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on Macroeconomics |
| By: | Oded Galor (Brown University); Luca Pensieroso (UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)); Daniel C. Wainstock (University of Oxford) |
| Abstract: | How could inequality between social classes have ever persisted during the Malthusian epoch, as affluence led to greater reproductive success, diluting inherited wealth and narrowing disparities over time? This paper uncovers the Paradox of Inequality, establishes its robust theoretical foundations, and provides its resolution. The analysis suggests that elites’ lavish, nonproductive displays of status inadvertently diverted resources from reproduction, limiting the dilution of inherited wealth and sustaining inequality across generations. Ironically, extravagance preserved the wealth it seemed to squander. |
| Keywords: | Inequality, Malthusian Epoch, Conspicuous consumption, Fertility, Paradox |
| JEL: | O10 Z10 |
| Date: | 2026–10–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctl:louvir:2026018 |
| By: | Ji, Wenjing; Zheng, Jiacheng; Guan, Suzhen; Liu, Yang; Chen, Xi; Lin, Zhuoer; Costa-Font, Joan; Merchant, Reshma Aziz; Guariglia, Alessandra; Wang, Chenyan; Xu, Sen; Yang, Caijun; Shen, Mingwang; Jiang, Minghuan; Wang, Duolao; Fang, Yu; Lastuka, Amy |
| Abstract: | Importance Population aging is contributing to rising multimorbidity across physical, psychological, and cognitive domains, yet global evidence integrating health and economic burdens in older adults remains limited. Objectives To quantify the global health and economic burden of multimorbidity among adults aged 60 years or older and to assess trends from 2000 to 2023. Design, Setting, and Participants This economic evaluation used observational modeling of Global Burden of Disease study 2023 estimates as health inputs and integrated them with macroeconomic, health expenditure, and population data from World Bank Open Data, the World Health Organization Global Health Expenditure Database, and United Nations population data. Health burden analyses covered adults aged 60 years or older in 204 countries and territories from 2000 to 2023, and economic burden analyses covered 180 countries and territories. Data analyses were performed from January 27 to July 22, 2026. Exposures Cross-domain multimorbidity spanning physical conditions, psychological disorders, and cognitive disorders, operationalized as 78 multimorbidity combinations. Main Outcomes and Measures The main outcomes were years lived with disability (YLDs) per 100 000 population and economic losses. All economic indicators are reported in 2021 international dollars (USD) adjusted for purchasing power parity. Joinpoint regression characterized 2000 to 2023 trends. Results From 2000 to 2023, total YLDs increased from 2367.81 (95% uncertainty interval [UI], 1067.67-4969.59) to 2941.68 (95% UI, 1252.99-6816.95) per 100 000 population, while economic losses increased from $80.10 billion (95% UI, $59.60-$104.69 billion) to $363.25 billion (95% UI, $264.04-$502.74 billion). The highest 2023 YLD rate was observed for osteoarthritis and Alzheimer disease and other dementias (369.87 [95% UI, 163.86-752.23] per 100 000 population), whereas the largest 2023 economic loss was observed for osteoarthritis and anxiety disorders ($48.51 billion [95% UI, $31.68-$76.57 billion]). The fastest-growing combination was diabetes, anxiety disorders, and Parkinson disease, with a YLD average annual percentage change (AAPC) of 3.94% (95% CI, 3.79%-4.08%) and an economic loss AAPC of 9.92% (95% CI, 9.69%-10.13%). Conclusions and Relevance In this economic evaluation of the global health and economic burden of multimorbidity among adults aged 60 years or older, multimorbidity burden increased worldwide, with economic losses growing faster than YLDs. Heterogeneity across sex, country income groups, and disease combinations, together with divergence between disability and economic burden, suggest that policy priorities for aging populations should consider both health burden and economic vulnerability. |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2026–10–21 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:141652 |
| By: | Yuhang Ji; Fasheng Xu; Tianjun Feng |
| Abstract: | Large language model (LLM) platforms introducing advertising must decide how much capability ad revenue should fund and what consumers should pay to avoid ads. We study a monopolistic platform that jointly chooses costly response quality, advertising intensity, and subscription prices when advertising reduces user value but better service raises advertising returns. Three findings follow. First, when partly ad-supported and ad-free plans coexist, advertising can finance useful service for consumers who receive none under pure subscription. Lower effective quality in middle plans weakens the alternatives available to premium users, allowing higher prices for unchanged ad-free service. Some fully ad-supported users gain utility, while partly ad-supported and ad-free users lose: broader access can coexist with utility polarization. Second, an intermediate advertising cap can maximize consumer surplus by preserving some revenue that finances service while limiting degradation. Third, cheaper compute can raise quality and reduce ad intensity, yet sufficiently large cost reductions can increase aggregate advertising revenue above its initial level because better service raises the value of the remaining advertised interactions. An extension shows how advertising-funded upgrades can bring plans to the same maximum capability and advertising exposure, eliminating the basis for different prices. These results make menu design central to evaluating LLM advertising: the consequences extend beyond users who see ads to the alternatives and prices faced by those who do not. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.32945 |
| By: | Congressional Budget Office |
| Abstract: | In 2023, the roughly 134 million households in the United States received a total of about $20 trillion in income. Average income before transfers and taxes rose for households at the bottom of the income distribution and fell for those at the top. The extent to which transfers and taxes reduced inequality was similar in 2023 and 2022. Income inequality decreased in 2023, whether measured before or after transfers and taxes. |
| JEL: | H20 H24 H50 J30 |
| Date: | 2026–09–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbo:report:62761 |
| By: | Pranay Anchuri (Offchain Labs) |
| Abstract: | Demand on blockchain-based marketplaces arrives in bursts and at a high rate. On these platforms the data are completely visible, which makes it feasible to compare the bursty demand against the usual load. The congestion manifests as an increased demand for gas, the primary resource a blockchain sells. Existing studies consider how to price the gas. The demand itself, and what it is made of during bursts, has not been measured. We measure it on Robinhood Chain, a layer-2 blockchain that quickly became a venue for trading tokenized equities and memecoins. We collected the data from every block of its first three active months and more than 50 million Uniswap swaps that occurred during bursty periods. We find that a burst trades about as many pools as a quiet period, mostly different ones, and trades them harder, on top of elevated demand that accumulated for hours. With the bursts aligned on their peaks, the median peak is 2.5 times the usual load. Both the rise and the fall of the demand are described by the sum of two exponential functions with different timescales, a slow one of hours and a fast one of minutes. Against a matched quiet period, a burst has 1.05 times the pools, 1.40 times the trades, and 1.21 times the senders. We use two models to explain the arrival of bursts: externally triggered cascades and self-excitation. The former fits the data relatively better. Inside a burst, the entry of each trader into a pool is followed for about 24 seconds by more entries than the existing traders predict. Whether this is because of imitation or because of a shared signal is left open. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.35738 |
| By: | Aurelien Quignon (ICN Business School, CEREFIGE - Centre Européen de Recherche en Economie Financière et Gestion des Entreprises - UL - Université de Lorraine) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how environmental innovation influences startup creation in energy and non-energy sectors. Using a panel of 35 developed and developing countries from 1998 to 2019 and a two-way fixed effects model, I find that environmental knowledge significantly increases the creation of startups in energy sectors, while no effect is found for non-energy sectors. Further analysis reveals that environmental knowledge promotes startup creation across nongreen, digital, and non-digital energy sectors, suggesting broad spillover effects. I also find that in less developed entrepreneurial ecosystems, environmental knowledge is critical for supporting the formation of startups in the clean energy sector. These results support policies aimed at fostering environmental innovation to stimulate entrepreneurship. |
| Keywords: | L26, Q55, knowledge spillovers JEL Classification Codes: O31, energy entrepreneurship, environmental innovation, environmental innovation energy entrepreneurship knowledge spillovers JEL Classification Codes: O31 Q55 L26 |
| Date: | 2026–06–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05785510 |
| By: | Platvoet, Ralf |
| Abstract: | Six preceding working papers define the operational situational picture through seven characteristics, trace its causal chain, clarify its coupling to machine procedures, render the construct measurable, describe its introduction and determine its content. Together they state thirty-eight propositions about effects. Each names a dependent variable, as required. The rule does not ask whether the variable is determinate, that is, whether it shows what is counted. The fourth paper described and remedied the same deficiency on the independent side. It observes that without a measure no proposition can be tested, and develops the measure for situational picture maturity. On the dependent side the observation was left standing, and the fourth paper itself names "the effect of the situational picture" as the dependent variable of one of its own propositions, that is, precisely the variable for which no measure exists. This paper closes the gap. It codes the thirty-eight propositions across six fields, condenses the named dependent variables into twelve distinct effect variables and four measurement-quality variables, supplies a measurement specification for each, and orders a research programme by cost and yield. It develops no construct, no further measure for the independent side and no further conjecture. Four findings carry the paper, three of them against the author's own body of work. First, ten of the thirty-eight propositions claim an effect on a proportion, across four papers, using seven different numerator-denominator pairs; no two count the same thing. Second, "usage" carries seven propositions from five papers and is defined in none of them. Third, six propositions name no determinate dependent variable; of nineteen variables carried, nine are immediately measurable, seven require a counting rule, and three require construction work of their own. Fourth, the thirty-eight statements fall into four mechanism families that bundle across paper boundaries; the largest holds eight propositions from five papers claiming that build order outweighs component quality, and the most striking holds six propositions from five papers, all counterintuitive, all claiming that disclosure of one's own weaknesses raises usage rather than lowering it. The paper is conceptual. It contains no survey, no evidence of effectiveness and no test of any of the thirty-eight propositions. It deliberately opens no proposition series of its own. Zusammenfassung (deutsch): Sechs vorangegangene Arbeitspapiere bestimmen das Betriebslagebild über sieben Merkmale, ordnen seine Wirkungskette, klären seine Kopplung an maschinelle Verfahren, machen das Konstrukt messbar, beschreiben seine Einführung und bestimmen seinen Inhalt. Zusammen führen sie achtunddreißig Propositionen über Wirkungen. Jede von ihnen benennt pflichtgemäß eine abhängige Größe. Ob die Größe auch bestimmt ist, ob also erkennbar wird, was gezählt wird, hat die Regel nicht verlangt. Das vierte Papier hat denselben Mangel für die unabhängige Seite beschrieben und behoben. Es stellt fest, dass ohne Maß keine Proposition prüfbar ist, und entwickelt das Maß für die Lagebildreife. Für die abhängige Seite ist der Satz stehen geblieben, und das vierte Papier führt in einer seiner eigenen Propositionen „die Wirkung des Lagebildes" als abhängige Größe, also genau jene Größe, für die es kein Maß gibt. Dieses Papier schließt die Lücke. Es kodiert die achtunddreißig Propositionen der sechs Papiere auf sechs Feldern, verdichtet die genannten abhängigen Größen zu zwölf unterscheidbaren Wirkungsgrößen und vier Messgütegrößen, legt je Größe eine Messvorschrift vor und ordnet ein Prüfprogramm nach Aufwand und Ertrag. Es entwickelt kein Konstrukt, kein weiteres Maß für die unabhängige Seite und keine weitere Vermutung. Vier Befunde tragen das Papier, und drei davon fallen zulasten des eigenen Bestandes aus. Der erste betrifft die größte Gruppe. Zehn der achtunddreißig Propositionen behaupten eine Wirkung auf einen Anteil, verteilt über vier Papiere. Diese zehn Aussagen verwenden sieben verschiedene Zähler-Nenner-Paare. Keine zwei von ihnen zählen dasselbe, und keines der Papiere sagt, ob es dasselbe meint wie das vorige. Die Reihe hat siebenmal eine Folgequote behauptet und siebenmal etwas anderes gezählt. Der zweite betrifft die meistgenutzte Größe. „Nutzung" trägt sieben Propositionen aus fünf Papieren und ist in keiner bestimmt. Ob der Aufruf eines Werkzeugs, die Befassung in einer Besprechung, der Verweis in einem Protokoll oder die Entscheidung unter Bezugnahme gezählt wird, steht nirgends. Vier der sieben nennen zwölf Monate als Beobachtungszeitpunkt, drei nennen kein Zeitfenster. Der dritte betrifft die Prüfbarkeit. Sechs Propositionen nennen keine bestimmte abhängige Größe. Vier von ihnen nennen ein Konstrukt, für das kein Maß vorliegt, eine nennt gar keine Größe, und eine wirkt als Moderator und verlangt deshalb, dass die moderierten Größen bestimmt sind. Von neunzehn geführten Größen sind neun unmittelbar erhebbar, sieben erst nach Festlegung einer Zählregel, und drei verlangen eigene Konstruktionsarbeit. Der vierte fällt zugunsten des Bestandes aus und ist der einzige, der eine Richtung angibt. Die achtunddreißig Aussagen lassen sich vier Mechanismusfamilien zuordnen, die über Papiergrenzen hinweg bündeln. Die größte umfasst acht Propositionen aus fünf Papieren und behauptet durchgehend, die Reihenfolge des Aufbaus schlage die Qualität der Bestandteile. Die auffälligste umfasst sechs Propositionen aus fünf Papieren, die alle gegen die naheliegende Erwartung gerichtet sind und behaupten, Offenlegung eigener Schwächen erhöhe die Nutzung, statt sie zu verringern. Diese Familie ist unabhängig voneinander fünfmal entstanden und ist damit der aussichtsreichste Prüfgegenstand der Reihe. Das Papier ist konzeptionell. Es enthält keine Erhebung, keinen Wirksamkeitsnachweis und keine Prüfung einer der achtunddreißig Propositionen. Es eröffnet ausdrücklich keine eigene Propositionsserie, und Abschnitt 12 begründet, warum nicht. |
