Working Papers

This paper provides an empirical examination of the economic impact of spectator sports on local economies. Confirming the results of other ex post analyses of sports in general, this paper finds no statistically significant evidence that college football games in particular contribute positively to a host’s economy. Our analysis from 1970-2004 of 63 metropolitan areas that play host to big-time college football programs finds that neither the number of home games played, the winning percentage of the local team, nor winning a national championship has a discernable impact on either employment or personal income in the cities where the teams play. While successful college football teams may bring fame to their alma mater, fortune appears to be a bit more elusive.

This paper explores the relationship between different levels of education and poverty through an analysis of household-level data from 60 villages in Bangladesh. First of all, it depicts the overall trend in school enrollment at primary and secondary level between 1988-2000, and confirms the inequality that exists in the access to education at post-primary level. This is followed by a presentation of income and occupation data that show a strong positive correlation with the level of education. In the second part, an income function analysis has been done to assess the impact of education along with other determinants. Marginal returns to upper secondary and primary level of education have been found to be higher than lower secondary education. The third part analyzes the effects of education on child/woman ratio, and on the secondary school participation rate of male and female children. Both poverty and low education have positive but weak effect on child/woman ratio. On the othe...

The aim of this paper is to describe product market competition in the Belgian economy for the period 1997 ]2004 and to illustrate some causality with market regulation. The analysis is held at the industry level, for selected manufacturing and services industries. Emphasis is given to the profit elasticity (PE) measurement of competition (the gBoone h indicator) and the average profitability (AP) indicator (an approximation of the mark ]up indicator). We applied the OECD Regimpact indicator as a proxy for regulation. We present some stylized facts, for Belgium in comparison with selected EU countries; and through an econometric exercise we illustrate the potential of regulation as an explanatory variable for competition.

A special case of dollarization is analyzed: quotation of prices in dollars. The proposed explanation is price stickiness: when price adjustment is costly, forms can prefer to fix their prices in a stable foreign currency rather than in an unstable domestic one in order to avoid frequent price changes. The proposed model shows how the choice of price-setting currency made by a firm depends on the in ation rate, exchange rate volatility, the pricing currency of competitors and input suppliers, and the shape of the demand function. The model predicts that there are two Nash equilibria in the economy populated by symmetric firms: an equilibrium with uniform ruble pricing and an equilibrium with uniform dollar pricing. It is shown that in economy with less competition a smaller increase in inflation is needed to make an individual firm deviate from the equilibrium with uniform ruble pricing and turn to pricing in dollars.

Industry clusters in a region represent a material basis for an innovation-based economy. The paper aims to explore the Turkish industry clusters by examining the inter-industry selling and purchasing relationships. The 1990 Turkish input-output table is used to identify the similarities between selling and purchasing patterns of 60 manufacturing industries and derive a matrix that describes the relative linkage between them. Principle component factor analysis reveals the presence of 12 distinct industry clusters. The largest cluster is the petroleum cluster, followed by vehicle and food and agricultural clusters. The firms within the identified clusters provide a potential to share technical information and knowledge transfer through formal or informal interactions.

The study attempted to analyse the long-term effects of the FTA on India. It is argued that after full trade liberalization, India’s allocative efficiency will increase, but the terms of trade effect will worsen continuously and remain negative. India will be able to arrest the worsening in terms of trade once the gain in allocative efficiency is used to improve productivity in the export-oriented sectors as well as achieve economies of scale.

Notre étude se propose de mesurer l'efficacité des institutions de microfinance (IMFs) en UEMOA, en utilisant la méthode DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis). C'est la première étude qui considère à la fois la fonction d'intermédiaire et d'outreach des IMFs. Nous trouvons une efficacité moyenne très faible de 50% en rendement d'échelle constant et de 63% en rendement d'échelle croissant. La baisse de l'efficacité sur la décennie 2000-2010, pour l'ensemble de la zone, s'explique par les difficultés rencontrées par le secteur de la microfinance qui ont conduit à la fermeture de nombreuses institutions, ou à une détérioration des indicateurs d'outreach dans les pays tels que la Côte d'Ivoire, le Sénégal et le Bénin. La bonne gestion financière et de portefeuille, les subventions ont un impact positif sur l'efficacité tandis que la taille et la formation ont un impact négatif.

This paper argues that unemployment persistence in countries like Tunisia is not caused only by labor market rigidities and by population growth. The size of the informal sector and the low level of investment within the formal sector and in public infrastructure and services are other important factors. The main purpose of this paper is to show that the larger the size of the informal sector the more persistent unemployment will be, and that the larger the share of investment allocated to the formal sector the lower and least persistent unemployment will be. We also show that an exogenous increase of the wage rate paid by the informal sector, for instance as a result of the enforcement of some labor regulations within the informal sector, will (paradoxically) reduce unemployment. The reason is that it reduces the gap between work conditions in the formal and the informal sectors and slows down the migration process to the formal sector. The link between unemployment, the size of th...

