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Academic research has been completed on various historical economic crises, mostly in isolation, with some researchers attempting to make a comparison to prior crises. This paper focuses on identifying crisis indicators based on historical analysis of pre-crisis conditions, both in the country with the highest disparity based on the Gini coefficient (South Africa) and the country with the highest concentration of wealth (the United States). A systematic literature review was performed, and a total of 37 unique identifiers were found from 16 papers selected for inclusion. A systematic literature review is an appraisal and synthesis of primary research papers using a rigorous and clearly documented methodology in both the search strategy and the selection of studies. While common in medical research, the systematic review, a rigorous and thorough approach, is rarely used in finance and economics, with this paper representing one of few such reviews that have been published. The indicators that were found to be common amongst the crises studies were Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Interest Rates, Foreign Currency Exchange Rates, Assets Prices, Current Account Balance, and National debt. These six indicators were found in at least 25% of the papers included, with GDP cited in 50% of papers reviewed. This body of work compiles a list of indicators that can be used to improve the current Early Warning Indicators used by economists to predict financial crises, as it compiles commonalities from 80 years of crises, rather than examining a single crisis in isolation. Finally, additional literature was found to support the application of crisis indicators from developed and developing nations to predict the next crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investments in the architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) sector can be used by governments to introduce desired changes in the economy, which gives an indication of the future trends of the economy. In addition, the stock market—as reflected by the Standard and Poor 500 (S&P 500)—creates a sense of confidence about the direction of the US economy. Many studies have shown that stock prices in multiple international industries could be considered as leading economic indicators. Nevertheless, this was not researched within the AEC sector in the United States. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by investigating whether the stock prices of AEC companies in the United States could be used to inform strategic, proactive decision making. First, time series data were collected for the stock prices of 16 large AEC companies as well as for the S&P 500 index. Second, multivariate time series analysis was conducted to examine the type of relationship between the response variable—S&P 500—and all other input variables. Two econometrics models were developed: a linear, statistical vector autoregression model and a computational, deep learning model based on long–short-term memory (LSTM) networks. Third, the two developed econometrics models were tested on unseen data. Fourth, the best econometrics model was verified using another leading economic indicator which is the Purchasing Managers' Index. The results reflected that the computational LSTM model outperformed the linear statistical model. The findings showed that the stock prices of AEC companies could be considered as an additional and complementing leading economic indicator to the American Institute of Architects' Architecture Billings Index to provide a broader perspective of the business ecosystem. This paper adds to the body of knowledge by providing an econometrics model for helping in optimal investment opportunities, taking informed strategic management and business judgments, and predicting changes in the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the nineteenth century, federal Indian policy oscillated between two extreme positions: assimilation versus isolation. While scholars have often been interested in the impact of past federal policy on current levels of economic development among American Indian tribes, none have explicitly examined the influence of federal assimilation policy on long-run economic development. In this paper, I take advantage of tribal-level variation in the application of federal policies to estimate the effect of assimilation on long-run economic performance. To quantify the impact of such policies, I introduce a novel measure of cultural assimilation: the prevalence of traditional indigenous names relative to common American first names. To calculate the distribution of name types, I have gathered the names and locations for all American Indians enumerated in the 1900 United States census. After classifying each name, I calculated the reservation-specific share of non-indigenous names. I estimate the relationship between cultural assimilation in 1900 and per capita income from 1970 through 2020. I find that historical levels of assimilation are consistently associated with higher levels of per capita income in all census years. The results are robust to the inclusion of a variety of cultural and institutional controls and regional fixed effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) has been a crucial trade and development initiative, offering preferential access to qualified Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries to the United States market since its enactment in 2000. This paper presents a comprehensive review of scholarly articles and policy reports that analyze the impact of AGOA on the economic performance of SSA countries. Employing various econometric methods and data analysis techniques, researchers have investigated the effects of AGOA on trade flows, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, employment, economic growth, and poverty levels. The findings reveal that AGOA has positively affected the region's trade, particularly in apparel, textiles, and agriculture. However, its influence on promoting export diversification and attracting FDI is nuanced, with substantial heterogeneity among the beneficiary countries and industries within each country. While some SSA countries have experienced substantial export growth and FDI inflows, others have not fully leveraged the benefits of AGOA due to absorptive capacity constraints and governance challenges. AGOA's effectiveness in promoting broad-based employment, GDP growth, and poverty reduction remains an active area of inquiry, necessitating further research to understand the policy's sustained impact and inform future trade policy designs for SSA countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus pandemic led to a severe economic shock in the United States. This paper uses a unique survey data collected early on in the pandemic to measure economic deprivation among individuals. The Federal Reserve Board fielded a Survey of Household Economics and Decision-making (SHED) in April 2020. This survey is used to compile data on four indicators of economic deprivation, namely: i) Overall financial condition, ii) Loss of employment, iii) Reduction in income and iv) Inability to pay bills in full. Data on these indicators is compiled for each individual and is used in a novel way to construct a set of multidimensional deprivation indices. These indices measure the overlap of deprivations experienced by an individual. Results show that almost 25 percent of the respondents faced hardships in at least two of the four indicators. More than 13 percent of adults reported their inability to pay monthly bills and struggled to make ends meet financially. One in four respondents had lower income compared to income from previous month. The economic shock affected Hispanics in a more profound way. More than 37 percent Hispanics reported hardship in two or more indicators and 8 percent reported hardship in all four indicators. Higher