Author: balticeco

The 2nd Baltic Central Banks’ Invited Lecture Series (BCBILS) was held on 9-11 April 2024

The event took place in Tallinn and consisted of a seminar and a six-lecture long course by a famous macroeconomist Ricardo Reis. The topic of the training course was “How do central banks control inflation? Theory and applications to the recent inflation disaster”. The course was structured around the research paper “How do central banks control inflation? A guide for the perplexed” by Laura Castillo-Martinez (Duke University) and Ricardo Reis (LSE).

On the first day of the event, participants presented their own research on topical issues in monetary policy, such as quantitative tightening and inflation expectations.

Looking forward to meeting you at the 3rd edition of BCBILS, which will take place in spring 2025 in Latvia. The announcement will be published in December 2024 on this website and Inomics.

You are welcome to join the Research Seminar of the Department of Economics and Finance of Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) on Wednesday, 24 April at 16:00-17:00.

In MS Teams, please join via LINK

“Greenhouse Gas Mitigation and Price-Driven Growth in a Solow-Swan Economy with an Environmental Limit”
Michael C. Burda (Humboldt-Universität Berlin and IZA)

The existence of an environmental limit in the Solow-Swan economy changes the nature of economic growth, but does not preclude it. When atmospheric greenhouse gases reach a predetermined absolute threshold, further growth requires a permanently expanding, resource-intensive mitigation effort. If the rate of technical progress in mitigation is too low, it becomes the effective constraint on economic growth. Yet growth in both quantities and relative prices remains a robust feature of this class of economies. It also characterizes the social planner’s optimum that anticipates the costs of reaching the environmental limit abruptly.

Keywords: Solow-Swan growth model, Baumol cost disease, anthropogenic climate change, mitigation, price-driven economic growth, Ramsey optimal policy
JEL classification: O44, Q01, Q54
Authors: Michael C. Burda (Humboldt-Universität Berlin and IZA), Leopold Zessner-Spitzenberg (TU Wien)

On 24 April at 14:00-15:00 you are invited to attend the research seminar of the School of Economics and Business Administration of the University of Tartu in which Brent McKenzie (University of Guelph) will present the research project “How Canadian Whisky’s 9.09% Rule Has Transformed Its Brand Image: From Weakness to a Strength”.

A number of countries have geographically identified food and drink. One of the most well-known distilled products around the world is Scotch, or more accurately Scottish Whisky. Other countries such as the United States and Bourbon, Irish Whiskey, and Japanese Whisky also have defined whisky categories. Canadian Whisky also falls within this group. Like the others there are specific requirements for making whisky. For Canadian whisky, it must be made from grains, distilled, aged, and bottled in Canada, for a minimum of three years. Where Canadian whisky differs, is that it also has a 9.09% rule, which means that in a bottle of Canadian whisky, the distillery is allowed to add up to 9.09% (1/11) of something else. From a positive perspective it provides Canadian distillers greater opportunities to shape the taste of the final product, as well as increasing development of different Canadian whiskies. For competitors of Canadian whisky, the 9.09% rule has been used to denigrate or criticize the product. This study provides an overview of the history of the Canadian whisky and how companies that are making Canadian whisky today are using the 9.09% rule as a way to position their product through transparency and communication of its use. This research highlights how the 9.09% Rule, and other examples of arguably negatively oriented restrictions, can be shifted in terms of brand focus, and brand identity. Further contributions focus on the value of clarity in terminology as an important variable in terms of brand understanding and by extension brand trust.

Zoom meeting

Meeting ID: 97908273181
Passcode: 711029

On 17 April at 12:00 you are invited to attend the research seminar of the School of Economics and Business Administration of the University of Tartu in which Ewa Stawasz-Grabowska (University of Lodz) will present the research project “Gold Renaissance among Central Banks: Can Gold Reserves Reduce Countries’ Sovereign Credit Risk?”.

The main objective of the chapter is to fill the research gap by theoretically and empirically investigating the motives behind the gold renaissance among central bank in light of the recent increase in their purchases, which peaked in 2022. The reasons for gold purchases are intertwined, having both geopolitical and economic origin, and one of the drivers of gold accumulation may be the need to reduce countries’ sovereign credit risk especially of emerging markets. Higher central bank gold reserves, may be perceived as a symbol of conservatism due to safe-haven property of gold and its inflation hedge attributes. Motivated by theoretical considerations, we empirically analyze whether higher central bank gold holdings are found to reduce sovereign risk as measured by 10-year government bond yields in countries that accumulated the highest amount of gold. This study was carried out during the nineteen-year period 2004–2022, which encompassed the global financial crisis, COVID-19 pandemic, and Russian invasion of Ukraine. The results suggest that central bank gold reserves can reduce sovereign credit risk. This effect was stronger during 2022, when central bank gold purchases hit record high amid soaring inflation and increased geopolitical tensions.

