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In this article, Maryland's non-legal-tender paper money emissions between 1765 and 1775 are reconstructed to determine quantities outstanding and redemption dates, providing a substantial correction to the literature. Over 80 per cent of this paper money's current market value was expected real asset present value and under 20 per cent was liquidity premium. It was primarily a real barter asset and not a fiat currency. The liquidity premium was positively related to the amount of paper money per capita in circulation. This paper money traded below face value due to time-discounting, rather than depreciation. Past scholars have simply confused depreciation with time-discounting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers in this symposium were initially presented at the Global Political Economy Network conference at Loughborough University in London in April 2019. It is also possible that female-led firms may find it harder to implement innovations learned by exporting: this seems to be particularly a problem facing larger female-led firms. Rather than treating institutions as exogenous and policy as endogenous, these authors investigate the effect upon institutions of a policy choice to adopt inflation targeting. [Extracted from the article]

Prime Minister Julia Gillard released the 'Australia in the Asian Century' White Paper in October 2012, describing it as 'a roadmap showing how Australia can be a winner in the Asian Century'. This article provides a review of Australia's progress on engagement with Asia 2 years after the White Paper. It covers the political and performance status of key Asia- related initiatives following the election of the Abbott government. It finds a high level of continuity and support for individual policies and objectives in the White Paper. However, there have been some significant changes in policy, emphasis and approach and emerging areas of underperformance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In New Zealand, after the Second World War, the share of manufacturing in GDP rose relative to the share of agriculture. Although the government lacked a clearly articulated industrial policy, it was increasingly drawn into the promotion and support of firms in manufacturing. The Murupara pulp and paper scheme was the most spectacular instance of state intervention in the first two postwar decades. Tasman, the company set up to operate the pulp and paper mill, was a joint venture between the state, a New Zealand construction firm called Fletchers, and British multinationals. Tasman soon became New Zealand's leading exporter of manufactured products. The need to secure the market for Tasman's newsprint exports was one of the main reasons for the negotiation of a partial free trade agreement between New Zealand and Australia in 1965. This article explains the early history of Murupara, and discusses its contribution to industrial development and diversification in New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The recent expansion of tree plantations is the most important agrarian change in many parts of Brazil. This article uses the results of extensive field research to analyse the different ways paper and pulp companies assure their land base for eucalyptus plantations. The mechanisms of land access have changed little over the decades, amounting to a process of primitive accumulation which seems to be controlled by the ways the pulp industry influences land markets and prices, the strength of any resistance, and particularly the government support enjoyed by industry. Many paper and steel companies, either directly or indirectly, are increasingly relying on eucalyptus plantations, with negative impacts in many places. The expansion of tree monocultures with rural exclusion is characteristic of the wider phenomenon of land grab which is driven by the dominating financial logic of current capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper surveys the recent literature on the economic impacts of SARS, MERS, and COVID‐19, which Asian countries have experienced in the past two decades. In particular, we provide a detailed summary of how each of the past infectious diseases has impacted on the Asian economies and the extent of that impact. This paper also documents how the governments of Asian countries have responded to the COVID‐19 shocks with their economic policies, and discusses the effectiveness of these economic policies to mitigate the COVID‐19 shocks on their economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the goals of the European Commission's White Paper 'Completing the Internal Market,' a plan for a large scale onslaught on the ommissions in the acquis with respect to Treaty obligations crucial to market integration. Support for the completion of Internal Market; Implementation of a significant part of the program of the White Papers.

The article describes the colonial monetary standard in Massachusetts in the 1600s. It discusses the establishment of a commodity standard in 1640 and the official prices of commodities in Massachusetts during the 1600s. The article details the development of the paper-money standard in 1690. It comments on the topics covered by most recent studies of the monetary system of the American colonies. The establishment of a mint in Boston in 1652 is reported. By 1737 the price of silver had risen. In 1750, the Massachusetts Assembly restored specie payments. The article also considers the objections to the continuation of paper-money issues.

