Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
E-Commerce During COVID in Spain: One “Click” Does Not Fit All
The share of e-commerce in total credit-card spending boomed during Covid in Spain. In particular, women, youth, and urban consumers used e-commerce proportionally more during the pandemic, especially for services. Using a unique proprietary dataset on credit card transactions, we test conjectures about consumers’ behavior (based on fear, hoarding, or learning) during Covid. Overall, e-commerce share reverted to its pre-Covid trend as the pandemic waned. However, some consumers with lower pre-Covid e-commerce usage tend to permanently use more e-commerce, supporting the conjecture of “learning by locking” for these individuals.
Brazil
Brazil is at crossroads, emerging slowly from a historic recession that was preceded by a huge economic boom. Reasons for the historic bust following a boom are manifold. Policy mistakes were an important contributory factor, and included the pursuit of countercyclical policies, introduced to deal with the effects of the global financial crisis, beyond the point where they were helpful. More fundamentally, it reflects longstanding structural weaknesses plaguing the economy, that also help explain Brazil’s uninspiring growth performance over the past four decades.
Perspectives on Regional Unemployment in Europe
The third stage of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) was implemented in January 1999 against the specter of persistently high unemployment in many of the participating countries. While the high European unemployment has received considerable attention, this new IMF staff study analyzes an equally important issue: the extent of regional unemployment disparities in certain countries. The paper focuses on large and persistent differences in regional unemployment rates within several European countries. The paper includes detailed case studies of two euro area countries where regional disparities in unemployment are striking- Italy and Spain. The studies emphasize that wages are unresponsive to local labor market conditions.
Jobs and Growth
Five years after the onset of the global financial crisis, Europe’s economy is still fragile. Notwithstanding recent positive signs amid calmer financial markets, medium-term growth is likely to remain frail owing to continuing weaknesses and vulnerabilities at the country level and in the fabric of European institutions and banks, especially in the euro area. In addition, unemployment in many countries has reached very high levels. The IMF research collected in this volume provides a number of guideposts that offer an opportunity for stronger and better-balanced growth and employment in Europe after what has been a long and dismal period of crisis.
Populism and Civil Society
Populists claim to be the only legitimate representative of the people. Does it mean that there is no space for civil society? The issue is important because since Tocqueville (1835), associations and civil society have been recognized as a key factor in a healthy liberal democracy. We ask two questions: 1) do individuals who are members of civil associations vote less for populist parties? 2)does membership in associations decrease when populist parties are in power? We answer thesequestions looking at the experiences of Europe, which has a rich civil society tradition, as well as of Latin America, which already has a long history of populists in power. The main findings are that individuals belonging to associations are less likely by 2.4 to 4.2 percent to vote for populist parties, which is large considering that the average vote share for populist parties is from 10 to 15 percent. The effect is strong particularly after the global financial crisis, with the important caveat that membership in trade unions has unclear effects.
Preferences for Reforms: Endowments Vs. Beliefs
Are preferences for reforms driven by individuals’ own endowments or beliefs? To address this question, we conducted a cross-country survey on people’s opinions on employment protection legislation—an area where reform has proven to be difficult and personal interests are at stake. We find that individuals’ beliefs matter more than their own endowments and personal pay-offs. A randomized information treatment confirms that beliefs explain views about reform, but beliefs can change with new information. Our results are robust to several robustness tests, including to alternative estimation techniques and samples.
Structural Reforms and Economic Performance in Advanced and Developing Countries
This volume examines the impact on economic performance of structural policies-policies that increase the role of market forces and competition in the economy, while maintaining appropriate regulatory frameworks. The results reflect a new dataset covering reforms of domestic product markets, international trade, the domestic financial sector, and the external capital account, in 91 developed and developing countries. Among the key results of this study, the authors find that real and financial reforms (and, in particular, domestic financial liberalization, trade liberalization, and agricultural liberalization) boost income growth. However, growth effects differ significantly across alternati...
How Do the Skilled and the Unskilled Respond to Regional Shocks? the Case of Spain
Are there any differences in how workers of different skill levels respond to regional shocks? This paper addresses that question using the methodology of Blanchard and Katz (1992) and a unique data set on working-age population, labor force, and employment for five educational groups (ranging from the illiterate to the college-educated) over 1964-92 for the 50 Spanish provinces. The paper finds that the high-skilled migrate very promptly in response to a decline in regional labor demand, while the low-skilled drop out of the labor force or stay unemployed.
Monetary Transmission in Low Income Countries
This paper reviews monetary transmission mechanisms in low-income countries (LICs) to identify aspects of the channels that may operate differently in LICs relative to advanced and emerging economies. Given the weak institutional frameworks, reduced role of securities markets, imperfect competition in the banking sector and the resulting high cost of bank lending to private firms, the traditional channels (interest rate, bank lending, and asset price) are impaired in LICs. The exchange rate channel is also undermined by central bank intervention in the foreign exchange market. These conclusions are supported by review of the institutional frameworks, statistical analysis, and previous literature.
Exchange Rates and Wages in an Integrated World
We analyze how the pass-through from exchange rate to domestic wages depends on the degree of integration between domestic and foreign labor markets. Using data from 66 countries over the period 1981–2005, we find that the elasticity of domestic wages to real exchange rate is 0.1 after a year for countries with high barriers to external labor mobility, but about 0.4 in countries with low barriers to mobility. The results are robust to the inclusion of various controls, different measures of exchange rates, and concepts of labor market integration. These findings call for including labor mobility in macro models of external adjustment.