proportion of young adults and those without a college degree suffered multiple hardships. The paper highlights the plight of Americans during the early months of the economic crisis set in motion amid the coronavirus pandemic and sheds light on how economic disparities deepened along racial/ethnic lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper hypothesizes that the structure of macroeconomic governance with its financial and non-financial dynamics is, among other things, a key determinant of economic performance, taking the case of the United States from 1952Q1 to 2018Q4. The paper tests its hypothesis by developing three modes of macroeconomic governance based on complementarities and a time-series model to be used for the empirical analysis of these modes and by using a linear and nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag cointegration model. In so doing, the paper compares five periods between 1952Q1 and 2018Q4 using the same time-series model to illustrate how the changing structure of macroeconomic governance affects long-term economic performance over time. The paper reaches three conclusions. First, higher economic performance in 1952Q1–1968Q3 originates in, among other things, a systemic mode of macroeconomic governance. Second, lower economic performance in the three sub-periods between 1968Q4 and 2008Q2 is due to a fragmented mode of macroeconomic governance. Third, the sharp decline in economic performance in 2008Q3–2018Q4 originates in the outbreak and deepening of a structural trap due to long-run structural fragmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the effect on income of Phase II of the wage-price control program of the United States. Several discussants commented on the issue of income shares under the Phase II program. R. A. Gordon, William Branson, and others noted that, with productivity growing exceptionally fast because of the rapid cyclical expansion expected in the economy, profit margins would widen so much that some cost absorption by business would still permit the profit share to expand. Arthur Okun noted that Perry's neutrality was defined as the state of income shares that would prevail in the absence of the program and that the cyclical expansion of profit margins that we are experiencing would have occurred anyhow. Gardner Ackley argued that we did not know enough about what has happened to price-cost relations in recent years to take any strong position about what income shares should be. Therefore Perry's neutrality concept should not override the need to slow inflation, and some cost absorption was appropriate as a way to help accomplish this. James Duesenberry and Michael Posner felt that the most serious practical problem was not the question of existing income shares but rather delivering on the promise to slow prices noticeably. The trade unions are reluctant to accept wage controls because they have little faith that the inflation will slow down. Differing views were expressed on the use of profit margin ceilings in Phase II. Alan Greenspan pointed out that the application of the rules on the basis of the margins of individual firms would hold down overall prices and margins more than people thought.

This paper constructs quarterly financial conditions indexes (FCIs) for eight Asian economies--namely, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand--using a common factor methodology based on Hatzius et al. (2010). A wide array of financial data is included in the indexes based on identified monetary transmission channels in the literature. Bank-related indicators, various measures of financial stress and risk, and credit surveys, where available, are incorporated to fully reflect the state of the financing environment. The FCIs for Asia successfully capture important episodes in each economy's financial history, but only the indexes of financially advanced economies Japan and Singapore have sufficient forecasting power to predict output growth and inflation. High co-movement of Asian FCIs suggests highly similar monetary policies in the region that are strongly linked with monetary policy in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the stochastic properties of consumer sentiment to understand how they affected the luxury sector in the United States before and after COVID-19. The results were derived using fractional integration methodologies and suggest that, before the pandemic episode, both variables were expected to be mean reverting and the shocks were transitory, having similar behavior. However, after the appearance of COVID-19, results suggest that consumer sentiment recovered before the luxury sector. Results from the use of cointegration methodologies show that the effects of COVID-19 disappeared in the short-run. Finally, the sentiment of consumers acts as a leading indicator of the behavior of the luxury sector according to wavelet analysis. Thus, an increase in consumer sentiment implies an increase of 3.6% in the luxury sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After years of relative neglect, renewed attention has been paid to smaller, "ordinary" cities. The distinctiveness of these cities is often found in their economic development paths, which, can encompass their roles in international trade. Many locations have included exports as part of their economic growth strategies, yet the effectiveness of export strategies varies by location. This is in addition to varying components of exports for these cities, including the destination geographies and reliance on particular markets. In order to contribute to the growing literature on ordinary cities, this paper examines the export performance of smaller metropolitan areas across the southern United States. In recent decades, the South has been a region marked by robust economic performance, both overall and in terms of exporting; the region's smaller cities are an especially notable case in terms of export performance and structure. While goods-related exports from the smaller cities across this region have tended to trend upward, export performance has been spatially uneven, with export markets and key export industries varying widely. The article concludes with an exploration and discussion of possible export trajectories for these urban areas in the post-pandemic and potentially, post-globalization, environments, particularly in terms of development-related outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there have been many empirical studies about the financial cycle since the financial crisis of 2008, few have analysed the structural changes in the Chinese financial cycle over time. The Chinese financial development process is short, and it is difficult to obtain accurate results on the measurement of the financial cycle. Based on wavelet analysis, this paper analyzes the time-varying characteristics of the Chinese financial cycle and the relationship between the financial and business cycles. In addition, we measure the impact from the United States. This paper draws three conclusions. Firstly, in terms of the characteristics of cycles, the existence of Chinese business cycle and financial cycle is proved, while the credit cycle, leverage cycle, stock market cycle and property cycle are quite different. Specifically, China has a 5.8-year credit cycle, an 8-year stock market cycle, 3.4-year and 12-year business cycles and a 15-year leverage cycle. Secondly, the financial cycles can serve as leading indicators of the business cycle, though the relationships between them are change overtime. Finally, the United States has a significant impact on the Chinese financial cycle with a 'decoupling-recoupling' effect, which is mainly reflected in the leverage cycle and the stock market cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, income and expenditure-side estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) (GDP I and GDP E ) measure "true" GDP with error