Luiz Renato Lima

Public debt sustainability and endogenous seigniorage in Brazil: time-series evidence from 1947-1992

Using national accounts data for the revenue-GDP and expenditure GDP ratios from 1947 to 1992, we examine two central issues in public finance. First, was the path of public debt sustainable during this period? Second, if debt is sustainable, how has the government historically balanced the budget after hocks to either revenues or expenditures? The results show that (i) public deficit is stationary (bounded asymptotic variance), with the budget in Brazil being balanced almost entirely through changes in taxes, regardless of the cause of the initial imbalance. Expenditures are weakly exogenous, but tax revenues are not;(ii) a rational Brazilian consumer can have a behavior consistent with Ricardian Equivalence (iii) seignorage revenues are critical to restore intertemporal budget equilibrium, since, when we exclude them from total revenues, debt is not sustainable in econometric tests.

Estimation of Censored Quantile Regression for Panel Data With Fixed Effects

This article investigates estimation of censored quantile regression (QR) models with fixed effects. Standard available methods are not appropriate for estimation of a censored QR model with a large number of parameters or with covariates correlated with unobserved individual heterogeneity. Motivated by these limitations, the article proposes estimators that are obtained by applying fixed effects QR to subsets of observations selected either parametrically or nonparametrically. We derive the limiting distribution of the new estimators under joint limits, and conduct Monte Carlo simulations to assess their small sample performance. An empirical application of the method to study the impact of the 1964 Civil Rights Act on the black–white earnings gap is considered. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

Testing covariance stationarity

In this paper, we show that the widely used stationarity tests such as the Kwiatkowski Phillips, Schmidt, and Shin (KPSS) test have power close to size in the presence of time-varying unconditional variance. We propose a new test as a complement of the existing tests. Monte Carlo experiments show that the proposed test possesses the following characteristics: (i) in the presence of unit root or a structural change in the mean, the proposed test is as powerful as the KPSS and other tests; (ii) in the presence of a changing variance, the traditional tests perform badly whereas the proposed test has high power comparing to the existing tests; (iii) the proposed test has the same size as traditional stationarity tests under the null hypothesis of stationarity. An application to daily observations of return on U.S. Dollar/Euro exchange rate reveals the existence of instability in the unconditional variance when the entire sample is considered, but stability is found in subsamples.

A Test for Strict Stationarity

We introduce a test for strict stationarity based on the fluctuations of the quantiles of the data, and we show that this test has power against the alternative hypothesis of unconditional heteroskedasticity while other tests for first order (level) stationarity as the KPSS test (Kwiatkowski et al., 1992) and, its robust version, the IKPSS test (de Jong et al., 2007) have low power against this alternative of time-varying variance. Moreover, our test has power against the alternative hypothesis of time-varying kurtosis, while the test for second order (covariance) stationarity introduced by Xiao and Lima (2007) has power close to size against this alternative.

Empirical Evidence on Convergence Across Brazilian States

This paper is aimed to analyze the convergence hypothesis across Brazilian States in a 60 year period (1947-2006). In order to test the existence of income convergence, the order of integration of the income differences between each State and Sao Paulo is examined. Sao Paulo is the richest State and for this reason is used as a benchmark. First of all, we employed the conventional unit root tests, finding evidence against the convergence hypothesis. However, given the lack of power of unit root tests, especially when the convergence is very low, we used ARFIMA models, which is also theoretically more appropriate [Michelacci and Zaffaroni (2000)]. Even so, the findings of the ARFIMA models cast doubts on the convergence hypothesis

Testing Unit Root Based on Partially Adaptive Estimation

This paper proposes unit root tests based on partially adaptive estimation. The proposed tests provide an intermediate class of inference procedures that are more efficient than the traditional OLS-based methods and simpler than unit root tests based on fully adaptive estimation using nonparametric methods. Taking into account the well documented characteristic of heavy-tail behavior in economic and financial data, we consider unit root tests coupled with a class of partially adaptive M-estimators based on the student-t distributions, which includes the normal distribution as a limiting case. Monte Carlo experiments indicate that, in the presence of heavy tail distributions, the proposed test is more powerful than the traditional ADF test. We apply the proposed test to several macroeconomic time series that have heavy-tailed distributions. The unit root hypothesis is rejected in U.S. real GNP, supporting the literature of transitory shocks in output. However, evidence against unit root is not found in real exchange rate and nominal interest rate even when heavy-tail is taken into account.

Is there long memory in financial time series

There has been a large amount of research on long memory in economic and financial time series. However, there is still no consensus on its presence in these series. We argue in this article that spurious short memory may be found because of the use of bandwidth parameters that diverge too quickly when the process exhibits long memory. We propose a new bandwidth parameter that is robust against the presence of long memory and revisit several economic and financial time series using the proposed bandwidth choice. Our results indicate the existence of spurious short memory in real exchange rates when traditional bandwidth parameters are employed, but short memory is rejected when the proposed bandwidth is used. We also find short memory in financial returns and long memory in their volatility.

Impacto do PIS e da COFINS na inflação: uma abordagem econométrica usando o teste de janela variável

The purpose of this article is to test if the change in the PIS / COFINS law, a consequence of 10.637/2002 and 10833/2003 laws, caused structural breaks in the Brazilian inflation dynamics, or even if it has any effect on the level of inflation. We concluded that for the price indexes - IGP and CPI -- there is no evidence of structural break on the inflation dynamics/level. The same is true for the sub-indexes of inflation, but the sub-index of Health Insurances which is the only exception.

Stages of diversification in high performing Asian economies

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the evolution of industry structure in the World Bank’s eight high performing Asian economies (HPAEs) displays the U-shaped relationship between manufacturing concentration and per capita income widely held to foster economic development. Increasingly prosperous HPAEs have long been hailed as models for success by other emerging economies. Focusing on a regional group of high performing economies enables us to relate policies used by successful HPAEs directly to observed patterns of manufacturing diversification and provide policy guidance to emerging economies. Design/methodology/approach A robust locally weighted scatterplot smoothing procedure is employed to generate the U-shaped relationship between manufacturing concentration and level of economic development. Policies used by the most successful HPAEs are discussed. Findings The relationship between manufacturing concentration and level of economic development is found to be U-shaped. Diversification of manufacturing is a prerequisite for successful economic development. Countries further along the economic development path such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan made extensive use of active and selective interventionist policies to diversify manufacturing before eventually specializing in a narrower range of export activities. Practical implications Emerging economies should follow examples set by the most successful HPAEs that demonstrated significant government assistance is required to foster economic development. Originality/value The paper is the first to investigate the evolution of manufacturing concentration over the economic development path HPAEs. Success enjoyed by HPAEs holds important lessons for developing and emerging economies.

Migration and Regional Trade Agreements: A (New) Gravity Estimation

This paper investigates the role of regional trade agreements (RTAs) on bilateral international migration. Building on a gravity model for migration, our econometric strategy controls for the multilateral resistance to migration and solves the zero migration flows problem by using a censored quantile regression approach. Further, the endogeneity problem of RTAs in migration settlement is addressed by using instrumental variable censored quantile regression. Our results suggest that the presence of a RTA stimulates the migration stocks among member countries. The pro‐migration effect of RTAs is magnified if the agreement includes also provisions easing bureaucratic procedures for visa and asylum among member countries. Finally, we find an asymmetric effect of RTAs across the quantiles of the distribution of migration settlements.