| Keywords: | operational situational picture; effect measurement; proposition; dependent variable; operationalisation; follow-up rate; usage measurement; reactivity; research programme; Mittelstand; Wirkungsmessung; Propositionsinventar |
| JEL: | C80 D83 L60 M10 M15 |
| Date: | 2026–10–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:131514 |
| By: | Bindler, Anna; Machin, Stephen; Hjalmarsson, Randi; Rubio-Ramos, Melissa |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the effect of anti-Irish sentiment on 19th-century English jury decisions in criminal trials from London's Old Bailey. Using surnames to measure perceived ethnicity, Irish named defendants were 3% more likely to be convicted and 16% less likely to receive jury recommendations for mercy. Exploiting variation in expected punishment generated by the abolition of capital punishment, juries are shown to respond differently to extraneous factors when defendants were perceived as Irish. Similar patterns for Irish-named victims further support an interpretation based on ethnic animus. The disparities widened during the Irish Famine migration, and persisted thereafter. |
| Keywords: | Irish;crime;criminal law;discrimination;economic history |
| JEL: | K42 K14 J15 |
| Date: | 2026–09–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:141218 |
| By: | Joel M. David; Raffaella Giacomini; Xiyu Jiao; Weining Wang |
| Abstract: | State-dependent local projections (LPs) are widely used to study how causal effects vary as a function of economic states, but shock exogeneity alone does not identify this response function. We show that identification follows when the underlying conditional mean is linear in the shock with a state-dependent coefficient, a condition satisfied in canonical micro-macro environments, including first-order perturbation solutions of heterogeneous-agent and macro-finance models. Even then, standard linear-interaction LPs generally recover only a projection of the response function, motivating LPs with nonparametric state dependence. We develop a sieve estimator and establish pointwise and uniform inference for micro-macro panels, where a distinctive challenge is that the estimator can converge at different rates across the state space. Applied to firm investment, the method uncovers a hump-shaped response to monetary policy shocks and shows that standard linear-interaction LPs substantially understate the aggregate role of financial heterogeneity. |
| Keywords: | Impulse response functions; Identification; uniform inference; heterogeneous agent |
| JEL: | C12 C14 C23 E32 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedhwp:103968 |
| By: | Romero, Paola; Castaneda, Juan |
| Abstract: | Independent central banks must be effectively accountable, particularly when they engage in discretionary policies during a crisis. We argue that ex post assessment of central bank performance is insufficient for proper accountability. Using the inflationary episode that followed the Covid-19 pandemic, we show that a central bank explicitly committed to an inflation-targeting rule can deviate substantially from its target, with the extent of the deviation being identified only once it is already too late to correct it. We propose ‘procedural accountability’, a comprehensive framework for monetary policymaking. Drawing on the gold standard experience and existing rule-based proposals, we specify the minimal formal architecture any such regime must satisfy. |
| Keywords: | accountability;central banks;discretion;inflation targeting;monetary policy |
| JEL: | E42 E58 E61 |
| Date: | 2026–10–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:140780 |
| By: | Vasily Astrov (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Alexandra Bykova (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Selena Duraković (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Meryem Gökten (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Richard Grieveson (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Gabor Hunya (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Branimir Jovanović (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Biljana Jovanovikj (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Jakub Komárek (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Niko Korpar (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Dzmitry Kruk; Isilda Mara (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Michał Możdżeń; Emilia Penkova-Pearson; Emilė Petravičiūtė; Olga Pindyuk (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Sandor Richter (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Bernd Christoph Ströhm (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Marina Tverdostup (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw) |
| Abstract: | Despite a stronger-than-expected recovery in European industry, the euro area faces a difficult outlook, with renewed inflationary pressures, high interest rates and mounting fiscal challenges expected to constrain growth in 2027. Against this backdrop, most economies in Central, East and Southeast Europe (CESEE) remain resilient and continue to outperform Western Europe, although differences between countries are widening. The region's traditional growth model, based on cheap labour, foreign investment and German industrial demand, is giving way to one increasingly driven by domestic demand, automation and investment in defence, energy and higher-value industries, creating new opportunities alongside significant geopolitical and economic risks. |
| Keywords: | CESEE Central and Eastern Europe, economic forecast, Western Balkans, CIS, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, EU, business cycle, economic sentiment, euro area, convergence, labour markets, unemployment, Russia-Ukraine war, commodity prices, inflation, price controls, trade disruptions, renewable energy, gas, electricity, monetary policy, fiscal policy |
| JEL: | E20 E21 E22 E24 E32 E5 E62 F21 F31 H60 I18 J20 J30 O47 O52 O57 P24 P27 P33 P52 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wii:fpaper:fc:autumn2026 |
| By: | Algan, Yann |
| Abstract: | Le mouvement lycéen de l’automne 2026 rassemble presque toute une génération : 92 % des 16-20 ans jugent ses revendications justifiées. Il ne ressemble pourtant ni à celui de 1986 ni à celui de 2006 : il n’y a aucun texte à retirer, et un jeune sur trois veut que le mouvement continue même si ses revendications sont satisfaites. Notre enquête auprès de 1 077 jeunes de 16 à 20 ans, interrogés avant et après le 17 octobre, montre que cette colère se nourrit moins du pouvoir d’achat que de l’idée que le gâteau ne grossit plus et d’un lien aux autres abîmé. Elle se divise pourtant en deux. Les jeunes proches de la gauche radicale et ceux de la droite radicale partagent la même blessure : plus de huit sur dix jugent que la démocratie fonctionne mal. Mais ils ne désignent pas le même coupable : 35 % des premiers en veulent d’abord aux riches et aux inégalités, 40 % des seconds à l’immigration. La gauche radicale veut changer le système, et c’est elle qui descend dans la rue : près de quatre mobilisés sur dix en sont proches, et 60 % de ses jeunes jugent légitime d’affronter les forces de l’ordre. La droite radicale soutient la cause, mais reste chez elle et demande de l’ordre. Les débordements du 17 octobre ont durci ces deux colères plutôt que de les rapprocher. Les lycéens donnent ainsi la version la plus vive des colères françaises : une même blessure, celle d’une promesse de progrès qui ne tient plus, et deux colères dont le rapport aux autres décide la direction. |
| Keywords: | France, Bien-être, Colère, Politique, Lycéens, Manifestations |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpm:notobe:2620 |
| By: | Xiaoping Zhao (Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University, JAPAN); Junyi Shen (Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration, Kobe University, JAPAN); Ken-Ichi Shimomura (College of Asia Pacific Studies, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, and Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration, Kobe University, JAPAN); Hiromasa Takahashi (Faculty of International Studies, Hiroshima City University) |
| Abstract: | We study public-good provision in a three-player environment with Cobb-Douglas preferences and heterogeneous endowments. Across treatments we vary the distribution of endowments while holding the group's total endowment constant. We conduct two comparisons: (i) within-mechanism, contrasting theoretical benchmarks with experimental outcomes; and (ii) across mechanisms, contrasting simultaneous with sequential play under the same role–endowment mapping. In the sequential mechanism, the richest participant is exogenously assigned as the leader, and the two followers move simultaneously in the second stage. Taking Varian (1994) as a testable null (sequential provision should not exceed simultaneous provision), we report both aggregate provision and role-level contributions and document alignment and gaps between theory and data within mechanisms, as well as the pure timing effect across mechanisms. This design extends the literature that has largely studied heterogeneous endowments under simultaneous play by adding a systematic analysis of heterogeneous endowments under sequential play. |
| Keywords: | Endowment heterogeneity; Simultaneous moves；Sequential moves; Public goods; Theory; Experiment |
| JEL: | C91 C92 D63 H41 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kob:dpaper:dp2026-28 |
| By: | Javier Ojea Ferreiro; Andrea Ugolini; Juan C. Reboredo |
| Abstract: | Artificial intelligence (AI) has a double-edged relationship with financial stability: it may improve efficiency and risk management, while also creating new vulnerabilities and amplification channels. This paper studies whether market-perceived exposure to AI is reflected in the tails of financial-sector returns, and whether this relationship depends on macroeconomic conditions. We develop a framework that decomposes financial-sector tail outcomes across contemporaneous AI and macroeconomic scenarios, and identifies whether the AI-related episodes are primarily associated with extreme gains or losses. Using daily equity returns for financial sectors in Canada, the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom, and China, we document substantial heterogeneity. Financial-sector-specific scenarios dominate tail outcomes across markets, while the contribution of AI-related scenarios to return asymmetry differs substantially across countries. AI-sector scenarios contribute to downside asymmetry in Europe, China, and especially the United Kingdom, but make only a limited contribution in Canada and have the smallest tail weights in the United States. China is the only market exhibiting positive average skewness, driven by the financial and systemic scenarios rather than by AI-related outcomes. Overall, AI-related market movements are neither uniformly stabilizing nor destabilizing; their financial-stability interpretation depends on the market considered and on whether AI-sector tail events occur in isolation or jointly with broader macroeconomic movements. |
| Keywords: | Financial system; Financial institutions and intermediation; Financial stability and systemic risk; Models and tools; Econometric, statistical and computational methods; Structural challenges; Digitalization and productivity |
| JEL: | C C5 C58 G G0 G01 G2 G21 G3 G32 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bca:bocawp:26-40 |
| By: | Chengkai Zhang; Yuhao Li; Elaine Shi; Mengqian Zhang; Lirong Xia; Qishen Han |
| Abstract: | The adaptive clinching auction of Dobzinski, Lavi, and Nisan (FOCS'08) is a cornerstone of mechanism design with budget-constrained bidders, and it has since inspired a broad range of extensions to substantially richer market settings. Adaptive clinching enjoys compelling guarantees: it is Pareto optimal, and truthful bidding is a dominant strategy whenever budgets cannot be overreported. In many real-world environments, however, identities are cheap to create, making resilience to Sybil attacks an additional requirement. Whether the guarantees of adaptive clinching survive when a bidder can split its budget across fake identities has remained open. We introduce a generalized framework for adaptive clinching and prove that it satisfies Sybil-robust incentive compatibility: a bidder cannot benefit from splitting into any finite number of identities with arbitrary value reports, provided their aggregate reported budget does not exceed the bidder's enforceable true budget. Sybil resilience thus joins the list of ideal properties of adaptive clinching. Our work is motivated by practical problems in decentralized finance, where automated market makers (AMMs) are among the most widely used applications. We design a new AMM mechanism that extends classical adaptive clinching in two ways: it supports a two-sided market and protects against two-sided strategies, and it allows the supply function to depend on the auction state. Its one-sided special case is captured by our generalized adaptive clinching framework, and our proof techniques show that the full two-sided mechanism simultaneously satisfies Sybil-robust incentive compatibility and a relaxed notion of Pareto optimality. We argue that these guarantees are essentially the best possible via impossibility results. More broadly, our work reveals new connections between classical algorithmic game theory and modern decentralized blockchains. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.36629 |
| By: | Damaris Ning Mufur; Hubert Tchakoute Tchuigoua |
| Abstract: | There is limited empirical evidence on the impact of audit quality on earnings quality in social enterprises, especially among microfinance institutions (MFIs). To address this research gap, we frame our analysis using agency theory and examine a sample of 5284 MFIs from 115 emerging countries between 2007 and 2014. We define earnings quality as the extent to which reported earnings are less affected by earnings management. Our findings suggest that Big 4 auditors enhance earnings quality in MFIs. However, we also observe that MFIs are more likely to misreport during economic downturns and that Big 4 auditors are less effective in curbing this discretionary behaviour under such conditions. |
| Keywords: | audit quality; earnings management; external audit; non-profit auditing |
| Date: | 2026–07–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/413179 |
| By: | Ketan Ahuja; Karan Daryanani (Harvard's Growth Lab); Marie Jugé; Ben McWilliams; Simone Tagliapietra |
