Displaying from 1 to 10 of 292 available piece of news
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Asymmetry in Inflation Persistence under Inflation Targeting
This study empirically documents that inflation is significantly more persistent when it is below the Central Bank's target than otherwise, in five inflation targeting countries (Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, United States and the Euro-Area). We use a threshold autoregressive model to test for this asymmetry in inflation persistence; above and below some estimated threshold. We find that the threshold estimates are reasonable in light of a central bank's announced inflation target. Theoretically, we postulate that this phenomenon occurs because while forming their expectations, agents pay attention to recent observations asymmetrically along the business cycle. It is shown that a New Keynesian model with adaptive learning and an adaptive gain can explain the asymmetry in inflation persistence. Due to relatively larger forecasting errors, agents tend to put more weight on recent events in periods of high inflation, forcing inflation persistence to deteriorate. Our empirical evidence supports the theoretical findings that inflationary periods are associated with larger forecasting errors.
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Financial inclusion and women economic empowerment in Ghana
Although the impact of micro-credit and direct cash transfers on women's economic empowerment has been extensively studied, the impact of having access to a bank account remains relatively understudied. This paper uses a detailed national representative dataset of female household heads in Ghana to analyze the relation between access to formal and informal financial accounts and women's economic empowerment. Using propensity score matching, our results elicit that women who have a financial account are more likely to be employed and tend to have higher income. The results are mainly driven by ownership of a formal account (i.e., in a commercial bank) while the impact of informal account ownership is not statistically significant. Thus, our findings call for higher promotion of formal banking, particularly among women in rural and poorer areas where financial inclusion is lower.
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Digitalisation and high-growth enterprises in Europe
The profound implications that digital technologies have for business dynamism and the competitive environment have raised the attention of policymakers and scholars. This paper examines the link between digitalisation and firm growth and investigates whether high-growth enterprises (HGEs) invest and adopt digital technologies differently than non-HGEs. Using the European Investment Bank Investment Survey and Generalised Least Squares as well as random-effects probit models, we find strong complementarities between different digitalisation indicators. Furthermore, firms investing in digitalisation are more likely to exhibit rapid employment, sales and labour productivity growth. Our results also highlight the heterogeneous nature of the digitalisation process and its relationship with firm performance.
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Sustainability, Local Environmental Behaviour and Firm Location Decisions
This paper uses Mercantile Register data to analyse the location decisions of firms in Catalan municipalities (between 2010 and 2019). Using count data panel estimations, we focus on local sustainability characteristics. The identification of the location patterns and the effects of local environmental policies on firms belonging to different sustainability industries constitute a contribution to the empirical location literature.
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Locaction dynamics of coworking spaces in China: insights fron Beijing metropolitan
The article explores the location dynamics of coworking spaces in Beijing, China, answering three key questions: Where are these spaces located, what determines their location, and what role do creative industry specialization, variety, and government incentives play? Using a count data model applied to data collected in 2022, the findings reveal that most coworking spaces, largely promoted by public authorities, cluster in the city center where knowledge-intensive and creative industries are highly diverse. Beijing's semi-polycentric urban structure shapes coworking location dynamics by forming local hubs of activity. Additionally, the study finds that creative industry specialization and diversity are crucial factors, while government facilities and incentives also play a significant role in determining the locations of these coworking spaces.
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Do online attention and sentiment affect cryptocurrencies’ correlations?
This study explores the daily patterns in major cryptocurrencies and how they relate to online investor behavior. The research reveals interesting connections between cryptocurrency correlations and the attention and sentiment expressed by investors on digital platforms.
The findings show that increased public attention to cryptocurrencies tends to strengthen the relationships between different digital currencies. However, the overall sentiment or mood of investors has an even more significant and negative impact on cross correlations.
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Time-frequency co-movements between commodities and global economic policy uncertainty
This study explores how economic uncertainty, driven by factors like political and health crises, influences various commodity prices.
Commodities, like metals, food, and energy, are becoming increasingly popular investments due to their low correlation with other assets, offering diversification benefits for portfolios. This research is unique because it examines a broad range of commodities (precious metals, food, etc.) across a long time period (1997-2022), encompassing major crises.
The study uses advanced techniques to analyze these relationships in detail. It goes beyond traditional methods by employing a tool called "wavelet analysis" to uncover how these connections change over time and across different frequencies. This provides a richer understanding of how commodity prices move together and how quickly they react to uncertainty.
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Modeling uncertainty in tourism markets
In the recent years the tourism sector has been hit by a number of uncertainty events. In this paper, Juan Antonio Duro, António Osório and Alejandro Perez-Laborda, researchers from the department of economics at URV and ECO-SOS, study how uncertainty impacts on the tourism markets and on the destinations price and promotion decisions. They consider a two-stage model with two reference destinations and product differentiation. Specifically, they distinguish between traveling and production costs/inputs uncertainty, and between informative and persuasive advertising. They found that uncertainty tends to increase prices as destinations pass uncertainty to consumers. However, in order to minimize the negative effect of higher prices in their bookings, destinations tend to intensify their promotion efforts. Altogether, uncertainty typically affects more consumers than destinations, which in most cases see their profits increase because of the increase in prices.
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The role of information sources as a driver of innovation
An extensive empirical literature shows the important role that information sources have on firm innovation. However, there is scarce evidence on the different typologies of between technological and non-technological innovations and their expectations. We investigate how the wide number of information sources affect the propensity to innovate and its future expectations. At the methodological level, we apply a multivariate Probit to the Innovation Survey of Chilean companies (2013-2016).
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Trade Costs and the Integration of British West Africa in the Global Economy
Despite the essential role of trade for African economies, in the extensive literature on the historical evolution of international trade costs, Africa is still missing. In this article, we contribute to filling this gap by (1) providing the first estimates of British West Africa's trade costs with Britain c. 1840-1940 by computing relative price gaps in a representative sample of African export and European import prices, and (2) analysing the main determinants of trade costs trends, by regressing price gaps on measures of transport costs, market efficiency, and trade barriers.
