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on Transition Economics |
| By: | Evangelos Charalambakis; Federica Teppa; Athanasios Tsiortas |
| Abstract: | Abstract This paper analyses the consumer’s decision to apply for credit and the probability of the credit being accepted in the euro area during a period characterized by the unprecedented concomitance of events and changing borrowing conditions linked to the global COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We use data between 2020Q1 and 2023Q2 from the ECB’s Consumer Expectations Survey. We find that the credit demand is highest when the first lockdown ends and drops when supportive monetary compensation schemes are implemented. There is evidence that constrained households are significantly less likely to apply for credit. Credit is more likely to be accepted under favourable borrowing conditions and after the approval of national recovery plans. We also find that demographic, economic factors, perceptions and expectations are associated with the demand for credit and the credit grant. |
| Keywords: | Consumer finance; Liquidity constraints; Credit applications; Consumer Expectations Survey |
| JEL: | C23 D12 D14 G51 |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dnb:dnbwpp:807&r=tra |
| By: | Barry Eichengreen (NCAER and University of California, Berkeley) |
| Abstract: | Globalization is not over, but it is being reconfigured by events. Internationally, there are economic and political tensions between the United States and China. Both countries have responded with import tariffs, export controls, and foreign investment restrictions that have led to a decline in the relative importance of bilateral trade and the collapse of bilateral foreign direct investment. The paper concludes that globalization remains deeply entrenched despite the Global Financial Crisis, COVID, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and U.S.-China tensions. At the same time, the landscape of globalization has been changing in response to these events and specifically in response to U.S.-China rivalry. |
| Keywords: | Globalisation;Economic Growth |
| Date: | 2024–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nca:ncaerw:161&r=tra |
| By: | Algieri, Bernardina; Kornher, Lukas; von Braun, Joachim |
| Abstract: | The inflation surge in recent years is having profound social, economic, and political consequences. With food price changes being an integral part of inflation, low income segments of the population are strongly impacted. What makes this period so unusual is the breadth of price pressures that are affecting both low and high-income countries. In essence, this phenomenon shows that inflation is increasingly synchronised across borders. This study examines price developments across countries and over time and investigates the driving factors behind food price hikes. Our analysis reveals that a complex mix of causes has led to the soaring food prices seen in 2021-2022. The spread of COVID-19 produced disruptions in the world’s supply chains, pushing the cost of producing and transporting food upward. The increase in fertilizer and energy prices has further exacerbated production costs for agricultural products. Adverse climatic phenomena (e.g., La Niña), generated droughts in parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas, damaged harvests, and fuelled inflation. The war in Ukraine and the associated trade blockade of grain exports made things worse. Additional pressures included speculative activities in financial markets, which were already at play before the Russia-Ukraine war. In spite of all these increases in costs, inflation could perhaps have been kept under control by immediate, sufficiently restrictive monetary policies by Central Banks. Most likely, the main cause of the strong inflationary surge in several countries seems to have been the failure of some Central Banks to rapidly intervene to counteract the effects of overall price increases including key staples. Soaring inflation is continuing to make vulnerable countries hungrier and poorer and, therefore, prompt actions are necessary to help them. |
| Keywords: | Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Security and Poverty |
| Date: | 2024–03–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:ubzefd:340561&r=tra |
| By: | Wessel Vermeulen; Fernanda Gutierrez Amaros |
| Abstract: | Data on online job postings represents an important source of information for local labour markets. Many countries lack statistics on labour demand that are sufficiently up-to-date and disaggregated across regions, sectors and occupations. Web-scraped data from online job postings can provide further insights on the trends in labour demand and the skills needed across regions, sectors and occupations. This paper assesses the comparability and validity between Lightcast and other data sources for Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden, for the years 2019 to 2022 across regions, sectors and occupations. It concludes with some recommendations for labour market analysts that want to use data on online job postings for assessing labour demand trends. |
| Keywords: | big data, Lightcast (Burning Glass), online job postings, unconventional data sources, vacancy data |
| JEL: | C89 J23 J29 J63 O50 R12 Y1 |
| Date: | 2024–03–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:cfeaaa:2024/02-en&r=tra |
| By: | Tasso Adamopoulos; Fernando Leibovici |
