The Unassuming Economist

From a paper by Haibo Li, Jiayin Sun, and Ningxin Qiu:

“Previous research shows that the impacts of inflation expectations on consumer behaviour are mixed. Using a survey of 2,500 Chinese households, this letter finds that rising inflation expectations increase the purchase intention of durable goods, such as housing and cars, while reducing the demand for easily substitutable goods, such as mobile phones. The effect exhibits significant heterogeneity across income and age groups: higher-income and younger consumers are more inclined to increase investment-oriented spending, while lower-income and older groups adopt more cautious consumption behaviours. These findings also highlight the heterogeneous effects of inflation expectations on consumer welfare across demographic characteristics.”

From a paper by Ernest Alang Wung, Joslanie Douanla Tameko, and Muhamadu Awal Kindzeka Wirajing:

“This study investigates the effect of external dependency on structural change in 54 African countries between 1990 and 2021. The Two-Step System Generalized Method of Moments strategy is adopted to control for potential endogeneity problems. Findings reveal that structural change in Africa is strongly impaired by the level of external dependency. This is since all proxies of external dependency are negatively and statistically significant with all structural change proxies. For instance, under agricultural productivity, external debts stocks (EDS) give an eigen value (β) of 0.879, standard coefficient (SC) = 0.162, and p = 0.000; for external debt services (DSED), β = 0.240, SC = −0.040, and p = 0.972; and for personal remittances received (PRR), we have β = 0.764, SC = −0.133, and p = 0.031. Depicting that, the more African countries rely on the external world for change, the less they realize this change. The results remain consistent after accounting for income differences by segmenting African countries into low- and middle-income groups. As suggestions to policymakers, for structural change to concretely take place in Africa, the rate of external dependence should be limited, and resources in Africa and local methods of growth should be used rather than copying from the Western world. Though the results are valid across income groups and Africa, the case of countries could be more significant.”

From a paper by Emiliano Brancaccio, Fabiana De Cristofaro, and Raffaele Giammetti:

“The so-called ‘IMF-OECD consensus’ suggests that labour market deregulations increase employment and reduce unemployment. This paper presents a meta-analysis of research on this topic based on MAER-NET guidelines. We examine the relation between Employment Protection Legislation indexes on one hand, and employment and unemployment on the other. Among 53 academic papers published between 1990 and 2019, only 28 per cent support the consensus view, while the remaining 72 per cent report results that are ambiguous (21 per cent) or contrary to the consensus (51 per cent). The decline in support for the consensus view is particularly evident in the last decade. Our results are independent of the citations of papers examined, the impact factor of journals and the techniques used. A FAT-PET meta-regression model confirms these outcomes.”

From a paper by Nora Lustig and Andrea Vigorito:

“Inequality measures based on household surveys may be biased because they typically fail to capture incomes of the wealthy properly. The “missing rich” problem stems from several factors, including sampling errors, item and unit nonresponse, underreporting of income, and data preprocessing techniques like top coding. This paper presents and compares prominent correction approaches to address issues concerning the upper tail of the income distribution in household surveys. Correction approaches are classified based on the data source, distinguishing between those that rely solely on within-survey information and those that combine household survey data with external sources. We categorize the correction methods into three types: replacing, reweighting, and combining reweighting and replacing. We identify twenty-two different approaches that have been applied in practice. We show that both levels and trends can be quite sensitive to the approach and provide broad guidelines on choosing a suitable correction approach.”

From a paper by Khadijah Iddrisu, Joshua Yindenaba Abor, Osman Issah, and Felix Owusu Gyebi:

“This chapter investigates the crucial role of monetary policy in shaping economic outcomes and promoting inclusive growth, particularly during periods of economic uncertainty. It begins by defining monetary policy and detailing the tools used by central banks, including unconventional methods like quantitative easing (QE) and forward guidance. The discussion highlights the importance of central bank independence (CBI) for protecting policy decisions from political influence and bolstering market credibility. It addresses the challenges central banks face in implementing monetary policy and provides an overview of inclusive growth. The chapter further explores how monetary policy impacts inclusive growth, examining its specific role during economic uncertainty. It also analyses the challenges, opportunities and future prospects of monetary policy in fostering inclusive growth amid economic instability. This thorough analysis emphasises the dynamic nature of monetary policy and its essential function in stabilising economies while advancing equity and development.”