Daniel Riera-Crichton

Price Discrimination and Competition in Two-Sided Markets: Evidence from the Spanish Local TV Industry

In this paper, we empirically test the relation between price discrimination and product market competition in a two-sided market setting using a new data set of Spanish local TV stations that provides information on subscription and advertising prices per station for 1996, 1999 and 2002. During these years, changes in regulation in this sector had a deep impact on the degree of local market competition. We use differences in market structure across markets and across years to study the relation between competition and price discrimination in this setting. Our findings suggest that stations in more competitive markets are less likely to use price discrimination. We also find evidence that stations price discriminating in a market are also more likely to price discriminate on the other market. Finally, cable subscription fees and advertising prices are higher in more competitive markets which suggests that tougher competition may increase market segmentation through station differentiation, driving stations to charge higher uniform prices to more loyal customers. This may indicate that less price discrimination may be associated with lower consumer surplus in all markets.

International gross capital flows: A new measure and application to a global panel

Macroeconomic studies of international capital flows have focused on (i) net capital flows across countries, (ii) gross capital flows or (iii) more rarely gross inflows (outflows) computed as the sum of foreign (domestic) acquisitions of domestic (foreign) assets in balance of payments data. In this paper, we argue that more information than embodied in existing measures is readily available. Thus, we decompose a country’s net capital inflow into four instead of the standard two inflow/outflow components. We, then, support the practical importance of four-way decompositions by showing that they explain six financial crises and predict sudden stops better than standard measures of gross capital flows. Finally, we note that what the literature’s terms gross capital “inflows” (“outflows”) really measure net acquisitions of international assets by foreign (domestic) residents and that the actual cross-border flows implied by balance of payments data are larger.

Economic Shocks, Civil War and Ethnicity

Using a novel cross-country panel dataset, we show that commodity terms of trade declines cause civil war in countries with intermediate ethnic diversity. The civil war effects for highly diverse or homogenous societies are negative and insignificant. Since the size of the largest ethnic group explains 96% of the variation in the ethnic diversity measure, we conjecture that a key problem may be ethnic dominance: countries where the ethnic plurality is large, but not so large it cannot be challenged, may be most vulnerable to economic shocks. The findings may help to bridge the partly distinct literatures linking ethnicity and economic factors to conflict.

Controlling for Import Price Effects in Civil War Regressions

Abstract Several studies estimate the effects of commodity export prices on economic outcomes, such as conflict and democratic transitions. In this note, we argue that it is important to control for the effects of import prices due to two reasons. First, economic theory predicts that both import and export prices affect the economy’s performance, which can, in turn, affect its conflict propensity. Second, the facts that import prices might affect the conflict risk and that import and export prices can be correlated imply that the failure to control for import price effects can bias the export price coefficients. We illustrate these points using the dataset and one of the regression specifications in a recent civil war study.

Fiscal adjustment in Latin America and the Caribbean : short-run pain, long-run gain?

After a growth slowdown that lasted six years, the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region has finally turned the corner and resumed growth at a modest rate of 1.1 percent in 2017 and 1.8 percent expected in 2018. This reflects a more favorable external environment, particularly a recovery in commodity prices. In spite of the benign external environment, most LAC countries still face a fragile fiscal situation. While gradual fiscal adjustments have started in several countries, most countries are still running fiscal deficits and debt levels are high. Further fiscal consolidation is needed to preserve the substantial gains achieved by the region in recent times, in terms of lower inflation, less poverty and inequality, and inclusive growth. This Semiannual Report analyzes the complex decisions regarding fiscal adjustment policies

From Known Unknowns to Black Swans

After a growth recovery, with an expansion of 1.1 percent in 2017, the region has encountered some bumps in the road. The Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region is expected to grow at a modest rate of 0.6 percent in 2018 and 1.6 percent in 2019. This slowdown in the region’s recovery is mainly explained by the crisis that started in Argentina in April, the growth slowdown in Brazil, and the continuing economic, social, and humanitarian collapse in Venezuela. Furthermore, net capital inflows to the region have fallen dramatically since early 2018, bringing once again to the fore the risks faced by LAC. In addition, natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes have brought devastation to the region with disturbing frequency. The core of the report analyzes the foundations of risk, develops a theoretical framework to price risk instruments, and reviews how LAC has managed risk in practice. The overall message of the report is that there are different types of risk: (i) those that follow standard probabilistic distributions that can be easily insured by the market; and (ii) those that exhibit fat-tails (i.e., non-negligible probabilities of extreme events) that are much harder to ensure by the market (like earthquakes). Finally, there are “black swans” that, by definition, are unpredictable events that cannot be insured and force countries to rely exclusively on ex-post aid and/or broad preventive measures. In other words, the fatter are the tails of a distribution, the less market insurance is available, and the more countries will have to rely on ex-post aid. Yet progress in managing risk continues to be made (the Catastrophe Bond for earthquakes in the Pacific Alliance, recently sponsored by the World Bank, being an outstanding example). This would have been unthinkable some time ago. New knowledge and insurance schemes, all supported by institutions such as the World Bank, will undoubtedly make LAC a safer region to live and prosper.

Non-Linear Distortion-Based Effects of Tax Changes on Output: A Worldwide Narrative Approach

We estimate the effect of worldwide tax changes on output following the narrative approach developed for the United States by Romer and Romer (2010). We use a novel dataset on value-added taxes for 51 countries (21 industrial and 30 developing) for the period 1970-2014 to identify 96 tax changes. We then use contemporaneous economic records to classify such changes as endogenous or exogenous to current (or prospective) economic conditions. In line with existing theoretical distortion-based arguments and based on the exogenous tax changes we and that the effect of tax changes on output is highly non-linear. The tax multiplier is essentially zero under relatively low/moderate initial tax rate levels and much larger (in absolute terms) as the initial tax rate and the size of the change in the tax rate increases.

Banking Crises, External Crises and Gross Capital Flows

In this paper, we study the relationship between banking crises, external financial crises and gross international capital flows. First, we confirm that banking and external crises are correlated. Then, as we explore the role of gross capital flows, we find that declines of external liabilities in the balance of payments – a proxy for foreign capital repatriation we call gross foreign investment reversals (GIR) – predict banking as well as external crises. Finally, we estimate the effects of GIR-associated banking crises on the risk of currency and sudden stop crises in an instrumental-variables specification. In developing countries, GIR-associated banking crises increase the onset risk for currency and sudden stop crises by 39-50 and 28-30 percentage points per year respectively. For OECD countries, we show an increase in the currency crisis risk by 33-45 percentage points.

Catalytic IMF? A Gross Flows Approach

The financial assistance the International Monetary Fund (IMF) provides is expected to catalyze private capital inflows. Such a catalytic effect has, however, proven empirically elusive. This paper deviates from the standard approach based on the net capital inflow to study instead the IMF’s catalytic role in the context of gross capital flows. Using fixed-effects regressions, instrumental variables and local projection methods, we document dynamics that are absent from existing models of IMF catalysis. Our results show significant differences in how resident and foreign investors react to IMF programs. While IMF lending does not catalyze foreign capital, it does affect the behavior of resident investors, who are both less likely to place their savings abroad and more likely to repatriate their foreign assets. As domestic banks’ flows drive this effect, we conclude that IMF catalysis is “a banking story”. In comparing the effects across crisis types, we find that the effect of the IMF on resident investors is strongest during sovereign defaults, and that it exerts the least effect on foreign investors during bank crises.