| Abstract: | Though Europeans have pioneered many green technologies, Europe is currently losing some competitiveness in the production of those technologies. This slowdown affects different countries and regions differently. Boosting competitiveness at the aggregate level should therefore involve approaches that take into account diverse regional industrial capabilities. In this paper, we evaluate Europe’s positioning in green technologies and identify opportunities for Europe to translate its industrial capabilities into leadership of green value chains. We use two datasets – the Greenplexity dataset from the Harvard Growth Lab, and the European Clean Tech Tracker from Bruegel (Growth Lab, 2025; Bruegel Dataset, 2025) – to explore trends at national and regional levels. We identify the sectors and regions in which Europe can strengthen its position, build competitiveness in new industries and generate economic growth through the energy transition. We conclude with policy priorities for guiding clean-technology investments, arguing that policymakers should use the feasibility and attractiveness of industrial clusters to target investment support at the regional level. This paper is also published as a Bruegel Working Paper. Issue number 28/2026, available at https://doi.org/10.64153/ZYKB9779. |
| Keywords: | competitiveness, trade policy, decarbonization, industrial policy, investment |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:glh:wpfacu:275 |
| By: | Katsuhiro Komatsu (Kyoto University) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how the wealth accumulation of workers and their job search behavior influence firm wage setting. I incorporate wealth accumulation and endogenous search intensity of risk-averse workers into an equilibrium job-ladder model. The wagesensitive search of wealth-poor workers restrains wage markdowns near the bottom of the job ladder. Removing this discipline through complete markets allows low-wage firms to further push down wages, lowering the average wage and raising wage inequality. This firm-side response, which I call the insurance channel, offsets the direct consumption-smoothing gain of unemployment insurance. |
| Keywords: | Wage; Saving; Search; Unemployment; Unemployment Insurance |
| JEL: | J30 E21 E24 D83 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kyo:wpaper:1133 |
| By: | Didier Christophe (ENSFEA - École Nationale Supérieure de Formation de l'Enseignement Agricole de Toulouse-Auzeville, LLA-CREATIS - Lettres, Langage et Arts – Création, Recherche, Émergence en Arts, Textes, Images, Spectacles - UT2J - Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse, EFTS - Education, Formation, Travail, Savoirs - UT2J - Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - ENSFEA - École Nationale Supérieure de Formation de l'Enseignement Agricole de Toulouse-Auzeville) |
| Abstract: | This communication studies a sociocultural reality that can no longer be kept hidden: many productions by contemporary artists have for the theme of societal or sociotechnical transitions. Then, artistic actions allow to accompany these transitions, to anticipate and/or document them. While taking care to recall historical landmarks, through the evocation of artists and researchers, we will seek to clarify artistic approaches in the field that focus on linking artistic production, knowledge production, reassessment of awareness-raising practices and issues. First, it is a matter of identifying and differentiating protocols and practices, the alliance of postures as an artist and as a socioanthropologist, and especially that of a participating observer often adopted and assumed in this type of artistic approach. We also need to explore the point of transition towards these choices of artistic themes, as well as the reasons for engagement and the chosen protocol. This approach, through the different options, references and modalities developed, makes it possible to identify five key axioms. |
| Abstract: | Cette communication se propose d'aborder une réalité socioculturelle qu'on ne peut plus tenir cachée : de nombreuses productions d'artistes contemporains se donnent pour thème des transitions sociétales ou sociotechniques. Des actions artistiques permettent alors de d'accompagner ces transitions, pour les anticiper et/ou les documenter. Tout en prenant le soin de rappeler des repères historiques, à travers l'évocation d'artistes et de chercheurs, nous chercherons à expliciter des démarches artistiques de terrain qui s'attachent à lier production artistique, production de connaissance, réévaluation des pratiques et enjeux de conscientisation. Il s'agit d'abord repérer et différencier les protocoles et les pratiques, l'alliance des postures d'artiste et de socioanthropologue, et la notamment celle d'observateur participant souvent adoptée et assumée dans ce type de démarche artistique. Il faut aussi sonder le point de basculement vers ces choix de thématique artistique, et les raisons d'engagement ainsi que le protocole choisi. Cette approche, à travers les différentes options, saisines et modalités développées, permet de repérer cinq axiomes déterminants. |
| Date: | 2026–09–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05804557 |
| By: | Coyle, Diane; Wdowin, Julia |
| Abstract: | Economists increasingly make the case for the measurement of missing capitals for better welfare, wealth, sustainability and productivity measures. Shadow prices represent the value of missing capital assets in economic welfare terms. This paper reviews the value concepts underlying shadow prices and the choice of estimation in practice. Four missing capital types are explored here: natural, cultural and heritage, human, and intangible capitals. We discuss the distinction between the concepts of exchange values and shadow prices intended to capture the social welfare value of assets when these differ from exchange values for reasons such as the presence of externalities. Exchange value estimates are consistent with SNA principles, while shadow prices seek to internalise the value of non-market elements such as externalities. We first clarify the distinction and also the relation of consumer surplus to shadow prices. In addressing the question of how to value non-market benefits and costs and, thus, how to estimate shadow prices, we also provide a mapping from missing capital asset categories to valuation methods and the theory of value they embed. Finally, we discuss issues relating to asset category overlaps as well as complementarities between categories in generating welfare, presenting some key unresolved questions. |
| Keywords: | welfare; shadow prices; inclusive wealth; exchange values; natural capital; cultural and heritage capital; human capital; intangible capital; economic measurement |
| JEL: | A13 D62 E01 E22 I30 Q51 Q57 |
| Date: | 2025–05–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eoe:escoed:escoe-dp-2025-05 |
| By: | Guida Ayza Estopà (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management (SBS-EM), Department of Applied Economics (DULBEA)); Bart Cockx (Ghent University, Department of Economics, CESifo, UCLouvain, IRES/LIDAM, IZA Institute of Labor Economics, Maastricht University); Sébastien Fontenay (Universidad de Alcalà, Department of Economics, IZA Institute of Labor Economics); Ilan Tojerow (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management (SBS-EM), Department of Applied Economics (DULBEA), IZA Institute of Labor Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how financial incentives shape labor supply decisions among disability insurance (DI) recipients who already combine benefits with part-time work. We exploit a distinctive feature of the Belgian Adapted Work Program, in which DI benefits are progressively withdrawn as earnings increase and the marginal withdrawal rate rises sharply at predefined thresholds. Because participants cannot freely adjust their working hours, this setting allows us to estimate how higher implicit taxation affects transitions out of partial work. Using administrative data and a Regression Kink Design, we find that higher implicit tax rates induce exits in two opposite directions: toward full-time employment and back to full DI. A oneeuro increase in the implicit marginal tax per working day raises the probability of returning to full DI by 3.0 percentage points and of resuming full-time employment by 1.5 percentage points, corresponding to elasticities of 0.84 and 0.85. A simple labor supply framework rationalizes these divergent responses. Our findings show that the financial design of partial-benefit schemes can determine whether partial work serves as a bridge toward full employment or instead leads recipients back to full benefit dependency. |
| Keywords: | Disability insurance; Return-to-work policies; Financial incentives; Regression kink design |
| JEL: | I13 I38 J14 J22 |
| Date: | 2026–10–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctl:louvir:2026017 |
| By: | Gutiérrez-Lythgoe, Antonio; Sergio, Faci-Lázaro; David, Iñiguez; Jose Alberto, Molina; José Antonio, Chanca Cáceres; Jesús Ángel, García Rubio; José Manuel, Lestegás Rivas; Pes Cifuentes, Esther |
| Abstract: | This paper combines two complementary tools for urban mobility planning in Zaragoza. First, we estimate an origin–destination matrix of the trips made in the city during the week of 20–26 May 2024. The destinations of bus and tram trips are inferred from anonymised smart card validation records using the trip-chaining method. These flows are anchored to total mobility observed in mobile phone data, and the remaining modes are disaggregated in a cascade. Most trips are made on foot (49.7%) or by car (29.1%); public transport accounts for 15.5% (11.5% bus and 4.0% tram), and bicycles and personal mobility vehicles for 5.7%. Second, we build an Explore and Preferential Return (EPR) mobility model, calibrated with bike-sharing (Bizi), bus and tram data, which allows the system to be simulated under perturbations. Measured by relative travel time, the Bizi network ceases to be efficient at around 11 users per bicycle in 2025 and 10 in 2026, which, given the expanded fleet, more than doubles the number of users the system can serve. The bus and tram network shows a high degree of redundancy: the efficiency-loss threshold is only reached when 13 lines or 7% of stops are attacked. |
| Keywords: | origin–destination matrix; trip-chaining method; mobile phone data; modal split; EPR model; network resilience; bike-sharing. |
| JEL: | C55 C63 R41 R42 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:131614 |
| By: | Kevin Dano; Bryan S. Graham; Yassine Sbai Sassi |
| Abstract: | In social and economic networks linked agents often share connections in common. There are two competing explanations for this phenomenon. First, agents may have a structural taste for transitive links – the returns to linking may be higher if two agents share a common connection. Second, agents may assortatively match on unobserved attributes, a process called homophily. We study parameter identifiability in a simple model of dynamic network formation with both effects. Agents form, maintain, and dissolve links over time to maximize utility. The return to linking may be higher if agents share connections in common. A pair-specific utility component allows for arbitrary homophily on time-invariant agent attributes. We derive conditions under which it is possible to detect the presence of a taste for transitivity in the presence of assortative matching on unobservables. We leave the joint distribution of the initial network and the pair-specific utility component, both high dimensional nuisance parameters, unrestricted. Our identification result is constructive, suggesting an analog estimator, whose finite and (single) large network properties we characterize. We show, via examples, the delicacy of information accumulation in the single (large) network setting. |
| Date: | 2026–10–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:azt:cemmap:18/26 |
| By: | Oklobdzija, Stan Nguyen (University of California, Riverside); Marantz, Nicholas; Reid, Carolina |
| Abstract: | Though the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education outlawed explicit segregation of public schools, segregation has remained stubbornly persistent in the intervening decades. What explains continuous racial segregation in the absence of explicit policy? One possible driver is America's built environment designed with similar segregationist impulses but not subject to the same corrective legal action. Zoning and land use policy influence where households of different means can live, thereby sorting their children across schools. We investigate this link drawing on housing unit counts from the American Community Survey, apportioned to 923 school district boundaries and 13, 002 school attendance zones with 27 million residential parcels. We find that districts where single-family and multifamily housing is spread unevenly across attendance zones are more segregated by race and income. Schools with attendance zones that contain a higher proportion of single-family detached residences enroll a disproportionately high share of Asian and White students, as compared with their districts. When an attendance zone boundary is redrawn to encompass a higher share of single-family housing, its Asian and White share increases further. These findings help illuminate how land use policy influences educational segregation and contributes to literature on how policies that regulate the built environment affect racial sorting. |
| Date: | 2026–10–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:rb4wx_v1 |
| By: | Dhamija, Vedanta (Centre for Macroeconomics); Fusari, Francesco (Newcastle University Business School); Tara, Roshni (Centre for Macroeconomics) |
| Abstract: | Fiscal policy is often anticipated before implementation, yet little is known about how fiscal foresight shapes inequality. We study the distributional effects of government spending shocks, distinguishing between anticipated (news) and unanticipated (surprise) components. We show that positive surprise shocks reduce U.S. consumption inequality, whereas positive news shocks increase it. A two-agent New Keynesian (TANK) model rationalises these findings and highlights the role of monetary-fiscal regimes: in a monetary-led regime, news and surprise shocks have opposite distributional effects similar to the empirical findings, while in a fiscally-led regime both reduce consumption inequality. Our results demonstrate that the distributional impact of fiscal policy depends critically on fiscal foresight and the prevailing policy regime. |
| Keywords: | consumption inequality, fiscal policy, news shocks, monetary-fiscal interaction, TANK model |
| JEL: | C32 E21 E61 E62 E63 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nwc:wpaper:2026-01 |
| By: | Gruhl, Henri; Kottmann, Robin |