How do we evaluate the effects of unconventional monetary policy measures? To answer this question, we propose a simple structural model that enables us to identify the effects of liquidity facilities during financial turmoil. Specifically, we develop a model that examines the effects of the Bank of Japan's (BoJ's) commercial paper (CP) operations on the CP primary market. On the basis of the structural model, we measure the effects of CP operations as differences between the actual rates in the primary market and the counterfactual rates without the operations, and decompose the effects into three factors. We apply our model to identifying the effects of CP operations from October 2008 to May 2009, including the period after the BoJ introduced the outright purchase of CP and its special funds-supplying operation accepting CPs as collateral in addition to the CP repo operation. Our results suggest that the CP repo operation and the outright purchase of CP had marked effects initially; however, these effects were subdued subsequently. Moreover, the effects of the special funds-supplying operation were substantial and persistent from January to April 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, academic journals of high standing rarely accept a conceptual idea in a paper not instantly accompanied by econometric estimates. The idea would almost certainly get rejected. Empirical validation based on past statistical data has produced an unfortunate backward orientation in economics. While one can learn from the past, this approach fails when the underlying conditions strongly change. The paper suggests various possibilities to overcome the intense publication pressure in so‐called top journals and the overemphasis on instant empirical evidence. Academia is, however, unlikely to adapt. As economics is too backward oriented, other disciplines or cranks may well dominate future economic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Habitats Directive is a key document for the protection of critical natural capital in the European Union. In a manner consistent with the understanding of sustainability in the European Commission, even critical natural capital is subject to trade-offs in favour of economic and social development. This is reflected in Articles 6(3) and 6(4) of the directive. This paper analyses the planning process leading to the approval of the expansion of the port of Rotterdam project – which will significantly affect Natura 2000 – against sustainability criteria. Although it shows that the directive is powerful to promote sustainable planning, the success of the case study was due mainly to elements specific to the particular planning process, namely the use of deliberative public participation mechanisms as well as specific assessment tools. Lessons are drawn and recommendations made to strengthen the Habitats Directive and the national planning processes in relation to projects potentially affecting Natura 2000 sites. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I argue that questions of banknote design are closely related to ideas of the national collective. Using the Danish banknote design competitions from 1947 to 2007 as an exemplary case I show how the Danish central bank, Nationalbanken, continuously sought to balance banknote iconography between different and evolving perceptions of the national community in an attempt to underpin the legitimacy and authority of Danish banknotes. I suggest that concepts from institutional theory can explain this equipoise relationship and I argue that banknote designers need to somehow reconcile conflicting ideas about the national community. As such, this article contributes to a more detailed understanding of the considerations and challenges facing banknote-issuing authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates macrofinancial linkages in the sample of 16 European economies over January 1997–December 2019 from a new twofold perspective. First, we put a particular emphasis on the role of news‐based sentiment measures in these relationships, that is, economic policy uncertainty and global geopolitical risk. Second, we pursue a hybrid econometric approach to capture a presumably nonlinear nature of these linkages by building on different quantiles of the data series and estimating impulse responses from smooth local projections (Barnichon and Brownlees, Review of Economics and Statistics, 101(3), 522–530, 2019). Our results legitimize such approach as the number of statistically significant impulse responses based on this approach is skewed towards upper (75th and 90th) quantiles. We find that global economic policy uncertainty index dampens the growth rates of industrial production in Austria, France, Italy, Luxembourg and Slovakia, which calls for specific measures to mitigate this adverse effect at the national level, for example, by curtailing yellow journalism, populist ideas and disbeliefs. However, there is only minor evidence for the relationship running between economic policy uncertainty and financial stress. Global geopolitical risk appears irrelevant in the country‐ and panel‐level analyses. Meanwhile, the VIX index performs a pervasive role in undermining industrial production and increasing economic policy uncertainty in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the intellectual contributions of Professor W. M. ('Max') Corden to Economics. We focus on three main fields: trade theory and practice, especially his pioneering work on the theory of effective protection; open economy macroeconomics, including exchange rate policy, the international monetary system, Dutch Disease and economic crises; and Australian economic policy. We emphasise Max's motivation for working on these topics, as he sought to understand real‐world economic issues and