Zoom meeting

We are happy to announce that two new issues of The University of Tartu Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Working Paper series have been published:

No. 145 

FIRM-LEVEL CAPABILITIES AND RESPONSE TO A NEGATIVE EXPORT SHOCK: 2014 RUSSIAN EMBARGO ON THE WEST
Authors: Mathias Juust and Urmas Varblane

https://mjtoimetised.ut.ee/febpdf/febawb145.pdf

No. 146 

AUTOMATION-SKILL COMPLEMENTARITY: THE CHANGING RETURNS TO SOFT SKILLS IN DIFFERENT STAGES OF TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION
Authors: Anastasiia Pustovalova and Priit Vahter

https://mjtoimetised.ut.ee/febpdf/febawb146.pdf

Full-text versions of our working papers are also visible in EBSCO, Social Science Research Network (SSRN) and RePEc databases. However, transition to our new university website may still cause some delays in the process.

On 18 April at 14:00-15:00 you are invited to attend the research seminar of the School of Economics and Business Administration of the University of Tartu in which Arnaldo Coelho (University of Coimbra) will present the research project “The challenges of the research on Greenwashing field: the impacts on the different stakeholders”.

Misleading information regarding environmental issues may bring damaging impacts to the company and its various stakeholders. We will identify the challenges of investigating the impacts on customers, employees, and B2B partners, as well as develop new strategies to approach data collection.

Zoom meeting

Meeting ID: 927 7346 2041
Passcode: 258497

You are welcome to join the Research Seminar of the Department of Economics and Finance of Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) on Wednesday, 10 April at 16:00-17:00.

In MS Teams, please join via LINK

“Inclusive Education in Soviet-Inherited Exclusive School System: The Effects of Student Background Factors on School Efficiency”
Simona Ferraro (Department of Economics and Finance, TalTech)

Relying on the school-level data and evaluating inclusive practices in education, we evaluate how the low socioeconomic status of families, the disparity in language spoken at home and at school as well as the special education needs (SENs) students affect schools’ efficiency. We adopt a two-stage double Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and estimate efficiency scores in the first, and the effects of nondiscretionary variables in the second stage. Our findings first show that the efficiency scores improved between the two academic years. Secondly, the reversed share of SEN students and high parental income affect positively school efficiency while language match between home and school has a non-significant impact on efficiency. Our policy implications indicate that the autonomy of schools over student admission and competitive drive for producing better student outcomes for the leaderboard works contrary to the inclusive reform aims – schools are incentivised not to admit SEN students and use decentralised admission interviews for selecting advantaged students.

Keywords: school efficiency, special educational needs, family background, double bootstrap DEA, autonomy of schools
JEL classification: H52, I20, I21
Authors: Simona Ferraro (Department of Economics and Finance, TalTech), Kaire Põder (Estonian Business School), Triin Lauri (Tallinn University)

We are happy to invite you to the research seminar by the Center for Economic Expertise which will take place on Wednesday, March 27st, 14:00-15:00. During the seminar Michail Kokkoris (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) will present the topic „In control but uninspired: Displays of artist self-control undermine perceptions of creativity“.

Venue: Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Vilnius University, Saulėtekio al. 9, Vilnius, TechHub Room 40 (2nd floor) and MS Teams

Abstract. Previous research highlighted the interpersonal benefits of self-control in professional contexts: People prefer high self-control individuals as work or study partners and expect them to perform better than low self-control individuals. We show that these benefits of self-control reverse in the artistic domain. Results of one pilot study and five preregistered experiments (N = 1,644) reveal that artists with high (vs. low) self-control are perceived as less creative. This effect replicates across various artistic domains (visual art, music, poetry, screenwriting), holds for both male and female artists, and can be explained by perceptions of lower experiential processing, which is considered indispensable for creativity. However, art created by high (vs. low) self-control artists is ascribed higher market value due to stronger attributions of productivity. These findings provide novel insights into the social perception of self-control and contribute to the understudied topic of the downsides of self-control as well as to the literature on lay theories of creativity.

MS Teams meeting

Meeting ID: 364 786 008 699
Passcode: xfRiBu

The 12th Nordic Econometric Meeting takes place in June 2024 in Bergen. The deadline for paper submission is the 2nd of April.

For more information see the conference website.

 

Occacional Papers of Eesti Pank 2/2024

The impact of climate change and policies on productivity

The occasional paper is a report by the ESCB Expert Group on productivity, innovation and technological change. The report is also published in the Occasional Paper series of the European Central Bank (No 340).

Occacional Papers of Eesti Pank 3/2024

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and policy support on productivity

The occasional paper is a report by the ESCB Expert Group on productivity, innovation and technological change. The report is also published in the Occasional Paper series of the European Central Bank (No 341).