| Abstract: | Is the healthcare system equipped to protect patients from extreme heat? Linking daily temperatures to administrative records covering 41.3 million German hospital admissions, we examine hospital-acquired dehydration among patients without dehydration at admission. Relative to stays at 15-20°C, exposure above 30°C increases dehydration by 0.63 percentage points (17%) and acute kidney failure, an objective dehydration-related outcome, by 0.08 percentage points (4.7%). Effects are concentrated among older patients and those with dementia. Our findings show that extreme heat not only increases demand for care, but also compromises patient protection within hospitals, highlighting the need for adaptation to prevent avoidable in-hospital deterioration. |
| Abstract: | Ist das Gesundheitssystem in der Lage, Patientinnen und Patienten vor extremer Hitze zu schützen? Wir verknüpfen tägliche Temperaturdaten mit administrativen Daten zu 41, 3 Millionen Krankenhausaufnahmen in Deutschland und untersuchen, wie sich Hitze auf im Krankenhaus auftretende Dehydrierung auswirkt. Berücksichtigt werden dabei nur Patientinnen und Patienten, bei denen zum Zeitpunkt der Aufnahme keine Dehydrierung dokumentiert war. Im Vergleich zu Aufenthalten bei Temperaturen von 15-20°C steigt die Wahrscheinlichkeit einer Dehydrierung bei Temperaturen über 30°C um 0, 63 Prozentpunkte (17 %). Auch das Risiko eines akuten Nierenversagens, eines objektiv messbaren und mit Dehydrierung zusammenhängenden Gesundheitsproblems, nimmt um 0, 08 Prozentpunkte (4, 7 %) zu. Besonders stark betroffen sind ältere Patientinnen und Patienten sowie Menschen mit Demenz. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass extreme Hitze nicht nur die Nachfrage nach medizinischer Versorgung erhöht, sondern auch die Sicherheit von Patientinnen und Patienten im Krankenhaus beeinträchtigen kann. Sie unterstreichen damit die Bedeutung von Anpassungsmaßnahmen, die vermeidbare gesundheitliche Verschlechterungen während des Krankenhausaufenthalts verhindern. |
| Keywords: | Healthcare quality, Climate change, Heat, Dehydration |
| JEL: | I10 I11 Q51 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:344215 |
| By: | Valter Carturo (Carturo & Partners, Italy); Daniele Cortolezzis (Free University of Bolzano, Italy); Pietro Domenichini (ISR Institute, Italy); Davide Ferrari (Free University of Bolzano, Italy); Francesco Ravazzolo (BI Norwegian Business School, Norway; Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy; RCEA) |
| Abstract: | Macro climate and climate-finance research quantify aggregate damages, valuation effects, and financial propagation, but they provide limited guidance on how a macro climate state becomes an exposure at a particular operating site and within a particular business process. We develop Geoclimatic Probable Maximum Loss (GCPML), a transparent macro-to-micro framework that evaluates physical hazards at verified facility coordinates, separates site-specific physical risk from ex ante hazard-importance weights, transmits hazards through damage mechanisms to eleven business processes, mediates exposure through audit-based organisational resilience, and scales the result by production value. The terminology denotes a conditional management assessment under existing audited protections and no additional adaptation; the pilot does not estimate a loss quantile. Macro financial evidence on climate-policy uncertainty describes how climate risk is priced and propagated; GCPML supplies the complementary upstream physical and organisational exposure that can subsequently be linked to cash flows, financing conditions, and valuations. To assess feasibility, we apply the framework to a pilot study of 17 audited sites. The pilot identifies material address-geocoding errors and shows that coordinate-only screening retains much of the intensity ranking (Spearman correlation 0.917) but reproduces the dominant process area at only five sites; the audit relocates it at the other twelve. The higher correlation for absolute exposure is partly mechanical because screening and full assessment share the same site production values. The exercise evaluates implementation, sensitivity, and diagnostic content, not predictive accuracy or actuarial calibration. |
| Keywords: | Physical climate risk; Climate finance; Enterprise risk management; Facility location; Composite indicators; Probable maximum loss; Organisational resilience. |
| JEL: | C43 D22 E44 G32 Q54 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bzn:wpaper:bemps121 |
| By: | Davis, Donald R.; Easton, Matthew; Thies, Stephan |
| Abstract: | We use a discrete choice framework to provide the first nesting of Thomas C. Schelling's canonical models of racial segregation amenable to empirical examination. Using U.S. Census data from 1970-2000, we demonstrate a central role for spatial racial spillovers in shaping racial clustering, patterns of racial shares and housing prices at the boundary of racial clusters, and the locus of racial change. Our results on the locus of racial change conflict strongly with prominent prior results on racial tipping. Our theory provides a foundation for spatially stratified regressions. The strongest spatial effects in the prior work are not tipping, but the distinct biased White suburbanization. Tipping effects in urban areas remote from Minority clusters are small or insignificant. In urban areas proximate to Minority clusters they average less than half those reported in prior pooled results. Policies promoting racial integration must thus attend to the heterogeneous fragility of neighborhoods. |
| Keywords: | house prices;segregation;us;race;minorities |
| JEL: | N0 |
| Date: | 2025–09–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:141744 |
| By: | Giorgos Iacovides; Oliver Hannibal; Wuyang Zhou; Danilo Mandic |
| Abstract: | Recent advances in Generative AI have substantially improved financial sentiment analysis through post-trained financial large language models (LLMs). However, existing approaches remain confined to predicting the sentiment of each article in isolation and operate as black boxes, which limits contextual understanding and hinders deployment in high-stakes financial decision-making. To this end, we introduce FinLLM-KG, a model-agnostic framework that combines causal LLMs with a financial knowledge graph, in order to inject temporally grounded, company-level knowledge from SEC 10-K filings at inference time, without updating model weights. Within FinLLM-KG, context is supplied either as a natural-language company profile or as a small set of relevance-ranked factual triples. This enables sentiment predictions to account for broader firm-level information rather than the article alone, at almost zero computational cost and for any causal LLM. In addition, attributing each article-level sentiment score to individual sentences and to the retrieved knowledge-graph facts makes the evidence behind the prediction inspectable, thereby enhancing explainability and supporting human-in-the-loop review. Simulations demonstrate that FinLLM-KG consistently improves portfolio performance over the state-of-the-art baseline. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.36083 |
| By: | Morgane Lucas (Nantes Univ - EPUN - Nantes Université - Ecole Polytechnique de l'Université de Nantes - Nantes Université - pôle Sciences et technologie - Nantes Univ - Nantes Université, LEMNA - Laboratoire d'économie et de management de Nantes Atlantique - Nantes Univ - IAE Nantes - Nantes Université - Institut d'Administration des Entreprises - Nantes - Nantes Université - pôle Sociétés - Nantes Univ - Nantes Université) |
| Abstract: | Analyser les tensions de gouvernance des systèmes d'information critiques integrant l'IA à partir des discours d'acteurs de la défense dans le contexte des capacités spatiales |
| Date: | 2026–05–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05789286 |
| By: | Engeman, Cassandra; Valentova, Marie; Thil, Laurène; Stastna, Anna; Hartung, Anne; Bartova, Alzbeta (Leiden University); Dobrotic, Ivana (University of Zagreb); Arnalds, Ásdís A.; Köppe, Stephan; Dimitrova, Elitsa |
| Abstract: | This document presents a repository of questions that can be used in cross-national comparative surveys to collect data on parenting leave. With our collated and proposed questions, we aim to assist researchers and data collection agencies build better parenting leave data to understand when and how parents use such provisions. In the following sections, we present questions related to measuring (1) formal and perceived eligibility for leave provisions, (2) leave use and non-use, (3) reasons for non-use, and (4) views about parenting leave. While questions in the first three sections primarily measure behaviour, we include questions about parents’ views, because they can inform behaviour. Each of these four main sections includes our research- and theory-based motivations for the phrasing, inclusion and design of the questions as well as their shortcomings. |
| Date: | 2026–10–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:anr86_v1 |
| By: | John K. -H. Quah; Rui Tang |
| Abstract: | Convexity of preferences is a pervasive assumption in economic analysis, so it is important to understand how this property is revealed in data. In this paper, we develop a method to test for convexity given partial preference information in the form of weak and strict incomplete orders. We characterize the pairs that can be extended to convex preferences and provide an efficient algorithm to verify this property. Requiring the convex preference to align with an order that satisfies independence, such as the Euclidean order or stochastic dominance, does not complicate the test. We apply our results to consumer demand, choice under risk and uncertainty, and preferences over information, and establish conditions under which upper semicontinuity or continuity can also be obtained. We identify environments in which convexity imposes no additional restrictions beyond rationality, extending Afriat-type results to infinite data and co-convex budgets and establishing a convex version of exact rationalization. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.34771 |
| By: | Mickael Beaud (CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro Montpellier - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement - UM - Université de Montpellier); Yujiang Sun (CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro Montpellier - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement - UM - Université de Montpellier); Marc Willinger (CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro Montpellier - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement - UM - Université de Montpellier) |
| Abstract: | While various models of inequality aversion predict different effects of background risk on giving, empirical evidence remains mixed. This study presents a laboratory experiment using a modified dictator game to examine whether exposure to an additive, zero-mean background risk affecting endowments influences giving behavior. Our results show that such exposure does not significantly affect average donation amounts, the likelihood of giving nothing, or the tendency to split resources equally. These findings are consistent with ex ante inequality concerns under risk neutrality; however, overall, our experimental data do not support the behavioral predictions implied by purely ex post inequality aversion. |
| Keywords: | Inequality aversion, Background risk, Dictator game |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05777756 |
| By: | Thomas, Pia Teresa; Tse, Emily; Fasold, Svenja; Hattula, Cansu |
| Abstract: | Digitalization has profoundly reshaped our everyday communication, social interaction, and relationship practices. Particularly smartphones have become deeply embedded in daily life, influencing attention, presence, and perceived relationship quality. In this context, the concept of digital minimalism - defined as a conscious, reflective, and value-oriented reduction of digital media usage - has gained increasing relevance. This study explores how digital minimalism relates to perceived relationship quality. Based on a qualitative research design, nine semi-structured interviews with participants aged 13 to 62 were conducted and analyzed using the Gioia methodology in line with grounded theory principles. In vivo coding was applied to remain close to participants' language and perspectives. The findings reveal an ambivalent relationship to digital media: while participants rely heavily on smartphones for communication, they also experience distraction, emotional strain, and reduced presence in their social interactions. Indeed, face-to-face interactions are consistently perceived as more meaningful, emotionally rich, and relationally satisfying than digital communication. Although most participants express a desire to reduce their media use, they face both social and structural barriers in doing so. Supportive social environments emerge as a key enabling factor. Overall, the study suggests that digital minimalism can enhance relationship quality by fostering presence, attention, and shared time, particularly when it is socially supported and collectively practiced. |
| Keywords: | Digitaler Minimalismus, Beziehungsqualität, digitale Mediennutzung, Grounded Theory, soziale Beziehungen, Smartphone-Nutzung, Selbstregulation, soziale Präsenz, Kommunikation |
| JEL: | Z13 I31 D91 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:iubhma:344245 |
| By: | Lerch, Benjamin; Brändle, Thomas; Baur, Martin |
| Abstract: | Switzerland’s fertility rate fell below 1.3 children per woman in 2024 and has remained well below the replacement level for decades, reflecting a broader trend across advanced economies. This paper discusses the economic and fiscal implications of persistently low fertility, reviews its underlying causes and the extent to which family policy can influence fertility decisions, and presents policy options available for Switzerland. Low fertility slows growth of the domestic working-age population, accelerates population ageing, and reduces long-term economic growth potential. For public finances, it dampens tax revenues and social insurance contributions while increasing age-related expenditure, particularly on pensions and healthcare. The causes of low fertility are multifaceted, including the financial costs of having children, difficulties in reconciling work and family life, and broader changes in social norms and lifestyles. Evidence from OECD countries suggests that family policies can alleviate some constraints, but their effects on fertility are small and often temporary. Coherent and well-coordinated measures supporting families throughout the child-rearing years appear more promising than individual measures. As a sustained reversal of current fertility trends appears unlikely, economic and fiscal policy should focus on adapting to an ageing society by making better use of the domestic labour supply, facilitating labor-market-oriented immigration, and fostering productivity growth. Finally, reforms to strengthen the fiscal sustainability of pension and healthcare systems become even more important. |
| JEL: | J11 J13 H51 H55 |
