Time Series Evidence Research Articles

The Role of Unemployment in the Rise in Alternative Work Arrangements

The share of U.S. workers in alternative work arrangements has increased substantially in recent decades. Micro longitudinal analyses show that unemployed workers are much more likely to transition into alternative work arrangements than other workers. Macro time-series evidence shows that weak labor market conditions lead to an increase in non-traditional work. But the estimated magnitudes imply that the Great Recession and high unemployment in the 2000s can account for only a modest part of the rise in alternative work. Secular factors associated with rising inequality and technological changes making it easier to contract out work appear to be the driving forces.

Does Financial Development Lead to Poverty Reduction in China? Time Series Evidence

The impact of financial development on poverty reduction has received attention in the literature recently. While the connection between financial development and poverty may appear straight forward in theory, in empirics it may be much complicated. This study attempted at empirically assessing the causal links between financial development and poverty reduction in China for the period 1985–2014. The study used the Toda-Yamamoto causality test to avoid pretesting bias that has featured majority of the existing studies. The study utilized two standard proxies for financial development, namely: the domestic private credit by banks as percentage of GDP, and money supply (M2) as percentage of GDP; and a standard proxy for poverty reduction namely: the household final consumption expenditure per capita growth (annual percentage). The study found a bidirectional causal flow between financial development and poverty reduction, implying that the causal flow between these important variables is independent of the proxy for financial development. This means that financial sector reforms and poverty reduction programs are more of “win-win” strategies in the case of China. Therefore policymakers in China should continue to implement robust financial sector reforms and poverty reduction strategies.

Does Financial Development Lead to Poverty Reduction in China? Time Series Evidence

The impact of financial development on poverty reduction has received attention in the literature recently. While the connection between financial development and poverty may appear straight forward in theory, in empirics it may be much complicated. This study attempted at empirically assessing the causal links between financial development and poverty reduction in China for the period 1985–2014. The study used the Toda-Yamamoto causality test to avoid pretesting bias that has featured majority of the existing studies. The study utilized two standard proxies for financial development, namely: the domestic private credit by banks as percentage of GDP, and money supply (M2) as percentage of GDP; and a standard proxy for poverty reduction namely: the household final consumption expenditure per capita growth (annual percentage). The study found a bidirectional causal flow between financial development and poverty reduction, implying that the causal flow between these important variables is independent of the proxy for financial development. This means that financial sector reforms and poverty reduction programs are more of “win-win” strategies in the case of China. Therefore policymakers in China should continue to implement robust financial sector reforms and poverty reduction strategies.

Compositional Changes in Public Expenditure and Economic Growth: Time Series Evidence from Pakistan

The role of government in achieving economic growth through its fiscal policy, particularly spending policy cannot be overlooked. Investigation of public spending policy and its transmission mechanism to sustainable growth is imperative to the ultimate objective of welfare maximization. This study aims to identify the growth-oriented components of public expenditure as it seems useful to know the contribution of each component of spending towards the objective of economic growth. The study adopts the Kocherlakota and Yi's (1997) model as modified by Colombier (2008) to carry out the empirical analysis. To this end, ARDL is employed on annual data that ranges from 1973 to 2014 to estimate both the long-run and short-run dynamics between public expenditure composition and economic growth in Pakistan. The results indicate that public development expenditures are growth-oriented, while current expenditures reduce economic growth. Thus sustainable economic growth and sustainable development can only be materialized by changing the composition of public spending in favor of development expenditure. Since Pakistan is in the dire need of infrastructure and energy, therefore, allocation of more funds to Public Sector Development Programs (PSDP) are expected to add directly to growth on one hand and set a crowding-in effect for private investments—thereby enhancing growth indirectly—on the other hand

Unpacking services trade during the Great Trade Collapse: time series evidence for the US

This study investigates the apparent resilience of services trade during the 2008–2009 global recession by analyzing the time-series behavior of aggregate US services exports and imports over 1987–2014. It finds evidence of structural instability in the long-run trade equations but little evidence it is coincident with the global recession. It also uncovers a distinct pattern in the income elasticity of business services trade: a large long-run value but a significantly smaller short-run value. Combined with its large weight in total US services trade, the limited short-run demand response of business services trade dampened the effect of the economic downturn on aggregate services trade. Far from being an anomaly, the response of US services trade to the 2008–2009 global recession was consistent with its time-series and compositional characteristics.

The Economics of Foreign Aid: Time Series Evidence from a Less Developed Country (LDC)

Empirical literature on aid-growth nexus mostly centered within cross-country framework exploiting typical ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation. As a result, scarcity prevails studies empirically examine country-specific causes of aid-growth nexus exercising distinct methods. This study aims to fill this gap, taking the case of Bangladesh- a leading aid recipient country. Empirical findings based on vector error correction modeling and Granger causality test unearth absence of long-run and short-run causality of aid on GDP growth. Therefore, this study argues that although aid remains a major component of LDCs macroeconomic framework; however, it is yet to emerge as a significant player in their economic growth.