| Abstract: | We study the role of international trade risk for food security, the patterns of production and trade across sectors, and its implications for policy. We document that food import dependence across countries is associated with higher food insecurity, particularly in low-income countries. We provide causal evidence on the role of trade risk for food security by exploiting the exogeneity of the Ukraine-Russia war as a major trade disruption limiting access to imports of critical food products. Using micro-level data from Ethiopia, we empirically show that districts relatively more exposed to food imports from the conflict countries experienced a significant increase in food insecurity by consuming fewer varieties of foods. Motivated by this evidence, we develop a multi-country multi-sector model of trade and structural change with stochastic trade costs to study the impact and policy implications of trade risk. In the model, importers operate subject to limited liability and trade off the production cost advantage against the risk of higher trade costs when sourcing goods internationally. We find that trade risk can threaten food security, with substantial quantitative effects on trade flows and the sectoral composition of economic activity. We study the desirability of trade policy and production subsidies in partially mitigating exposure to trade risk and diversifying domestic economic activity. |
| Keywords: | food security; trade; risk; structural change; productivity |
| JEL: | E10 F10 F60 I30 O11 O41 |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedlwp:97907&r=tra |
| By: | Cristina Cattaneo; Daniela Gireco; Nicola Lacetera; Mario Macis |
| Abstract: | We study out-group biases in attitudes toward refugees, and the effect of European Union (EU) immigration policies on these views, using an online survey experiment including 4, 087 Italian participants. We assess attitudes using donations to a randomly assigned group: Italian victims of violence or refugees fleeing wars in Ukraine or African countries. We also employ a novel measure, the share donated in cash. While donations indicated less support for African and Ukrainian refugees compared to Italian victims, the cash measure revealed a stronger prejudice against distant out-groups, with participants giving African refugees a smaller proportion of cash donations. This result was mainly driven by individuals with right-leaning political views. Providing information about immigration policy reforms that give the EU a more substantial role in receiving and allocating refugees had no impact. Textual analysis supports these findings. |
| Keywords: | ingroup-outgroup relations, prejudice, refugees, EU immigration policies, survey experiments |
| JEL: | C99 D02 D64 J15 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10950&r=tra |
| By: | Alexandru Petrea (Alexandru cel Bun Military Academy, Chisinau, Republic of Moldova) |
| Abstract: | The European Union has set ambitious targets for renewable energy, aiming to increase the percentage share of renewable energy in gross final energy consumption and promote its use in transportation and heating sectors. Romania, having a significant potential in renewable energy, especially wind and solar energy, can play an important role in achieving these goals. The exploitation of abundant natural resources and the development of production capacities in wind, solar and hydropower can contribute to the transition to a cleaner and more sustainable energy system, bringing economic and environmental benefits to the country and contributing to significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. |
| Keywords: | Renewable Energy Source, Energy Transition, Energy Policies, Energy Efficiency, Climate Goals, Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments |
| Date: | 2023–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:raiswp:0286&r=tra |
| By: | Selcuk Gul |
| Abstract: | [EN] This study aims to identify the role played by the sovereign risk in determining the local currency lending rates to the non-financial sector. In this context, lending rate equations for five emerging countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are estimated by the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model. The findings indicate that the impact of sovereign risk on lending rates varies among countries. While an increase in the sovereign risk premium leads to a significant rise in the local currency lending rates in Türkiye, its impacts on the lending rates are relatively low in Poland and Mexico and almost negligible in Hungary and Chile. Results imply that, in the case of Türkiye, as the decline in the risk premium, accompanying the monetary tightening policy initiated in June 2023, become permanent, it may have a reducing effect on the financing costs of the non-financial sector in the medium-to-long term. [TR] Bu calisma, finansal olmayan sektore verilen yerli para cinsiden kredi faizlerinin belirlenmesinde ulke riskinin oynadigi rolu ortaya koymayi amaclamaktadir. Bu cercevede, Ekonomik Kalkinma ve Isbirligi Teskilati (OECD) uyeleri arasindan secilmis bes gelismekte olan ulke icin kredi faizi denklemleri Otoregresif Gecikmesi Dagitilmis (ARDL) modeli ile tahmin edilmektedir. Bulgular, ulke riskinin kredi faizleri uzerindeki etkisinin ulkeler arasinda degiskenlik gosterdigine isaret etmektedir. Ulke risk primindeki artis finansal olmayan sektore verilen yerli para cinsinden kredi faizlerini Turkiye ekonomisinde onemli oranda artirirken, Polonya ve Meksika'da soz konusu artisin kredi faizleri uzerindeki etkisinin daha zayif, Macaristan ve Sili’de ise neredeyse ihmal edilebilir duzeyde oldugu gorulmektedir. Sonuclar, Turkiye ozelinde, 2023 yilinin haziran ayinda uygulanmaya baslanan parasal sikilastirma politikasina eslik eden risk primindeki dususun kalici hale gelmesiyle, orta ve uzun vadede finansal olmayan sektorun finansman maliyetlerini azaltici etkide bulunabilecegini ima etmektedir. |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tcb:econot:2403&r=tra |
| By: | Thiemo Fetzer (University of Warwick & Bonn and affiliated with CEPR, CAGE, NIESR, ECONtribute, Grantham Institute); Callum Shaw (London School of Economics); Jacob Edenhofer (University of Oxford) |