| Date: | 2026–10–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2026/09 |
| By: | Nxumalo, Mpumelelo; Raju, Dhushyanth |
| Abstract: | Türkiye’s formal employment agenda for Syrian refugees increasingly depends on whether firms can translate legal access into registered jobs. A large-scale 2026 survey of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises finds a relatively small employer base but generally favorable experience among firms that have hired Syrian refugees. The main firm-side frictions are limited knowledge of formal employment requirements, procedural complexity, and weak links between recruitment and formal services. Firms with prior hiring experience are far more open to additional support than never-employers. Policy should simplify formal hiring pathways, strengthen matching, differentiate support by hiring history, and target firms and locations with credible labor demand. |
| Date: | 2026–10–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:hdnspu:216013 |
| By: | Anna Maria Mayda; Lindsay Oldenski; Walter Steingress |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the impact of offshoring by US firms on voting patterns in the US. Using county-level voting data combined with industry-level offshoring data from 2000 to 2020, we ask whether an increase in employment at foreign affiliates of US multinational firms in vertically oriented industries is associated with an increase in the vote share for the incumbent party candidate in Presidential, House, and Senate elections. We find that offshoring leads to a significant increase in the incumbent vote share for counties with higher shares of college educated workers, and a significant decrease for counties with higher shares of workers in the manufacturing sector and in occupations that are more easily relocated abroad. These results are consistent with the labor market literature on offshoring and our own findings, which show that offshoring has heterogeneous effects on workers’ employment based on skill and occupational tasks. This suggests that voters respond to the economic effects of offshoring by rewarding or punishing incumbent party candidates. |
| Keywords: | Models and tools; Economic models; Structural challenges; International trade, finance and competitiveness |
| JEL: | D D7 D72 F F2 F23 F6 F60 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bca:bocawp:26-37 |
| By: | Márquez-Velázquez, Alejandro |
| Abstract: | Although many believe competitive currencies or real exchange rate undervaluation boost growth, recent research shows that the magnitude of this impact varies across countries. Since their integration into global value chains (GVCs) in the 1980s, a group of peripheral countries has transformed their export patterns. GVCs involve splitting production across several firms and countries. Many peripheral countries highly integrated into GVCs tend to present high backward-GVC participation. This means that imported inputs account for a significant share of the country's exports. This paper thus examines whether different levels of backward participation in GVCs alter the nexus between growth and competitive currencies within peripheral countries. The paper argues that in peripheral countries with high backward participation in GVCs, the growth impact of real exchange rate undervaluation will be lower. This is because higher backward-GVC participation implies less domestic value-added in a country's exports. Therefore, a lower share of domestic value-added is impacted by the competitiveness boost of real exchange rate undervaluation. Panel data regressions with annual data from up to 92 peripheral countries between 1950 and 2017 back the paper's argument. |
| Keywords: | competitive exchange rate, economic growth, global value chains, new developmentalism, peripheral countries |
| JEL: | F31 F43 O11 O14 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:fubsbe:344211 |
| By: | Matthias Unfried (Nürnberg Institut für Marktentscheidungen); Florian Ritter (Nürnberg Institut für Marktentscheidungen) |
| Abstract: | Herkunftsangaben wie „Made in Germany“ oder „Made in China“ finden sich auf unzähligen Produkten –von Kleidung über Elektronik bis hin zu Autos. Doch was verbinden Verbraucher weltweit mit diesen Labels? Geht es nur um den geografischen Ursprung oder schwingen dabei auch bestimmte Vorstellungen von Qualität, Sicherheit oder Nachhaltigkeit mit? Und wie stark beeinflussen Herkunftsangaben am Ende tatsächlich das Vertrauen in eine Marke oder die Kaufentscheidung? In der vorliegenden Studie wurde untersucht, welche Einstellungen Menschen in verschiedenen Ländern gegenüber sogenannten „Made in“-Labels haben. Dabei standen sowohl allgemeine Aspekte wie Vertrauen und Kaufintention im Fokus als auch Unterschiede je nach Produktkategorie. Zusätzlich wurde erhoben, wie der Begriff „Made in“ überhaupt verstanden wird und welche Eigenschaften Konsumenten mit unterschiedlichen Herkunftsländern verbinden. Die Ergebnisse geben Einblicke in ein Thema, das für internationale Markenstrategien ebenso relevant ist wie für die Verbraucherwahrnehmung im globalen Wettbewerb. |
| Keywords: | Herkunftskennzeichnung, Made in, Kaufentscheidungen |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eoh:nimpul:nimpul-012 |
| By: | Rivera Guivas, Nayib; Morgandi, Matteo; Alrayess, Dana Jasmine; Loots, Sonja |
| Abstract: | Labor Market Observatories (LMOs) convert data into actionable intelligence for policymakers, employers, educators, and job seekers. Despite their recognized importance, many countries remain locked in fragmented, survey-dependent systems that fall short of the integrated, forward-looking functions that effective labor mar ket governance demands. This paper develops a practical framework for designing and strengthening LMOs across institutional contexts. Drawing on case studies of advanced LMO functions in five high-income countries – Australia Germany, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and the United Kingdom – it distills transferable lessons organized around five building blocks: mission and policy intent, governance, data infrastructure, analytics capacity, and dissemination. A maturity assessment framework helps countries identify where they stand and how to progress. High-performing LMOs consistently demonstrate a clear legal mandate, interoperable data systems, and credible analytical capacity. There is no single institution al model, but context-sensitive application of these building blocks can substantially strengthen a country's capacity for evidence-based labor market policymaking |
| Date: | 2026–06–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:hdnspu:211679 |
| By: | Goutier, Marc |
| Abstract: | The increasing integration of intelligent agents (IAs) into knowledge work has reshaped human-AI collaboration. Contemporary IAs can initiate interaction themselves and offer proactive help from IAs before users request it, whereas reactive help from IAs remains tied to user prompts (Baird & Maruping, 2021; Berente et al., 2021). This shift is consequential. Users often fail to request help from IAs even when help from IAs would improve their results (Fuegener et al., 2021, 2022; Kraus et al., 2021), yet identical help from IAs can be welcomed or resisted depending on who initiated it, triggering self-threat, fostering over-reliance on help from IAs, or undermining Complementary Team Performance (CTP), i.e., the joint performance of a human and an IA that exceeds what either achieves alone (Fuegener et al., 2021, 2022; Hemmer et al., 2023). While IS research has extensively theorized the content and quality of help from IAs, it has examined willingness to accept help from IAs, reliance on help from IAs, and collaboration outcomes largely in isolation and under the implicit assumption that help from IAs is broadly beneficial (Baird & Maruping, 2021; Li & Karahanna, 2015). This dissertation therefore positions who initiates help from IAs as a design variable for agentic IS artifacts and examines, across five peer-reviewed articles (A–E), how proactive compared to reactive help from IAs shapes users' appraisals, coping responses, and collaboration outcomes. Theoretically, it draws on the framework of Human–Agent Interaction (Baird & Maruping, 2021), Self-Affirmation Theory (Steele, 1988), Appraisal Theory (Lazarus, 1991), and research on CTP (Fuegener et al., 2021, 2022; Hemmer et al., 2023). The first part of the dissertation (Articles A–C) addresses users' psychological reactions to proactive help from IAs and the conditions under which they arise. Articles A, B, and C show that proactive help from IAs increases perceived self-threat and reduces willingness to accept help from IAs, with self-threat serving as the mediating mechanism. This effect varies under three boundary conditions, namely perceived control (A), identity-relevance of the task (B), and relative competence of the IA (C). Theoretically, this contributes in three ways. The first contribution is to analytically separate the initiator of help from IAs from its content and to establish initiative as a psychologically consequential property of human-AI collaboration rather than a neutral efficiency feature. The second contribution is an extension of SAT from interpersonal helping (Craig et al., 2019; Harari et al., 2022) to human-AI collaboration, identifying relative competence of the IA as a boundary condition with no clean interpersonal analogue, since competence asymmetry between humans and IAs can be a structural rather than incidental feature. The third contribution introduces self-threat as an identity-protective mechanism that operates independently of the instrumental quality of help from IAs, such that users may decline objectively useful help from IAs to safeguard their self-concept (Sherman & Cohen, 2006; Steele, 1988). Practically, these findings imply that proactive help from IAs should be designed as an optional suggestion rather than a correction ("suggest, do not apply"), that reactive help from IAs should be the default for identity-relevant tasks, and that users should retain control over proactivity itself. The second part (Article D) shifts attention from willingness to accept help from IAs toward reliance on help from IAs and over-reliance on help from IAs. Using a mixed-methods design, Article D shows that proactive help from IAs increases both reliance on help from IAs and over-reliance on help from IAs, even when users abandon correct answers of their own to follow incorrect help from IAs, and identifies three appraisals through which users evaluate help from IAs, namely perceived reliability and trustworthiness of the IA, emotional and social dynamics, and the cognitive impact of help from IAs. The contribution is to establish willingness to accept help from IAs and reliance on help from IAs as related but theoretically and empirically distinct coping responses, and to extend Appraisal Theory (Lazarus, 1991) to human-AI collaboration as a lens that explains why users may devalue their own correct judgments when following proactive help from IAs, beyond performance-based accounts. Practically, this reframes the design objective from maximizing reliance on help from IAs to calibrating it and recommends deliberate evaluation moments such as showing reasoning, displaying confidence signals, or prompting users to commit before suggestions are revealed, particularly in high-stakes domains such as healthcare, finance, and legal services. The third part (Article E) addresses the design question that follows. Since neither proactive nor reactive help from IAs alone is sufficient to improve collaboration outcomes, Article E introduces Intelligent Helping, a design feature that assigns proactive and reactive help from IAs based on the relative performance of human and IA. Comparing intelligent with random treatment allocation, the article shows that this alignment improves CTP while preserving human control. This generates three contributions. The first reframes the goal of reliance on help from IAs from maximization to calibration, such that users rely on help from IAs when the IA is the more capable party and retain independent judgment when they are. The second operationalizes this calibration as a concrete design feature that combines proactive and reactive help from IAs rather than treating them in isolation, providing actionable design guidance for agentic IS artifacts. The third resolves the apparent tension between high levels of help from IAs and human control by showing that both can be achieved jointly. Practically, this means proactive help from IAs is useful where the IA outperforms the user, and reactive help from IAs is useful where the user outperforms the IA. Beyond the individual articles, the dissertation contributes to IS research on human-AI collaboration by positioning who initiates help from IAs as a first-class design variable in research on agentic IS artifacts, by integrating Self-Affirmation Theory and Appraisal Theory within a process-oriented framework that treats willingness to accept help and reliance on help from IAs as sequential but partly independent responses, and by introducing Intelligent Helping as a theoretical principle for combining proactive and reactive help from IAs. This contribution becomes especially consequential with the rise of agentic AI. As initiation moves from the user to the agent by default, the appraisal and coping dynamics examined here determine whether agent-initiated action is experienced as supportive or controlling, whether reliance on help from IAs is appropriately calibrated, and whether human control is preserved. The dissertation thereby complements the predominantly capability- and governance-oriented discourse on agentic AI with a behavioral foundation for design, and supports an augmentation-oriented perspective in which agentic AI succeeds not by maximizing autonomous action but by offering help from IAs that strengthens human judgment rather than supplanting it. Future research should examine how users' appraisals and reliance on help from IAs evolve over time, how the identified boundary conditions interact in complex settings, and how Intelligent Helping performs in field and multi-actor environments. Ultimately, this dissertation advances a more nuanced theoretical understanding of human-AI collaboration: not as a question of whether humans or IAs perform better in isolation, but of how the design of help from IAs shapes the psychological, behavioral, and performance dynamics through which humans and IAs work together. |
| Date: | 2026–10–15 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dar:wpaper:162811 |
| By: | Anani Mawulikplimi Kueviakoe (Faculté des Sciences Économiques et de Gestion, Université de Lomé, Togo); Awoki Tanko Tankpe (FaSEG - Université de Kara Faculté des Sciences Economiques et de Gestion) |