Is per capita energy use stationary? Time series evidence for the EMU countries

This study examines the stationary properties of per capita energy use in the 19 Eurozone member countries by using annual data over 1960–2013 period. We utilize the Clemente et al. unit root test that determines structural breaks. Empirical results show that most of the country series does not reject the unit root null hypothesis at the 5% significance level, both in the case of additive outlier and of innovative outlier. Therefore, our empirical findings provide significant evidence that energy use is nonstationary in almost all Eurozone countries. For the policy makers, it is necessary to pay attention to energy use series.

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Labor Reallocation, Employment, and Earnings: Vector Autoregression Evidence

An increasing number of data sources have measured the components of reallocation of jobs across employers and workers across jobs. Whether and how job reallocation across employers and excess worker “churn” affect other measures of the health of the U.S. economy remains an open question. In this paper, we present time series evidence for the U.S. 1993-2013 and consider the relationship between labor reallocation, employment, and earnings using a vector autoregression (VAR) framework. We find that labor market churn Granger-causes higher employment and lower unemployment, while job destruction does the opposite. We also find more limited evidence that churn and job destruction predict increased earnings, although this is not found for all earnings measures.

The Time - Varying Natural Rate of Interest and Its Fundamental Determinants: Time Series Evidence from Turkey

In this study, by estimating the natural rate of interest, its relationship with key macroeconomic variables is analyzed using the time series data obtained from Turkey. As a first step, together with the natural rate of interest, the potential levels of output, prices and foreign exchange rate are estimated by using the Kalman Filter algorithm and then the related gap levels of each variable representing the deviations from their potentials are determined. As a second step of the study, the effects of output, price and exchange rate gaps on the interest rate gap are analyzed by using cointegration and error correction methodologies and the causality relationship among variables are examined. The main conclusion of the current study is that there is significant causality relationship between the interest rate gap, output, price and exchange rate gaps.

Government Spending Policy Uncertainty and Economic Activity: U.S. Time Series Evidence

In this paper, I empirically examine the effects of uncertainty about government spending policy on economic activity using U.S. time series data. To this end, I constructed government spending policy uncertainty indexes and estimate proxy SVAR model. Proxy SVAR model with constructed indexes shows that an increase in government spending policy uncertainty has negative, sizable, and prolonged effects on economic activity. Moreover, the results imply that the commonly adopted recursive SVAR model in literature on policy uncertainty systematically underestimates the adverse effect of government spending policy uncertainty because of the endogeneity issue. One policy suggestion based on the empirical finding is clear announcement of future government spending path.

Is per capita energy use stationary? Time series evidence for the EMU countries

This study examines the stationary properties of per capita energy use in the 19 Eurozone member countries by using annual data over 1960–2013 period. We utilize the Clemente et al. unit root test that determines structural breaks. Empirical results show that most of the country series does not reject the unit root null hypothesis at the 5% significance level, both in the case of additive outlier and of innovative outlier. Therefore, our empirical findings provide significant evidence that energy use is nonstationary in almost all Eurozone countries. For the policy makers, it is necessary to pay attention to energy use series.

Schumpeterian and semi‐endogenous productivity growth explanations

AbstractThis paper examines the nature and sources of productivity growth in South African manufacturing sectors, from an international comparative perspective. On panel data estimations, we find that the evidence tends to support Schumpeterian explanations of productivity growth for a panel of countries including both developed and developing countries, and a panel of South African manufacturing sectors. By contrast, semi‐endogenous productivity growth is supported for a panel of OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) manufacturing sectors. However, we also report evidence that suggests that sectors are not homogeneous. For this reason, time series evidence may be more reliable than panel data. Time series evidence for South Africa suggests that prospects for the sustained productivity growth associated with Schumpeterian innovation processes, is restricted to a narrow set of sectors. For the OECD manufacturing sectors, both semi‐endogenous and Schumpeterian growth finds support. Schumpeterian growth is present for a larger number of sectors than for South Africa, and is most prevalent in the North American economies.

Monetary Policy and the Stock Market: Time-Series Evidence

We construct a slope factor from changes in federal funds futures of different horizons. Slope predicts stock returns at the weekly frequency: faster monetary policy easing positively predicts excess returns. Investors can achieve increases in weekly Sharpe ratios of 20% conditioning on the slope factor. The tone of speeches by the FOMC chair correlates with the slope factor. Slope predicts changes in future interest rates and forecast revisions of professional forecasters. Our findings show that the path of future interest rates matters for asset prices, and monetary policy affects asset prices throughout the year and not only at FOMC meetings.

