The Cyclicality of Sales and Aggregate Price Flexibility

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oleksiy Kryvtsov ◽  
Nicolas Vincent
Keyword(s):  
Time Use ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Price Level ◽  
Market Work ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Price Flexibility ◽  
The Business Cycle ◽  
One Year ◽  
The One ◽  
Robust Evidence

Abstract Macroeconomists traditionally ignore temporary price markdowns (“sales”) under the assumption that they are unrelated to aggregate phenomena. We revisit this view. First, we provide robust evidence from the U.K. and U.S. CPI micro data that the frequency of sales is strongly countercyclical, as much as doubling during the Great Recession. Second, we build a general equilibrium model in which cyclical sales arise endogenously as retailers try to attract bargain hunters. The calibrated model fits well the business cycle co-movement of sales with consumption and hours worked, and the strong substitution between market work and shopping time documented in the time-use literature. The model predicts that after a monetary contraction, the heightened use of discounts by firms amplifies the fall in the aggregate price level, attenuating by a third the one-year response of real consumption.

The Corporation in a Globalized World

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronen Palan
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Business World ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Relational Power ◽  
Globalized Economy ◽  
The One ◽  
Globalized World

The chapter addresses the nature of the power relationships between the business world and the state as seen from the perspective of a relatively new field of study called international political economy. Theories of corporate power in a globalized economy evolved along two parallel lines. On the one hand, the globalization literature of the 1990s has tended to assume there was a marked shift of power from states to markets. Recent literature questions these assumptions, not least in light of the experience of the great recession of 2007–2008. In parallel, conceptualization of power has evolved from relatively simplistic theories of relational power to theories of structural power and, increasingly, arbitrage power. Arbitrage power is the ability to arbitrate legal systems against each other, or against themselves, for pecuniary purposes.

scholarly journals Autonomes Fahren statt Stop and Go: Vorschläge zur effektiven Gestaltung der deutschen Kurzarbeit

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 252-260
Author(s):  
Almut Balleer ◽  
Britta Gehrke ◽  
Brigitte Hochmuth ◽  
Christian Merkl
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Business Cycle ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Timely Manner ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Stop And Go ◽  
Time Work ◽  
The Business Cycle ◽  
Short Time

Abstract This article argues that short-time work stabilized employment in Germany substantially during the Great Recession in 2008/09. The labor market instrument acted in timely manner, as it was used in a rule-based fashion. In addition, discretionary extensions were effective due to their interaction with the business cycle. To ensure that short-time work will be effective in the future, this article proposes an automatic facilitation of the access to short-time work in severe recessions. This reduces the likelihood of a too extensive use at the wrong point in time as well as structural instead of cyclical interventions.

scholarly journals Fragility – Sustainability: Two Conflicting Major Challenges of this Twenty-First Century

2019 ◽  
pp. 31-64
Author(s):  
Demetrios Argyriades ◽  
Pan Suk Kim
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
First Century ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
Global Order ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The World ◽  
Counter Culture ◽  
The One

With the Great Recession receding, but crises still afflicting large swaths of the world and a climate of rampant distrust adversely affecting governance, it may be time to ask whether and, if so, how and where our field went wrong. Have we been willing victims of sleep-walkers using metaphors as models? This paper argues as much. Specifically, it contends that, foisted on the world as the one- size-fits-all prescription for good governance, nationally and internationally, it has ended turning governance and democracy on their heads, while also undermining the very foundations on which a global order, based on peaceful coexistence and constructive cooperation through the United Nations, was predicated. The prevalence of symptoms of hurt and discontent should lead us to conclude that the roots of our predicament and problems go much deeper, to a might counter- culture, which triumphed in the 1990s but still goes strong, in places.