challenges and to employ economic theory and expositional clarity in search of policy reform. We also draw attention to his personal life history, and how it has shaped his thinking on major economic and political questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a growing body of literature documents a decrease in stock returns with an increase in economic uncertainty, the magnitude of this decrease may differ across countries. This paper examines whether a national culture that shapes its people's views towards uncertainty can serve as an explanation if there are heterogeneous responses of the stock market responses to an increase in economic uncertainty at the country level. Using the economic policy uncertainty (EPU) index to proxy for economic uncertainty and employing an SVAR model, this paper first finds that the magnitude of a stock market's response to an increase in uncertainty varies across countries. This paper then adopts the uncertainty avoidance index (UAI) as a proxy measure of culture relating to people's views towards uncertainty and finds that the observed cross‐country heterogeneity is correlated with the degree of a society's uncertainty avoidance. The stock market index is likely to drop more in response to an increase in uncertainty in countries with higher uncertainty avoidance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to document the effect of economic policy uncertainty on the value of advertising expenditures within the context of an emerging market. The paper shows that the value of advertising expenditures is an increasing function of economic policy uncertainty. The impact of advertising on firm performance is more pronounced during the periods characterized by higher economic policy uncertainty. We argue that, during uncertain times, the financial information loses its relevance. Therefore, during these periods, non‐financial traits, such as brand image, customer equity, relationship capital, and familiarity that characterizes firms with high advertising become more important. The findings hold in various sub‐samples and across various proxies of advertising activity. The findings also hold under alternate estimation procedures (pooled OLS regression, panel data with fixed effects and instrument variable regression). More importantly, this paper also shows that, relative to other agency reducing mechanisms (such as analyst coverage, asset utilization ratio, expense ratio and dividend payments), advertising is more valuable during periods with high economic policy uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has been hailed as a key pillar and catalyst for economic growth, industrialization, and sustainable development in Africa. One of the anticipated benefits is the promise to increase intra‐African trade through the elimination of import duties and other tariffs among countries. However, due to the heterogeneity between the African countries, questions remain as to whether each country will benefit from tariff elimination. This paper aims to evaluate the macroeconomic, fiscal, and welfare consequences of import tax removal in Senegal with the rest of Africa. We link an extended version of the partnership for economic policy (PEP) static computable general equilibrium (CGE) model with a non‐parametric microsimulation approach. We calibrate the model with Senegal's most recent Social Accounting Matrix. The microeconomic model is calibrated using the latest Senegalese household consumption survey. The findings indicate that tariff removal from the rest of Africa has favorable economic, fiscal, and welfare impacts for Senegal. The paper suggests that it will lead to an increase in economic growth and investment. The removal of tariffs is expected to favor urban households over rural ones and leads to a modest decrease in income inequality, accompanied by a 3.36% reduction in the number of poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mexico still has more than 24 million of its inhabitants living in poverty, the bulk of these living in rural areas. Since 1982 Mexico has carried out a model programme of structural adjustment and economic liberalization. From 1988 onwards the previously protective and interventionist farm policy has been liberalized. This paper examines the state of rural poverty and the effect of recent policy changes through detailed studies of four villages in central Mexico carried out between 1996 and 1998. In these cases, households maintained a diverse portfolio of income-earning activities, based on farming, salaried and waged work, temporary migration and small-scale enterprises. Incomes varied little between communities, but were highly unequal within the villages—almost as unequal as income nationally. Most of the inequality arose through the concentration of earnings from larger-scale business and salaried work. On the other hand, any additional income from waged work was likely to reduce inequality. Thanks to uneven distribution of incomes, half the households lived in moderate poverty and one third in extreme poverty. The main determinants of incomes were education, access to capital and migration. The chance of being poor was greater for households that had few sources of income and had no migrants. Cluster analysis revealed three groups differentiated by the pattern of their livelihoods. One third had specialized in salaried work or larger-scale rural business, and were rarely living in poverty; just over one sixth of households specialized in farming, also mainly not poor; and the majority who, while farming small plots, depended heavily on wage labouring for their subsistence and who were usually poor. The main changes affecting the economies of the four villages since 1988 were first and foremost changes in macro and external variables—inflation, stagnation of domestic demand, changes in the world coffee price, and knowledge of international migration. Farm and rural policy change—seen in terms of lower real prices for maize, fewer input subsidies and less state assistance to farming—had been less significant. Most of the changes lowered returns to farming and other rural businesses, pushed down real wages, and raised the cost of living. The retreat of the state and economic liberalization had not led to any countervailing entry of private services or capital. Despite harder times for many households, the response was usually to adapt by tightening belts and looking for extra jobs, rather than abandoning peasant life in the villages. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a widespread perception among academic researchers and aid practitioners alike that empirical cross-country analysis fails to find any significant link between aid flows and growth, and that aid is successful only when associated with good policies in the recipient countries. These positions do not stand up to careful scrutiny of existing studies. In this paper, we offer a re-examination of the literature on the aid–savings, aid–investment, and aid–growth relationships, and a comparative appraisal of more recent research contributions. Using an analytic framework for evaluating the empirical work, a coherent and positive picture of the aid–growth link emerges. There is a robust aid–growth link even in countries hampered by an unfavourable policy environment. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper documents that, over the period 1999–2011, Economic Notes made a further step forward in becoming a professional outlet for high‐quality academic research by moving under the production and distribution by an international publisher (Blackwell, later on, Wiley). The Journal cultivated research on the challenges posed by an environment of financial innovation and security‐market expansion, which posed new economic policy and bank management issues. Accordingly, it refocused on compelling financial, banking and monetary topics, as epitomized by adopting its current subtitle 'Review of Banking, Finance and Monetary Economics'. On balance, the Journal's long‐standing editorial policy of being open to a variety of contributions in the field of economics was retained, but a noticeable shift toward financial themes took shape over the 1999–2011 period. This focus, inspired by the events of the period, helped the Journal to remain relevant to the research interests of many scholars at the time. Notably, the Journal included topics in applied research that had a potential impact on the management of financial institutions, such as risk management and asset pricing, as well as the analysis of financial regulations. Those years proved fertile for both editorial policy and the dissemination of the Journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The context had radically changed when Economic Notes entered its third decade of activity. Specifically, the 1990s seemed to carry along a wave of conformity and of endangered pluralism in economic thought behind the mounting neoliberal economics mainstream. This paper reviews how the task of preserving pluralism in economic thought was resolutely pursued at Monte dei Paschi's publishing venture by placing the Journal on impartial grounds and keeping the door open to diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows how the structure of aid disbursement has changed over the last 30 years to reflect increasing disillusion with the LDC state and with the traditional 'development project' as an instrument of development. Aid is simply a different thing from what it was at the time of the last White Paper in 1975, consisting now mainly of technical assistance (much of it for training), programme assistance, private sector support and emergency aid, with traditional government-to-government project aid well down the list of priorities. How poverty will be reduced using this different mix of instruments is not spelled out in the White Paper. We seek to fill the gap by presenting a map, or menu, of alternative poverty strategies. Which elements are selected from the menu will depend partly on political feasibility and partly on relative cost-effectiveness-- about which we still know little, after 10 years of renewed anti-poverty effort. This opens up a whole new research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years a number of investigators, noatbly Aschauer (1988, 1989a, 1989b), Barro (1981, 1990), Barth and Cordes (1980), Blejer and Khan (1984), Calderon (1988), Cardoso (1993), Munnell (1990), Ram (1986), Ramirez (1991, 1993) and Riedel (1992), have investigated both conceptually and empirically the direct effects of public spending on private expenditures. This paper extends the scope of their analyses by explicitly showing how the inclusion of the government variable in the private consumption and investment functions changes the nature of fiscal policy in an open economy with variable domestic prices. Throughout the analysis, a systematic effort is made to compare the differing effects of fiscal policy in the standard and modified models under both fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes. This paper is organized as follows. First, a theoretical rationale for including the government sector as an argument in the private consumption and investment functions is provided. Next, the paper examines the impact of fiscal policy in the fixed rate case under both imperfect and perfect mobility. It is shown that when public and private spending are compliments, conventional policies for stabilizing the economy may lead to chronic stagflationary pressures. Under these conditions, it is expedient for policymakers to recognize that varying the compostion of public spending-independent of its amount-may lead to a stable assignment. Third, the paper examines the impact of changes in both the level and composition of government spending on relevant targets on the flexible rate case with perfect capital mobility. The paper is brought to a close by investigating the assignment problem in the modified model for the flexible rate case. It is shown that government officials may prescribe potentially destabilizing policies if they mistakenly believe that they are operating in the conventioanl model. The last section summarizes the major findings and offers some concluding observations. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International trade in commercial services is large and is growing as fast as merchandise trade. The liberalization of service sector activity, often characterized hitherto by incumbent monopolies, can produce major welfare gains. Reaching multilateral agreement in liberalizing services runs into problems of definition and quantification. The General Agreement on Trade in Services, though complex and partial in its coverage, has highlighted the importance of multilateral commitment in the pursuit of domestic reform. The agreement on basic telecommunications in particular has had a catalytic effect on domestic policy. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on market‐driven common stock returns and individual‐driven idiosyncratic stock returns as well as explores the role of corporate environmental responsibility (CER) engagement on this impact based on a sample of 175 firms listed on Shanghai and Shenzhen 300 index from 2008 to 2016. The results show that an increase in EPU significantly reduces the market‐driven common stock returns but increases individual‐driven idiosyncratic stock returns. Further, EPU has a lower negative impact on the common stock returns of high‐CER firms comparing with low‐CER firms. EPU has a higher positive impact on idiosyncratic stock returns of high‐CER firms comparing with low‐CER firms. Overall, the findings of this paper extremely relevant for the government, investors and firm's managers and can be utilised for policy and investment decision‐making. Highlights: We examine the impact of EPU on two types of stock returns.GDMF model is used to decompose stock returns.EPU has lower negative impact on the common stock returns of high‐CER firms.EPU has higher positive impact on the idiosyncratic stock returns of high‐CER firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article summarises the academic contributions presented and discussed during the 2016 edition of the Melbourne Institute Macroeconomic Policy Meetings, which focused on the role played by uncertainty for a number of countries' business cycle. Considerations on the interaction between uncertainty and financial frictions, the global dimension of uncertainty, uncertainty shocks in times of unconventional monetary policy and the imperfect knowledge that agents have over policy targets are among the discussions entertained in this article. The main insights coming from those papers are connected with the extant literature and directions for future research are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a discussion of a paper that examined uncertainty in monetary aggregates. The author discusses some the areas where he saw problems in the paper's argument such as the lack of analysis of the information gap between the author's preliminary and final figures. The author suggests that an effective analysis of this data could provide researchers with better information on the significance of the lack of information about developments in monetary aggregates. The author also addresses how the paper examines seasonal adjustment and notes that the paper fails to present a specified policy on this issue.

Examines the key propositions and recommendations of the Australian Green Paper entitled 'Restoring Full Employment,' released by the Committee on Employment Opportunities in December 1993. Expansion in labor market program spendings; Use of wage subsidies to be implemented by public sector job creation programs; Economic growth maximization.

It has recently been widely recognized that monetary policy objectives change through time as our understanding of monetary policy and its impact on the macroeconomy evolves. In recent years there has been an extensive review of the framework for monetary policy at major central banks around the world, given the practical problems that have been encountered with inflation targets. This paper is a contribution to this debate, in that the aim of this paper is to evaluate the consequences of adopting different monetary policy objectives in the U.S. macroeconomic policy setting. To accomplish this, we first decompose U.S. macroeconomic data using a time‐frequency domain technique, namely discrete wavelet analysis. We then model the behavior of the U.S. economy over each wavelet frequency range and use our estimated parameters to construct a tracking model. To illustrate the usefulness of this approach, we simulate jointly optimal fiscal and monetary policy with different short‐term monetary targets: an inflation target, a money growth target, an interest rate target, and a real economic growth target. The results show that the most effective monetary policy targets to achieve economic growth are either inflation targets or economic growth targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the adoption of neoliberal economic models by Latin American countries as they emerged from military dictatorships into democracies. South American countries' exploitation of natural resources and its relation to their economy; Occurrence in the shift in economic policies of most South American governments in parallel with the forces of political change.