and are available at a quarterly frequency. Methods exist for using these proxies to produce reconciled quarterly estimates of true GDP. In this paper, we extend these methods to provide reconciled historical true GDP estimates at a monthly frequency. We do this using a Bayesian mixed frequency vector autoregression (MF-VAR) involving GDP E , GDP I , unobserved true GDP, and monthly indicators of short-term economic activity. Our MF-VAR imposes restrictions that reflect a measurement-error perspective (i.e., the two GDP proxies are assumed to equal true GDP plus measurement error). Without further restrictions, our model is unidentified. We consider a range of restrictions that allow for point and set identification of true GDP and show that they lead to informative monthly GDP estimates. We illustrate how these new monthly data contribute to our historical understanding of business cycles and we provide a real-time application nowcasting monthly GDP over the pandemic recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the twentieth century, United States has been the most desirable destination for international migrants, primarily due to its economic performance and also to American values – work ethics and tolerance of ethnic diversity. This paper aims to test if selected economic indicators might influence international migration. To this end a time series analysis was performed with time series regression model, where lagged values of various macroeconomic indicators were tested for a significant impact on migration flows. This paper also cast a light on U.S. labour migration's legislation and history, as well as current migrant stock characteristics. It gives specific attention to Polish migrant population, as Polish Americans constitute the largest Polish diaspora worldwide. The results of the analysis show that U.S. immigration volumes are sensitive to American unemployment rate and American GDP growth (pull factors). However, analysing Polish migration volumes to the U.S. a significant correlation with selected American indicators was not revealed. On the contrary, Polish migration flows to the U.S. were correlated with Polish economic growth and the Polish unemployment rate fluctuations (push factors). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The greater availability of daily data in the U.S. has led to a number of studies of the seasonality of daily stock (index) returns. While the studies recognized the potential impacts of nontrading and price-adjustment delays in general, no formal analyses of such impacts were presented; in this paper analytic results are presented for the articulation between these phenomena. The implications of the analysis are discussed and shown to be consistent with a sample of U.K. index data. A modified form of the negative weekend effect is found to be present in the U.K. data analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the effects of relative price variability on output and the stock market and gauge the extent to which inflation proxies for relative price variability in stock return-inflation regressions. The evidence shows that the negative stock return-inflation relations proxy for the adverse effects of relative price variability on economic activity, particularly during the seventies, when the U.S. experienced oil supply shocks. Hence, it appears that inflation spuriously affects the stock market in two ways: the aggregate output link of Fama (1981) and the supply shocks reflected in relative price variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2016 Allan D. Grody and Peter J. Hughes proposed a method and system termed 'Risk Accounting', an integrated financial and risk accounting framework. Risk Accounting incorporates a novel operational risk exposure quantification technique based on the Risk Unit (RU), a new common additive metric designed to express all forms of operational risk in banks. In this paper, we report on initial tests of the inherent predictiveness of the RU. The test focused on the period leading up to the global financial crisis of 2007-8 and involved the restatement into RUs of publicly available accounting data in the United States relative to a subset of large US banks. We contend that the RU's inherent predictiveness could be concluded if it is demonstrated that an accelerated increase in trended operational risk RUs and subsequent material unexpected losses are positively correlated. We further describe how a monetary value can be stochastically derived and assigned to the RU over time. The inclusion of valued RUs in accounting systems will potentially enable the systematic adjustment of financial performance and condition relative to accepted nonfinancial risks to complement the accounting treatment already applied to financial (credit and market) risks. The resulting harmonisation of the accounting treatment applied to both financial and nonfinancial risks based on stochastic modelling will enable risk-adjusted economic profit to be adopted as the primary business performance metric and economic capital as the primary method of determining both operating and regulatory capital requirements. The real-time or near-real-time production of portfolio views of operational risk exposures based on the RU adds analytical rigour to their management and causes risk mitigation to become both a risk reduction and a profit optimisation initiative. The more effective management, oversight and governance of exposures to operational risks is the anticipated outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the macroeconomic dynamics of the 2007-09 recession in the United States and the subsequent slow recovery. Using a dynamic factor model with 200 variables, we reach three main conclusions. First, although many of the events of the 2007-09 collapse were unprecedented, their net effect was to produce macro shocks that were larger versions of shocks previously experienced, to which the economy responded in a historically predictable way. Second, the shocks that produced the recession were primarily associated with financial disruptions and heightened uncertainty, although oil shocks played a role in the initial slowdown, and subsequent drag was added by effectively tight conventional monetary policy arising from the zero lower bound. Third, although the slow nature of the recovery is partly due to the shocks of this recession, most of the slow recovery in employment, and nearly all of the slow recovery in output, is due to a secular slowdown in trend labor force growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on issues relating to the U.S. stock and bond markets, and its implications for demography. A key issue is the ability of the model to explain both interest rates and stock prices. If baby-boomers are saving for retirement, their behavior should push up the prices of both stocks and long-term bonds, lowering expected returns on both. Unlike stocks, bonds come with a little yield that tells exactly what the expected return on the bond is. As of March 2004, due to the development of the market in Treasury inflation-protected securities, yield comes in both nominal and real varieties. As a result, real bond yields are considered an accurate way to measure expected returns. In this paper, although short-term interest rates are out of phase with the demographic variables and the level of the stock market, real long-term interest rates and the stock market move in perfect coordination. Long-term bond prices and stock prices therefore move together as well. Therefore, this paper implies that when stock prices are very high, as in the late 1990s, bond prices should also be high, and when stock prices are very low, as in the mid-1970s, bond prices should be low. However, this is not what actually occurred. Since bond prices and stock prices seem to be telling different scenarios, it is useful to look for other evidence on expected returns over the past decade.

