The Unassuming Economist

From a paper by Constantin Burgi, Shoghik Hovhannisyan, and Camilo Mondragon-Velez:

“Economic growth is often associated with welfare gains through job creation. However, the number and quality of new job opportunities created in a growing economy vary across countries and sectors, due in great part to changes in labor productivity. This paper provides estimates of country and sector-specific GDP-employment elasticities based on data from the past two decades, including an evaluation of the predictive power among alternative methodological approaches. The results show that employment elasticities of growth vary significantly across countries and sectors, but are in most cases below 1.0, implying that employment grows less than GDP due to increasing productivity. Across sectors, agriculture has mostly lower elasticity values, becoming negative for more than one-third of developing countries. In addition, increases in labor productivity are associated with reductions in informal employment. These empirical results are in line with the implications of a theoretical model about the relationship between GDP growth, job creation, and labor productivity in economies with varying levels of productivity and informality.”

From a paper by Aviral Kumar Tiwari, Mehmet Metin Damm, Halil Altıntaş and Festus Victor Bekun:

“This paper uses the dynamic connectedness framework to investigate the interrelationship between the decomposed oil supply, demand and risk shocks that Ready (2018) developed and the stock market returns of emerging market economies. For this purpose, we use daily data from 11 October 2001 to 5 April 2021. Novel empirical methodologies, including wavelet quantile correlation (WQC), cross-quantilogram analysis, nonparametric causality-in-quantile approaches, contemporaneous R² connectedness approach and generalized R² connectedness approaches, are employed. The results show that oil price fluctuations significantly impact the economic performance of emerging market economies, reflecting historical events. Demand price shocks are regarded as net transmitters within the system, whereas supply and risk price shocks are net receivers of spillovers. Concurrently, our findings indicate a considerable degree of dynamic connectedness among the stock markets of emerging market economies. In particular, the stock markets of Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina have been identified as net transmitters of spillovers. In contrast, the stock markets of Turkey, South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia and India are classified as net receivers of spillovers. Furthermore, we examine and document the advantages of diversified portfolios that include all sector indices, including oil price shocks and emerging market economy stock markets, in terms of portfolio performance. The insights offered here are valuable for investors and policymakers striving to enhance their strategic approaches in today’s interconnected global financial context. The results show that oil price fluctuations significantly impact the economic performance of emerging market economies and reflect historical events. Demand shocks affecting the stock market indices of Brazil, Argentina and Mexico tend to act as net spillover transmitters. In contrast, supply shocks affecting the stock market indices of Indonesia, South Korea, India, Turkey and Malaysia mainly act as net spillover receivers. Net pairwise interconnectedness analysis reveals that, except for crisis periods, interactions between financial markets or macroeconomic indicators are evenly distributed. Thus, systemic risk is lower, and markets act independently. Empirical findings obtained using WQC generally show the presence of negative correlations at long-time scales and low quantiles, which is considered an indicator of the safe-haven feature associated with the asset in question. The hedge feature is observed to be evident only at long time scales. The results of the cross-quantilogram analysis show mixed evidence of correlation in all stock indices, especially in the weekly lag structure, compared to daily and monthly lags. Finally, non-parametric Granger causality test results show that stock returns are insensitive to oil price fluctuations, making these markets attractive for investors seeking diversification strategies. These findings provide valuable recommendations for investors seeking sustainable equities in a volatile oil market.”

From a paper by Akhilesh Kumar Sharma, and Sushil Kumar Rai:

“The empirical results from the applied models do not confirm an inverse relationship between output growth and the unemployment rate with an unexpected positive sign of Okun’s coefficient. The evidence of preference for more capital-intensive techniques in the Indian economy is also strongly supported by the results of the expanded form of Okun’s law with a statistically significant positive coefficient of GDP and labour productivity.”

From a paper by Afees Salisu and Etsubdink Sileshi:

“In recent decades, many African countries have been experiencing structural transformation. During
this same period, these countries were witnessing unfavorable external balance. This has challenged
conventional wisdom as these two are considered to be moving in opposite directions. This study
examines the effect of the shift in sectoral composition of African economies on their external balance
position. Using balanced panel data for 38 countries from 2000 to 2022, we estimate the effect of
structural change measured by sectoral shares in value added to GDP on external balance (% GDP).
Our methodology includes both static and dynamic panel models. However the dynamic panel models(GMM) are found to be the appropriate ones. The results show that agricultural sector’s share of
GDP has a negative effect on external trade balance, while the industrial sector is found to have a
positive impact. These results are robust to various model specifications. For additional robustness
check, we also used control variables- foreign direct investment to GDP ratio and official exchange rate.
Our results are consistent in sign, magnitude of coefficients and significance levels. As far as external
trade balance is concerned, African countries should give the necessary support to the expansion of
industrial sector. We also advise future researches to examine the composition of the each sector in
Africa and its implication for the external balance.”

From a book chapter by Matthew Cole:

“We live in a world where services dominate employment and form an ever-greater share of GDP. What does the relative decline of manufacturing and the rise of services mean for the present and future of work? There is much debate regarding this question. Recent advances in ICT infrastructure, datafication and artificial intelligence have allowed for a degree of technological substitution in service work that was previously impossible. This chapter argues that recomposition of capital at both the national and global scales has reorganised production and expanded production networks to place certain services as a crucial engine of growth. It proceeds by introducing the concept of services in the classical political economy and labour process tradition. It then addresses one of the key debates around the nature of services under capitalism and deindustrialisation. The chapter concludes that how technological and institutional change will impact the future of work will ultimately depend on the balance of power between capital and labour.”