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Do Larger Firms Exert More Market Power? Markups and Markdowns along the Size Distribution
Matthias Mertens, Bernardo Mottironi
IWH-CompNet Discussion Papers,
No. 1,
2023
Abstract
Several models posit a positive cross-sectional correlation between markups and firm size, which characterizes misallocation, factor shares, and gains from trade. Accounting for labor market power in markup estimation, we find instead that larger firms have lower product markups but higher wage markdowns. The negative markup-size correlation turns positive when conditioning on markdowns, suggesting interactions between product and labor market power. Our findings are robust to common criticism (e.g., price bias, non-neutral technology) and hold across 19 European countries. We discuss possible mechanisms and resulting implications, highlighting the importance of studying input and output market power in a unified framework.
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Do Larger Firms Exert More Market Power? Markups and Markdowns along the Size Distribution
Matthias Mertens, Bernardo Mottironi
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 1,
2023
Abstract
Several models posit a positive cross-sectional correlation between markups and firm size, which characterizes misallocation, factor shares, and gains from trade. Accounting for labor market power in markup estimation, we find instead that larger firms have lower product markups but higher wage markdowns. The negative markup-size correlation turns positive when conditioning on markdowns, suggesting interactions between product and labor market power. Our findings are robust to common criticism (e.g., price bias, non-neutral technology) and hold across 19 European countries. We discuss possible mechanisms and resulting implications, highlighting the importance of studying input and output market power in a unified framework.
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Physical Climate Change and the Sovereign Risk of Emerging Economies
Hannes Böhm
Journal of Economic Structures,
2022
Abstract
I show that rising temperatures can detrimentally affect the sovereign creditworthiness of emerging economies. To this end, I collect long-term monthly temperature data of 54 emerging markets. I calculate a country’s temperature deviation from its historical average, which approximates present-day climate change trends. Running regressions from 1994m1 to 2018m12, I find that higher temperature anomalies lower sovereign bond performances (i.e., increase sovereign risk) significantly for countries that are warmer on average and have lower seasonality. The estimated magnitudes suggest that affected countries likely face significant increases in their sovereign borrowing costs if temperatures continue to rise due to climate change. However, results indicate that stronger institutions can make a country more resilient towards temperature shocks, which holds independent of a country’s climate.
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U.S. Monetary and Fiscal Policy Regime Changes and Their Interactions
Yoosoon Chang, Boreum Kwak, Shi Qiu
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 12,
2021
Abstract
We investigate U.S. monetary and fiscal policy interactions in a regime-switching model of monetary and fiscal policy rules where policy mixes are determined by a latent bivariate autoregressive process consisting of monetary and fiscal policy regime factors, each determining a respective policy regime. Both policy regime factors receive feedback from past policy disturbances, and interact contemporaneously and dynamically to determine policy regimes. We find strong feedback and dynamic interaction between monetary and fiscal authorities. The most salient features of these interactions are that past monetary policy disturbance strongly influences both monetary and fiscal policy regimes, and that monetary authority responds to past fiscal policy regime. We also find substantial evidence that the U.S. monetary and fiscal authorities have been interacting: central bank responds less aggressively to inflation when fiscal authority puts less attention on debt stabilisation, and vice versa.
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A Comparison of Monthly Global Indicators for Forecasting Growth
Christiane Baumeister, Pierre Guérin
International Journal of Forecasting,
No. 3,
2021
Abstract
This paper evaluates the predictive content of a set of alternative monthly indicators of global economic activity for nowcasting and forecasting quarterly world real GDP growth using mixed-frequency models. It shows that a recently proposed indicator that covers multiple dimensions of the global economy consistently produces substantial improvements in forecasting accuracy, while other monthly measures have more mixed success. Specifically, the best-performing model yields impressive gains with MSPE reductions of up to 34% at short horizons and up to 13% at long horizons relative to an autoregressive benchmark. The global economic conditions indicator also contains valuable information for assessing the current and future state of the economy for a set of individual countries and groups of countries. This indicator is used to track the evolution of the nowcasts for the U.S., the OECD area, and the world economy during the COVID-19 pandemic and the main factors that drive the nowcasts are quantified.
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Power Generation and Structural Change: Quantifying Economic Effects of the Coal Phase-out in Germany
Katja Heinisch, Oliver Holtemöller, Christoph Schult
Energy Economics,
2021
Abstract
In the fight against global warming, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is a major objective. In particular, a decrease in electricity generation by coal could contribute to reducing CO2 emissions. We study potential economic consequences of a coal phase-out in Germany, using a multi-region dynamic general equilibrium model. Four regional phase-out scenarios before the end of 2040 are simulated. We find that the worst case phase-out scenario would lead to an increase in the aggregate unemployment rate by about 0.13 [0.09 minimum; 0.18 maximum] percentage points from 2020 to 2040. The effect on regional unemployment rates varies between 0.18 [0.13; 0.22] and 1.07 [1.00; 1.13] percentage points in the lignite regions. A faster coal phase-out can lead to a faster recovery. The coal phase-out leads to migration from German lignite regions to German non-lignite regions and reduces the labour force in the lignite regions by 10,100 [6300; 12,300] people by 2040. A coal phase-out until 2035 is not worse in terms of welfare, consumption and employment compared to a coal-exit until 2040.
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05.11.2020 • 23/2020
IWH Bankruptcy Update: Bankruptcy Statistics Only See Slight Uptick, Despite Reinstatement of Filing Obligation
The number of German companies declaring bankruptcy trended somewhat higher in October, but total bankruptcy figures remain low. While the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) anticipates a further rise in bankruptcy statistics over the final two months of the year, we do not expect a wave of bankruptcies this year.
Steffen Müller
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