The house price-to-income ratio (PIR) is widely used as an affordability indicator. This paper complements the cross-sectionally focused literature by proposing a tractable model for the PIR dynamics. Our model predicts that the PIR is very persistent and is correlated to the lagged aggregate output. Cross-country analysis confirms this prediction and provides evidence for a long-term, positive, and

At the beginning of the 2000s, Latin America countries experienced rising commodities prices and, in turn, foreign investors shifted part of their portfolio composition toward the region. Unlike past episodes, more integrated financial markets allowed international players to invest in a wider range of financial instruments, usually related to composite commodity indexes. We investigate the macroeconomic

This paper analytically examines the demand for surgical masks following the recent health precautions due to coronavirus. Using a simple linear demand curve and alternatively examining the impacts of requirements that mandate (a) the wearing of masks by frontline workers; (b) suggested but not required masking by the whole public; and (c) compulsory masking by the whole public. The impacts of the

This study builds a North–South trade and uneven development model and investigates the effects of changes in income distribution (the profit share) on economic growth rates of both countries. How a change in each country’s profit share affects both countries’ growth rates differs for the short- and long-run equilibria. For example, in the short-run equilibrium, an increase in the North’s profit share

We propose a supermultiplier model that includes formal and informal wage redistributive devices enabling everyone in the population to satisfy their primary needs. By introducing population growth and technical progress into the model, we show that wage redistribution gives rise to an autonomous consumption component, the growth rate of which corresponds to the natural rate of growth. The three main

With the exception of Pasinetti's work on structural change, the sraffian literature remains silent on normative issues. By generalizing Smith's notion of free competition, this paper identifies and formalizes an ideal social arrangement yielding a unique income distribution configuration which is fair in terms of the “equality of opportunity” norm, and which can be used as a benchmark for normative

In times of heightened uncertainty, consumers face incentives to build up precautionary stocks of essential supplies. We study consumer spending dynamics during one such time, the first infection wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, using household scanner data covering fast-moving consumer goods in the United Kingdom. We document large increases in demand for storable products, such as food staples and

We investigate the distortionary effects of transaction taxes through a case study of the Scottish residential property market. We make use of four sources of variation in transaction tax rates present in recent Scottish tax systems: (1) jumps in tax liabilities at tax thresholds; (2) jumps in marginal tax rates at thresholds; (3) a tax announcement that created temporary tax saving opportunities;

The post-1945 global trading system was designed around the principle of non-discrimination. During the 1947–94 GATT era, regionalism and multilateralism were often viewed as antagonistic approaches to international trade, and preferential treatment within regional blocs was to be deterred. Since 1995, although regional trade agreements are monitored by the WTO Secretariat and presented as a threat

The post-1945 global trading system was designed around the principle of non-discrimination. During the 1947–94 GATT era, regionalism and multilateralism were often viewed as antagonistic approaches to international trade, and preferential treatment within regional blocs was to be deterred. Since 1995, although regional trade agreements are monitored by the WTO Secretariat and presented as a threat

The aim of this paper is to analyze whether parents' fertility behavior may be an important determinant of the future fertility outcomes of their children in Spain. To address this issue, we use data from the Survey of Living Conditions. Our results confirm the intergenerational transmission of fertility behavior in Spain. The higher the parents’ number of children, the higher the number of children

This paper focuses on economic policy uncertainty spillovers across Europe, before and after the outburst of the Eurozone crisis, using data for seven Eurozone countries for the period 2003–2019. At first, we analyze the spillovers of uncertainty in Europe via the estimation of the Diebold-Yilmaz spillover index. The results indicate that uncertainty connectedness was 50.5% before the crisis, while

This paper considers the problem of allocating resources between economic goods and military goods in a contest model. We characterize the equilibrium and its stability in both cases where the two states' economic goods are substitutes and complements, and compare the outcomes. If the two states' economic goods are substitutes, there may exist multiple equilibria including at least one unstable equilibrium

This paper introduces corporate social responsibility (CSR) into a quantity-setting duopoly with cross-participation at ownership level. One firm is fully owned by its shareholder, who also owns a minority participation in the rival firm (controlling shareholder). We analyze the shareholders’ strategic choice of whether to engage their firms in CSR or not. We find that high levels of cross-ownership

The paper studies tax evasion in an evolutionary setting. In addition to standard variables such as the fine individuals may have to pay if found guilty or the probability of being audited, agents’ inclination to engage in tax evasion may also be affected by social interactions. Moreover, expected payoffs may include reputational costs or rewards awarded by society after an individual is audited. The

In this paper, we examine whether jumps matter in both equity market returns and integrated volatility. For this purpose, we use the swap variance (SwV) approach to identify monthly jumps and estimated realized volatility in prices for both developed and emerging markets from February 2001 to February 2020. We find that jumps arise in all equity markets; however, emerging markets have more jumps relative

