|
|
|
|
|
NEW RESOURCES Library Bulletin Issue # 2 March 2006 |
|
|
A biweekly e-bulletin for the latest print and electronic resources as they are added to the AUBG Library collections. Access is only via university net. |
|
|
Compustat Global
Authoritative U.S. and International Fundamental Financial Data | |
|
e-Books from the World Bank e-Library
Reforming Regional-Local Finance in Russia | |
|
e-Books from the World Bank e-Library Reducing Poverty through Growth and Social Policy Reform in Russia | |
|
| |
|
e-Books from the World Bank e-Library
From Inside Brazil | |
|
World Bank e-publication The World Bank Research Observer 18 (1), March 2003 | |
|
Economic Papers from the CEPR Discussion Papers DP5563 Trade and Growth with Heterogenous Firms Authors: Richard Baldwin, Frédéric
Robert-Nicoud Date of Publication: March 2006 Abstract: This paper explores the impact of trade on growth
when firms are heterogeneous. We find that greater openness produces
anti-and pro-growth effects. The Melitz-model selection effects raises the
expected cost of introducing a new variety and this tends to slow the rate
of new-variety introduction and hence growth. The pro-growth effect stems
from the impact that freer trade has on the marginal cost of innovating. The
balance of the two effects is ambiguous with the sign depending upon the
exact nature of the innovation technology and its connection to
international trade in goods and ideas. We consider five special cases
(these include the Grossman-Helpman, the Coe-Helpman and Rivera-Batiz-Romer
models) two of which suggest that trade harms growth; the others predicting
the opposite. This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF)
format. | |
|
Economic Papers from the CEPR Discussion Papers DP5590
Debt, Deficits and Destabilizing Monetary Policy in
Open Economies URL: www.cepr.org/DP5590 Authors: Andreas Schabert, Sweder van Wijnbergen Date of Publication: March 2006 Programme
Area(s): IM Abstract: Blanchard (2005) suggested that active interest
rate policy might induce unstable dynamics in highly-indebted economies. We
examine this in a dynamic general equilibrium model where Calvo-type price
rigidities provide a rationale for inflation stabilization. Unstable
dynamics can occur when the CB is aggressively raising the interest rate in
response to higher expected inflation. The constraint on stabilizing
interest rate policy is tighter the higher the primary deficit and the more
open the economy is. If the government cannot borrow from abroad in its own
currency, stability requires interest rate policy to be accommodating
(passive). Inflation stabilization is nevertheless feasible if the CB uses
an instrument not associated with default risk, e.g. money supply. This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF) format. | |
|
Economic Papers from the CEPR
Discussion Papers
DP5571
From Farmers to Merchants, Voluntary Conversions
and Diaspora: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish History URL: www.cepr.org/DP5571 Author(s): Maristella Botticini, Zvi Eckstein Date of Publication: March 2006 Programme
Area(s): IEP, LE Abstract: From the end of the second century C.E., Judaism
enforced a religious norm requiring any Jewish father to educate his
children. We present evidence supporting our thesis that this exogenous
change in the religious and social norm had a major influence on Jewish
economic and demographic history. First, the high individual and community
cost of educating children in subsistence farming economies (2nd to 7th
centuries) prompted voluntary conversions, which account for a large share
of the reduction in the size of the Jewish population from about 4.5 million
to 1.2 million. Second, the Jewish farmers who invested in education, gained
the comparative advantage and incentive to enter skilled occupations during
the vast urbanization in the newly developed Muslim Empire (7th and 8th
centuries) and they actually did select themselves into these occupations.
Third, as merchants the Jews invested even more in education - a
pre-condition for the extensive mailing network and common court system that
endowed them with trading skills demanded all over the world. Fourth, the
Jews generated a voluntary Diaspora by migrating within the Muslim Empire,
and later to western Europe where they were invited to settle as high skill
intermediaries by local rulers. By 1200, the Jews were living in hundreds of
towns from England and Spain in the West to China and India in the East.
Fifth, the majority of world Jewry (about one million) lived in the Near
East when the Mongol invasions in the 1250s brought this region back to a
subsistence farming economy in which many Jews found it difficult to enforce
the religious norm regarding education, and hence, voluntarily converted,
exactly as it had happened centuries earlier. This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF) format. | |
|
Economic Papers from the CEPR Discussion Papers DP5574
Trade and Economic Geography: The Impact of EEC
Accession on the UK URL: www.cepr.org/DP5574 Authors: Henry G. Overman, L Alan Winters Date of Publication: March 2006 Programme
Area(s): IT Abstract: This paper combines establishment level production
data with international trade data by port to examine the impact of
accession to the EEC on the spatial distribution of UK manufacturing. We use
this data to test the predictions from economic geography models of how
external trade affects the spatial distribution of employment. Our results
suggest that accession changed the country-composition of UK trade and via
the port-composition induced an exogenous shock to the economic environment
in different locations. In line with theory, we find that better access to
export markets and intermediate goods increase employment while increased
import competition decreases employment. This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF) format. | |
|
Economic Papers from the CEPR Discussion Papers DP5575
On-the-Job Search and
Sorting URL: www.cepr.org/DP5575 Authors: Pieter A Gautier, Coen N
Teulings, Aico van Vuuren Date
of Publication: March 2006 Programme
Area(s): LE Abstract: We characterize the
equilibrium of a search model with a continuum of job and worker types, wage
bargaining, free entry of vacancies and on-the-job search. The decentralized
economy with monopsonistic wage setting yields too many vacancies and hence
too low unemployment compared to first best. This is due to a business-
stealing externality. Raising workers' bargaining power resolves this
inefficiency. Unemployment benefits are a second best alternative to this
policy. We establish simple relations between the losses in production due
to search frictions and wage differentials on the one hand and unemployment