| Abstract: | Abstract: In a context marked by the globalization of trade, the digital transformation of organizations and increasing demands for financial transparency, the quality of financial information constitutes a major strategic issue for large companies in Togo. Despite accounting and regulatory standards, this quality remains heterogeneous and is strongly influenced by the digitalization of accounting processes as well as by organizational and institutional factors that are still insufficiently mastered. This study aims to identify the determinants of financial information quality in large Togolese companies in the digital era. It adopts a qualitative approach based on data triangulation, combining participant observation and semi-structured interviews conducted in Lomé, from November to December 2025, with 12 financial actors. Data were processed through thematic content analysis. Results show that financial information quality is shaped by internal factors (organization of the accounting system, maturity of information systems, digital skills, internal control quality) and external factors (regulatory framework, tax pressure, stakeholder requirements, institutional environment), with digitalization acting as a cross-cutting factor that strengthens reliability, traceability and transparency. These findings propose an integrative framework linking internal factors, external factors and digitalization as a cross-cutting dimension, extending beyond classical approaches centered on governance and audit. Keywords: financial information quality, digitalization, information systems, governance, large Togolese companies, qualitative analysis. JEL Classification: M41; M15 Paper type: Empirical Research |
| Abstract: | Résumé : Dans un contexte marqué par la mondialisation des échanges, la transformation digitale des organisations et le renforcement des exigences de transparence financière, la qualité de l'information financière constitue un enjeu stratégique majeur pour les grandes entreprises au Togo. Cependant, malgré les normes comptables et réglementaires, cette qualité demeure hétérogène et fortement influencée par la digitalisation des processus comptables ainsi que par des facteurs organisationnels et institutionnels encore insuffisamment maîtrisés. Cette étude vise à identifier les déterminants de la qualité de l'information financière dans les grandes entreprises au Togo à l'ère du digital. Elle adopte une approche qualitative basée sur une triangulation des données, combinant des observations participantes et des entretiens semi-directifs réalisés à Lomé, de novembre à décembre 2025, auprès de 12 acteurs financiers (responsables comptables, financiers, contrôleurs de gestion et auditeurs). Les données ont été traitées par une analyse de contenu thématique permettant de faire émerger les catégories de facteurs explicatifs. Les résultats montrent que la qualité de l'information financière est déterminée par deux ensembles de facteurs. Les facteurs internes concernent l'organisation du système comptable, la maturité des systèmes d'information, les compétences numériques des acteurs et la qualité du contrôle interne. Les facteurs externes regroupent le cadre réglementaire, la pression fiscale, les exigences des parties prenantes et l'environnement institutionnel. La digitalisation apparaît comme un facteur transversal renforçant la fiabilité, la traçabilité et la transparence de l'information financière. Ces résultats proposent un cadre intégrateur articulant facteurs internes, facteurs externes et digitalisation comme facteur transversal, dépassant les approches classiques centrées sur la gouvernance et l'audit. L'étude souligne que la qualité de l'information financière résulte d'une interaction entre facteurs internes, externes et transformation digitale. Elle implique le renforcement des compétences numériques, la modernisation des systèmes d'information comptable et l'amélioration du cadre institutionnel afin d'accroître la qualité de l'information financière dans les grandes entreprises togolaises. Mots-clés : qualité de l'information financière, digitalisation, systèmes d'information, gouvernance, grandes entreprises togolaises, analyse qualitative. Classification JEL : M41 ; M15 Type du papier : Recherche empirique |
| Keywords: | analyse qualitative. Classification JEL : M41, M15 Paper type: Empirical Research, qualitative analysis. JEL Classification: M41, M15 Type du papier : Recherche empirique financial information quality, qualité de l'information financière, qualitative analysis. JEL Classification: M41 M15 Paper type: Empirical Research, large Togolese companies, governance, information systems, digitalization, analyse qualitative. Classification JEL : M41 M15 Type du papier : Recherche empirique financial information quality, grandes entreprises togolaises, gouvernance, systèmes d'information, digitalisation |
| Date: | 2026–09–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05761485 |
| By: | Belli, Paolo; Raju, Dhushyanth |
| Abstract: | In many low- and middle-income countries, the missing jobs problem is typically framed as a shortfall in labor demand. Yet sustained output growth often coexists with limited durable wage employment, high informality, and weak job upgrading. This paper argues that in such settings the constraint frequently lies not in insufficient labor demand alone, but in weak job conversion, defined as the institutional and market mechanisms that determine whether potential matches between firms and workers are formed, sustained, formalized, and upgraded over time. We develop a surplus-based framework in which expected match surplus shapes vacancy posting, match durability, and investment in productivity-enhancing activities. When hiring and screening frictions, weak skill signaling, mobility barriers, regulatory misalignment, instability, or employer market power depress expected surplus, vacancy creation slows, matches are short-lived, and upgrading stalls. In equilibrium, this reduces observed labor demand and lowers the employment elasticity of growth, so that expansion generates employment without transformation. This perspective unifies missing jobs and missing better jobs within a single framework and clarifies why labor market policies underperform when they fail to address the relevant conversion constraint. Strengthening job conversion by improving matching efficiency, skill alignment, mobility, retention, and regulatory coherence complements growth-oriented reforms and increases the likelihood that output expansion translates into durable employment, rising productivity, and structural transformation. |
| Date: | 2026–03–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:hdnspu:208695 |
| By: | Hyun Moh Shin (Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the trade-off between minority shareholder protection and innovation-driven specialization created by South Korea’s regulation of vertical spin-offs (muljeok bunhal) — a wholly-owned daughter firm structure at the center of Commercial Act reforms since 2022, which critics warn may suppress a legitimate channel for technological specialization in the name of shareholder protection. Using 206 spin-offs disclosed on DART between 2016 and 2024, I construct firm-quarter measures of patent-based technological value (following Kogan et al., 2017) and input-output-based industry heterogeneity between parent and daughter (following Antras and Chor, 2013.<p> An event-study difference-in-differences design shows spin-off announcements are associated with a 4.2 percentage point abnormal decline in parent stock returns — significant only once industry heterogeneity is controlled for. Daughter firms spun off into more dissimilar industries create substantially more technological value (a one-standard-deviation increase in heterogeneity raises it by 36.8 percentage points), and parent firms show a symmetric reversal from technological value destruction to value creation as heterogeneity rises. A cost-benefit simulation combining these estimates finds that expected innovation gains exceed estimated shareholder losses in 201 of 206 cases — a result that depends critically on accounting for industry heterogeneity and would reverse sharply if heterogeneity were ignored. |
| Keywords: | spinoffs; spin-offs; vertical spinoffs; vertical spin-offs; firm boundaries; innovation; industrial organization; firm organization; firm decisions |
| JEL: | G34 O31 L22 D57 |
| Date: | 2026–08–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:kieter:023844 |
| By: | Lopes, Marcel Felipe Machado; Lopes, Paula Roméro Cajaty |
| Abstract: | Governments are among the largest single buyers of books, yet public procurement research rarely asks what state purchasing does to the diversity of the market it buys from. This article examines federal book procurement in Brazil using item-level electronic invoice (NF-e) data published by the Office of the Comptroller General (CGU). The data cover 60 months between October 2021 and September 2026 and R$21.9 billion in purchases, 96.7% of which were made by a single buyer, the National Fund for Education Development (FNDE). Drawing on Stirling's variety–balance–disparity framework, we build five indicators of bibliodiversity: supplier concentration (Herfindahl–Hirschman index), the share of the four and eight largest suppliers, supplier evenness, title evenness, and territorial inequality among suppliers. The results describe a market with high variety but low balance. A median of 280 suppliers invoice the federal government each month, yet the four largest take a median 68% of value, and two publishers, FTD and Moderna, account for 45% of the whole series. Concentration is episodic rather than trending: 13 of 60 months exceed the HHI threshold of 2, 500, with no significant monotonic trend. Territorial inequality is extreme and stable (median Gini 0.93), with São Paulo-based emitters taking 93% of value. Title diversity falls when supplier concentration rises (Spearman ρ = −0.61) and has declined sharply since mid-2025. We read these patterns against transaction cost, principal–agent, competition, strategic-procurement and institutional theories. We argue that, in markets for unique cultural goods purchased without price competition, the locus of competition moves from the tender to the pre-selection stage, so programme design rather than tendering rules becomes the main lever for diversity. We derive five propositions and discuss the data-quality limits of invoice-based procurement analytics. |
| Date: | 2026–10–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:eky7w_v1 |
| By: | Veer Taylor |
| Abstract: | To our knowledge, this paper provides the first systematic quantitative evaluation of the ICT Accumulation-Manipulation-Distribution (AMD) model on CME E-Mini NASDAQ-100 futures (NQ). The AMD model proposes that institutional participants structure intraday price delivery in three phases: overnight accumulation in the Asian session, a deliberate false breakout during London, and directional delivery to the opposing liquidity pool during the New York morning session. Using four years of real 15-minute OHLCV data from Databento (January 2022 to July 2026), we operationalize the AMD rules into a strict mechanical strategy and analyze the statistical properties of the resulting signal across N = 484 manipulation signal days using chi-square testing, Benjamini-Hochberg multiple comparisons correction, and regime-conditional analysis. Three principal findings emerge. First, the AMD manipulation signal fires on 44% of trading days. Second, 57% of valid signals see full target delivery before the 9:40 AM New York entry window opens, revealing a structural mismatch between the model's timing assumptions and actual price delivery. Third, within this operationalization of the AMD model, no directional information beyond the daily trend regime was observed: when the signal aligns with the trend it is correct 62-71% of the time (Cohen's h = 0.23-0.43); when it opposes the trend it is correct only 25-30% of the time (Cohen's h = 0.42-0.53). All four trending-regime cells survive Benjamini-Hochberg correction. Key findings are robust to variation in the manipulation breach threshold (5-20 NQ points), Asia range filter percentile, and stop buffer. The regime-dependent signal pattern constitutes a specific, testable hypothesis for follow-on research. |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.35887 |
| By: | Bryan T. Kelly; Yinan Su; Chao Zhang |
| Abstract: | Can we explain asset price movements even with ex post observations of their drivers? Reinterpreting Roll’s (1988) AFA Presidential Address, “R2, ” as a modern empirical exercise, we show that conventional macroeconomic, cash-flow, expectations, and flow variables deliver out-of-sample R2 values that are often negative and otherwise below 10% for monthly U.S. equity returns and are unavailable at the daily frequency. We use generative AI to extract newspaper-stated reasons from Wall Street Journal market summaries and filter out price and return language. These reasons explain around 30–40% of daily and monthly returns out of sample. Their content maps to interpretable themes, including corporate news, macroeconomic conditions, monetary policy, sentiment, and geopolitics. |
| JEL: | C45 C49 G1 G14 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35885 |
| By: | Anthony Wiskich |
| Abstract: | Batteries can power a large ship two ways: carried together onboard, or sent alone as speculative battery vessels (BVs) coupled to a host under way, powering it over a short segment, and recharging in port. Onboard storage is limited by heterogeneous charging opportunities; a BV is more flexible but carries high fixed costs. We assess both on the busy Western Mediterranean cruise corridor, subject to EU policy on port couplers (OPS) and emissions, using real schedules, prices and sea states to optimise pack sizes, charging times and BV routes for maximum fleet profit. At projected 2040 battery costs, onboard batteries are viable first, led in value order by the near-year-round hosts that exploit sunk OPS spare capacity, from an implied carbon price around €95/tCO2e. BVs switch on above about €175/tCO2e, below the implied all-in carbon price of about €260/tCO2e from the current regulatory stack. Four BVs supplementing onboard packs then electrify about 50% of the fleet’s at-sea energy against 36% without them, by serving hosts that leave the corridor seasonally and raising port-coupler utilisation. High BV utilisation requires traffic density or host route flexibility. |
| Keywords: | shipping decarbonisation, battery-electric propulsion, shore power (OPS), technoeconomic optimisation, FuelEU Maritime, EU Emissions Trading System |
| JEL: | C61 L91 Q42 Q48 Q54 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:een:camaaa:2026-92 |
| By: | Jennifer L. Kao; Tamar Oostrom |