Past financial crises have illustrated the importance of recognising the combinations of factors that can cause financial distress in the banking industry. Accordingly, this study uses fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify the combinations of factors that lead to bank failure. The data consist of 30 annual financial ratio series for 156 U.S. banks over a 15-year period (2001–2015). Identifying combinations of conditions that can produce bank failure is crucial to help regulators and bank managers. The fsQCA presented in this paper sheds light on the relationships between combinations of conditions and bank failure, providing a solution comprising two sufficient and disjunctive sets of conditions that lead to bank failure. This solution includes financial indicators of performance, asset quality, efficiency and capitalisation. The robustness of the two sets of conditions is assessed using several tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Federal Reserve sets targets for interest rates which it enforces through direct market intervention. These targets are changed periodically. In this paper, we develop a term structure model in which the short rate is subject to a control which keeps it close to a target which changes from time to time. The probability of target changes is not constant in the model, but changes as a function of observables. The model performs well at explaining the shifts in the yield curve that accompany target changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electrical power infrastructure of the modern world is advanced, efficient, and robust, yet power outages still occur. In addition to affecting millions of people around the world, these outage events cost billions of dollars to the global economy. In this paper, the revenue loss borne by electricity-supplying companies in the United States due to power outage events is estimated and predicted. Various factors responsible for power outages are considered in order to present an exploratory data analysis at the U.S. level, followed by the top ten affected states, which bear over 85% of the total revenue loss. The loss is computed using historic observational data of electricity usage patterns and the tariff offered by the energy suppliers. The study is supplemented with reliable and publicly available records, including electricity usage patterns, the consumer category distribution, climatological annotations, population density, socio-economic indicators and land area. Machine learning techniques are used to predict the revenue loss for future outage events, as well as to characterize the key parameters for efficient prediction and their partial dependence. The results show that the revenue loss is a function of several parameters, including residential sales, percentage of industrial customer, time-period of the year, and economic indicators. This study may help energy suppliers make risk-informed decisions, while developing revenue generation strategies as well as identifying safer investment avenues for long-term returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a special issue of the Journal of Economic and Social Measurement on U.S. Regional Economic Indicator Models. It describes recent research on such models, both specifically and in the context of general research on economic indicators, and provides some references. The six papers of this special issue represent a selection from the papers presented at a conference held in Braga, Portugal at the Universidad do Minho 7-10 June 1998, a purpose of which was to bring together scholars from Europe, North America, and South America to consider issues in the construction of indicator models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the financial turmoil of the US subprime loan crisis of mid-Noughties and to compare it with the Japanese asset bubble of late 1980s. While examining the two crises, it compares the monetary policies of both countries, focusing on the excess liquidity and expansion of bank loans that were seen. This paper develops several bubble indicators, including the ratio of real estate loans to total loans, the loan-to-GDP ratio, and housing affordability. In order to develop these indicators, it is necessary to compare banking behavior in both Japan and the United States, as banks in both countries were making loans beyond the point of profit maximization. Property prices and monetary policy in both countries influenced banking behavior significantly. The bubble indicators developed in this paper can be used as early warning indicators for future bubbles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By modeling macro-economical indicators using digital traces of human activities on mobile or social networks, we can provide important insights to processes previously assessed via paper-based surveys or polls only. We collected aggregated workday activity timelines of US counties from the normalized number of messages sent in each hour on the online social network Twitter. In this paper, we show how county employment and unemployment statistics are encoded in the daily rhythm of people by decomposing the activity timelines into a linear combination of two dominant patterns. The mixing ratio of these patterns defines a measure for each county, that correlates significantly with employment ( $0.46\pm0.02$ ) and unemployment rates ( $-0.34\pm0.02$ ). Thus, the two dominant activity patterns can be linked to rhythms signaling presence or lack of regular working hours of individuals. The analysis could provide