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on Monetary Economics |
| By: | Mauro Boianovsky; Hans-Michael Trautwein |
| Abstract: | The paper discusses the League of Nations's project to produce consensus in the interpretation of aggregate economic fluctuations in the 1930s. G. Haberler started working in 1934 at the League of Nations headquarters in Geneva on a broad enquiry that should lead to a synthesis of the several conflicting explanations of the causes of the business cycles, which culminated with the publication of his classic book in 1937. The paper makes use of archival material hitherto unexplored - such as correspondence and verbatim records of conferences - to show how the discussions with economists at the time were incorporated into Haberler's final report, and to interpret in what extent the attempt to reach a consensus was successful. |
| JEL: | B22 |
| Date: | 2004 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2004:002&r=mon |
| By: | Maria-Helena A. Dias; Joilson Dias; Charles L. Evans |
| Abstract: | The objective of this paper is to show an alternative technique to smooth time series from Monte Carlo Simulations. The technique considers that time series can contain more than one structural break, coming from movements in coefficients of trend or from intercept. The Hodrick-Prescott Filter (HP) does not provide identification of such possible breaks in order to smooth trend from the series to analyze its cyclical component. If the series are relatively stable, this problem may not have relevant implications. Otherwise, for economies relatively unstable, trend movements may interfere in the specification of the cyclical component, and Hodrick-Prescott smoothing could lead empiricists to achieve simplistic forms to economic cycles. In the context, we present an empirical methodology that allows structural breaks in any point of time, from coefficients or from intercepts. We apply this recursive technique to different models with variations in trend, from coefficients and from intercepts, using series simulated by Monte Carlo. Moreover, we compare the results of both techniques to the Brazilian GDP. |
| JEL: | E32 C22 |
| Date: | 2004 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2004:104&r=mon |
| By: | Hildo Meirelles de Souza Filho; Miguel Rocha de Sousa; Antônio Márcio Buainain; José Maria da Silveira; Marcelo Marques Magalhães |
| Abstract: | We evaluate the "Cédula da Terra" Pilot Project, a land reform project whose conception, mechanisms and operational structure is different from traditional agrarian reform based on expropriation. The land distributed by the project, is first acquired by the agricultural producers associations, and a given set of incentives is established to obtain a better efficiency use of resources. The main objective of this article is to characterize the sources of technical and allocative inefficiency from a cross section of 309 beneficiaries from five states in NE Brazil. We estimated a potential production frontier following the methodology of BATTESE and COELLI (1995), using the software FRONTIER 4.1. (Tim COELLI, 1996). The main conclusion is that technical assistance, human capital (years of schooling) and better access to credit reduce inefficiency, or thus increase technical and allocative efficiency of the beneficiaries. |
| JEL: | Q15 |
| Date: | 2004 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anp:en2004:109&r=mon |