In this paper we survey the features of different approaches available in the literature used to study the effects of the aging of the population on Social Security expenditures. We comment on the weaknesses and strengths of each of them, and perform a quantitative analysis by comparing the results they imply in the particular case of the Spanish economy. Finally, we highlight some elements of the modelling strategies on which more evidence is needed for a correct evaluation of the problem at hand.

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Modeling the Impact of Aging on Social Security Expenditures

A new economic policy uncertainty index for Spain

The Chinese banking system, characterized by massive government intervention, poor asset quality and low capitalization, has started a reform process based on three main pillars: (i) bank restructuring, through the cleaning-up of non-performing loans and public capital injections, particularly in the four largest state-owned banks; (ii) financial liberalization, with the gradual flexibilization of quantity and price controls, the opening-up to foreign competition and cautious steps toward capital account liberalization; and (iii) strengthened financial regulation and supervision, coupled with efforts to improve corporate governance and transparency. Although the reform is still ongoing, our preliminary assessment indicates that changes are needed for the reform to be fully successful. Asset quality has improved, particularly in the recapitalized banks, but there is a high risk of a new build-up of non performing loans. Capitalization has increased in the largest banks, as a consequence of the government capital injections, but it generally remains low and profitability has fallen even further. China's huge financing needs, to maintain high economic growth, and its commitment to fully open up its banking system to foreign competition urgently require a more comprehensive and time-bound strategy, with a long-term vision of the desired structure of the Chinese banking system. Bank recapitalization should be completed immediately, not only to ensure bank soundness, but also to increase profitability, which could be affected negatively as competition increases with full financial liberalization. Bank ecapitalization, however, needs to be accompanied by a radical improvement in corporate governance, which would clearly be facilitated by a change in the property structure.

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China's Banking Reform: An Assessment of its Evolution and Possible Impact

We examine gender differences in career progression and promotions in central banking, a stereotypical male-dominated occupation, using confidential anonymized personnel data from the European Central Bank (ECB) during the period 2003-2017. A wage gap emerges between men and women within a few years of hiring, despite broadly similar entry conditions in terms of salary levels and other observables. We also find that women are less likely to be promoted to a higher salary band up until 2010 when the ECB issued a public statement supporting diversity and took several measures to support gender balance. Following this change, the promotion gap disappears. The gender promotion gap prior to this policy change is partly driven by the presence of children. Using 2012-2017 data on promotion applications and decisions, we explore the promotion process in depth, and confirm that during this most recent period women are as likely to be promoted as men. This results from a lower probability of women to apply for promotion, combined with a higher probability of women to be selected conditional on having applied. Following promotion, women perform better in terms of salary progression, suggesting that the higher probability to be selected is based on merit, not positive discrimination.

The gender promotion gap: evidence from central banking

Este trabajo presenta evidencia de la participacion del trabajo, del capital y de los beneficios en el valor anadido de las empresas no financieras de Francia, Alemania, Italia, Espana y Estados Unidos entre 1995 y 2016, tratando de explicar las diferencias entre paises y su evolucion en el tiempo. No se encuentra evidencia de que la composicion del valor anadido haya convergido en el area del euro o entre Europa y Estados Unidos ni tampoco hay evidencia de que la participacion del trabajo haya disminuido de forma generalizada. Hay que resaltar la tendencia creciente de la participacion de los beneficios en Alemania 
y en Estados Unidos desde el ano 2000, siendo superior esta magnitud en Alemania. La evidencia presentada apoya los resultados de otros estudios en cuanto a que el aumento en el poder de mercado es el principal determinante de los cambios en la composicion del valor anadido en Estados Unidos. En el caso de los paises del area del euro, los cambios en la participacion del trabajo y del capital responden tambien a los cambios en los precios relativos de los inputs productivos (de forma consistente con una elasticidad de sustitucion entre trabajo y capital menor que uno, comparada con la de Estados Unidos que es 
cercana a uno). Por ultimo, para explicar el aumento de la participacion de los beneficios en Alemania, hay que considerar las mejoras continuadas de costes en terminos comparativos de las empresas alemanas.

Corporate cost and profit shares in the euro area and the US: the same story?

We provide additional evidence on the relationship between uncertainty and economic activity. For this purpose, we gather and construct a wide range of proxy indicators of economic and economic policy uncertainty from Spain. We distinguish between the relative merits of different types of measures based on (i) the volatility of financial markets; (ii) economic analysts’ disagreement; and (iii) economic policy uncertainty. We show that the first and the third block of measures are the most relevant to grasp the negative effects of unexpected changes in uncertainty on aggregate economic developments, as measured by real GDP. In addition, we find that economic policy uncertainty and financial uncertainty shocks produce visible negative effects on private consumption. The negative responses on capital goods investments are initially bigger in magnitude but vanish more quickly.