policy makers a better insight into the processes governing employment, where problems could not only be identified based on the number of officially registered unemployed, but also on the basis of the digital footprints people leave on different platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an intertemporal equilibrium model, this paper analyzes how lower source-based taxes on capital income impact trade performance and international competitiveness. It shows that, depending on import shares and intertemporal and intratemporal substitution elasticities, capital accumulation may induce changes in real interest rates and the terms of trade that stimulate domestic saving -- even if financial capital is perfectly mobile internationally. Import shares appear important determinants of exchange rate effects. Numerical simulations illustrate these results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether a convergent behavior exists in the price indexes of the seven Asian Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) markets. Design/methodology/approach – The authors investigate the convergent behavior in Asian REIT indexes against Japan and the USA by conducting the unit-root testing procedure. Findings – Results show that the Asian REIT markets are more connected with the US REIT market than with that of Japan. The convergent behavior was more obvious since 2007. Practical implications – The underlying assets of real estate securities in different countries are usually not directly related; hence, there should be segmentation to a certain extent between international REIT markets as well. If the performances of Asian REIT markets are converged, this linkage can be viewed as a contagion effect. Originality/value – The results of this paper indicate that the risk of REITs might be underestimated and the benefit that investors may acquire from adding REITs to their portfolios might be overestimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abba Lerner's paper in the Review of Economic Studies (1934) is the source of what is now referred to as the Lerner Index of monopoly power. The Lerner Index has become the standard measure of monopoly power and one of the most widely cited indexes in the discipline of economics. This paper traces the origins of the index, sets out its strengths and weaknesses, and examines its role in antitrust enforcement. The Index is a better indicator of a firm's price-setting discretion than its ability to sustain monopoly prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have investigated the effect of unanticipated weekly changes in the money stock (M1) on nominal interest rates (see, for example, Grossman, Urich and Wachtel, Urich, Figlewski and Urich, Roley, and Cornell). In these studies, the unanticipated change in M1 is measured as the difference between the announced change and the expected change derived from the Money Market Services, Inc. weekly survey of government securities dealers. Unlike other survey measures of expectations (the most notable example of which is the Livingston survey data), these expectations are formed by active market participants. Consequently, the survey's forecast, made public before the Fed's announcement of the actual change in the money stock, is commonly thought to represent the “market's” expectation. The concern in this paper is not with the impact of unanticipated money changes on nominal interest rates. The purpose is to compare the relative forecasting abilities of the survey predictions and those obtained from a time-series model. This question is of interest, because the weekly money series used in previous research includes certain "abnormal" weeks in which exogenous factors may significantly alter the series' stochastic properties (see, for example, Cornell, Urich and Wachtel). Thus, the influence of these abnormal weeks—weeks that include benchmark revisions, changes in seasonal factors, and weeks in which there is a “social security effect”—is examined by comparing forecasting results for two samples; one includes these weeks and the other deletes them. Following Pearce, this approach allows us to test the hypothesis that the survey responses are at least weak-form rational and to see how sensitive this test is to the sample of weeks used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of several experiments in union-management cooperation that took place during the 1920s. The author examines the economic and social factors that influenced the formation, operation, and decline of these experiments. Although observers at that time hoped that union-management cooperation would be widely adopted, it extended only to industries suffering from declining markets for union-made products and failed to survive the Great Depression. When the author compares these early experiments to current cooperative endeavors, he concludes that unions and employers will voluntarily work together to improve productivity only within an intermediate range of economic stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an in-depth analysis of a paper which was written by Stephanie Aaronson et al., which examined the recovery of the United States from a 2001 recession. The analysis was written by Gary Burtless. Burtless provides an overview of the activities which helped prompt the recovery from the recession and the changes in the rates of employment which came from it. Burtless uses his knowledge of economics and economic activity to determine whether Aaronson's paper provides accurate and reliable data and economic discussion.

