International Economics最新文献

{"title":"Population aging, pensions, informality and labor market frictions in Lebanon. Reforms and policy choices","authors":"Marie-Claude Kamar ,&nbsp;Riccardo Magnani","doi":"10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100531","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100531","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We evaluate the effects of population aging on the macroeconomic evolution of the Lebanese economy and the financial sustainability of its major pension schemes. We use an OLG model with labor market frictions as in de la Croix et al. (2013). Individuals are differentiated by their origin, age, gender, and education and choose the sector of activity, which implies that the size of the informal sector is endogenous. We assess the long-run implications of population aging and show that the public sector pension scheme is unsustainable. In contrast, the private sector scheme is insufficient to ensure decent living standards for the elderly. Finally, we evaluate the effects of two pension reforms. We first propose a mix of measures that guarantee the sustainability of the public sector scheme. Then, we evaluate the impact of the pension reform introduced in December 2023 and of an alternative reform aiming at increasing the size of the private sector scheme to improve the living standards for the elderly.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":13794,"journal":{"name":"International Economics","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 100531"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141714314","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Asymmetric shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Australian stock market: Evidence from multiple threshold nonlinear ARDL (MTNARDL) approach","authors":"Partha Gangopadhyay ,&nbsp;Rudra P. Pradhan ,&nbsp;Narasingha Das","doi":"10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100533","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100533","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study investigates the asymmetric effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Australian stock market using a novel methodology (multiple threshold nonlinear ARDL). We find that, in the short-term, the pandemic's impact is statistically insignificant for moderate levels of pandemic intensity (30–70% range). However, for both more severe outbreaks (above 70%) and less intense initial stages (below 30%), the pandemic shows short-term negative effects. Interestingly, these adverse effects become consistent across all intensity levels in the long-term. Additionally, our analysis reveals counterintuitive relationships between daily economic activity and stock market performance at different pandemic intensity thresholds.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":13794,"journal":{"name":"International Economics","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 100533"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141713842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Assessment of Economic Policy Uncertainty spillovers: A cross-border analysis of global and BRIC economies","authors":"Umar Kayani ,&nbsp;M. Kabir Hassan ,&nbsp;Austin Dejan ,&nbsp;Maaz Khan ,&nbsp;Farrukh Nawaz","doi":"10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100530","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100530","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study empirically assesses the dynamics of variation in economic policy uncertainty over the financial markets of BRIC countries, including Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Using monthly frequency data from January 2003 to June 2023 and employing Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) spillover estimation framework, we find a significant influence of global economic policy uncertainty on the BRIC economies that varies with the time horizons. The findings show a total spillover of 35.65% in the global and BRIC economic policy uncertainty. The highest gross directional spillover is reported globally and in China, while Brazil shows the lowest directional gross economic policy uncertainty spillover. However, the global economic policy uncertainty transmits the highest net directional spillover. The study provides practical policy implications in adopting a comprehensive, globally informed approach to economic policy decisions and risk mitigation strategies to navigate the evolving landscape of economic policy uncertainties effectively.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":13794,"journal":{"name":"International Economics","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 100530"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141596297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Trade openness, governance quality, and economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean","authors":"Olugbenga A. Onafowora ,&nbsp;Oluwole Owoye","doi":"10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100527","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100527","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The existing literature on the relationship between trade openness and economic growth is extensive, but there is a dearth of research that examines whether this relationship is contingent on the quality of governance institutions in a country. In this study, we address this gap by investigating the moderating effects of governance quality on the trade openness-economic growth nexus in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) during the 2000–2021 period. We utilize six indicators of governance quality from the World Bank's world governance indicators and employ correlation and the dynamic panel System Generalized Method of Moments technique for robust and efficient analysis, which yields more accurate results when the number of cross-sections exceeds the time dimension of the dataset. Our findings indicate that governance effectiveness, rule of law, control of corruption, and regulatory quality have a significantly positive impact on the positive relationship between trade openness and economic growth. In contrast, the moderating effects of voice and accountability and political stability on the trade openness-economic growth relationship are negative and statistically significant. Based on these results, we conclude that each governance dimension has distinct effects on the trade openness-economic growth nexus. In term of policy recommendation, policymakers need to harness the benefits of international trade for promoting economic growth; therefore, LAC countries should focus on investing in institutional quality and designing policies that would enhance the overall quality and effectiveness of governance.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":13794,"journal":{"name":"International Economics","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 100527"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141540014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Unravelling the impact of political risk on industrialization: Evidence from Africa","authors":"Hervé Kaffo Fotio ,&nbsp;Abdoul Karim","doi":"10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100528","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100528","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Despite the growing concern about the economic costs of political risk, relatively little is known about its effect on industrialization. This paper fills the knowledge gap by investigating the impact of political risk on industrialization and relative transmission mechanisms using data from 34 African countries over the 2000–2019 period. Findings from Driscoll and Kraay (1998), system GMM, and quantile regressions show that political risk has a direct negative impact on industrialization. When considering the sub-dimensions of political risk, results show that the increase in government risk, internal and external conflict risk, military politics risk, ethnic tensions risk, investment profile risk, corruption risk, bureaucratic quality risk, and socioeconomic risk adversely affect industrialization. Further, the mediation analysis reveals that political risk does not only have a direct effect on industrialization but also an indirect impact through its adverse effects on financial integration, financial development, and internet penetration. Finally, the net impact is negative and suggests that political risk hinders Africa's industrialization.