The Impact of the Exchange Rate Volatility Upon Us Bilateral Trade Growth: A Time Series Evidence

This study investigates the effect of the increased exchange rate volatility upon bilateral trade flows of the US with Japan, Canada and the UK, over the last three decades. It analyses and critically discusses the divergence of theoretical predictions that explain the direction of this effect. Subsequently, this study deliberatively adopts a bilateral, time series econometric approach for allowing exchange rate volatility effects to diverge across countries in view of an empirical and theoretical ambiguity in addressing this issue. Additionally, it considers different measures for exchanges rates in order to check the robustness of the effect under investigation as well as it uses a set of different model equations for assuring that results do not depend only on the specifications chosen. The exchange rate volatility is found to impact negatively upon US/Canada and positively upon US/Japan and US/UK bilateral trade flows during the period 1985/Q1-2014/Q4. Different measures of the exchange rates and, hence, of their volatility achieved robust results across models for each country. However, bilateral trade flows seem to coincide in magnitudes but differ in directions across countries. Results in this study go in line with those supporting mixed directions of the effect of the exchange rate volatility upon trade, which are far common in the empirical literature. Moreover, results are found to be somewhat statistically significant for Canada and the UK, while not for Japan. Finally, this study provides a possible explanation that can account for supporting the lack of convergence of directions across studies and researchers.

The effect of corporate governance on firm value and profitability: Time-series evidence from Turkey

We study the corporate governance practices of Turkish public firms from 2006 to 2012, relying on hand-collected data covering the vast majority of listed firms. We build a Turkey Corporate Governance Index, TCGI, composed of subindices for board structure, board procedure, disclosure, ownership, and shareholder rights. TCGI predicts higher market value (with firm fixed effects) and higher firm-level profitability with firm random effects. The principal subindex which predicts higher market value and profitability, and drives the results for TCGI as a whole, is disclosure subindex. We also study the determinants of firms' governance and find that most firm-specific factors have little effect on firms' governance choices.

The Effect of Corporate Governance on Firm Market Value and Profitability: Time-Series Evidence from Turkey

We study the corporate governance practices of Turkish public firms from 2006 to 2012, relying on hand-collected data covering the vast majority of listed firms. We build a Turkey Corporate Governance Index, TCGI, composed of subindices for board structure, board procedure, disclosure, ownership, and shareholder rights. TCGI predicts higher market value (with firm fixed effects) and higher firm-level profitability with firm random effects. The principal subindex which predicts higher market value and profitability, and drives the results for TCGI as a whole, is disclosure subindex. We also study the determinants of firms' governance and find that most firm-specific factors have little effect on firms’ governance choices.In a related project, The Effect of Business Group Governance on Group Market Value and Profitability: Time-Series Evidence from Turkey, http://ssrn.com/abstract=2277768, we study the effect of business group-level corporate governance on group level market value and profitability.

Concentration-response functions for ozone in health impact assessment- time-series evidence systematic review and subsequent expert committee recommendations

Concentration-response functions for ozone in health impact assessment- time-series evidence systematic review and subsequent expert committee recommendations

Financial structure and economic performance in selected African countries: time series evidence

In this paper, the authors investigate the long-debated question of whether or not a country’s financial structure matters for economic performance and, if so, how exactly it matters. The study uses the Johansen cointegration and vector error correction modelling framework within a country-specific setting to examine empirically the existence of a long-run equilibrium relationship between the financial structure of a country and per capita GDP and the causality thereof. The empirical assessment is based on evidence from selected African countries over the period 1971-2013, notably Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa. Firstly, cointegration test results reported in this paper show that there exists a strong relationship between the financial structure of Egypt and South Africa, and per capita GDP in these countries. However, such a relationship is weak in Nigeria, mainly attributable to its low level of financial development and the possibility of the natural resource curse emanating from the oil industry. Secondly, the evidence also strongly suggests that the nature of the relationship between the financial structure of Egypt and South Africa and per capita GDP is positive, albeit based on different measures of financial structure. In Egypt, financial structure is measured by the S-Size ratio, while, in South Africa, it is proxied by the S-Activity ratio. In Nigeria, there is no evidence suggesting that the country’s financial structure influences per capita GDP. Lastly, coefficients of the error correction term for all three countries are low, suggesting inefficiencies in the financial system and possible rigidities within the economies

Volatility and Growth with Recursive Preferences

This paper studies the relationship between volatility and long-run growth in a complete market economy with human capital accumulation and Epstein-Zin preferences. There is both cross-country and time-series evidence that volatility is associated with lower growth. Matching this evidence has proved a challenge for growth models with no market failures as they tend to predict the opposite for values of risk aversion higher than unity. However in our model, risk aversion and intertemporal elasticity of substitution are allowed to move independently of each other, and when both are relatively high or relatively low, the relationship between volatility and growth is negative. Indeed this is the case for parametrizations of preferences in line with the literature.