Working papers results

The relationships between real wages, output per capita, inflation and unemployment in Italy between 1970 and 1994, are modelled using a cointegrated vector autoregression. There is evidence of a change in the underlying equilibria and in the dynamic evolution of the variables, probably associated with the substantial changes in many sectors of the Italian economy after 1979. Alternative ways to model structural change in the Italian labour market are considered. In adopting a split sample approach the results favour an hysteresis interpretation of unemployment.

Product and labor market deregulation are fundamentally about reducing and redistributing rents, leading economic players to adjust in turn to this new distribution. Thus, even if deregulation eventually proves beneficial, it comes with strong distribution and dynamic effects. The transition may imply the decline of incumbent firms. Unemployment may increase for a while. Real wages may decrease before recovering, and so on. To study these issues, we build a model based on two central assumptions: Monopolistic competition in the goods market, which de-termines the size of rents, and bargaining in the labor market, which determines the distribution of rents between workers and firms. We then think of product market regulation as determining both the entry costs faced by firms, and the degree of competition between firms. We think of labor market regulation as determining the bargaining power of workers. Having characterized the effects of labor and product market deregulation, we then use our results to study two specific issues. First, to shed light on macroecononomic evolutions in Europe over the last twenty years, in particular on the behavior of the labor share. Second, to look at political economy interactions between product and labor market deregulation.

A common finding in the empirical literature on the validity of purchasing power parity (PPP) is that it holds when tested for in panel data, but not in univariate (i.e. country specific) analysis. The usual explanation for this mismatch is that panel tests for unit roots and cointegration are more powerful than their univariate counterparts. In this paper we suggest an alternative explanation for the mismatch. More generally, we warn against the use of panel methods for testing for unit roots in macroeconomic time series. Existing panel methods assume that cross-unit cointegrating or long-run relationships, that tie the units of the panel together, are not present. However, using empirical examples on PPP for a panel of OECD countries, we show that this assumption is very likely to be violated. Simulations of the properties of panel unit root tests in the presence of long-run cross-unit relationships are then presented to demonstrate the serious cost of assuming away such relationships. The empirical size of the tests is substantially higher than the nominal level, so that the null hypothesis of a unit root is rejected very often, even if correct.

There is a wide literature on the dynamic adjustment of employment and its relationship with the business cycle. Our aim is to propose a statistical model that offers a congruent representation of post-war UK labour market. We use a cointegrated vector autoregressive Markov-switching model where some parameters change according to the phase of the business cycle. Output, employment, labour supply and real earnings are found to have a common cyclical component. The long run dynamics are characterized by two cointegrating vectors: trend-adjusted labour productivity and the labour share. Despite there having been many changes affecting this sector of the UK economy, the Markov-switching vector-equilibrium-correction model with three regimes representingm recession, growth and high growth provides a good characterization of the sample data over the period 1966(3)-1993(1) In an out-of-sample forecast experiment over the period 1991(2)-1993(1) it beats linear and non-linear model alternatives. The results of an impulse-response analysis highlight the dangers of using VARs when the constancy of the estimated coefficients has not been established.

The dramatic rise in the US social security and public health expenditure is only partially explained by the demographic trend, and may be due to the political complementarity between these two programs. We suggest that public health care increases the political constituency in favor of social security, and viceversa. Specifically, public health decreases the longevity differential between low and high-income individuals, therefore rising the retirement period, and the total pension benefits of the former relatively to the latter. This increases the political support for social security among the low-income young. We show that in a political equilibrium of a two-dimensional majoritarian election, a voting majority of low-income young and all retirees supports a large welfare state. Its composition between public health and social security is determined by intermediate (median) income types, who favor a combination of the two programs, since public health increases their longevity enough to make social security more attractive.

We construct and numerically solve a dynamic Heckscher-Ohlin model in which the initial distribution of production factors in the world makes world-wide factor price equalization impossible, and leads countries to group in two diversification cones. We study the dynamics of income components and factor prices. Our results suggest that the Ramsey model under complete specialization (CS) overcomes several shortcomings of its autarchy and factor-price-equalization (FPE) counterparts. In comparison with the autarchy model, it can account for important cross-sectional differences in income per capita growth rates without generating too large rental-rate differentials across countries. Furthermore, the CS model generates cross-country convergence in growth rates and levels along the transition towards the steady-state. Finally, the CS model converges to FPE in the long run. Unlike the autarchy model, FPE does not necessarily yield convergence in levels; however, international trade is beneficial to both countries in terms of welfare.

Is corruption systematically related to electoral rules? A number of studies have tried to uncover economic and social determinants of corrup-tion but, as far as we know, nobody has yet empirically investigated how electoral systems influence corruption. We try to address this lacuna in the literature, by relating corruption to different features of the electoral system in a sample from the late nineties encompassing more than 80 (de-veloped and developing) democracies. Our empirical results are based on traditional regression methods, as well as non-parametric estimators. The evidence is consistent with the theoretical models reviewed in the paper. Holding constant a variety of economic and social variables, we find that larger voting districts - and thus lower barriers to entry - are associated with less corruption, whereas larger shares of candidates elected from party lists - and thus less individual accountability - are associated with more corruption. Altogether, proportional elections are associated with more corruption, since voting over party lists is the dominant effect, while the district magnitude effect is less robust.