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":13794,"journal":{"name":"International Economics","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 100528"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141540013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Erratum to “Remittances, financial development, and income inequality: A panel quantile regression approach” [Int. Econ. 175 (2023) 171-186]","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100529","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100529","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":13794,"journal":{"name":"International Economics","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 100529"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2110701724000520/pdfft?md5=297011acc7b78fc7a9434e7ba2c6c373&pid=1-s2.0-S2110701724000520-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141573130","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The equally weighted portfolio still remains a challenging benchmark","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100525","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100525","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This research replicates the paper “Optimal Versus Naive Diversification: How Inefficient is the 1/N Portfolio Strategy?”, DeMiguel et al. (2009b). Similar to the referring paper, working in the mean–variance context, we compare the out-of-sample performance of the same investment strategies on the basis of standard metrics (Sharpe ratio, certainty equivalent and turnover). We consider proportional transaction costs and estimation rolling windows of limited length. Our study updates the original paper for many interesting aspects. First, to exclude that the empirical evidence of DeMiguel et al. (2009b), whose data stopped in 2004, could depend on very specific market behavior, we use an updated version of the original databases that contains the returns of the last 20 years. Recent data are characterized by a few severe systemic events, the 2008 global financial crisis and the shock related to the pandemic, and a generally higher level of price volatility than the previous periods. In our opinion, this variation in the market’s conditions makes the replication very interesting. Second, we introduce the Equally Risk Contribution (ERC) portfolio within the allocation strategies under comparison. This allocation rule is strictly related to the mean–variance approach when the variance is used as the referring risk measure and it constitutes a very interesting alternative investment benchmark. Moreover, using real data, we study whether a variation of the holding period or the length of the estimation window can modify the performance of all the strategies under comparison. Our findings confirm the results of DeMiguel et al. (2009b), i.e. that the equally weighted portfolio still remains a challenging benchmark to beat. Nevertheless, we find a few significant differences: the number of strategies that outperform naive diversification is larger due to the increased market volatility; limiting the impact of transaction costs by investing in a portfolio with a stable allocation as the ERC, or modifying the lengths of the estimation window and the holding period, is not sufficient to beat naive diversification systematically.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":13794,"journal":{"name":"International Economics","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 100525"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2110701724000489/pdfft?md5=a20cc53ea1cfe2dde7b02370da4f61fa&pid=1-s2.0-S2110701724000489-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141501460","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Money demand stability: New evidence from transfer entropy","authors":"Hadi Movaghari ,&nbsp;Apostolos Serletis ,&nbsp;Georgios Sermpinis","doi":"10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100524","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100524","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper revisits the empirical relationship between interest rates and money demand from a novel perspective, i.e., information theory. Particularly, we utilize the model-free transfer entropy to quantify the flow of information from interest rates to monetary aggregates and present three findings. First, we document a hump-shaped informational link between interest rate and M1 monetary aggregate, with a rounded high point in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Second, we identify three structural shifts in the information transmission from interest rate to M1. The first two breakpoints occurred in the early 1980s and mid-1990s, likely as a response to the removal of Regulation Q and the introduction of sweep technology, respectively. The third shift took place during the relatively less-explored period of the early 2000s. Finally, we unravel a previously unreported pivotal distinction between the first two changepoints despite the apparent similarity in inducing money demand instability: the 1980s financial deregulations facilitate the transmission of information, whereas the 1990s financial reforms acted as an impediment to the information flow. Our results are robust to alternative entropy measures.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":13794,"journal":{"name":"International Economics","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 100524"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2110701724000477/pdfft?md5=3b12f1208186885d8c990808ad53786c&pid=1-s2.0-S2110701724000477-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141444120","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Political uncertainty and macro-financial dynamics in the BRICS","authors":"Fredj Jawadi ,&nbsp;Thierry M. Pondie","doi":"10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100523","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100523","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We empirically study the impact of political uncertainty on macro-financial variables (stock prices, inflation, consumption) and behavioral dynamics (consumer confidence, anxiety) in the BRICS over the period 1990–2022. To this end, we applied a panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) model that tests further endogenous interactions between the variables in the model. Accordingly, we find that political uncertainty increases inflation while reducing consumer spending and stock prices. In addition, we find that consumer confidence and investor anxiety are negatively affected by political uncertainty. Our results have different implications, especially for policymakers who have to tackle political uncertainty in order to protect householders and investors more effectively.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":13794,"journal":{"name":"International Economics","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 100523"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141638817","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How interstate soft conflicts affect bilateral migration: Results from a structural gravity model","authors":"Tamar Taralashvili","doi":"10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100522","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.inteco.2024.100522","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study aims to empirically examine the impact of interstate soft conflicts on bilateral migration. Interstate soft conflicts that arise when diplomacy fails and a military operation seems too extreme may act as a policy tool and have a negative effect on bilateral relations. The empirical approach uses balanced panel data with annual observations and a theory-consistent structural gravity model of migration, augmented by a new measure of interstate soft conflict. The findings suggest that interstate soft conflicts have a lasting adverse effect on migration, regardless of the control for omitted variables (presence of regional trade agreements, various types of sanctions, the state acts, and militarized interstate disputes) and different model specifications. More specifically, these conflicts result in an average reduction of about 23.35% in bilateral migration. After accounting for the time delay in the effect and addressing reverse causality, the findings suggest that interstate soft conflicts may exert a prolonged (the effect disappears after three years) adverse impact on bilateral migration flows, causing a reduction of approximately 34.22%. Therefore, the study’s findings not only illuminate the complex relationship between soft conflicts and migration but also underscore their significant implications. These insights are valuable for policymakers and researchers, providing a solid foundation for informed decision-making and further exploring this complex issue.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":13794,"journal":{"name":"International Economics","volume":"179 ","pages":"Article 100522"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2110701724000453/pdfft?md5=58b8cec5f6220c9d2fe02ef1d7c715bf&pid=1-s2.0-S2110701724000453-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141400751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}