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Please find below various options to search for INFER publications. For obtaining a certain book or article please contact the publishing house directly. Some books or articles may also be available as e-books or e-papers from or , among others. If you have any further questions, please contact us at info@infer.info

 

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Downside risk and flight to quality in the currency market

Author: Victoria Dobrynskaya
Vol.: 2011.5
Publishing house: i) INFER
Place: Speyer, London
year: 2011
No of pages: 22
ISBN
category INFER Working Paper Series
price EUR

Some currencies systematically crash together with the stock market, while others serve as a „safe haven‟. This paper studies which country macroeconomic fundamentals are consistently related to the riskiness of its currency. I look at various macroeconomic variables and find that high real interest rates in a country are associated with high downside risk of its currency, while inflation rate, nominal interest rate and other variables are not that relevant. But to be a „safe haven‟ currency, both low real interest rate and low inflation rate are required. I suggest that there is a „flight to quality‟ in the currency market when the stock market goes down.

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• cover page: Title WP 2011_5 - Dobrynskaya.jpg
• : WP 2011_5 - Dobrynskaya.pdf

 

Who and where are the co-authors? The relationship between institutional and geographical distance in scientific publications

Author: Rosamaria d’Amore Roberto Iorio Agnieszka Stawinoga
Vol.: 2011.4
Publishing house: i) INFER
Place: Speyer, London
year: 2011
No of pages: 26
ISBN
category INFER Working Paper Series
price EUR

This paper analyses the phenomenon of collaborations between university and other research institutions with industry, seen through the lens of co-autorship of scientific publications in the Italian biotech sector. We analyse a database including the publications done by the Italian biotech firms from 2003 to 2005; the institutions the authors of the publications belong to are registered and classified in four categories (firms, universities, hospitals and research centres); their localization is registered too. The main goal of our research is to analyse the relationship between geographical and institutional distance. Given that there is institutional distance if different kinds of institutions collaborate, we want to verify if such distance changes, and in what direction, when the physical distance increases. This analysis is conducted at an aggregated level, than at a more disaggregated one, taking two factors into consideration: the quality and relevance of the papers; the different nature and aims, therefore the different behaviour, of the different institutions. Regarding the empirical tools, the social network analysis is joined with the regression analysis. The more relevant results may be synthesized in this way: at a more aggregate level the direction of the relationship between spatial and institutional distance does not emerge with full statistical evidence; at a more disaggregate level the results emerge more clearly: taking into consideration the papers that receive few citations (that may be considered as results of project of limited scientific relevance or quality), the relationship between geographical and institutional distance is inverse (the variety of institutions is more limited among papers written as results of international collaborations than among papers deriving from national co-autorships); among more cited papers, the relationship is direct. On another side, taking the behaviour of different institutions into consideration, we observe an inverse relationship between spatial and institutional distance for firms, universities and research centres, a direct relationship for hospitals. This kind of analysis may shed more light on the way knowledge flows among innovative agents and should be taken into consideration by the policy maker that aims to promote research collaboration between different institutions.

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• cover page: Title WP 2011_4 - D Amora Iorio Stawinoga.jpg
• : WP 2011_4 - D Amora Iorio Stawinoga.pdf

 

Monetary Policy Trade-Offs in a Portfolio Model with Endogenous Asset Supply

Author: Stefan Schueder
Vol.: 2011.3
Publishing house: i) INFER
Place: Speyer, London
year: 2011
No of pages: 57
ISBN
category INFER Working Paper Series
price EUR

This paper develops an open economy portfolio balance model with endogenous asset supply. Domestic producers choose an optimal capital structure and finance capital goods through credit, bonds and equity assets. Private households hold a portfolio of domestic and foreign assets, shift balances depending on risk-return considerations, and maximise real consumption in accordance with the law of one price. Within this general equilibrium model, it will be shown that central bank interventions may promote an inefficient international allocation of real capital. The application of expansive monetary interventions throughout the course of economic crises maintains the domestic stock of real capital at the cost of inflation, currency devaluation, distortions of interest rates and asset prices, and risk clusters on the central bank’s balance sheet. Exchange rate stabilising interventions have the result that the central bank can also stabilise the domestic stock of real capital. However, such interventions produce either risk clusters on the central bank’s balance sheet or changes in the domestic price level.

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• cover page: Title WP 2011_3 - Schueder.jpg
• : WP 2011_3 - Schueder.pdf

 

The Ease of Doing Business Index as a Tool for Investment Location Decisions

Author: João Zambujal-Oliveira Ricardo Pinheiro-Alves
Vol.: 2011.2
Publishing house: i) INFER
Place: Speyer, London
year: 2011
No of pages: 23
ISBN
category INFER Working Paper Series
price EUR

The Ease of Doing Business Index (EDBI) uses 41 variables to compare the business environment of different countries. It is widely used by policy makers, researchers and multinational companies. This paper aims to assess EDBI’s consistency and validity in representing the business environment by using factor analysis. It is found that the EDBI presents a limited consistency and descriptive power of a country’s business environment. The consequence of these findings is that multinational firms should handle carefully the EDBI in their investment decisions.