This paper investigates the resilience of environmentally friendly companies in an overwhelming economic and social environment that has been generated after the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) pandemic. To this respect, we have investigated the cointegration between the Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 Carbon Efficiency Index (CEI) with COVID‐19 cases, supplemented with covariates such as government response stringency to the pandemic, economic policy uncertainty, oil prices and global markets fluctuations. We have used daily data from 2nd January to 5th October 2020 and have employed a robust estimator within a Fourier approach to accommodate both sharp and smooth breaks. Our results suggest that green companies have been positively affected by the outbreak of COVID‐19. Our paper provides practical implications for companies that wish to furnish themselves with resilience during rough times and stakeholders who wish to invest in safe, long‐lasting returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the socio‐economic dynamics that, in the Colombian case, underlie the relationship between mining and the territory where it takes place. The description includes the key features of public policy regarding mining, under which mineral resource extraction may have produced unintended effects that raise doubts regarding mining's contribution to Colombian economic development. Under a qualitative approach, I carried out a documentary analysis from which I identified several aspects of the economic and mining policy. The analysis confirms several of the explanations for the so‐called resource curse hypothesis, the connection between these aspects, and of them with specific policy decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the connectedness between China's economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and the geopolitical risk (GPR) of the countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) using quantile time‐varying parameter vector autoregression. The empirical results indicate that China's EPU becomes a net risk transmitter at the median quantile, demonstrating that ASEAN countries' GPR is vulnerable to China's economic shocks. Furthermore, extreme events such as COVID‐19 amplify the connection between EPU and GPR, leading to a higher total connectedness index value. Moreover, the pairwise spillover effect analysis reflects that the risk launcher effect of China's EPU is longer and more prominent for Thailand and the Philippines than for Malaysia and Indonesia, which enriches the hypothesis. The contributions are as follows. This paper selects emerging China as the research object and first discusses its economic influence on neighbouring countries. In addition, fully analysing the heterogeneous spillover effects of EPU on the GPR of different countries makes our suggestions diversified and practical. Therefore, improving recognisable ability and institutional quality will promote ASEAN countries to mitigate their vulnerability to China's EPU shocks. Meanwhile, China's government should quickly respond to external uncertainties, prudently adjust economic policies, and avoid large swings of EPU volatility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, it is shown that it matters a lot for empirical research whether policy is taken to be exogenously set or to be endogenous. In the model investment depends on policy that depends on economically important fundamentals and is, thus, endogenous. The paper analyzes what might be concluded when treating policies as randomly assigned, when in fact they are not. When policy is endogenous, the measured effects of policy on growth will generally be biased. Based on the model and OECD data, the signs of the biases for tax variables and for redistribution are derived. Based on these signed biases, the paper discusses some empirical results that seem puzzling from a theoretical viewpoint. The paper argues that regressing growth on policy can still yield important information if policy endogeneity is taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence of a Mediterranean way of creativity and its effects on regional performance has been discussed in European development strategies. However, there is little evidence supporting that idea. This paper addresses this issue by using data on creative industries for a sample of 276 European regions and the local linear least squares estimator, able to deal with parameter heterogeneity. The results suggest that creative industries increase labor productivity. Nevertheless, the paper contributes by providing, for the first time, evidence that the average impact of the creative industries for Mediterranean regions is not substantially different from that for the rest of European regions. However, other territorial patterns emerge, showing the heterogeneity of the impacts of creative industries, which can be even negative in some regions. This evidence has implications for regional, economic and cultural policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Draft Green Paper on Land Reform of South Africa. The paper has received approval for publication for gathering public comments. It notes that the paper seeks to generate ideas and responses policy issues regarding land reform, one concerns government investment in transforming land relations. Key areas of the paper are given which include vision for land reform, principles for land reform as well as challenges and constraints.