The economic miracle that U.S.A.'s new economy creates is an important subject that people are exploring all the time, which not only creates continuous economy increase at a high speed, but also keeps the price steady in a long time especially. This paper is from discussing American scholars' researches about money supply and inflation, which analyzes the relation of money supply and inflation of U.S.A from 1994 to 2004 in terms of demonstration analysis, because of drawing the conclusion different from American scholars', this paper analyzes the reason which produces the difference and reveals the answer to the riddle of the mystery of low inflation of U.S.A. by the characteristic of "New Economy" from 1994 to 2004. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a new pricing model for American-style indexed executive stock options. We rely on a basic model framework and an indexation scheme first proposed by Johnson and Tian (2000a) in their analysis of European-style indexed options. Our derivation of the valuation formula represents an instructive example of the usefulness of the change-of-numeraire technique. In the paper's numerical section we implement the valuation formula and demonstrate that not only may the early exercise premium be significant but also that the delta of the American-style option is typically much larger than the delta of the otherwise identical (value-matched) European-style option. Vega is higher for indexed options than for conventional options but largely independent of whether the options are European- or American-style. This has important implications for the design of executive compensation contracts. We finally extend the analysis to cover the case where the option contracts are subject to delayed vesting. We show that for realistic parameter values, delayed vesting leads only to a moderate reduction in the value of the American-style indexed executive stock option. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first cryptocurrency was born in 2008. Already today, virtual financial assets and tokens are a significant part of trading in global financial markets. The cryptocurrency market capitalization currently exceeds 600 billion U.S. dollars. However, there is a lot of discussion about cryptocurrency functions and the correlation between Bitcoin prices and the basic economic indices. Therefore, the purpose of the paper is to define the statistical substantiation of the influence of fundamental economic indicators on the market of virtual financial assets and the possibility of using cryptocurrency as the investment assets. This article is based on the theoretical principles and methods of econometric analysis; the system approach methods to define the main vehicles and trends of the international financial market. The study presents correlation analysis, regression models with paired and multiple variables. For these models, R-Studio instruments are the main tools of quality estimation and results interpretation. The article shows the results of the correlation analysis of Bitcoin's U.S. dollar price dynamics and changes in the main stock, monetary market indicators, cryptocurrencies market tendency, levels of the United States fundamental economic indicators for the period from 2014 to 2021. Traditional multifactorial regression models are used to determine the level and the impact of individual indicators of the world stock market at the U.S. dollar price of Bitcoin. A comparison of the level of volatility of key investment financial assets in the market of cryptocurrencies and stock markets is carried out. The authors determine the level of correlation dependence and make a regression model of the impact of fundamental economic indicators and stock market trends on the dynamics of U.S. dollar prices for key cryptocurrencies. The article presents conclusions on trends and problems of using cryptocurrencies as an investment asset, considering volatility and profitability. Implementation of the results allows to clarify the economic essence of cryptocurrencies as a specific financial vehicle, as well as improving the existing models of investment management, considering the statistical characteristics of the virtual financial assets. The main direction of further research is to build models of medium-term prediction of prices for the main cryptocurrencies as an investment asset in conditions of changes in global financial markets, which must consider the fundamental economic indicators of the world economy and trends on key stock and commodity markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the performance of conditional heteroscedasticity model of inflation uncertainty in the U.S. It has often been argued that high inflation causes high inflation uncertainty, and that uncertainty in turn causes inefficiencies in the real economy. This argument involves conjectures about the causes and consequences of inflation uncertainty which can only be substantiated by empirical analysis. For such analysis to be convincing, inflation uncertainty must be measured in a convincing way. This paper examines the performance of one type of uncertainty measure which has become popular in recent years, the conditional heteroscedasticity model developed by Engle. This measure is indirect in the sense that it relies on some maintained hypothesis about how uncertainty is generated. For example, in the autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model, the variance surrounding a forecast is assumed to be related to the size of past forecast errors.

The article presents discussions by economists on some papers that are published in the May 1, 1970 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." The author states that a monetary indicator is a variable the value of which tells whether monetary policy is becoming more or less restrictive, given influences of current and past fiscal policy, past monetary policy and stochastic elements affecting investment, saving and portfolio balance. Presumably, advocates of the interest rate as an indicator interpret a fall in the rate as a symptom of a less restrictive monetary policy, while advocates of the money supply interpret a larger money supply or larger rate of change of the money supply as indicative of a more expansive monetary policy. However, it appears that the problem of choosing an indicator has no content over and above the problem of choosing the optimal monetary instrument. Economist Richard Zecher's paper, published in the present issue of the journal, illustrates the fact that the information needed to assess the appropriateness of alternative monetary indicators is exactly the information required to choose between alternative monetary instruments. A glance at the major points of controversy in the discussion of monetary indicators makes it clear that there is really no separate indicator problem.

This article responds to comments made in a paper which addressed the designing of monetary policy for controlling inflation in the U.S. Stephen Cecchetti responded to a criticism concerning the absence of more explicitly structural models from his paper. He argued that he intentionally avoided building a structural model because of the general lack of agreement about which model was the most appropriate. Further, he indicated that in this work, he was primarily interested in high-frequency events and the appropriate policy responses to those events, and not so much in the longer-term trends in inflation and economic activity about which structural models have the most to say. Another critic, Jim Stock, pointed out that the root-mean-square errors of regression forecasts of inflation appeared to be much larger than those of contemporaneous U.S. Federal Reserve forecasts. Carlos Végh felt that a more explicit theoretical framework was needed; in particular, there was some inconsistency between the standard theoretical analysis, which treats money as exogenous and interest rates as endogenous, and the empirical work, which treats the interest rate as exogenous policy instrument.