/pdf/measuring-economic-and-economic-policy-uncertainty-and-their-2yssulm3ow.pdf

Measuring economic and economic policy uncertainty and their macroeconomic effects: the case of Spain

In highly decentralized countries the subnational dimension of economic developments acquires particular relevance, given the existence of potential spillover effects across jurisdictions or the existence of asymmetric impacts of national-wide macroeconomic shocks. At the same time, though, the analysis of sub-national macroeconomic and public finance short-term developments tend to be restricted in many countries due to data limitations. Against this backdrop, the aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the available data for monitoring macroeconomic and public finance developments at the regional level in Spain, and to present some examples of its practical use in real time. After a thoroughly review of the publicly available information, we identify two key informational gaps in this area of conjunctural analysis, namely: (i) the lack of homogeneous and official quarterly measures of aggregate regional economic activity (in particular, real GDP), and (ii) the limited sample size of time series pertaining to government budgetary developments at the regional level.

Monitoring the Spanish Economy From a Regional Perspective: Main Elements of Analysis

The goal of this paper is to propose a model to produce nowcasts of GDP growth of Spanish regions, by means of dynamic factor models. This framework is capable to incorporate in a parsimonious way the relevant information available at the time that each forecast is made. We employ a Bayesian perspective to provide robust estimation of all the ingredients involved in the model. Accordingly, we introduce the Bayesian Factor model for Regions (BayFaR), which allows for the inclusion of missing data and combines quarterly data on regional real output growth (taken from the database of the AIReF and from the individual regional statistics institutes, when available) and monthly information associated to indicators of regional real activity. We apply the BayFaR to nowcast the GDP growth of the four largest regions of Spain, and illustrate the real-time nowcasting performance of the proposed framework for each case. We also apply the model to nowcast Spanish GDP in order to be able to assess the relative growth of each region.

An Application of Dynamic Factor Models to Nowcast Regional Economic Activity in Spain

The focus of this paper is on nowcasting and forecasting quarterly private consumption. The selection of real-time, monthly indicators focuses on standard (“hard”/“soft” indicators) and less-standard variables. Among the latter group we analyze: i) proxy indicators of economic and policy uncertainty; ii) payment cards’ transactions, as measured at “Point-of-sale” (POS) and ATM withdrawals; iii) indicators based on consumption-related search queries retrieved by means of the Google Trends application. We estimate a suite of mixed-frequency, time series models at the monthly frequency, on a real-time database with Spanish data, and conduct out-of-sample forecasting exercises to assess the relevant merits of the different groups of indicators. Some results stand out: i) “hard” and payments cards indicators are the best performers when taken individually, and more so when combined; ii) nonetheless, “soft” indicators are helpful to detect qualitative signals in the nowcasting horizon; iii) Google-based and uncertainty indicators add value when combined with traditional indicators, most notably at estimation horizons beyond the nowcasting one, what would be consistent with capturing information about future consumption decisions; iv) the combinations of models that include the best performing indicators tend to beat broader-based combinations.

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Nowcasting Private Consumption: Traditional Indicators, Uncertainty Measures, Credit Cards and Some Internet Data

We provide additional evidence on the relationship between uncertainty and economic activity. For this purpose, we gather and construct a wide range of proxy indicators of economic and economic policy uncertainty from Spain. We distinguish between the relative merits of different types of measures based on: (i) the volatility of financial markets; (ii) economic analysts’ disagreement; (iii) economic policy uncertainty. We show that the first and the third block of measures are the most relevant to grasp the negative effects of unexpected changes in uncertainty on aggregate economic developments, as measured by real GDP. In addition, we find that economic policy uncertainty and financial uncertainty shocks produce visible negative effects on private consumption. The negative responses on capital goods investments are initially bigger in magnitude but vanish more quickly.

María Gil

Papers

Measuring economic and economic policy uncertainty and their macroeconomic effects: the case of Spain

Monitoring the Spanish Economy From a Regional Perspective: Main Elements of Analysis

An Application of Dynamic Factor Models to Nowcast Regional Economic Activity in Spain

Nowcasting Private Consumption: Traditional Indicators, Uncertainty Measures, Credit Cards and Some Internet Data

Measuring economic and economic policy uncertainty, and their macroeconomic effects: the case of Spain