The green transition requires a reduction in the consumption of fossil fuels, and new innovations suggest that refined biomass can replace fossils within many different industries. In recent years, policy‐makers have therefore framed the bioeconomy as a stepping‐stone for realizing social, economic and environmental objectives in the green transition. However, the policy coherence literature faces a key challenge for analyzing whether these policy goals are indeed compatible: few methods offer a systematic approach for detecting interdependencies and interactions among three (or more) policy goals. The present paper addresses this methodological challenge by proposing a novel set‐theoretic approach, the Alternating Necessity Test, for identifying whether policies are incoherent, weakly coherent, or strongly coherent. The present paper applies this approach to the Nordic bioeconomy context, findings the Nordic bioeconomy strategy to be weakly coherent. This suggests that the Nordic countries can replace fossil fuels with refined biomass without encountering trade‐offs among social, economic and environmental policy goals, but also without experiencing any synergies. Demonstrating how policy coherence and goal compatibility can be conceptualized in set‐theoretic terms, this paper offers a novel tool for identifying those situations in which policy‐makers should focus not only on overcoming incoherence, but on progressing from weak to strong policy coherence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent financial crisis has highlighted the need to go beyond a purely micro approach to financial regulation and supervision. As a consequence, the number of policy speeches, research papers and conferences that discuss a macro perspective on financial regulation has grown considerably. The policy debate is focusing in particular on macroprudential tools and their usage, their relationship with monetary policy, their implementation and their effectiveness. Macroprudential policy has recently also attracted considerable attention among researchers. This paper provides an overview of research on this topic. We also identify important future research questions that emerge from both the literature and the current policy debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent calls by world leaders recommend that policy responses to the COVID crisis incorporate "green stimulus" or "green recovery" as a vital element. In a 2014 article in this journal, we argued that green stimulus would be an inefficient way to either boost demand and restore full employment in the context of the global financial crisis or pursue long‐run environmental goals. In this paper, we argue that the attempt to marry green and COVID recovery programs may prove an even less fitting response to the near‐term crisis, while still threatening to put environmental policy on paths that prove inefficient in the long run. We argue that green stimulus/recovery, while yielding more long‐term climate benefits, would likely generate a slower and smaller recovery in jobs and activity than a traditional macroeconomic stimulus. This creates a trade‐off for policymakers. The global financial crisis provides our primary real‐world experience of green stimulus/recovery policies. A small but growing number of ex post empirical studies suggest that these measures' near‐term growth impact was less than expected or obtained at a relatively high cost. There is also a danger that orienting green programs toward near‐term shocks like the global financial crisis and COVID could compromise public understanding of, political support for, and the quality of environmental and climate policies in the long run. This article is categorized under:Climate Economics > Economics of Mitigation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic complexity measures the productive knowledge embedded in an economy by analysing the export structure of countries. Although the recent literature suggests that economic complexity might arise as a useful tool to lower output volatility by both diversifying export bundles and increasing the sophistication of exports, the empirical evidence on this issue is rather scarce. We contribute to the existing literature by investigating the effect of economic complexity on output volatility for a large set of developing countries. To this end, we apply a panel vector auto regression (PVAR) methodology, which allows us to capture the dynamic interrelationships between variables. The findings of the paper robust to the alternative specifications reveal that economic complexity affects output volatility negatively. Hence, economic policies aimed at diversifying productive capabilities and export bundles should be one of the major priorities in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a call for papers on the topic about training and development in Africa.

