National Bureau of Economic Research

About: National Bureau of Economic Research is a nonprofit organization based out in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Monetary policy & Population. The organization has 2626 authors who have published 34177 publications receiving 2818124 citations. The organization is also known as: NBER & The National Bureau of Economic Research.

Bank Regulation and Supervision in 180 Countries from 1999 to 2011

Abstract: In this paper and the associated online database, we provide new data and measures of bank regulatory and supervisory policies in 180 countries from 1999 to 2011. The data include and the measures are based upon responses to hundreds of questions, including information on permissible bank activities, capital requirements, the powers of official supervisory agencies, information disclosure requirements, external governance mechanisms, deposit insurance, barriers to entry, and loan provisioning. The dataset also provides information on the organization of regulatory agencies and the size, structure, and performance of banking systems. Since the underlying surveys are large and complex, we construct summary indices of key bank regulatory and supervisory policies to facilitate cross-country comparisons and analyses of changes in banking policies over time.

Goodbye Pareto Principle, Hello Long Tail: The Effect of Search Costs on the Concentration of Product Sales

Abstract: Many markets have historically been dominated by a small number of best-selling products. The Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, describes this common pattern of sales concentration. However, information technology in general and Internet markets in particular have the potential to substantially increase the collective share of niche products, thereby creating a longer tail in the distribution of sales. This paper investigates the Internet's “long tail” phenomenon. By analyzing data collected from a multichannel retailer, it provides empirical evidence that the Internet channel exhibits a significantly less concentrated sales distribution when compared with traditional channels. Previous explanations for this result have focused on differences in product availability between channels. However, we demonstrate that the result survives even when the Internet and traditional channels share exactly the same product availability and prices. Instead, we find that consumers' usage of Internet search and discovery tools, such as recommendation engines, are associated with an increase the share of niche products. We conclude that the Internet's long tail is not solely due to the increase in product selection but may also partly reflect lower search costs on the Internet. If the relationships we uncover persist, the underlying trends in technology portend an ongoing shift in the distribution of product sales. This paper was accepted by Ramayya Krishnan, information systems.

Labor- and Capital-Augmenting Technical Change

Abstract: I analyze an economy in which profit-maximizing firms can undertake both labor- or capital-augmenting technological improvements. In the long run, the economy looks like the standard growth model with purely labor-augmenting technical change, and the share of labor in GDP is constant. Along the transition path, however, there is capital-augmenting technical change and factor shares change. A range of policies may have counterintuitive implications due to their effect on the direction of technical change. For example, taxes on capital income reduce the labor share in the short run, but increase it in the medium/long run.

Balance Sheets and Exchange Rate Policy

Abstract: В статье анализируется связь между обменным курсом и балансом активов и пассивов и влияние этой связи на макроэкономические показатели в малой открытой экономике Из-за высокой степени долларизации обязательств, обесценение национальной валюты, с одной стороны, снижает чистую стоимость компаний (net worth), что порождает финансовую хрупкость частного сектора Это ведет к ограничению инвестиций С другой стороны, девальвация приводит к расширению выпуска и росту отдачи от инвестиций, что также является компонентом чистой стоимости компании В работе показывается, что негативный внешний шок может быть усилен эффектом баланса (balance sheet effect) В результате выпуск и инвестиции снижаются При фиксированном курсе это падение сильнее, чем при плавающем Таким образом, гибкий курс является лучим "амортизатором" внешних реальных шоков, даже несмотря на значительный эффект баланса