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Ce document de travail examine l’impact redistributif des politiques budgétaires au Brésil, au Chili, en Colombie, en Indonésie, au Mexique, au Pérou et en Afrique du Sud en utilisant la technique d’analyse d’incidence sur des données aux alentours de l’année 2010. L’impact de la redistribution est le plus important en Afrique du Sud, et le plus faible en Indonésie. La performance de la redistribution est principalement déterminée par l’effort redistributif (part de la dépense sociale dans le PIB de chaque pays) et par la mesure dans laquelle les taxes et transferts sont ciblés vers les plus pauvres et les impôts directs vers les plus riches. Les politiques budgétaires réduisent systématiquement les inégalités, mais pas la pauvreté. La dépense publique augmente la pauvreté au Brésil, en Colombie (au-delà même de la pauvreté mesurée avant redistribution) à cause de la forte taxation des biens élémentaires. L‘impact marginal des taxes directes, des transferts directs et des transferts en nature a toujours un impact progressif. L’impact marginal des taxes indirectes est régressif au Brésil, en Colombie, en Indonésie et en Afrique du Sud. Les dépenses totales d’éducation sont plus favorables aux pauvres, sauf en Indonésie, où elles sont neutres en termes absolus. Les dépenses de santé sont plus favorables aux pauvres au Brésil, au Chili, en Colombie et en Afrique du Sud, globalement neutres en termes absolus et favorables aux pauvres en Indonésie et au Pérou.
Business cycle dynamics can be seen as footprints left by individual decision makers. Tracing those footprints we offer a novel, largely model independent and exogenous measure of the business cycle dynamics. This measure also, allows for distinguishing positive and negative shocks without prior estimation. Utilizing more than twentythousand observations of firms surveyed quarterly in the periods (1999-2006), we employ a Markov-chain approach combined with conventional time series econometrics for gauging the dynamics of business cycles. Since we start the analysis with firm level data we label our method the “bottom-up approach”.
We apply multivariate singular spectrum analysis to the study of US business cycle dynamics. This method provides a robust way to identify and reconstruct oscillations, whether intermittent or modulated. We show such oscillations to be associated with comovements across the entire economy. The problem of spurious cycles generated by the use of detrending filters is addressed and we present a Monte Carlo test to extract significant oscillations. The behavior of the US economy is shown to change significantly from one phase of the business cycle to another: the recession phase is dominated by a five-year mode, while the expansion phase exhibits more complex dynamics, with higher-frequency modes coming into play. We show that the variations so identified cannot be generated by random shocks alone, as assumed in “real” business-cycle models, and that endogenous, deterministically generated variability has to be involved.
Using the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), this paper documents how the returns to education and skill change with experience for a sample of 22 OECD countries. It does this within the framework of the Altonji and Pierret (2001) employer learning model, and therefore also tests the relevance of this theory in a wide range of countries using comparable data and a consistent methodology. Significant heterogeneity is found in the experience profiles of the returns to education and skill across countries, and convincing evidence in support of the employer learning theory is only found in a sub-set of the countries analysed. While these countries vary significantly from one another in terms of their labour market institutions and educational systems, the analysis does seem to suggest that employer learning is most common in those countries where employment protection legislation on temporary contracts is weak. This is consistent with a model in which temporary contracts allow employers to test and learn about young workers, and give them the flexibility to adjust wages in line with observed productivity.
JEL codes: J24, J32, D83
Keywords: Employer learning, returns to education, returns to skill
This paper presents long-term trade scenarios for the world economy up to 2060 based on a modelling approach that combines aggregate growth projections for the world with a detailed computable general equilibrium sectoral trade model. The analysis suggests that over the next 50 years, the geographical centre of trade will continue to shift from OECD to non-OECD regions reflecting faster growth in non-OECD countries. The relative importance of different regions in specific export markets is set to change markedly over the next half century with emerging economies gaining export shares in manufacturing and services. Trade liberalisation, including gradual removal of tariffs, regulatory barriers in services and agricultural support, as well as a reduction in transaction costs on goods, could increase global trade and GDP over the next 50 years. Specific scenarios of regional liberalisation among a core group of OECD countries or partial multilateral liberalisation could, respectively, raise trade by 4% and 15% and GDP by 0.6% and 2.8% by 2060 relative to the status quo. Finally, the model highlights that investment in education has an influence on trade and high-skill specialisation patterns over the coming decades. Slower educational upgrading in key emerging economies than expected in the baseline scenario could reduce world exports by 2% by 2060. Lower up-skilling in emerging economies would also slow down the restructuring towards higher value-added activities in these emerging economies.
JEL classification codes: E23, E27, F02, F17, F47
Keywords: General equilibrium trade model, long-term trade and specialisation patterns, trade liberalisation
This paper studies the cyclical behaviour of public social spending in 20 OECD countries observed over the period between 1982 and 2011. In view of the recent discussion on cutting the budget deficit, the paper pays particular attention to whether social spending is pro-cyclical or countercyclical, whether it changes asymmetrically during expansions and recessions and whether the asymmetric changes in social spending contribute to a drift in social expenditures over time. The links between social spending levels and key economic variables, such as economic growth, provide also a useful context for discussing current social expenditure trends. The estimates, based on a system-GMM estimator, suggest that an upward ratchet effect exists. The effect is robust to a large number of alternative specifications.
JEL classification: E32, E62, H50, I00
Keywords: Fiscal policy, economic cycles, social spending, ratchet effect