Many papers show that aggregate fertility is pro-cyclical over the business cycle. Using data on more than 100 million births from 1988 to 2014, we show that for recent recessions in the United States, there is a large and rapid fall in the growth rate of conceptions several quarters prior to economic decline. This newly emerging pattern appears in the aggregate data, as well as within individual states and in many European countries. Our findings suggest that fertility behaviour is more forward looking and sensitive to changes in short-run expectations about the economy than previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American Community Survey (ACS) is a U.S. Census Bureau product designed to provide accurate and timely demographic and economic indicators on an annual basis for both large and small geographic areas within the United States. Operational plans call for ACS to serve not only as a substitute for the decennial census long-form, but as a means of providing annual data at the national, state, county, and subcounty levels. In addition to being highly ambitious, this approach represents a major change in how data are collected and interpreted. Two of the major questions facing the ACS are its functionality and usability. This paper explores the latter of these two questions by examining 'persons per household (PPH),' a variable of high interest to demographers and others preparing regular post-censal population estimates. The data used in this exploration are taken from 18 of the counties that formed the set of 1999 ACS test sites. The examination proceeds by first comparing 1-year ACS PPH estimates to Census 2010 PPH values along with extrapolated estimates generated using a geometric model based on PPH change between the 1990 and 2000 census counts. Both sets of estimates are then compared to annual 2001-2009 PPH interpolated estimates generated by a geometric model based on PPH from the 2000 census to the 2010 census. The ACS PPH estimates represent what could be called the 'statistical perspective' because variations in the estimates of specific variables over time and space are viewed largely by statisticians with an eye toward sample error. The model-based PPH estimates represent a 'demographic perspective' because PPH estimates are largely viewed by demographers as varying systematically and changing relatively slowly over time, an orientation stemming from theory and empirical evidence that PPH estimates respond to demographic and related determinants. The comparisons suggest that the ACS PPH estimates exhibit too much 'noisy' variation for a given area over time to be usable by demographers and others preparing post-censal population estimates. These findings should be confirmed through further analysis and suggestions are provided for the directions this research could take. We conclude by noting that the statistical and demographic perspectives are not incompatible and that one of the aims of our paper is to encourage the U.S. Census Bureau to consider ways to improve the usability of the 1-year ACS PPH estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reexamines the empirical performance of monetary exchange rate models for the dollar/yen exchange rate. We focus on the character of a potential long-run relationship between exchange rates and fundamentals. Using monthly data from 1976:01 to 2007:12 this paper applies a novel time-varying coefficient approach which allows a distinction between breaks in the cointegration vector and instabilities in the adjustment coefficients. We are able to show that most of the observed breakpoints can be traced back to major policy changes or specific economic developments. Our findings also show that macroeconomic fundamentals do matter for the U.S. dollar/Japanese yen exchange rate, but in different ways over different periods of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Governments around the world are providing multi-billion dollar subsidies to roll out fiber to the home (FTTH) to enable superfast broadband (50 Mbps and above). The premise for this is a belief that superfast broadband brings substantial economic and societal benefits. This paper's purpose is to examine whether this belief is well founded.Design/methodology/approach – The authors critically review the arguments most commonly made in favor of FTTH, examining their logic and underlying evidence.Findings – The paper finds that these arguments often inappropriately use benefits of basic broadband to make the case for the upgrade to superfast broadband, or use the benefits of providing superfast to business premises to argue for providing superfast to homes. The authors find the evidence that basic broadband brings economic growth is patchy, and that frequently studies that argue for a link do not adequately distinguish between correlation and causation.Originality/value – Thus the authors conclude that the conventional wisdom that FTTH will bring substantial economic and societal benefits and therefore deserves a subsidy is, at best, much overstated. The case has simply not been made that FTTH has sufficient incremental externalities over other forms of broadband. This is an important conclusion for politicians, policy makers, telecoms providers and taxpayers, and suggests that billions of dollars of public money may be being wasted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore how satellite images of global night lights from year 1992 to 2003 can be used to estimate economic activity at the sub-regional level in the US and China. The night lights based estimates of economic activity are then spatially analysed and compared with subregional economic indicators where available for selected years. We also briefly discuss two theoretical models that shed light on the geospatial patterns reflected by the night light data. The results are presented with a series of maps, charts and tables. Resumen. En este artículo exploramos el uso potencial de imágenes de satélite de la iluminación nocturna global desde 1992 a 2003 para estimar la actividad económica a escala subregional en los EE.UU. y en China. A continuación se analizan espacialmente las estimaciones de la actividad económica basadas en la iluminación nocturna y se comparan con los indicadores económicos subregionales disponibles para los años del estudio. Discutimos también brevemente dos modelos teoréticos que podrían ilustrar los patrones geoespaciales que reflejan los datos de iluminación nocturna. Los resultados se presentan junto con una serie de mapas, gráficos y cuadros. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds a two-country model with differential productivity and financial frictions to quantitatively account for the recent increase in the U.S. current account deficit. An influential literature says that as U.S. productivity surged, capital was attracted to the United States to take advantage of the high returns to investment. We show, however, that when we include emerging Asia, the gap in productivity growth between the United States and the rest of the world cannot explain the U.S. current account deficits, especially since 2000. This is because on a gross domestic product-weighted basis, the rest of the world actually had higher productivity growth during this period; and standard macroeconomic models would predict an outflow of funds from the United States to the rest of the world, and a consequent narrowing of the U.S. current account deficit. This paper shows that greater financial integration abroad can explain this anomaly. However, we still cannot explain why U.S. per capita output growth has been so low, despite the large inflow of capital.IMF Staff Papers (2009) 56, 655–682. doi:10.1057/imfsp.2009.4; published online 31 March 2009 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the cointegration relationships and the causal links between the exchange rate of the US Dollar, on