This paper aims at empirically estimating the demand effects of changes in functional income distribution for Austria. Based on a Post-Kaleckian macro model, this paper estimates the effects of a change in the wage share on the main demand aggregates. The results for the behavioral functions for consumption, investment, prices, exports and imports are compared with the specifications of the WIFO macro model and the IHS macro model. A reduction in the wage share has a restrictive effect on domestic demand as consumption decreases more strongly than investment increases. Because of the strong effects on net exports the overall effects of a decrease in the wage share are expansionary. However the latter effect operates only as far as the fall in the wage share increases competitiveness. As wage shares were also falling in Austria's main trading partners, the effect seems to have been neutralized. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Germany has experienced a period of extreme nominal and real wage moderation since the mid 1990s. Contrary to the expectations of liberal economists this has failed to improve Germany's mediocre economic performance. However, Germany is now running substantial current account surpluses. One possible explanation for Germany's disappointing performance is found in Kaleckian theory, which highlights that the domestic demand effect of a decline in the wage share will typically be contractionary, whereas net exports will increase (Blecker 1989). The size of the foreign demand effect will critically depend on the degree of openness of the economy. The paper aims at estimating the demand side of a Bhaduri-Marglin (1990) -type model empirically for Germany. The paper builds on the estimation strategy of Stockhammer, Onaran and Ederer (2007) and Hein and Vogel (2008a, 2008b). The main contribution lies in a careful analysis of the effects of globalization. Since Germany is a large open economy by now it is a particularly interesting case study. (author´s abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Sydney, 2008. / A thesis submitted to the University of Western Sydney, College of Business, School of Economics and Finance, in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Includes bibliographical references.

Economic policy in the EU faces a trilemma of solving three challenges simultaneously - growth, distribution, and the environment. In order to assess policies that address these issues simultaneously, economic models need to account for both sector-sector and sector-environment feedbacks within a single framework.This paper presents a multi-sectoral stock-flow consistent (SFC) macro model where a demand-driven economy consisting of multiple institutional sectors - firms, energy, households, government, and financial - interacts with the environment. The model is calibrated for the EU region and five policy scenarios are evaluated; low consumption, a capital stock damage function, carbon taxes, higher share of renewable energy, and technological shocks to productivity. Policy outcomes are tracked on overall output, unemployment, income and income distributions, energy, and emission levels. Results show that investment in mitigation technologies allows for absolute decoupling and ensures that the above three issues can be solved simultaneously. (author's abstract) / Series: Ecological Economic Papers

In this study, a Kaleckian-Post-Keynesian macroeconomic model, which is an extended version of the Bhaduri and Marglin (1990) model, serves as the starting point. The merit of a Kaleckian model for our purposes is that it highlights the dual function of wages as a component of aggregate demand as well as a cost item as opposed to the mainstream economics, which perceive wages merely as a cost item. Depending on the relative magnitude of these two effects, Kaleckian models distinguish between profit-led and wage-led regimes, where the latter is defined as a low rate of accumulation being caused by a high profit share. Are actual economies wage-led or profit-led? Current orthodoxy implicitly assumes that they are profit-led, and thus supports the neoliberal policy agenda. The purpose of the paper is to carry this discussion into the empirical terrain, and to test whether accumulation and employment are profit-led in two groups of countries. We do so by means of a structural vector autoregression (VAR) model. The model is estimated for USA, UK and France to represent the major developed countries, and for Turkey and Korea to represent developing countries. The latter are chosen since they represent two different export-oriented growth experiences. The results of the adjustment experiences of both countries are in striking contrast to orthodox theory, however they also present counter-examples to each other in terms of their ways of integrating into the world economy. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers Series "Growth and Employment in Europe: Sustainability and Competitiveness"

This thesis examines the relationship between received remittances and education using random samples from panel survey data from households in rural Malawi collected between 2008 and 2010. Past research as well as that conducted in this paper point to the fact that remittances and education share an important correlation. The results of this study indicate that on a microeconomic level, remittances have a highly significant and positive impact on household education. Other remittance-related factors such as the distance from agent, the remittance amount, and the type of account held by an individual also have a significant impact on the highest level of education attained by an individual, whereas the account type, age, gender, and marital status are important determinants in the probability of an individual ever having attended school. The results from this study raise questions as to whether the “brain drain” can actually have a positive impact on developing nations. The study also discusses policy implications for money transfer operators in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In January 2013, the Japanese Government under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Bank of Japan launched a package of monetary and fiscal stimulus along with promises of structural economic reform called Abenomics. This paper examines the preliminary effects of the Bank of Japan’s Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easing (QQE), which forms the monetary component of Abenomics. Given the weak economic response to QQE so far, the study predicts that QQE has failed to make a significant impact on its target macroeconomic variables of inflation and output. The results confirm this hypothesis as increases in the monetary base have an insignificant effect on the Consumer Price Index and have little effect in changing the trajectory of output. The results of QQE so far mirror those of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing programs, during which expansion of the monetary base in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis failed to significantly raise output given the size of the stimulus. Abenomics, however, continues to be implemented, making the results presented in this paper inconclusive.

An increase in the wage share has contradictory effects on the subaggregates of aggregate demand. Private consumption expenditures ought to increase because wage incomes typically are associated with higher consumption propensities than capital incomes. Investment expenditures ought to be negatively affected because investment will positively depend on profits. Net exports will be negatively affected because an increase in the wage share corresponds to an increase in unit labor costs and thus a loss in competitiveness. Theoretically aggregate demand can therefore be either wage led or profit led depending on how these effects add up. The results will crucially depend on how open the economy is internationally. The paper estimates a Post-Kaleckian macro model incorporating these effects for the Euro area and finds that the Euro area is presently in a wage-led demand regime. Implications for wage policies are discussed. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

For almost 40 years, scholars have sought to determine how elections affect the economy. Recently, certain studies have focused on the effect of political uncertainty on the economy. This paper focuses specifically on the effect of political uncertainty on business investment. We use 30 years of data from the U.S. states to show that policy uncertainty leads to significant declines in business fixed investment, sometimes referred to as “irreversible investment.” Moreover, we find that the magnitude of the decline in investment depends on the level of policy uncertainty. These results support predictions for “Electoral Investment Theory” and the existence of reverse political business cycles more generally.

This paper investigates the influence of various macroeconomic variables on Japan’s merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, both in terms of total deal value and total number of deals. Looking at monthly data from June 1997 to December 2013, I use econometric time-series analysis to find that: First, total deal value per month is not well explained by our macroeconomic variables, but about half of the variation in number of deals per month can be explained by our dataset. Second, the most important determinant in the total number of deals per month during our period is the level of national debt, and interest rates had the opposite effect from what was originally expected. Third, adding lag variables to our analysis proved to be relatively fruitless. Finally, when taking a look at only the past couple of years to determine the effects of “Abenomics” on M&A activity in Japan, I conclude that there is not enough data, and better results would be obtained in the future.