Journal of International Commerce, Economics and Policy

This paper examines the effect of trade policy space on production diversification, and particularly on industrialization. We define trade policy space as the extent of constraints imposed by non-trade obligations, and possibly bilateral and regional trade agreements on the current trade policy stance. Thus, the lower the extent of these constraints, the higher is the available trade policy space to promote production diversification and particularly on industrialization. The empirical analysis uses a sample of 159 countries, over the period 1995–2015, and shows that trade policy space is conducive to production diversification and industrialization, although the effect could vary across sub-samples.

The Zero Lower Bound (ZLB) on short nominal interest rates has imposed serious constraint on stimulating and stabilizing economy of major central banks. Analysis of monetary policy by Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models under the existence of ZLB has also been an important issue from both practical and academic views for central banks and macroeconomists. However, the nonlinearity of ZLB constraint makes linear solution and estimation techniques of DSGE models unreliable and impractical.

In many recent empirical works, it has been proved that the shadow rate can be used as an accurate proxy to represent the stance of unconventional monetary policy in the ZLB environment. We use shadow rate to estimate a medium-scale DSGE model based on the theoretical foundation proposed by Wu and Zhang (2016). A shadow rate New Keynesian model (No. w22856). National Bureau of Economic Research, and conduct counterfactual simulation exercises to quantify the macroeconomic effects of unconventional monetary policy implemented by Bank of Japan (BoJ). Compared with the estimation results of pre-ZLB sub-sample (1980Q1–1998Q4), the structural parameters estimated from full-sample (1980Q1–2016Q3) with the shadow rate still have very reasonable values that are consistent with most related medium-scale DSGE literature. The statistical properties of model dynamics implied by two groups of estimation are also very close. Counterfactual simulation shows that without the unconventional monetary policy, macroeconomic variables would have worse performance than their actual realizations.

This study explored the impact of income inequality, household energy consumption, government expenditure, and investment on carbon dioxide emissions at the household level over the period 1970–2015 in the United Kingdom. The study applied Clemente–Montanes–Reyes unit root test to identify structural break in the time series. Further, the cointegrating relationship of the time series observations was explored by applying the autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) (linear) bounds test approach along with the nonlinear ARDL for making fruitful comparisons in the long-run relationship among the variables. The paper used Bayer–Hanck combined cointegration method for robustness test in the cointegrating methods. In addition, the causality analysis was explored using the Toda–Yamato (1995) method of Granger causality. The results confirmed the existence of cointegration among the variables.The estimated NARDL results show that in the long run the negative asymmetric impact of the income inequality is stronger than the positive impact. The paper concludes that there is an urgent need to reduce income inequality in the United Kingdom to improve equitable consumption of energy at the household level. Last the causality test shows that there exists unidirectional causality from inequality transmission to carbon emissions.

This study extends previous literature by examining the effect of extremely large to extremely small changes in the exchange rate volatility on the US exports to developing countries such as Brazil, India, Mexico, and South Africa. We use novel approach called multiple threshold nonlinear ARDL (MTNARDL) and compare its results with ARDL and nonlinear ARDL models. The ARDL model supports insignificant results, whereas standard nonlinear ARDL model indicates asymmetric effect of exchange rate volatility on the US exports to Mexico only. Finally, the MTNARLD model indicates that in the short run, the effect of extremely large changes in exchange rate volatility does not significantly differ from the effect of small changes in exchange rate volatility on the US exports to all sample countries. Whereas in the long run, the effect of extremely large changes in exchange rate volatility is significantly different from the effect of small changes in exchange rate volatility on the US exports to all sample countries. The findings of this novel methodology suggest different policies in the long run and short run.

Shocks to global interest rates or risk cause capital outflows for countries outside the core of the global financial system. These outflows lead to downward pressure on exchange rates and financial sector stress, in addition to having general contractionary effects. To defend the exchange rate, the appropriate internal response is a fiscal/monetary contraction. To maintain full employment and financial stability, the appropriate internal response is fiscal/monetary expansion. The contradiction in these policy responses implies policymakers prioritize hitting either internal or external targets after these shocks; but how do they decide? Using a fixed effects model and data from 100 emerging market and developing economies from 1990 to 2012, we show that the relative sensitivity of interest groups to these policy responses influences which response occurs. We find some evidence that this effect is stronger in the presence of more political-institutional constraints. Using a strategic probit model, we also find some evidence that this policy response influences the relative likelihood of banking crises versus currency crashes after these global shocks.

An overwhelming increase in household debt in the last decade has stirred researchers to explore the determinants of this phenomena, especially the role of the labor market. This paper comes to identify these determinants using the macro panel data from Asia Pacific countries for 1994–2016 and dynamic heterogeneous panel data analysis. The empirical results found that household consumption, housing price index, and labor force have a long-run positive relationship with household debt. In contrast, the unemployment rate and dependency ratio have a long-run negative relationship with household debt. This implies that when consumption, housing price, and labor force increase, then the household debt will increase, and when the unemployment rate and dependency ratio increase, the household debt will decrease. Also, in the short-run, public debt does affect private consumption, and it is not different among countries. The labor market, as represented by the unemployment rate, dependency ratio, and labor force, has a strong effect on the household debt in the long-run. Based on these findings, the government should pay more attention to the household debt related to property and commodity markets because they expose the short-run volatility and create problems for the long-term.