the one side, and different price indices of US products on the other side. Data are of monthly frequency and cover a period of two or three decades. We show that the exchange rate cointegrate with the Consumer Price Index and with the prices indices of several agricultural, manufactured and service goods; moreover a one-direction causal link is present, running from price to exchange rate. On the opposite, cointegrating relationships between exchange rate and price indices do not exist in the case of recreational products with "cultural" content. Tentative theoretical explanations are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Conceptualization of the notion of 'sustainable' structural change. • Proposal for a methodology to mitigate government failures. • Construction of two composite indicators measuring economic and green performances. • Application to the analysis of the US manufacturing system. With the 2008 economic crisis–and again with the outbreak of the coronavirus emergency in 2020–industrial policy has explicitly reappeared in the political agenda of many countries and regions. A common feature has been the demand and the adoption of selective policies aimed at promoting specific targets of the economy, such as particular industries, technologies, companies, or territories. Nevertheless, the theoretical framework adopted to legitimize and implement public action in this field has not evolved much in the last two decades: it appears weak, too vague, and often anachronistic, increasing the risk of substantial 'government failures'. By focusing on the US manufacturing system, this paper contributes to the political economy stream of the industrial policy literature by proposing new methods to make government intervention more effective, efficient, and oriented towards a sustainable structural change, as defined in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a consequence of the powerful changes that have occurred over the last three decades in the principal 'drivers' of economic change, there have been significant realignments in the global patterns of production and consumption of natural resources, as well as in the intensity of their use, in the quest to raise the level of material wellbeing throughout the world. In this paper, three large minerals-consuming (and -producing) countries are examined - the USA, China and Russia - and the story of a generation's economic progress (or decline, as the case may be) is seen through the lens of resource consumption - the 'stuff' that comprises a modern 'standard of living'. After presenting data on gross domestic product, population, the observed levels and annual growth rates of consumption and production of four non-fuel minerals over a 35-year interval ending in 2005 for these countries and for the world, the paper includes a description of these countries' growing import dependence (or, as the case may be, their enhanced or reduced role as an exporter to the world economy) for some, or all, of these critical resources over this time period. These changing trends contribute to one of today's 'front-burner' public policy issues: resource-supply security. The last section of the paper examines the changing 'intensity-of-use' of these minerals. The paper concludes with some remarks on the geopolitical/environmental dilemma associated with resources, which is intensifying as we approach the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The composition of economic growth can be analyzed in two different ways. In the ‘traditional method’ for the decomposition of GDP growth, total imports are deducted from exports. This approach underestimates the importance of exports for the growth in GDP, and overestimates the importance of domestic expenditure categories. In the alternative methodology proposed in this paper, imports are allocated to all expenditure categories. Although this ‘import-adjusted method’ is more complex than the ‘traditional method’, it has the considerable advantage that the contributions of the expenditure categories to GDP growth provide a better understanding of why GDP growth decelerates or accelerates. The methodology and data requirements for calculating the import content of final demand, and the implications for the decomposition of real GDP growth, are discussed. For six European countries and the United States, the paper shows that applying the alternative methodology provides rather a different economic story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we assess whether or not organic agriculture has a positive impact on local economies. We first identify organic agriculture hotspots (clusters of counties with positively correlated high numbers of organic operations) using spatial statistics. Then, we estimate a treatment effects model that classifies a county's membership in an organic hotspot as an endogenous treatment variable. By modeling what a hotspot county's economic indicators would have been had the county not been part of a hotspot, this model captures the effect of being in a hotspot on a county's economic indicators. We perform the same analysis for general agricultural farm hotspots to confirm that the benefits associated with organic production hotspots are, in fact, due to the organic component. Our results show that organic hotspot membership leads to a lower county-level poverty rate and a higher median household income. A similar result is not found when investigating the impact of general agriculture hotspots. On the other hand, our result is robust to alternative hotspot definitions based on type of organic operations to alternative methods of estimating average treatment effects on the treated. These results provide strong motivation for considering hotspots of organic handling operations, which refers to middlemen such as processors, wholesalers and brokers, and hotspots of organic production to be local economic development tools, and may be of interest to policymakers whose objective is to promote rural development. Our results may incentivize policymakers to specifically focus on organic development, rather than the more general development of agriculture, as a means to promote economic growth in rural areas, and may further point them in the direction of not only encouraging the presence of organic operations, but of fostering the development of clusters or hotspots of these operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the economic models for monetary policymaking in the U.S. It has been suggested that monetary policy in most countries and periods is best modeled as an interest rate. In probability models, models are presented with coefficients estimated from data and with standard errors of the estimates. The Federal Reserve Board's FRBUS model applies a standard single-equation specification to many variables that assumes no within quarter interactions among variables. The Bayesian approach to interference recognizes the need for what has to go on daily in data analysis for policymaking.

In a recent issue of this journal, Beil et al. (2005, hereafter, BFJ) examined the relationship between telecommunications investment and economic growth in the United States over the period 1947-1996. Based on results from Granger-Sims test, BFJ conclude that '... investment by telecommunications firms is caused by, but does not cause, economic activity, and the findings are robust across lag lengths'. However, using another version of the Granger causality test due to Toda & Yamamoto (1995) and the same data set transformed into natural logarithms, the evidence in this paper indicates a feedback where there was a bi-directional causality between telecommunications investment and economic growth. This seems to suggest that policies aimed at stimulating the US economy by accelerating investment in the telecommunications sector may be successful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]