Stephen Bazen

The impact of trade on the relative wages and employment of low skill workers in France

The impact of international trade on labour markets in developed countries will be different according to the degree of competition in product markets, the flexibility of the labour market and the skill intensity of production. An econometric analysis of the impact of trade in France has been undertaken using sectoral data for the period 1985–p1992. It is found that lower relative import prices reduce the relative employment of low skill workers in the first half the period and reduce their relative wages in the second half. In both cases the effect is more pronounced in sectors where the skill intensity of production is initially low.

Forecasting Bordeaux wine prices using state-space methods

ABSTRACT Generic Bordeaux red wine (basic claret) can be regarded as being similar to an agricultural commodity. Production volumes are substantial, they are traded at high frequency and the quality of the product is relatively homogeneous. Unlike other commodities and the top-end wines (which represent only 3% of the traded volume), there is no futures market for generic Bordeaux wine. Reliable forecasts of prices can to large extent replace this information deficiency and improve the functioning of the market. We use state-space methods with monthly data to obtain a univariate forecasting model for the average price. The estimates highlight the stochastic trend and the seasonality present in the evolution of the price over the period 1999 to 2016. The model predicts the path of wine prices out of sample reasonably well, suggesting that this approach is useful for making reasonably accurate forecasts of future price movements.

An Oaxaca Decomposition for Nonlinear Models

The widely used Oaxaca decomposition applies to linear models. Extending it to commonly used nonlinear models such as duration models is not straightforward. This paper shows that the original decomposition that uses a linear model can also be obtained by an application of the mean value theorem. By extension, this basis provides a means of obtaining a decomposition formula which applies to nonlinear models which are continuous functions. The detailed decomposition of the explained component is expressed in terms of what are usually referred to as marginal effects. Explicit formulae are provided for the decomposition of some nonlinear models commonly used in applied econometrics including binary choice, duration and Box-Cox models.

'Jamendo: The Heartbeat of Free Music!': Musicians and the Creative Commons

Jamendo is a website for the legal, free downloading of music. This platform of “free” online music, the biggest in the world, operates on the basis of Creative Commons licences. The survey presented here was carried out on a sample of 767 artists (solo musicians or groups) who are members of Jamendo. Our purpose in carrying out this survey was to identify as precisely as possible the characteristics of the artists present on Jamendo and the type of CC licence they choose in order to better understand the motives for their choices. To go further, the question is that of the Jamendo business model from the artists’ point of view. Does Jamendo simply represent a great opportunity for amateurs to showcase their music and win an audience? Or is Jamendo also capable of attracting professional artists, for whom earning an income from their music is essential? To put it another way, the underlying question is whether platforms like Jamendo constitute a possible alternative model for the music industry of tomorrow.