| Abstract: | Formal conceptions of state capacity have mostly focused on indirect measures of state capacity – by, for instance, using the state’s fiscal or extractive capacity as a proxy for its overall capacity. Yet, this input or extractive view of state capacity falls short, especially since cross-country empirical evidence suggests that similar levels of fiscal capacity, measured by tax revenues as a percent-age of GDP, can produce starkly different outputs – both in classic economic terms and in broader terms that citizens would recognize as desirable outcomes, including quality of life, health, security, equality of opportunity, and inter-generational mobility. This paper argues that a central step towards addressing these shortcomings of the conventional view is to account for a crucial and largely ignored boundary of the state or dimension of state capacity: its capac-ity to gather, process, and deploy information in its conduct of fiscal policy. Specifically, we study how the presence or lack of such informational capacity constrains governments in responding to crises, such as the recent energy price shock. Our framework provides the analytical toolkit to examine how the infor-mational boundary of the state shapes the incentives for policymakers to resort to untargeted and/or distortionary policy instruments, as opposed to targeted and non-distortionary ones, in responding to crises. The policy response to the energy crisis following the invasion of Ukraine provides the empirical context upon which we bring this theoretical framework to bear on data, though the latter can be straightforwardly extended to other recent crises. |
| Keywords: | state capacity, economic development, carbon taxation, political economy, pork-barrel politics |
| JEL: | H11 O43 D63 D73 Q48 P16 C21 C55 |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:282&r=tra |
| By: | Odran Bonnet (Insee); Etienne Fize (Institut des Politiques Publiques, Paris School of Economics); Tristan Loisel (Insee, Crest); Lionel Wilner (Insee, Crest) |
| Abstract: | This article exploits both the crude oil price surge consecutive to the invasion of Ukraine and 2022 fuel excise tax rebates in France as quasi-natural experiments to infer the price sensitivity of fuel demand. Based on granular individual bank account data at the transaction level, we properly disentangle anticipation effects from price effects, and estimate an average price elasticity of -0.31. It varies little with respect to income and location but substantially decreases, in absolute, with respect to fuel spending and is higher for retirees. We evaluate financial and distributional effects of the actual tax policy as well as its impact on CO2 emissions based on counterfactual simulations. We empirically demonstrate that resorting to transfers, be they targeted or not, achieves only imperfect compensation against fuel inflation. However, we show that a policy maker subject to a tight budget constraint and seeking to alleviate excessive losses, relative to income, prefers means-tested transfers to rebates. |
| Keywords: | Commodity taxation; Excise tax; Tax-and-transfer schemes; Fuel price elasticity; Anticipatory behavior; Transaction-level data. |
| JEL: | C18 C51 D12 H23 H31 L71 Q31 Q35 Q41 |
| Date: | 2024–03–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crs:wpaper:2024-05&r=tra |
| By: | Ionut Ciutacu (Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University of Bucharest, Romania) |
| Abstract: | Ius civile regulates legal relations between Roman citizens. The dominium mentality of the Romans led them to pay more attention to the legal relations specific to the possession of goods. During ancient times, when the Romans were a people of shepherds and farmers, the norms of the old Civil Law established the legal institution of mancipatio, which applied only to res mancipi. The development of society determined the appearance of other categories of goods, the possession of which could no longer be obtained with the help of mancipatio. In order to update the legal regime of acquiring property and relate it to reality, the Roman developed additional civil law procedures that contributed to the improvement of private property and to the crystallization of the concept of patrimony. |
| Keywords: | mancipatio, in iure cessio, usucapio, adiudicatio, lex |
| Date: | 2023–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:raiswp:0282&r=tra |
| By: | Könneke, Jule; Adolphsen, Ole |
| Abstract: | The outcome of the 28th UN Climate Change Conference shows that international cooperation remains possible despite today's challenging geopolitical situation. Instead of the feared blockade, an agreement was reached for the first time - some three decades after the start of the COP process - to move away from fossil fuels in energy systems. Overall, the steps agreed in Dubai are a compromise that sends a political signal short of what is necessary from a scientific perspective. On the one hand, international climate cooperation continues to be characterized by traditional conflicts between developing countries and industrialized nations (issues of global justice, financial commitments), with new trade tensions and what at times amounted to an obstructionist attitude among a handful of countries compounding the difficulties. On the other hand, dynamic North-South coalitions have formed in the negotiation tracks on 'loss and damage' and the global energy transition. These must be further strengthened as the starting point for lasting alliances against fossil fuel interests. German climate foreign policy can make an important contribution by undertaking consistent diplomatic efforts to implement structural reforms of the international financial system and by offering attractive partnerships. |
| Keywords: | World Climate Conference, COP28, Global North, Global South, Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, energy security, Global Stocktake (GST), nationally determined contributions (NDCs), carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:swpcom:284703&r=tra |
| By: | Nebojša Vukadinović (IRM - Institut de Recherche Montesquieu - UB - Université de Bordeaux, Sciences Po - Sciences Po) |
| Abstract: | Since the end of communism in the 1990s, the new currencies have had a triple function in the Balkans, particularly in the Yugoslav area. When they were first adopted, the idea was that they should primarily serve an economic function. But their symbolic and political functions must not be overlooked. After the disintegration of Yugoslavia, adopting new currencies enabled the new governments to pursue an independent monetary policy. |
| Keywords: | Eurozone, Monetary policies, Europe, Balkans |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04469808&r=tra |