Files to download:

• cover page: Cover 2011.2.JPG
• : WP 2011.2.pdf

 

Entrepreneurship in the Global Economy: Economics, Innovation, Competition and Social Change

Author: Anca Borza, Christian Richter, Ovidiu Bordean
Vol.: 1
Publishing house: i) INFER
Place: Speyer, London
year: 2011
No of pages:
ISBN 978-3-9814-328-0-0
category INFER Book Series
price 25 EUR

This volume originates from the INFER workshop on Entrepreneurship in the Global Economy: Economics, Innovation, Competition and Social Change held at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca on 22-23 October 2010. The aim of the workshop was to provide a platform for researchers and academics from all over the world to present their research and development activities in Entrepreneurship and Economics.

The volume records the refereed papers presented at the workshop by researchers from different parts of the world, namely from Italian universities (University of Salerno, University of Naples Federico II), Hungarian universities (University of Miskolc) and several Romanian universities (West University of Timișoara, Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest and Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca).   

Files to download:

• cover page: Coverpage.JPG
• : Preface and Contents.pdf

 

Is there Clustering among the Eurozone Economies? Evidence from how the EU’s New Member States are Converging

Author: Andrew Hughes Hallett Christian Richter
Vol.: Journal of Economic Policy Reform 14 (2), pp. 127-150
Publishing house: ii) Various Peer Reviewed Journals
Place: Various
year: 2011
No of pages: 14
ISBN
category Origninal Article
price EUR

Optimal Currency Area theory stresses the importance of the co-movement of business cycles among Eurozone member states for a successful common currency. In this paper, we show how to decompose economic cycles in a time-frequency framework in order to compare the coherences and phase shifts for Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Germany and France. We find that, there has been some convergence on the Eurozone economy at short cycle lengths, but little convergence in long cycles. We argue that this shows evidence of divergence in the Eurozone into two groups: a German cluster and the periphery economies.

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Labour Migration in the Enlarged EU: A New Economic Geography Approach

Author: d Artis Kancs
Vol.: Journal of Economic Policy Reform 14 (2), pp. 171-188
Publishing house: ii) Various Peer Reviewed Journals
Place: Various
year: 2011
No of pages: 18
ISBN
category Origninal Article
price EUR

This paper studies the impact of migration policy liberalisation on international labour migration in the enlarged EU in a structural NEG approach. The liberalisation of migration policy would induce an additional 1.80 - 2.98 percent of the total EU workforce to change their country of location, with most of migrant workers relocating from the East to the West. The average net migration rate is decreasing in the level of integration, suggesting that from an economic point of view no regulatory policy responses are necessary to labour migration in the enlarged EU.

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Real Economic Activity Leading Indicators; Should we have paid more attention?

Author: Geraldine Ryan Edward Shinnick
Vol.: Journal of Economic Policy Reform 14 (2), pp. 105-125
Publishing house: ii) Various Peer Reviewed Journals
Place: Various
year: 2011
No of pages: 21
ISBN
category Origninal Article
price EUR

The ability to predict business cycle activity is an invaluable skill for governments and policy makers alike, especially before an economy enters a downturn. We analyse causality relationships between key leading economic indicators and economic growth for three countries from 1970 to 2010. We find that while many indicators do not help explain current movements in GDP growth, lags of these indicators do. In addition, the direction of the change and the size of the change in the lagged economic indicators are very important in many cases.  This is particularly true for housing indicators.

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Chinese Competition in OECD Markets: Impact on the Export Position and Export Strategy of OECD Countries

Author: Filip Abraham Jan van Hove
Vol.: Journal of Economic Policy Reform 14 (2), pp. 151-170
Publishing house: ii) Various Peer Reviewed Journals
Place: Various
year: 2011
No of pages: 20
ISBN
category Origninal Article
price EUR

China has been rapidly increasing the exports of manufactured products to OECD markets. In this paper we obtain evidence that the rise of China decreases the export market shares of OECD countries in other OECD markets. We also assess strategies of OECD countries to respond to increasing Chinese competition. OECD countries that upgrade the quality of their export goods strengthen their export position.  The evidence for a strategy of variety expansion is less convincing. These conclusions hold for total manufacturing trade. At the sectoral level, the impact of variety expansion and quality upgrading appears to be very heterogeneous.

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Is there a link between homeownership and unemployment? Evidence from German regional data

Author: Oliver Lerbs
Vol.: Special Issue International Economics and Economic Policy (fortcoming)
Publishing house: ii) Various Peer Reviewed Journals
Place: Various
year: 2011
No of pages: 20
ISBN
category Origninal Article
price EUR

Using German regional data for 1998, 2002 and 2006, this study examines the Oswald hypothesis, the conjecture that high levels of homeownership are linked to inferior outcomes in the labor market. Applying a set of control variables, three different econometric models are specified and estimated: a cross-sectional model, a pooled data model, and a model taking into account unobserved regional heterogeneity. Once unobserved regional effects are accounted for, the findings are consistent with Oswald’s hypothesis. The economic significance of the relationship is at best marginal, however.

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