on the other hand. Both can be used for empirical testing. This paper is available for
download in electronic (PDF) format. | |
|
Economic Papers from the CEPR Discussion Papers DP5580 Consumption and Real Exchange Rates with Incomplete
Markets and Non-Traded Goods URL: www.cepr.org/DP5580 Authors: Gianluca Benigno, Christoph Thoenissen Date of Publication: March 2006 Programme
Area(s): IM Abstract: This paper addresses the consumption-real exchange
rate anomaly. International real business cycle models based on complete
financial markets predict a unitary correlation between the real exchange
rate and the ratio of home to foreign consumption when subjected to supply
side shocks. In the data, this correlation is usually small and often
negative. This paper shows that this anomaly can be addressed by models that
have an incomplete financial market structure and a non-traded as well as
traded goods production sector. This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF) format. | |
|
Economic Papers from the CEPR
Discussion Papers
DP5581 Measuring and Explaining Management Practices
Across Firms and Countries URL: www.cepr.org/DP5581 Authors: Nicholas Bloom, John Van Reenen Date of Publication: March 2006 Programme
Area(s): LE Abstract: We use an innovative survey tool to collect
management practice data from 732 medium sized manufacturing firms in the
US, France, Germany and the UK. These measures of managerial practice are
strongly associated with firm-level productivity, profitability, Tobin's Q,
sales growth and survival rates. Management practices also display
significant cross-country differences with US firms on average better
managed than European firms, and significant within-country differences with
a long tail of extremely badly managed firms. We find that poor management
practices are more prevalent when (a) product market competition is weak
and/or when (b) family-owned firms pass management control down to the
eldest sons (primo geniture). European firms report lower levels of
competition, while French and British firms also report substantially higher
levels of primo geniture due to the influence of Norman legal origin and
generous estate duty for family firms. We calculate that product market
competition and family firms account for about half of the long tail of
badly managed firms and up to two thirds of the American advantage over
Europe in management practices. This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF)
format. | |
|
Economic Papers from the CEPR
Discussion Papers
DP5584
Fiscal Policy and Macroeconomic Stability Within a
Currency Union URL: http://www.cepr.org/DP5584 Authors: Tatiana Kirsanova, David Vines, Simon Wren-Lewis Date of Publication: March 2006 Programme
Area(s): IM Abstract: We analyse the stability of countries within a monetary union in the face of asymmetric shocks, using a simple but widely applicable model. We show that members of the union may be subject to severe, and possibly unstable, cycles following asymmetric shocks if there is a significant backward looking element in inflation behaviour, and if real interest rates influence the level of aggregate demand. This cyclical instability can be mitigated if fiscal policy in each member country reacts to inflation differences, but it can be aggravated if fiscal feedback on debt is too strong. This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF)
format. | |
|
Economic Papers from the CEPR
Discussion Papers
DP5587
Native-Migrant Differences in Risk Attitudes URL: http://www.cepr.org/DP5587 Authors: Holger Bonin, Amelie Constant, Konstantinos
Tatsiramos, Klaus F Zimmermann Date of Publication: March 2006 Programme
Area(s): LE Abstract: This paper questions the perceived wisdom that
migrants are more risk-loving than the native population. We employ a new
large German survey of direct individual risk measures to find that
first-generation migrants have lower risk attitudes than natives, which only
equalize in the second generation. This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF)
format. | |
|
Economic Papers from the CEPR
Discussion Papers
DP5588
On-Net and Off-Net Pricing on Asymmetric
Telecommunications Networks URL: http://www.cepr.org/DP5588 Author: Steffen Hoernig Date of Publication: March 2006 Programme
Area(s): IO Abstract: The differential between on-net and off-net prices,
for example on mobile telephony networks, is an issue that is hotly debated
between telecoms operators and regulators. Small operators contend that
their competitors' high off-net prices are anticompetitive. We show that if
the utility of receiving calls is taken into account, the equilibrium
pricing structures will indeed depend on firms' market shares. Larger firms
will charge higher off-net prices even without anticompetitive intent, both
under linear and two-part tariffs. Predative behavior would be accompanied
by even larger on-net / off-net differentials even if access charges are set
at cost. This paper is available for download in electronic (PDF)
format. | |
|
E-journals
Communications in Information and Systems (CIS) ISSN: 15257555 | |
|
Selected Internet Resources
A comprehensive index of every artist represented at hundreds of museum sites, image archives, and other online resources. 8,229 artists listed ; 2,186 art sites indexed ; access to 180,000 works of art (est.). The Artcyclopedia's custom search engine is already the fastest way to search the Net for information about fine artists. | |
|
Selected Internet Resources Encyclopedia of Religion and Society "The Encyclopedia of Religion and Society marks a unique venture in that it attempts to bring together in a single-volume compendium a state-of-the-art summary of the insights gained by the principal social sciences of religion: anthropology, psychology, and sociology. To do so is to take, admittedly, a "one-sided" approach to the religion-and-society nexus. One could perhaps consider an alternative posture, more ethical in nature—namely, one that considers what religions think about society. This would really be an encyclopedia of religious social ethics, and it is not within the scope of this project." Introduction by William H. Swatos, Jr. | |
|
Selected
Internet
Resources
The Bulgarian News Agency
(BTA) Bulgaria's national news agency was established by a decree issued by Prince Ferdinand I in 1898. The BTA is now a major and reliable source of information to the print and electronic media, the state bodies and NGOs in Bulgaria. FREE NEWS STORIES includes sections: Bulgaria, the Balkans, Today's special, press review and all topics.
| |
|
*Access is only via university net. Selection: Reference department For additional info libmail@aubg.bg | |
New Books