| Abstract: | During research and development, firms must decide which types of individuals to engage in developing and testing their products. We investigate how lowering the cost of including one group shapes its representation, subsequent innovation, and product adoption. In 2000, Medicare expanded coverage of clinical trial costs for elderly trial participants, a historically underrepresented group in drug development. This policy increases representation: trial sponsors expand trial eligibility to include elderly participants and increase the share of elderly participants. We find an immediate and large increase in the number of clinical trials for diseases common among the elderly, with the largest increase in drugs not yet approved and in approved drugs tested in new diseases. We document an increase in drug utilization of newly tested drugs among elderly individuals and analyze trial results, adverse events, and drug approvals. Our findings show how financial incentives can increase representation in product development and shift the rate, direction, and adoption of innovation to potentially benefit underserved groups. |
| JEL: | I14 I18 J14 O31 O38 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35936 |
| By: | Itai Ater; Brad Ross; Adi Shany; Shoshana Vasserman |
| Abstract: | Congestion pricing policies are widely debated and critics often argue that toll costs outweigh congestion relief. We show theoretically that welfare gains depend on two forces: the extent of driver heterogeneity—both in preferences and in exposure to highly demanded roads and times of day—and the extent of revenue recycling. We quantify the impact of both forces using data from a large-scale experiment that tracked driving behavior with and without usage-based congestion pricing incentives for nearly 10, 000 drivers over two years. Using a model of time-varying traffic equilibrium with heterogeneous drivers and a granular road network, we show that a congestion pricing policy using the experiment's price schedule would raise welfare by as much as adding a new lane to every highway and would raise enough revenue to fully compensate losers. Moreover, the extent of driver heterogeneity entails that optimal prices can improve net welfare with only a small fraction of toll revenue. |
| JEL: | H0 L0 R4 R40 R41 R48 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35887 |
| By: | Malukisa Nkuku, Albert |
| Abstract: | La capture de l’État et de la société civile est un phénomène largement répandu dans la plupart des pays en développement, avec des résultats contrastés en matière de gouvernance. Certains pays progressent alors que d’autres demeurent dans l’impasse. Au regard de la littérature, ce travail permet de comprendre comment cette capture crée une instabilité politique chronique en RDC en mettant en exergue le fait qu’elle est fortement fragmentée, décentralisée et non accompagnée d’une vision à long terme comme on l’observe dans d’autres pays, y compris le Rwanda et l’Ouganda qui continuent de se nourrir de cette instabilité depuis la chute du président Mobutu. Très souvent, des débats passionnés sur la théorie du complot ou de la balkanisation occultent les dynamiques politiques domestiques fortement conflictuelles qui transforment l’État en terrain de confrontation et de rando (règlement de comptes) des différents réseaux de patronage des anciens et des nouveaux dirigeants. À l’échelle nationale et locale, les compétitions tribales, ethniques et d’accès aux ressources publiques éloignent les horizons d’une vision à long terme pour le pays. La capture de l’État et de la société civile pousse les perdants à recourir à la violence armée en vue de garantir leur avenir politique. Depuis l’indépendance du pays, la légitimité domestique des leaders politiques du pouvoir et de l’opposition a dégringolé. Les alliances politiques imprévisibles reproduisent sans cesse le modèle d’un État prédateur et débouchent souvent sur des conflits insurmontables qui se soldent par des règlements de comptes à répétition pour lesquels les élites politiques ont de plus en plus besoin du soutien des pays étrangers. Après le régime du président Mobutu, on assiste à la diversification et à la fragmentation de la dépendance des élites congolaises vis-à-vis des pays voisins et des puissances occidentales. Dans la mesure où l’instabilité au Congo ne constitue pas une menace à la paix internationale et aux intérêts des puissances occidentales, cellesci ferment les yeux et laissent la situation pourrir sur le terrain. Les États-Unis d’Amérique, partagés entre leurs intérêts au Rwanda et en RDC se caractérisent ainsi par une ambivalence, même après la signature des accords de paix et de partenariat stratégique de Washington. Les investissements diplomatiques stratégiques réalisés par Kigali après le génocide lui garantissent une impunité internationale et le bénéfice du double standard de la Communauté internationale. Malgré la diversité des organisations de la société civile congolaise, celles-ci sont encore loin de contribuer efficacement à une redevabilité politique durable. Les leaders de ces organisations sont généralement partagés entre le pouvoir, l’opposition et les bailleurs. L’hybridation de la société civile et de la société politique obéit aux mêmes logiques de patronage et de compétitions tribales ou ethniques. À chaque alternance politique, la société civile perd une bonne partie de ses élites qui rejoignent le pouvoir. La capture de cette société civile figure ainsi parmi les vecteurs de l’instabilité politique chronique en RDC. |
| Keywords: | République Démocratique du Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, DRCongo, DRC, RDC, politics, politique |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iob:wpaper:2026.06 |
| By: | Bibilashvili, Mariam (Masaryk University) |
| Abstract: | Challenging the common understanding in the relevant literature, this study reconceptualizes resilience to hybrid threats as a politically mediated process rather than purely a matter of institutional capacity-building. To examine how policy frameworks and political rhetoric interact to shape resilience, it traces Georgia’s security culture in the aftermath of the Russo-Georgian war. Through intertextual discourse analysis, the article cross-examines the institutional architecture of digital resilience, encompassing cybersecurity (systemic), media regulation (protective) and media literacy (empowerment) measures, with the government’s shifting rhetoric (2023–2025), while interview data provide contextual insights. The analysis reveals a discordant security culture manifested in fragmented governance and discursive struggle over resilience. Although formal policy frameworks normatively align with the West and consistently identify Russia as the principal security threat, governmental rhetoric portrays the same Western actors as sources of foreign interference and prioritizes political autonomy over cooperation while still invoking commitments to the constitutionally enshrined Euro-Atlantic trajectory. This dichotomy between institutional design and political discourse results in strategic ambiguity. It suggests that in hybrid regimes formal frameworks may function symbolically to signal external alignment, while practice is determined by short-term political calculations and discretionary authority, leaving institutions and societies vulnerable to evolving forms of foreign interference. |
| Date: | 2026–10–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:62dj3_v1 |
| By: | Busso, Matías; González-Velosa, Carolina; Muñoz-Morales, Juan S.; Ruiz, Juanita; Valencia Romero, Juan Diego; van der Werf, Cynthia |
| Abstract: | This paper studies whether government-issued skill certification improves labor market integration when workers skills are hard to verify. We evaluate a randomized offer of access to an occupation-specific certification program in Colombia to locals and migrants, two groups with different ex ante signaling capacity. The program certifies existing skills rather than providing training. Among locals, the offer increases employment by reducing inactivity and raises hours worked. The effects persist unevenly over time and are robust to attrition bounds and alternative outcome measures. Among migrants, estimates are less precise and provide no evidence of effects in employment, hours, or wages. The results show that a common skill certification generates different patterns of labor market adjustment among locals and migrants. |
| Keywords: | signaling;certifications;skills;Migration |
| JEL: | J24 J61 J64 I26 O15 D82 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:14806 |
| By: | Naoufal Nifa |
| Abstract: | We couple two sets of simulated market and credit paths by minimizing absolute temporal-correlation error relative to a prescribed target. Each market path receives exactly one credit path, preserving both empirical distributions of complete scenarios. A perfect-matching test identifies whether a uniform correlation-error tolerance is feasible and determines its smallest attainable value. Further assignments give exact empirical mean-loss and exceedance-probability bounds; quantile bounds follow by binary search over eligible loss thresholds. A synthetic bond-forward credit stress test illustrates the method. The experiments report matching precision, empirical score tails and exposure-grid error, and measure matching and mean-loss computation. The method is independent of the scenario generator and provides a reproducible way to examine dependence assumptions in existing risk engines. Tail measures concern default-probability-weighted credit scores. Accompanying reproducibility package (Python code, synthetic scenario libraries, permutations, and benchmarks) is attached in the ZIP archive. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.35118 |
| By: | Paiva, Yago (School of Public Policy, Government and Business of the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV EPPG)); Lui, Lizandro |
| Abstract: | Over the past decades, digital transformation has become a central aspect of state modernization. In this article, we treat this process as a form of state capacity building — specifically, of the digital capacity of the state. Our aim is to assess whether, at the municipal level, fiscal capacity and bureaucratic quality account for higher levels of digital capacity. To this end, we adapt to the municipal context a concept originally formulated for national states and construct the Municipal Digital Capacity Index (ICDM), a novel and comprehensive measure built from the seven waves of the Brazilian Survey of Basic Municipal Information (MUNIC) that include an information and communication technology module between 2004 and 2024, covering virtually all Brazilian municipalities in each wave. Using the ICDM as the dependent variable, we estimate panel models designed to recover between-municipality effects. Fiscal autonomy is the strongest determinant of digital capacity, with a magnitude far exceeding that of bureaucratic attributes, whose effects are positive but modest. None of these effects, however, operates uniformly: own-source revenue yields more in low-income municipalities, staff qualification pays off only where there is organizational structure to absorb it, and the share of politically appointed staff, whose average effect is null, is positive in poorer municipalities and negative in wealthier ones. |
| Date: | 2026–10–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:rfsyu_v1 |
| By: | Gondauri, Davit |
| Abstract: | The emergence of the agentic economy-an economic environment in which autonomous artificial intelligence agents increasingly undertake transactions, negotiate contractual terms, allocate resources, and execute decisions on behalf of human and institutional principals-introduces a fundamental challenge to economic theory: individual algorithmic rationality does not necessarily imply collective efficiency, equilibrium stability, or the protection of human welfare. As autonomous decision-making becomes increasingly embedded in economic institutions, the central question extends beyond whether AI agents can optimize delegated objectives. It concerns whether their strategic interactions generate economically desirable outcomes, under what conditions delegated decisions diverge from human interests, and whether governance mechanisms can provide mathematically verifiable guarantees against welfare deterioration. This study develops a comprehensive theoretical-computational framework for equilibrium selection, welfare alignment, and robust governance in the agentic economy. Integrating noncooperative game theory, strategic complementarities, Bayesian and regularized market responses, convex optimization, quasilinear exchange, and incomplete financial markets, the research establishes a structured collection of analytical results, counterexamples, computational algorithms, and verifiable certificates, designated AE1-AE30. Principal Scientific Contributions 1. Equilibrium rationality does not guarantee human-welfare protection. The analysis establishes that individually rational strategies of autonomous AI delegates may generate multiple Nash equilibria with materially different consequences for human principals. Consequently, governance policies evaluated exclusively against a favorable equilibrium may fail to protect human interests under alternative strategically consistent outcomes. For a specified class of finite games with nonnegative additive strategic complementarities and nondecreasing human loss, the research derives conditions under which the greatest pure-strategy equilibrium provides a valid upper bound on human loss across all mixed Nash equilibria (AE9). This result converts a potentially complex equilibrium-safety assessment into a mathematically tractable certificate within the declared game class. 2. Cost-minimizing safe governance may fail to attain an optimum. The study identifies an explicit two-instrument governance mechanism in which autonomy incentives and assurance interventions jointly influence strategic behavior and human exposure. Within this model, the requirement to protect human welfare against every Nash equilibrium generates a nonclosed safety region. An exact analytical construction (AE7-AE8) demonstrates that the governance-cost infimum can remain unattained, even though feasible policies can approach it arbitrarily closely. The result reveals a fundamental distinction between approaching the lowest possible governance cost and possessing an implementable, cost-minimizing safe policy. 3. A common AI valuation bias can be economically neutral, while heterogeneous biases generate welfare losses. The research distinguishes common additive distortions in delegated valuations from cross-agent differences in those distortions. Under explicitly specified quasilinear exchange conditions, a common additive score shift can be absorbed into supporting market prices without changing equilibrium resource allocations or aggregate human welfare. By contrast, heterogeneous distortions alter relative allocation incentives and can generate measurable human-welfare losses. The resulting decomposition (AE24) provides an economic explanation of why the dispersion of delegated objectives-not merely the magnitude of a common algorithmic bias-can be decisive for welfare alignment. 