Bernardo Maggi

The automatic reaction of the Italian government budget to fundamentals: an econometric analysis

The paper offers a new estimate of the sensitivity of Italys primary budget balance to macroeconomic variables. The analysis has distinguishing features: detailed itemization of public finance aggregates; close attention to the statistical properties of the time series; and joint estimation of elasticities with respect to both real GDP and inflation. First, the economic variables driving the automatic component were chosen. Second, when possible, a macroeconomic base was associated with each public finance item. Third, each tax base was regressed on the driving economic variables. Fourth, each budget item that was supposed to include an automatic component was regressed either on its own base or directly on the economic variables affecting the automatic components. The effects on public budget are simulated to investigate the consequences of a change in nominal and real GDP.

The Macrodynamics of External Overborrowing and Systemic Instability in a Small Open Economy

The paper presents a monetary growth model for a small emerging economy with a currency board arrangement. The integration into global financial markets determines an acceleration of debt-creating capital inflows that boosts growth and the prospect of future profits, and leads to the building-up of large imbalances in the public and private sectors. Financial fragility undermines the state of confidence and determines an endogenous capital reversal. At this stage, the strong commitment to maintain the peg leaves no room for stabilization purposes and leads to systemic instability. We run a continuous-time estimation of the non-linear differential equations system of the model, with reference to Argentina during the years of the currency-board arrangement. We find two steady-state solutions, corresponding to a high-interest rate and a low-interest rate equilibrium, respectively. The local stability and sensitivity analysis show that both equilibria are unstable and that the system is intrinsically fragile. We show that even a tighter fiscal policy, according to the prescriptions of international institutions, results ineffective in improving stability.

Assessing Italian Government bonds' term structure with CIR model in the aftermath of EMU

In this article we analyse the term structure of the Italian Government bonds after the adoption of Euro currency. In such a framework, we make use of the CIR model and deal with the degree of different volatilities of the maturities considered. To cope with this problem, we propose a simple correction formula and make use of a reaction function to take into account the influence of the monetary policy of the ECB with the result of considerably improving the performance of the model.

Measuring (in a time of crisis) the impact of broadband connections on economic growth: an OECD panel analysis

ABSTRACT Technological innovation has always been considered a major stimulus for economic growth. High-speed internet access via broadband infrastructure has undergone rapid development since the end of the 1990s, thanks to the deployment of both fixed and mobile technologies. The present study investigates the impact of fixed broadband diffusion as a technological determinant of economic growth on the basis of a panel of 23 OECD countries over 15 years (1996–2010). The time horizon chosen is suitable for verification of the causal effect on growth of the transition from traditional copper to partially fibre networks. Through implementation of a dynamic panel by using the generalized method of moments (GMM) combined with an instrumental variable (IV) two-stage approach, we found a positive correlation between broadband diffusion and economic growth, even after controlling for countries initial endowment of information and communication technologies (ICT) and for the years of economic crisis. Our main finding provides evidence, through a continuous time interpretation of our estimations, of a quantitatively relevant relationship between broadband diffusion and economic dynamics in the short, medium and long runs. Our findings may be useful to policy makers in that they permit forecasting of the benefits of further transition from broadband to ultra-wide broadband networks.

A Dynamical Model of Technology Diffusion and Business Services for the Study of the European Countries Growth and Stability

With this study we intend to define a methodology capable to deal with the task of evaluating and planning the interdependent dynamics of growth for some European countries together with their foreign partners. To that aim we employ a nonlinear differential equations system representing a disequilibrium model based on a Schumpeterian evolutionary context with endogenous technology. We use such a model in order to disentangle the interrelationships occurring among countries for the critical variables considered. That is, we succeed in evaluating the contribution to growth of a country with respect to another one in terms of the variables involved. We address and corroborate the validity of our conjectures on the importance of the business services in the innovation and production processes by presenting also a minimal model. Further, we provide an evaluation of the convolution integral of our differential system to determine the necessary initial conditions of the critical variables for policy purposes. We then perform a sensitivity analysis to assess per each country the effectiveness of some possible efforts in order to gain stability.

ICT stochastic externalities, technology innovation and business services: is there an evidence of missed opportunity growth?

ABSTRACT In this paper, we present an analysis of the production process for some OECD countries and consider the new technology of the ICT capital as driver of growth. In doing so, the production function approach adopted allows to disentangle the externalities not exploited. In line with the general-purpose technology theory, we attribute such externalities to the new technology ICT capital. Business services are a relevant vehicle to use better the innovative capital embedded in the production process. We develop and implement a methodology for the evaluation of the effect on growth related to the interaction between innovative capital and business services. The main conclusion of the paper is that the potentials of new technologies in use are almost completely exploited during the productive process. Then, even if a competitive solution is viable, there are small, though possible, margins to improve a sustainable European growth in the long run linked to externalities. We also point out some conclusions on the capital and labor shares showing that the latter is ‘too small’ both in the long and short run.

Debt–Liquidity Shock Risk: Intertemporal Effects and Probability Measures

We analyze how the yield of government securities may be managed in order to save costs in the face of the risk of a liquidity shock. This issue is especially relevant for highly indebted countries that are under the threat of positive changes in the yields of public debt bonds. We study the liquidity features of the Italian government bond market with the twin aims of formalizing and estimating the intertemporal effects of a debt-liquidity shock on yields, with a view to understanding how to reduce costs when issuing new bonds, and evaluating the effectiveness of the average liquidity cost index by finding its conditional probability.