The events that occurred after the worldwide diffusion of COVID‐19 provide a real‐life example of how uncertainty can severely affect the global economy. This paper reviews literature on the negative impacts of the economic policy uncertainty index (EPU) on individuals, businesses, governments, and economies at the local and international levels. This reveals that a high EPU is associated with adverse effects on households, corporations, and governments, which tend to delay many financial decisions under high uncertainty, which leads to lower consumption, fewer issuances of debt, fewer investments, and higher unemployment. The effects of political and regulatory uncertainty also extend to the commodity markets, such as the adverse effects on both oil and gasoline markets, and can potentially create adverse impacts on the crypto‐currency market and its potential growth. We demonstrate that governmental uncertainty also affects financial, housing, and equity markets; debt issuances; and the entire economy. This underscores the importance of considering EPU as a risk factor. The association with several components of the global economy reflects not only the EPU index's critical influence, but also the importance of risk management. Our results lead us to consider the gravity of economic policy uncertainty and call for innovation across different sectors to mitigate its adverse effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the effectiveness of unconventional monetary policies (UMP). It considers whether these policies have been successful and where their effects remain uncertain. We survey both the domestic financial market and macro‐economic effects of UMP in the economies where these policies were introduced and their international spillover effects. The paper considers the impact of a wide range of UMP rather than the effects of specific policy instruments. We also provide a retrospective on the important case of Japan beginning in the late1990s and ask whether the Eurozone's experience with UMP is substantively different given its structure of policymaking. Finally, we ask: if the 'old normal' is not in our future, should the 'new normal' in monetary policy routinely include what we now refer to as UMP? We conclude that UMP can prevent economic collapse but are not designed to promote stronger long‐term economic growth. Apart from new communication strategies, the use of UMP under normal circumstances does not appear to be a sound monetary policy strategy. Failure to learn this lesson might also enable future policy makers to ask or expect too much from their central banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on the effectiveness of macroprudential policy tools is still in its infancy and has so far provided only limited guidance for policy decisions. In recent years, however, increasing efforts have been made to fill this gap. Progress has been made in embedding macroprudential policy in theoretical models. There is increasing empirical work on the effect of some macroprudential tools on a range of target variables, such as quantities and prices of credit, asset prices, and on the amplitude of the financial cycle and financial stability. In this paper we provide a critical review of recent progress in theoretical and empirical research on the effectiveness of macroprudential instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Having reviewed 1259 papers on cluster theory, we find that current cluster studies primarily discussed cluster phenomena from either a microlevel or mesolevel. We argue that studying relations among clusters would increase our understanding of clusters, and such a research topic is worth becoming a new research orientation for cluster theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an application of efficient markets-rational expectations theory to analyze empirically the relationship of money supply growth and short-term interest rates, a hotly debated issue in the literature. This approach has the advantage over earlier research on this subject in that it imposes a theoretical structure that allows easier interpretation of the empirical results as well as more powerful statistical tests. The empirical results uniformly do not support the proposition that increases in money growth are correlated with declines in short rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A stochastic framework for coordination of macroeconomic policies is introduced in this paper. It is suggested that: (i) measures of policy accountability should allow for the climate of uncertainty that surrounds policy decisions, and (ii) most models of aggregate economic activity impose arbitrary specifications of uncertainty that do not appear to be empirically justifiable. Ambiguities in interpreting the Humphrey-Hawkins reports of policy authorities are sketched in section II; a proposal for maximizing the ex ante prospects of policy objectives is illustrated in section III; finally, nonstationary allocations of uncertainty are discussed in sections IV and V. This paper provides a brief survey of ongoing work by members of the Federal Reserve Board staff on the role of uncertainty in policy forecasts. It suggests that policy discussion could be improved by more explicit consideration of the allocation of uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their well known and controversial paper, Andersen and Jordan [2] presented evidence that, when responses of GNP to monetary and fiscal actions are analyzed, only money matters. The equation from which these results were derived has since been subjected to much criticism. This criticism has centered mostly on the statistical specification of the St. Louis equation (e.g., [14]) and on the "reversecausation" argument (e.g., [12]). In perhaps its most popularized form, the St. Louis equation measures monetary actions by employing changes in the narrowly defined money stock (DeltaM[sub 1]). Fiscal actions are measured by changes in high employment federal expenditures (DeltaE). In addition, statistical constraints are imposed upon the equation for estimation purposes. These constraints are: 1) each independent variable has the same lag length, 2) the distributed lag weights are estimated by a fourth degree polynomial by the Almon technique with both endpoints constrained to zero. Schmidt and Waud [14] show that if the statistical constraints are removed, estimation of the St. Louis equation indicates that money matters, but so do fiscal actions. Lombra and Torto [12] demonstrate that, if the variable employed to measure monetary actions is adjusted to account for "reverse-causation," the conclusion derived from the St. Louis equation is that money still matters, but again, so do fiscal actions. In spite of these criticisms, the St. Louis equation continues to be used in its original form (e.g., [4]). The purpose of this paper is to show that, even if 1) the Andersen-Jordan constraints are imposed upon the equation, and 2) the monetary variable is not adjusted for reverse-causation, estimation of the St. Louis equation with a weighted aggregate money stock variable leads to conclusions different from those discovered by Andersen and Jordan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]