Orthogonal polynomials can be used to modify the moments of the distribution of a random variable. In this paper, polynomially adjusted distributions are employed to model the skewness and kurtosis of the conditional distributions of GARCH models. To flexibly capture the skewness and kurtosis of data, the distributions of the innovations that are polynomially reshaped include, besides the Gaussian

We introduce various methods that combine forecasts using constrained optimization with penalty. A non-negativity constraint is imposed on the weights, and several penalties are considered, taking the form of a divergence from a reference combination scheme. In contrast with most of the existing approaches, our framework performs forecast selection and combination in one step, allowing for potentially

Multi-horizon forecasting often contains a complex mix of inputs – including static (i.e. time-invariant) covariates, known future inputs, and other exogenous time series that are only observed in the past – without any prior information on how they interact with the target. Several deep learning methods have been proposed, but they are typically ‘black-box’ models that do not shed light on how they

ABSTRACT This paper employs goods and services descriptions from US trademarks to study spatial diffusion of innovations. Identifying novel, fast-spreading tokens (words) in trademark descriptions, we outline patterns of regional innovation and estimate how distance affects diffusion. Novel trademark tokens are frequently new to English, they capture many unpatented innovations, and their appearance

ABSTRACT We make the case for a technology-enabled approach to Smart Specialisation policymaking aimed at increasing its effectiveness by assessing the general equilibrium effects of the European Cohesion Policy objectives contained in the regional Operational Programmes prepared by the regional policymakers. We simulate the impact of achieving the research and development personnel targets on gross

ABSTRACT The European Union (EU) has recognized that universities and research institutes play a critical role in regional Smart Specialisation processes. Our research aims to identify thematic cross-border research domains across space and disciplines in Arctic Scandinavia. We identify potential domains using an unsupervised machine-learning technique (topic modelling). We uncover latent topics based

ABSTRACT External urban relations are commonly described as one of two types: hierarchical local hinterlands (central place theory) and networked non-local hinterworlds (central flow theory), referred to as town-ness and city-ness, respectively. This paper builds on and develops these generic concepts to make them specifically relevant to today’s corporate globalization. The central place process is

We provide empirical evidence that supports a commonly-held assumption: that experts’ appraisals of policy options are often very distinct from those of resource users most affected by those policy choices. We analyse perspectives about 40 policy options to address peatland fires in Indonesia, using a Q methodology approach to rank the options according to perceived effectiveness. Peatland fires in

This paper theoretically and empirically investigates the factors that determine the government “take” in gold mining projects around the world. We develop a theoretical model to predict the government take, which we define as the ratio of total payments to the government from a mining project (including taxes, fees, and royalties) relative to the mining company’s pre-tax net revenue from the same

In this paper, we ask whether the main cause of asylum migration, that is, violence in the home country, still affects the life satisfaction of refugees even after they reach a safe country. We combine individual-level survey data on refugees in Germany with country-level data on terror fatalities. The timing of the survey interviews generates exogenous variation in the intensity of recent terror activity

This study examines the effects of democracy and hybrid regimes on income inequality. Despite strong theoretical arguments for the redistributive impact of democracy, empirical evidence of this phenomenon is inconclusive. This study helps to solve this puzzle by suggesting that the two key dimensions of democracy, contestation and inclusiveness/participation, have opposite effects on inequality. Whereas

Many countries have taken a variety of measures to stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19 infections. Among the most important of these involve using social distancing to prevent contact. Restricted social contacts have important effects on activity participation and on travel demand. The current study examined an array of less-studied factors, such as attitudes and

This article catalogues experiences of the general aviation sector as it progressively encountered the challenges of COVID-19 in the early part of 2020. The article focuses primarily on the Australian marketplace as a contribution to the body of knowledge in an under-researched industry sector. The article draws on literature pertaining to prior pandemic experience to enquire about the level of precursory

Commuting between an origin and destination pair is one of the most critical components of an individual's daily activity, and the associated trip satisfaction significantly influences a commuter's well-being. Owing to negative externalities associated with urban travel such as increased congestion, poor roadway infrastructure, inadequate and unreliable public transport system, safety and security

This study finds that aggressive tax strategies adopted by a firm affect idiosyncratic stock return volatility. Aggressive tax strategies, which I measure as tax paid by a firm divided by pretax income (adjusted for special items), are associated with higher levels of idiosyncratic stock volatility. Uncertainty associated with tax strategies may result due to several factors, such as penalties, fines

The study investigates (i) the time-varying and directional connectedness of nine equity sectors through intra- and inter-sector volatility spillover periods and (ii) assesses the impact of state variables on aggregate volatility spillovers. The study finds about 76% of volatility linkage is associated with cross-sector volatility transmissions. Aggressive sectors, which are sensitive to macroeconomic