Suchergebnisse

Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the relationship between output and unanticipated inflation when wages are indexed for the loss of purchasing power. The authors argue that the monetary authority remains useful when firms that face rigid demand index wages to compensate for the loss of purchasing power, unlike Fischer (1977), who suggested that monetary policy loses effectiveness when firms index wages.


Design/methodology/approach
This paper develops a simple theoretical model followed by an empirical investigation of the relationship between output and unanticipated inflation in the presence of indexation. The theoretical model assumes a perfectly competitive firm that produces a final good that has no close substitutes using one factor, labor. The demand for the product is rigid. The empirical work considers quarterly US data from 1982Q1 to 2017Q1 and uses the Generalized Method of Moments in which endogenous variables are instrumented using their own lags. This paper further considers the period before and after the recent global financial crisis.


Findings
This paper shows that unexpected inflation decreases the growth rate of output in the USA. The decrease is quantitatively and qualitatively stronger before the financial crisis than after the crisis. This finding suggests that the Federal Reserve should maintain higher expectations of inflation and then surprise the public with lower inflation rates. The results further suggest that regardless of how expectations are formed, firms and workers agree on the nominal wage that is equal to the realized marginal revenue product of labor.


Originality/value
This paper sheds light on the behavior of the central bank and its relative ineffectiveness in light of the recent economic recession.

AbstractThis paper examines whether Internet access positively affects credit card balances. To that end, we compare the 2010 and 2013 Surveys of Consumer Finances, analyze the consistency of the results over time, and provide the rationale for any resulting differences. Using the censored techniques, our results indicate that Internet access has a positive effect on credit card balances, which suggests that consumers with Internet access are prone to higher balances compared to those without. The probability of carrying positive balances was larger in 2010 compared to 2013. Overall, the results suggest that, while the financial crisis might have contributed to higher balances in 2010, the economic recovery afterward seems to have eased the burden of credit card debt.

AbstractUtilizing the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances data, the present study aims to examine the role of the Internet in carrying a credit card balance among US households. The central question of this study is whether or not households with Internet access have more favorable attitudes toward incurring more credit card balance. This study further investigates whether education, income, gender, age, race, etc., make any differences in carrying credit card debt when households have access to the Internet. Our results with the Tobit model show that having access to the Internet increases the probability of carrying a positive credit card balance by 4% to 5% compared to those who do not have access to the Internet. This result does not apply to older Americans. Our results further indicate that education decreases the probability of carrying a positive credit balance for households that have access to the Internet, while income and liquid assets may have little positive effect on that probability. The results suggest that Internet leads to more debt, but education could alleviate that debt.

AbstractThis study examines the relationship between competition and corruption in the presence of enhanced telecommunications infrastructure. We use firm‐level aggregate data provided by the World Bank Enterprise Surveys and collected between 2006 and 2018. Our fixed‐effects results are two‐fold. First, the number of competing firms increases corruption in developing countries. This result is consistent with the previous literature on the competition‐corruption nexus. Second, corruption decreases as the number of competing firms increases in countries with better information and communication technology endowment. Our results are robust to controlling for endogeneity via the two‐step, feasible efficient generalized method of moments and suggest that e‐governance may help to reduce firm‐level corruption in a competitive environment. Given the negative impact of corruption on investment and growth, developing countries should aim at adopting and using more telecommunications infrastructure, along with the traditional approaches of combatting corruption that are based on enforcing rules of law or building stronger institutions, just to name a few, to boost investment and economic growth.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether remittances induce inflation in South Asian countries, namely, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.


Design/methodology/approach
This study uses panel cointegration and Pooled Mean Group techniques covering from 1975 to 2017 to estimate the long-run and the short-run effect of remittances on inflation.


Findings
The estimated results suggest that the inflationary impact of remittances in South Asia depends on the time length. The inflow tends to lower inflation in the short run, whereas it increases in the long run. The findings highlight the regional peculiarity in the impact of remittances on the price level. The results are statistically significant and are confirmed by the Mean Group estimation as well.


Originality/value
Most past studies investigating the nexus between remittances and inflation in the South Asian context examine either these countries individually or include them all in a pool of big cross-sections. This study contributes to the literature by addressing this void. The South Asian countries should not generalize the earlier findings on the link between remittance inflows and inflation, as the short-run effect is different from the long run. Thus, these countries would be better off designing long-run policies that are different from the short run.