‘I’ve Learned to Love What’s Going to Pay Me’: A Culture of Despair in Higher Education during a Time of Insecurity

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Aronson
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
University Employees ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Structural Problems ◽  
The Social ◽  
Commuter University ◽  
The One ◽  
College Plans

Based on 153 interviews at a mid-sized, commuter university, this article examines the disjuncture between students and alumni on the one hand, and faculty, academic staff and administrators on the other in their perceptions of the challenges facing students who graduate during the Great Recession. Findings reveal a culture of despair in response to economic insecurity for students and graduates: they pursued degrees primarily for a workplace credential, were fearful about the future, and experienced and expressed uncertainty in their post-college plans. While university employees were sympathetic to student problems, only a small number of faculty, staff and administrators viewed student despair as resulting from large-scale structural problems. Instead, the majority of faculty and all of the administrators and academic staff emphasized the need for an individualized response to the social problem of the Great Recession.

scholarly journals Workers’ EU political alignments during the Great Recession

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
André Freire ◽  
Luís Cabrita ◽  
Mariana Carmo Duarte ◽  
Hugo Ferrinho Lopes
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
The Other ◽  
Election Study ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Political Alignments ◽  
European Election ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The One ◽  
The Eu

Using data from the European Election Study 2014, this article focuses on workers’ EU political alignments during the Great Recession. It deals with two research questions. First, how does the attitude of (manual) workers towards the EU compare to that of the middle and upper classes in the aftermath of the Great Recession? Second, when it comes to workers’ support for the EU, are there systematic differences between countries affected by the crisis? The article finds that, on the one hand, in terms of patterns of workers’ EU political alignments, there are no systematic differences between countries affected to varying degrees by the Great Recession. On the other hand, workers still feel fundamentally detached from the EU, especially when it comes to the manual workers. However, high levels of generalised detachment from the EU are not clearly translated into preferences for Eurosceptic parties, since there are high levels of vote fragmentation.

Consumption, unemployment and the Great Recession

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 724-743
Author(s):  
Joaquín Alegre ◽  
Llorenç Pou
Keyword(s):  
Business Cycle ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Job Loss ◽  
Consumption Smoothing ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Household Members ◽  
The Business Cycle ◽  
Unemployment Spells ◽  
Unemployment Persistence

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test whether households with members that experience job loss shocks are able to protect their previous level of consumption. The paper also tests whether consumption protection is affected when spells persist through time. Design/methodology/approach – The paper estimates an intertemporal consumption model, where households try to smooth their marginal utility over time. For that purpose it analyses Spanish household budget surveys that span a long period, 1999-2012, including the Great Recession. Unlike most consumption datasets, this microdata is designed as a panel and provides detailed information for all consumption categories as well as household members’ labour status. Findings – The paper finds that consumption smoothing is dependent on the household member facing the unemployment transition. In particular, only main breadwinner’s unemployment transitions affects consumption smoothing. It also shows that the consumption drop persists beyond the period of the job loss for ongoing spells, although it follows a decreasing pattern. Finally, the estimation results are stable over the business cycle. Practical implications – The results suggest that Spanish households are not capable of fully insuring against main breadwinner’s unemployment shocks. Further, the results show that this effect remains up to two years for ongoing unemployment spells. Thus these results highlight a welfare loss by Spanish households with unemployed members. Originality/value – The paper extends the usual analysis of job loss shocks by the main breadwinner to include the cases of both the spouse and the rest of household members, who tend to account for most unemployment. Further, it tests for unemployment persistence. Finally, it checks the sensitivity of the results to the business cycle, including the Great Recession.

scholarly journals Inflation puzzles, the Phillips Curve and output expectations: new perspectives from the Euro Zone

Empirica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuliana Passamani ◽  
Alessandro Sardone ◽  
Roberto Tamborini
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Phillips Curve ◽  
Forecast Errors ◽  
Explanatory Variables ◽  
Euro Zone ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Expected Inflation ◽  
Curve Model ◽  
The Business Cycle ◽  
Output Gaps

AbstractConfidence in the Phillips Curve (PC) as predictor of inflation developments along the business cycle has been shaken by recent “inflation puzzles” in advanced countries, such as the “missing disinflation” in the aftermath of the Great Recession and the “missing inflation” in the years of recovery, to which the Euro-Zone “excess deflation” during the post-crisis depression may be added. This paper proposes a newly specified Phillips Curve model, in which expected inflation, instead of being treated as an exogenous explanatory variable of actual inflation, is endogenized. The idea is simply that if the PC is used to foresee inflation, then its expectational component should in some way be the result of agents using the PC itself. As a consequence, the truly independent explanatory variables of inflation turn out to be the output gaps and the related forecast errors by agents, with notable empirical consequences. The model is tested with the Euro-Zone data 1999–2019 showing that it may provide a consistent explanation of the “inflation puzzles” by disentangling the structural component from the expectational effects of the PC.

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