but they were swallowed up in the rise of the total state and total war. But today, we hear him speak again in this book. Bettina B. Greaves did the translations. It is her view that in that in the essays, Mises provides the clearest explanation of the Great Depression ever written. Indeed, he is crystal clear: precise, patient, and thorough. It makes for a gripping read, especially given that we face many of the same problems today. This book refutes the socialists and Keynesian, as well as anyone who believes that the printing press can provide a way out of trouble. Mises shows who was responsible for driving the world into economic calamity. It was the inevitable effects of the government's monopoly over money and banking

There's No Such Thing as "The Economy"

There's No Such Thing as Author: Samuel A. Chambers
Publisher: punctum books
ISBN: 1947447890
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Every Economics textbook today teaches that questions of values and morality lie outside of, are in fact excluded from, the field of Economics and its proper domain of study, "the economy." Yet the dominant cultural and media narrative in response to major economic crisis is almost always one of moral outrage. How do we reconcile this tension or explain this paradox by which Economics seems to have both everything and nothing to do with values? The discipline of modern economics hypostatizes and continually reifies a domain it calls "the economy"; only this epistemic practice makes it possible to falsely separate the question of value from the broader inquiry into the economic. And only if we have first eliminated value from the domain of economics can we then transform stories of financial crisis or massive corporate corruption into simple tales of ethics. But if economic forces establish, transform, and maintain relations of value then it proves impossible to separate economics from questions of value, because value relations only come to be in the world by way of economic logics. This means that the "positive economics" spoken of so fondly in the textbooks is nothing more than a contradiction in terms, and as this book demonstrates, there's no such thing as "the economy." To grasp the basic logic of capital is to bring into view the unbreakable link between economics and value.

Essays on the Transmission of Economic Shocks

Essays on the Transmission of Economic Shocks PDF Author: Claire H. Hollweg
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Consumption (Economics)
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
This thesis explores the transmission of economic shocks. Although the thesis is structured as four stand-alone chapters, the common theme throughout is identifying the impact of economic shocks: either idiosyncratic shocks at the household-level, macroeconomic shocks emanating from foreign countries and transmitted through global markets, or countries' own macroeconomic policy changes (for example, structural reforms or trade reforms). Each chapter applies a different empirical methodology, including structural estimation, reduced form instrumental variables estimation, and growth accounting. Finally, each chapter utilizes a different dataset and country sample selection. While one chapter uses a micro dataset from household-level surveys, others use cross-country datasets at the aggregate country level. Both developed and developing countries are considered in the analyses. The thesis begins by exploring the relationship between idiosyncratic income changes and consumption changes of Australian households over the period 2001-2009. A major contribution to the literature is the use of the Household Income and Labor Dynamics of Australia dataset that includes panels on both consumption and income data. For the entire sample of Australian households, nearly full consumption smoothing exists against transitory shocks. Although less consumption smoothing exists against permanent shocks, Australian households still achieve a high degree of consumption smoothing against highly persistent shocks, particularly when compared to households in the United States. Durable purchases, female labor supply, and taxes and transfers are all found to act as consumption-smoothing mechanisms. The thesis then explores the impact of structural reforms on a comprehensive list of macro-level labor-market outcomes, including the unemployment rate, employment levels, average wage index, and labor force participation rates. After documenting the average trends across countries in the labor-market outcomes up to ten years on either side of each country's reform year, fixed-effects ordinary least squares as well as instrumental variables regressions are performed to account for likely endogeneity of structural reforms to labor-market outcomes. Overall the results suggest that structural reforms lead to positive outcomes for labor, particularly for informal workers. Redistributive effects in favor of workers, along the lines of the Stolper-Samuelson effect, may be at work. The thesis then explores the impact of trade liberalization on macroeconomic estimates of productivity using Brazil as a case study. Trade and economic reforms can affect the price of capital goods relative to other tradable and especially non-tradable goods. If the price of capital investments rises more than the price of all goods and services in the economy, mismeasurement of the price of capital caused by the divergence in these relative prices would result in an overestimated capital stock and underestimated TFP. This chapter overcomes this bias by constructing a capital price index using international trade data on capital goods' unit values then adjusts the index to reflect domestic Brazilian prices. A significant recovery between 1992 and 2006 is observed, highlighting the important role of the price deflator in growth accounting. The final chapter of this thesis proposes a methodology to measure the vulnerability of a country through exports to fluctuations in the economic activity of foreign markets. Export vulnerability depends first on the overall level of export exposure, measured as the share of exports to a foreign market in gross domestic product, and second on the sensitivity of exports to fluctuations in foreign gross domestic product. This sensitivity is captured by estimating origin-destination specific elasticities of exports with respect to changes in foreign gross domestic product using a gravity model of trade. Although the results suggest differences in elasticity estimates across regions as well as product categories, the principal source of international heterogeneity in export vulnerability results from differences in export exposure to global markets.

The Great Depression. Course, Effects and Consequences

The Great Depression. Course, Effects and Consequences PDF Author: Anastazia Spajic
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 334648422X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 18

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Book Description
Essay from the year 2020 in the subject Business economics - Economic and Social History, grade: 2,0, University of Applied Sciences Essen, language: English, abstract: This scientific essay deals with the topic of the Great Depression. The Great Depression represents the economic crisis that began on October 24, 1929 and dominated the 1930s. There is no doubt that the interwar economic crisis was the most serious event in the recent economic crisis. The reason for this is its size and the associated consequences. Both historians and economics have worked intensively on the issues surrounding the Great Depression. This is because the Great Depression was a global phenomenon. This globality has determined our thinking since then and justifies its impact. But all the facts just mentioned will be shown and explained in more detail in the course of this scientific essay. Furthermore, the current corona crisis, which is also having a very large impact on the global economy, shows why an occupation with this topic is justified right now. At the beginning of the scientific essay, the term economic crisis and how an economic crisis arises are to be explained. This is to serve that the further content of this work can be better understood and transferred to the Great Depression. Thereupon it will give you some general information about the Great Depression, which should introduce the whole topic. Afterwards, a brief insight into the economic situation in Europe and America after the First World War and in the 1920s is given. This insight is intended to help you understand the causes and triggers for the Great Depression. These two topics are also dealt with in this essay. To round off the entire topic, the countermeasures that were used to overcome the crisis are listed at the end. Ultimately, there is also a conclusion on the entire topic.