This paper identifies and discusses the regional heterogeneity of the Brazilian great economic recession of 2014-16 Specifically, we outline a state-level chronology of the recession by applying the Bry-Boschan algorithm, using the states' monthly index of economic activity as reference variables The results indicate that the recession lasted 32 months, and the economic activity fell (peak to trough) 11 8% for the average Brazilian state However, we find a significant heterogeneity regarding timing, duration, and magnitude of the recession -- on average, more industrialized states (with greater participation of the agricultural sector) entered before (after) and stayed more (less) in a state of recession We also find the dispersion, severity, and diffusion of the 2014-16 recession across states was far more significant than in the 2008-09 economic recession Finally, preliminary data suggests that the significant and widespread drop in regional economic activity following the COVID-19 shock is 12 7% and 77 1% larger than those observed in the 2014-16 and the 2008-09 recessions, respectively Our results have critical implications for policymakers

Research into the effects of fiscal rules has so far focused on their budgetary impact. Possible unwanted side effects of having fiscal rules have gone largely unexplored. This is unfortunate since such side effects are highly probable. For instance, governments attempting to abide by a fiscal rule might curb social expenditure; and this could lead to a higher level of income inequality. We test this hypothesis with data from the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID) and a new set of fiscal rules dummy variables for EU countries. We find that after 'hard' rules, i.e. rules that are reinforced by sanctions and/or automatic correction mechanisms, have been in place for several years, the amount of redistribution in a country declines, leading to an increase in inequality based on disposable income measures.

This study assesses the impact of rice price shocks on household welfare and poverty in rural Bangladesh using the first- and second-order welfare measures derived from an indirect utility function. This article contributes to this literature by accounting for the heterogeneous price increase across each household and a differential price increase for net buyers and net-sellers. By utilizing 2015 Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey (BIHS) data, this article finds that a large increase in rice price reduces the welfare of the households and increases the poverty rate in rural Bangladesh. A 35% increase in retail price and a 28.5% increase in wholesale rice prices lead to a 1.72 and 1.43 percentage points increase in the headcount rate (HCR) of poverty in rural Bangladesh estimated using the upper and lower poverty lines, respectively. The decomposition of total households into net sellers and net buyers reveal that households who are net buyers fall into poverty more in number than the net seller who moves out of poverty. The results of this study would be valuable inputs for policymakers to design policies that protect the group of households who get hurt from rice price shocks.

Modeling national Olympic medal counts has received much attention in recent research. National Olympic medal counts, however, may change after the event as a result of the fight against doping. We show for the Olympic Games that took place in Beijing 2008 that ex-post forfeitures of Olympic medals are predictable, at the aggregate level, using standard variables commonly used in earlier research to model national Olympic medal counts. The predictability of forfeitures of Olympic medal casts doubts that the international anti-doping system works efficiently

This paper applies a non-parametric tool, the relative distribution, to identify patterns of changes in Brazil's household income distribution over the period 2001-2011. Despite the sharp decline in income inequality recently experienced by the country, we are able to document an increased income polarization, which has particularly affected households below the median. The results call directly into question the future sustainability and equity of existing social programs dealing with the unequal distribution of resources.

In this paper, we address the issue of spurious correlation in the production of health in a systematic way. Spurious correlation entails the risk of linking health status to medical (and nonmedical) inputs when no links exist. This note first presents the bounds testing procedure as a method to detect and avoid spurious correlation. It then applies it to a recent contribution by Lichtenberg (2004), which relates longevity in the United States to pharmaceutical innovation and public health care expenditure. The results of the bounds testing procedure show longevity to be linearly related to these two factors. Therefore, the estimates reported by Lichtenberg (2004) cannot be said to be result of spurious correlation, to the contrary, they very likely reflect an effective relationship, at least for the United States.

The Atlantic bonito rush experienced in Turkey in the Fall of 2005 coincides with the avian influenza food scare that happened exactly at the same time-period in the country. In this research using time-series techniques, we investigate how the food scare and the excess fish caught jointly influence the demand for meat products in Turkey.

The main aim of this paper is to compare the size and size-adjusted power properties of four residual-based and one maximum-likelihood-based panel cointegration tests with the help of Monte Carlo simulations. In this study the panel-‰, the group‰, the panel-t, the group-t statistics of Pedroni (1999) and the standardized LR-bar statistic of Larsson et al. (2001) are considered. The simulation results indicate that the panel-t and standardized LR-bar statistic have the best size and power properties among the flve panel cointegration test statistics evaluated. Finally, the Fisher Hypothesis is tested with two difierent data sets for OECD countries. The results point out the existence of the Fisher relation.

Standard economic analysis assumes the sets of public and private goods to be exogenously given. Yet societies very often choose the public-private mix, using resources to convert seemingly private goods into ones with public goods characteristics and vice versa. In practice, we see a bewilderingly large variety of public-private mixes across societies. This papers advances an analysis of the choice of the public-private mix in the framework of voluntary contributions to public goods provision, by envisaging that, starting from a situation where all goods have private characteristics, some goods can be changed to have public goods characteristics at a cost (by purchasing a Samuelson machine). It characterizes the jointly optimal choice of the public-private mix and the efficient supply or not of the public goods in the mix. This characterization generates a number of testable predictions on the public-private mix, and on the prevalence of free riding

In this note, we propose a simple infinite horizon of elections with two candidates. We suppose that the government policy presents some degree of inertia, i.e. a new government cannot completely change the policy implemented by the incumbent. When the policy inertia is strong enough, no party can win the elections a consecutive infinite number of times.