Nearly a million people take their own lives every year, more than those murdered or killed in war. Suicide is a problem that affects people of all ages and economic levels, and is recognised by the WHO as a significant public health problem. A large significant proportion of suicides are among young women. This document emerging out of the experience

Using a bootstrap panel analysis that allows for cross-country dependence, without requiring the use of pre-tests for a unit root, we study the causality links between energy use and employment for a sample of 16 African countries over the 1991-2010 period (according to availability of countries' data) in a panel Vector AutoRegressive model. Our results indicate that employment and energy use are strongly linked in Africa. Unidirectional causality from employment to energy use in Tunisia, Cameroun, Zambia and Ethiopia is found. A unidirectional causality from energy use to employment is found in DRC and Egypt. We found also bidirectional causality for Algeria, Benin, Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania). However, our estimates did not indicate any causality in Big African players like South Africa, Nigeria, Morocco, Ghana and Senegal.

The local, state, and federal governments, along with the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee, spent roughly $1.9 billion in direct costs related to planning and hosting the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. In this paper, we investigate whether these expenditures increased employment. At the state level, we find strong evidence it increased employment in leisure related industries in the short run and potentially in the long run. However, the results indicate it had no long term impact on employment in retail trade or in the overall economy.

Since 1997, the agricultural leases on Native land, issued under the 1976 Agricultural and Landlord Tenants Act (ALTA), began to expire. The sugar industry is the main commodity export earner for Fiji, directly contributing about 22% of the national GDP and supporting over 25% of the country's active labor force. Fiji exports 80% of its sugar production, earning on average of $250-300 million in foreign exchange annually. Several options have been suggested, including: non-renewal of leases, with the land reverting to Fijian owners; renewal of ALTA but with land rents pegged to the gross value of production instead of the unimproved capital value; sharecropping and contract wage arrangements; and abolishment of lease arrangement under ALTA with leases to be issued under an institutional arrangement guided by the Native Lands Trust Act (NLTA). The land tenure system adopted will have a significant impact not only on the efficiency of the sugar cane sector but also on Fiji's...

Internationally active firms rely intensively on trade credits even though they are considered particularly expensive. This phenomenon has been little explored so far. Our theoretical analysis shows that trade credits can alleviate financial constraints arising from asymmetric information because they serve as a quality signal and reduce the uncertainty related to international transactions. We use unique survey data on German enterprises to test the effect of the use of trade credits on firms' exporting and importing behavior, both at the extensive and intensive margins. Our results support the assertion that trade credits have a positive impact on firms' exporting and importing activities.

Conventional growth theories in the literature explain the poor economic performance of African economies by stressing the inadequacy of savings, human capital, and poor institutional quality. However, the key question is how to enhance savings for the accumulation of both physical and human capital in order to spur growth. A common thread that runs through the existing models is that the dependency ratio, not only remains constant over time, but has no long-run negative impact on economic growth. By relaxing this rigid assumption, this paper constructs a growth estimating equation which accommodates this demographic factor. The analytic results from the modified model suggest that economies with high dependency ratio face their stable equilibrium at lower levels of their income per capita. Moreover, econometric results from analysis of panel data drawn from Sub-Saharan Africa economies suggest that the growth puzzle can be well explained in terms of the demographic factors, especia...

Le lien gestion des compétences - stratégie est largement évoqué au sein de la littérature notamment à travers les deux modes d'interactions classiques (top down et bottom up). Ces travaux se centrent sur les entreprises d'une certaine taille dans la mesure où ils posent comme pré-requis l'existence de processus RH formalisés et l'élaboration d'actions stratégiques explicites. Au sein des PME, globalement caractérisées par le rôle clé de la vision stratégique du dirigeant et par un faible degré d'explication des processus RH, ce lien doit être repensé. Dans ce cadre, notre recherche vise à éclairer la relation entre stratégie et gestion des compétences dans le contexte particulier de la PME. Une attention particulière est portée à la place de la vision stratégique et des processus de formalisation dans cette relation. Ce travail exploratoire est conduit par le biais d'une recherche-action menée dans le cadre du pôle de compétitivité " Véhicule du Fut...

This paper presents estimates of the economic impacts of financing the hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup by the government of South Africa. Ex ante analysis using a fiscal social accounting matrix model indicates that hosting of the event impacts positively ...

We test for the existence of gender bias in power relationships. Specifically, we examine whether police officers are less likely to issue traffic tickets to men or to women during traffic stops. Whereas the conventional wisdom, which we document with surveys, is that women are less likely to receive tickets, our analysis shows otherwise. Examination of a pooled sample of

This paper examines the possibility that regulation actually increases a monopolist’s cost-efficiency. When the firm’s cost-reducing effort depends on the output supplied, a binding price-cap, by compelling the monopolist to produce more, finally results in lower costs. On the basis of a two-period asymmetric information model with a repeated choice of effort, the paper demonstrates that regulation increases efficiency when the elasticity of demand is sufficiently low, even assuming very conservative preferences and a very poor information set for the regulator. Moreover, contrary to previous findings and conventional wisdom, we find that a periodical rate base review exerts also a positive effect on future cost-reducing effort countervailing the well known ratchet effect.