Emmanuel Mamatzakis

Is public infrastructure productive? Evidence from Chile

This study assesses the extent to which public infrastructures have contributed to output in the Chilean economy over the period 1960–1995. For the long-run, it uses a vector error correction model for cointegration tests, while for the short-run, it resorts to the use of impulse response functions and variance decompositions. The results appear to show that public infrastructures in Chile have been significantly productive.

Testing for long run relationship between infrastructure and private capital productivity: a time series analysis for the Greek industry

This paper addresses the question of whether there is a long run relationship between infrastructure and private capital productivity of Greek industry. Causality issues are also discussed. The results provide evidence in favour of productivity enhanced by public capital stock, and of no feedback from the former to the later.

The dynamic responses of growth to tax structure for Greece

This paper estimates how output growth responds to shocks in the tax mix and tax burden over a long period of time. In particular, the underlying dynamic interactions between output growth, tax mix and tax burden are considered. To this purpose, Impulse Response Function analysis is applied. The chosen specification suggests that an appropriate tax-mix is one that would give weight to indirect taxation.

Does Regulation in Credit, Labour and Business Matter for Bank Performance in the EU-10 Economies?

Abstract Cost efficiency scores for banks in ten new EU member countries of Central and Eastern Europe are estimated using a parametric approach (data envelopment analysis) for the period prior to and immediately following their accession (2000–2010). These are then used in both fixed effects and dynamic panels to estimate the impact of regulation on bank specific efficiency in the transition economies of the EU. Using the Fraser Index of Economic Freedom (Gwartney, Hall, and Lawson 2012) we find that, among all the indices of economic freedom, the composite regulation index that includes regulation in credit, labour and business has more importance for the banking sector as results suggest a positive and statistically significant impact on bank efficiency. By decomposing the regulation index into its three components (credit, business and labour regulation) we find that strict labour regulation is associated with lower bank cost efficiency while certain aspects of credit regulation such as foreign ownership and competition as well as private ownership are significantly associated with improved efficiency. The dynamic panel vector autoregression (VAR) results using impulse response functions and variance decomposition further support the validity of these results. These findings are valuable for both academics and policy makers in their attempts to understand the drivers of bank efficiency.

Public Spending and Private Investment: Evidence From Greece

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether there is a link between disaggregated measures of government expenditures and private investment in Greece. A cointegration analysis of a multivariate system of equations is applied in order to empirically estimate the long run relationships between private investment and different measure of government expenditures. Subsequently IRF and VDC are estimated. Government investment is found to assert a positive effect on private investment, supporting in this way the capital accumulation process. On the other hand, government consumption appears to compete for the same resources with government investment, while it negatively affects private investment. [E62]

The Impact of Disaggregated Infrastructure Capital on the Productivity Growth of the Chilean Economy

The aim of this study is to estimate the productivity contribution of the main components of the infrastructure capital to the Chilean economy, over the 1960-2000 period. We develop a cost function framework that allows us to decompose the growth of total factor productivity into relevant contributions, which are then estimated via a translog function. Our estimates indicate that infrastructure capital was on the whole cost saving, but enhanced only moderately the productivity of the Chilean economy. Investment in electricity infrastructure systematically managed to tap such cost savings. This was also important for transport infrastructures over the 1990s, although it systematically failed for telecommunications. But the large contribution of economies of scale to total factor productivity might have also been indirectly stimulated by infrastructure in complex societal and economic ways.

The Effect of Corporate Governance on the Performance of US Investment Banks

This paper focuses on the impact of the corporate governance, using a plethora of measures, on the performance of the US investment banks over the 2000–2012 period. This time period offers a unique set of information, related to the credit crunch, that we model using a dynamic panel threshold analysis to reveal new insights into the relationship between corporate governance and bank performance. Results show that the board size asserts a negative effect on performance consistent with the ‘agency cost ’ hypothesis, particularly for banks with board size higher than ten members. Threshold analysis reveals that in the post-crisis period most of investment banks opt for boards with less than ten members, aiming to decrease agency conflicts that large boards suffer from. We also find a negative association between the operational complexity and performance. Moreover, the CEO power asserts a positive effect on performance consistent with the ‘ stewardship ’ hypothesis. In addition, an increase in the bank ownership held by the board has a negative impact on performance for banks below a certain threshold. On the other hand, for banks with board ownership above the threshold value this effect turns positive, indicating an alignment between shareholders’ and managers’ incentives.

Adjustment costs in the technical efficiency: An application to global banking

This paper proposes a new framework of measuring technical efficiency that takes into account adjustment costs in variable inputs associated with changes in efficiency. We look closely at the implicit assumption in any model of technical efficiency that inputs could freely adjust. Yet, the technical efficiency is determined from the allocation of inputs by the firm to production on the one hand and to efficiency on the other. We show that technical efficiency depends on adjustment costs in variable inputs. Estimating the proposed model has certain complexities that we overcome by employing a non-parametric Local Linear Maximum Likelihood (LLML). In the empirical section, we employ a comprehensive global banking sample and estimate bank alternative profit efficiency across a plethora of countries with strong variability in the underlying adjustment costs. Moreover, given the observed heterogeneity across countries evidence shows that adjustment costs due to personnel expenses are the highest among advanced countries. Emerging economies show strong potential in terms of efficiency post-financial crisis, mainly due to lower labor adjustment costs. Alas, our findings show some persistence in adjustment costs post the financial crisis.

Economic performance and public infrastructure: an application to Greek manufacturing

To comprehend the impact of public infrastructure on economic performance this paper provides a measure of productivity growth as derived from duality theory. This productivity growth is decomposed into the components of technical change, returns to scale and the effects of public infrastructure, the variable of our interest. In an application, we opt for Greek manufacturing so as to investigate whether the decline in its growth rate is partly explained by public infrastructure. Despite some variation in the estimation results of shadow shares across industries, public infrastructure asserts a cost saving effect in most industries, though it also appears that traditional labour-intensive industries with lower level of technological advancement do not benefit from the provision of public infrastructure. The estimation results further demonstrate that while public infrastructure enhanced productivity growth over the sample period for most industries, low infrastructure investment in the 1970s and the 1980s undermined productivity growth.

Risk and efficiency in the Central and Eastern European banking industry under quantile analysis

This paper estimates cost efficiency in the banking industry of 11 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries over the period 1998–2005 using a quantile regression analysis. Our purpose is to investigate for the first time whether cost efficiency in CEE banks differs across quantiles of the conditional distribution. We employ stochastic frontier analysis across quantiles using the Distribution-Free Approach. The reported evidence demonstrates lower efficiency scores for higher conditional distributions. The paper goes further into a second-stage analysis to investigate how risk, measured by non-performing loans and loans loss provisions, affects bank efficiency across quantiles. This second-stage analysis finds that risk asserts a negative impact on cost efficiency, especially in high-order quantiles. Finally, the paper investigates the relationship between bank-specific ‘z’ variables, such as structural reforms, bank concentration and profitability, and cost efficiency across quantiles.