4. Mathematically certified bounds on AI-induced welfare deterioration and safe governance. A central contribution is the derivation of a sharp welfare-loss bound for delegated exchange under uniform curvature assumptions and fixed convex feasibility constraints (AE27). The analysis connects the dispersion of AI-delegate valuation distortions to an explicit upper bound on human-welfare regret, including settings with active portfolio restrictions and incomplete security spanning. Building on this result, AE27-AE29 establish a computable, sufficient safety certificate for governance policies. When delegated score distortions depend affinely on policy instruments, the certificate generates a convex inner approximation of the safe-policy region. This provides a rigorous foundation for identifying governance interventions whose compliance with a prescribed welfare-loss threshold can be mathematically verified under the model's assumptions. 5. Reproducible computational verification and independent numerical benchmarking. The theoretical results are supported by a structured computational research program incorporating exact rational calculations, interval-certified numerical bounds, projected optimization methods, and independent solver comparisons. The computational analysis includes: 100 synthetic nonlinear policy-shock economies, including 50 cases with active joint portfolio constraints. Successful reconstruction of all 100 constructed equilibrium allocations, with certified rational coordinate-error bounds below (10^{-9}). 16 independently checked logit fixed-point certificates, using rigorous exponential enclosures with error bounds below (10^{-13}). 33 additional instances generated independently of preselected equilibrium solutions, covering heterogeneous populations of 4-128 agents and multiple portfolio-constraint regimes. Active portfolio restrictions in 22 of the 33 additional instances. Successful numerical solution of all 33 additional instances using projected-gradient optimization and an independent SLSQP reference solver, with a maximum absolute objective-value difference of approximately (5.433\times10^{-9}). These experiments evaluate numerical consistency, scalability across the examined population sizes, and the robustness of the computational implementation under different feasibility constraints. The results are accompanied by documented computational procedures and replication materials. Originality and Contribution to Economic Science The study's principal scientific contribution is not the invention of a universal equilibrium-existence theorem or a new foundation for convex optimization. Rather, it develops new conditional economic-mathematical results for explicitly specified human-AI delegation mechanisms, drawing on established mathematical tools while extending their application to agentic economic governance. Its distinctive contribution lies in the integration of three analytically connected problems: The relationship between strategic equilibrium selection and the safety of delegated economic decisions. The distinction between common valuation distortions and economically consequential heterogeneity across autonomous delegates. The construction of computable welfare-loss bounds and sufficient governance certificates for protecting human economic interests. Together, these results clarify the difference between optimizing the objectives of AI agents and safeguarding the welfare of the humans and institutions they represent. Scientific Significance and Scope The findings offer a mathematical foundation for further research into human-aligned AI markets, delegated financial decisions, algorithmic market coordination, equilibrium-sensitive regulation, and welfare-constrained autonomous economic systems. The framework provides theoretical guidance for designing assurance mechanisms, reviewing portfolio restrictions, and evaluating governance policies against explicitly defined welfare objectives. The investigation is theoretical-computational. Its mathematical conclusions apply under the stated assumptions, and its numerical results are derived from constructed or independently sampled synthetic economies. The study does not claim causal identification of governance effects in observed AI markets, empirical validation of deployed autonomous agents, or universal safety guarantees across all economic environments. Its broader significance is the demonstration that the economic governance of autonomous AI requires more than algorithmic efficiency: it requires explicit alignment between delegated objectives and human welfare, rigorous treatment of equilibrium multiplicity, and verifiable mathematical conditions under which governance interventions can limit economic harm. By connecting equilibrium theory, incomplete-market allocation, welfare analysis, and reproducible computation, this research contributes to the theoretical foundations of the emerging agentic economy and establishes a platform for subsequent empirical validation and institutional application. |
| Keywords: | agentic economy, human AI delegation, equilibrium selection, robust governance, incomplete markets, welfare alignment, exact computation |
| JEL: | C62 C63 C72 D52 D61 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:344185 |
| By: | Sullivan, Oriel; Gershuny, Jonathan; Lamote de Grignon Perez, Juana |
| Abstract: | This paper outlines the guiding principles behind decades of time use diary design and introduces a digital, multi-field diary developed at the Centre for Time Use Research (CTUR). Unlike many online tools that simplify data collection at the cost of detail, this design replicates the comprehensive structure of the Harmonised European Time Use Survey (HETUS) while maintaining a user-friendly, visually intuitive interface. The diary supports both self-completion and interviewer-assisted modes (CATI/CAPI), ensuring continuity with historical data and adaptability for diverse research needs. We demonstrate the design’s utility in estimating key policy-relevant metrics, including child-related time, ICT use, and behavioural risk for infectious disease transmission, highlighting its value for both research and policy in high- and low-income settings. |
| Keywords: | Time use diaries; Principles of diary design; Online diary design; Extended light diary; Comparison of diary designs; Diary collection in LMICs |
| JEL: | C81 C83 D13 E01 |
| Date: | 2025–07–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eoe:escoed:escoe-dp-2025-07 |
| By: | Mikula, Stepan (Masaryk University); Nicolini, Marcella (University of Pavia); Sabatini, Fabio (Sapienza University of Rome) |
| Abstract: | Childhood vaccination rates often fall over the course of the immunization schedule. We study whether local mobile internet coverage reduces this decline, using data on about 113, 000 children from India's National Family Health Survey (2019--21) matched to georeferenced maps of 3G network coverage. To address the non-random placement of 3G networks, we instrument coverage with terrain ruggedness, which raises the cost of deploying and maintaining network infrastructure. Comparing clusters within the same district, we find that 3G coverage has no detectable effect on the doses due in the first year of life but increases receipt of the doses due at 16--24 months. The effect emerges when children reach the age at which these doses become due. In a within-child design comparing earlier and later vaccinations of the same child, which removes all factors that affect both vaccinations equally, 3G coverage raises completion of the 16--24-month stage of the schedule but not of earlier stages. Taken together, the results point to information and coordination frictions as one barrier to completing vaccination in the second year of life. |
| Keywords: | mobile internet, 3G coverage, vaccination, health information, digital connectivity, India, child health |
| JEL: | I12 I18 O15 O33 L96 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp19010 |
| By: | Loubna Eddallal |
| Abstract: | The renewed instability in the Middle East has exposed Africa's continued vulnerability to external energy shocks. Shipping disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz, the maritime chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of global oil and LNG supplies transit, have once again demonstrated that African fuel security remains highly dependent on geopolitical developments beyond the continent. While many African economies have traditionally relied on refined petroleum imports from Gulf producers, the current crisis is accelerating the emergence of a continental alternative. The Dangote Refinery is increasingly functioning as a continental contingency mechanism by supplying refined petroleum products to African markets facing supply uncertainty. Although this role is driven by commercial incentives rather than coordinated policy, it represents an important shift in Africa's energy geography: for the first time, a continental refining hub possesses the scale to partially cushion African markets against external supply disruptions and strengthen Africa's control over the oil value chain. Dangote's potential to serve as a strategic energy supplier for Africa creates significant trade and energy-security opportunities for several African countries, particularly Morocco, whose aviation market has been expanding rapidly since 2024. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ocp:pbagri:pb_48-26 |
| By: | Tiantian Wu; Peng Yang |
| Abstract: | Quantitative investment requires alpha factors that are both predictive and diverse. However, existing factor generation methods, including formulaic mining and neural end-to-end models, are mostly based on a single-agent design, which limits exploration of the factor space and reduces adaptability to changing markets. Multi-agent approaches can broaden exploration, but agents trained under a shared objective often collapse to similar outputs, while existing diversity techniques either scale poorly with asset-universe size or address redundancy only after training. We propose a multi-agent sequential optimization (Det-MASO) framework for generating diversified, context-adaptive alpha factors. It introduces a differentiable log-determinant penalty on the inter-agent correlation matrix directly into the joint objective, discouraging correlated agent behavior during training with computational cost that scales linearly with the number of assets. We further show that this penalty prevents homogeneous equilibria and preserves factor diversity throughout optimization, while a context-conditioned scheduler dynamically adjusts agent emphasis across market regimes and Shapley interaction index analysis is used to characterize the cooperation structure that emerges among them. Experiments show that Det-MASO outperforms baselines, improving the information coefficient by 1.1\%, the annualized return by 6.4\%, and the Sharpe ratio by 0.33. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.34936 |
| By: | Sylvain Bellefontaine (AFD - Agence française de développement); Christophe Barat (AFD - Agence française de développement); Hélène Ehrhart (CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - UdA - Université d'Auvergne - Clermont-Ferrand I - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, AFD - Agence française de développement); Julien Gourdon (CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - UdA - Université d'Auvergne - Clermont-Ferrand I - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, AFD - Agence française de développement); Marion Hémar (ENSAE Paris - École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique - Groupe ENSAE-ENSAI - Groupe des Écoles Nationales d'Économie et Statistique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris, AFD - Agence française de développement); Vincent Joguet (AFD - Agence française de développement); Benoît Jonveaux (AFD - Agence française de développement); Amaury Mulliez (AFD - Agence française de développement); Thibault Vasse (AFD - Agence française de développement) |
| Abstract: | Shock after shock, the global economy continues to surprise observers with its "resilience, " particularly when assessed through the lens of GDP growth. If the ongoing discussions between the United States and Iran regarding the Strait of Hormuz crisis reach a successful conclusion (within the 60-day period starting on June 17) and result in a lasting agreement, the International Energy Agency once again forecasts an oil supply surplus as early as 2027. Inflation expectations could then rapidly become reanchored at levels more consistent with central banks' targets. Under such a scenario, and although a return to normal operations for the Gulf's oil and gas infrastructure would still require several months, monetary policy could gradually ease again as confidence in the disinflation process strengthens. In this regard, the IMF's latest forecasts (April 2026) outline a baseline scenario in which global growth reaches 3.1% in 2026 and 3.2% in 2027, while growth in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) would be only marginally affected (3.9% in 2026 instead of the 4.0% projected last October, and 4.1% in 2027). Admittedly, these would represent historically low levels over two consecutive years, yet the global economy would avoid recession, unlike in 2009 or 2020. So, under this baseline scenario—which still appears somewhat optimistic at the time of publication—would the shock amount to little more than a temporary warning before a return to normal conditions? |
| Keywords: | Macroeconmics, Disinflation, Monetary policies, Ouganda, Serbia, Egypt, Pakistan, Uzbekistan |
| Date: | 2026–07–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05769344 |
| By: | Ismail, Nasrul; Harvey, William S. |
| Abstract: | How do organisational actors withhold information while continuing to answer under scrutiny? Research on organisational silence has largely treated withholding as a question of whether actors speak. This article examines variation within speech through 1 781 question-and-answer exchanges from 102 recorded interview encounters with senior officials in prison health governance across three studies conducted between 2016 and 2023. Narrative absence was coded across six features and response timing was derived from audio and validated against blinded listener judgements. Higher narrative absence was associated with substantially shorter answers within encounters, and this association held across all robustness checks. Changes in response onset were much smaller, while pausing supported no independent association, and the automated measure of fillers and repairs failed validation. The findings identify controlled compression as a response form through which disclosure contracts while interactional responsiveness continues. Separating responsiveness from disclosure matters because organisational accountability is routinely assessed through visible responsiveness even though meaningful accountability depends on disclosure. An actor may therefore satisfy every observable requirement of cooperation while narrowing what is made available. The article shows that where speaking is expected, withholding does not cease but relocates into the answers themselves. |
| Date: | 2026–10–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:kfmsn_v1 |