Several recent studies have used network methods to explore the spatial spillovers within cities. This column adds to this literature by exploring how the spatial and managerial networks in Budapest influence firms’ import decisions. A peer in the same building with import experience from a specific country has a strong positive effect on the probability that a firm will start importing from that country. These findings point to the importance of social multipliers in facilitating the diffusion of good business practices.
A key function of financial markets is to share risks, and thus to mitigate the transmission of shocks to the real economy. This column analyses one historical setup in which risk-sharing possibilities in financial markets suddenly increased – the creation of the first central clearing counterparty in 1882 in France in the market for coffee futures. The ability to better hedge coffee prices had real effects and increased trade flows Europe-wide.
The majority of businesses in the UK report that Brexit is a source of uncertainty. This column uses survey responses from around 3,000 businesses to evaluate the level and impact of this uncertainty. It finds that Brexit uncertainty has already reduced growth in investment by 6 percentage points and employment by 1.5 percentage points, and is likely to reduce future UK productivity by half of a percentage point.
Traditional absolute valuation methods can’t be applied to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. This column instead applies relative valuation models to crypto-assets, leveraging Metcalfe’s theory of communication system valuation. Preliminary results show that the network value to Metcalfe ratio is relatively successful at identifying periods when Bitcoin was over-and undervalued.
The extent to which tax policies influence the amount of labour that private households supply has been at the centre of many public policy debates. Within married couples, joint versus separate taxation may be one factor that contributes to differences in household labour supply. This column uses a model that closely reproduces the changes in married women’s labour supply in the US and Europe between the early 1980s and 2016 to show that taxes are indeed a major factor shaping the labour supply of married women.
Other Recent Columns:
- Relative valuation of distributed ledger technologies
- Firm sorting and agglomeration
- On risk and black swans in emerging markets
- Automation and job displacement in emerging markets
- Global trends in interest rates
- Abortion laws and women’s health
- Commuting time and family labour supply decisions
- The lasting impact of the Taiping Rebellion
- Aggregating labour supply elasticities
- The minimum wage, income tax credits, and criminal recidivism
- Sovereign debt, banks, and firms’ investment in Italy
- Cryptocurrencies: Financial stability and fairness
- Competition with network effects in bike-sharing
- The Commission's Autumn 2018 Forecast
- The not-so-generalised effects of the Generalised System of Preferences
- Central bank balance sheets and monetary policy
- Politics in the Facebook era
- New eBook: The economics of the Great War: A centennial perspective
- Mapping the childhood roots of social mobility
- Legal clauses and sovereign bond pricing in the euro area
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23 - 23 November 2018 / London / Morgan Stanley
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26 - 26 November 2018 / Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria / Vienna University of Economics and Business and Agenda Austria
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13 - 15 December 2018 / Seoul, South Korea / Asian and Australasian Society of Labour Economics (AASLE)
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15 - 15 March 2019 / London, Royal Society / UK Network of Environmental Economists (UKNEE)
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28 - 29 March 2019 / European Central Bank, Frankfurt / European Central Bank and the University of Ohio
