Documents Campos, Nauro F. 13 results

"This note argues that one should lay the focus of future European growth policy on integration and technology. This focus should be on maximising the growth effects of their interaction, with an emphasis on the importance of deep integration. The note provides three examples that show how deep integration has contributed to stop the relative economic decline in the UK vis-à-vis the EU founding members; how deep integration increased productivity in Sweden, Austria, and Finland compared to that in Norway; and how a key mechanism to advancements in the new EU member states has been the capacity of deep integration to generate institutional change."

"What accounts for the dynamics of financial reforms? This paper identifies the political regime as one of the main factors. Focusing on democratization and financial reform, it puts forward novel evidence for a U-shaped relation, across countries and over time, for different reform measures and a wide range of estimators. Partial democracy is a main obstacle to financial reforms and democratization, when incomplete, may lead to severe financial reform reversals."

"This paper examines both the determinants and the effects of changes in the rigidity of labor market legislation across countries over time. Recent research identifies the origin of the legal system as being a major determinant of the cross-country variation in the rigidity of employment protection legislation. However, the supporting evidence is largely confined to levels of regulation and is almost exclusively based on international cross-section data for the post-1995 period. This paper introduces a new index capturing the rigidity of employment protection legislation (LAMRIG) for an unbalanced panel of more than 140 countries over time starting in 1960. Although the importance of legal origins in explaining the level of rigidity of labor regulations across countries is replicated using LAMRIG, their explanatory power is much weakened for changes over time (1960-2004.) More important as determinants of such changes are the level of development and other reforms such as trade liberalization. With respect to the effects of changes in the rigidity of labor regulations on growth and inequality, which have been very controversial in the literature, results with LAMRIG support Freeman's conjecture that changes in rigidity do not systematically affect economic growth but do lower income inequality."

"How does the relationship between earnings and schooling change with the introduction of comprehensive economic reform? This paper sheds light on this question using a unique data set and procedure to reduce sample selection bias. Our evidence is from consistently coded, non-retrospective data for about 4 million Hungarian wage earners. We find that returns to skill increased by 75 percent from 1986 to 2004 (that is, during the period stretching from communism to full membership in the European Union). Moreover, our results identify winners and losers from reform. Winners were the college and university educated and those employed in the services sector (which excludes those in public services). Our results show that reform losers were those in construction and agriculture, those who attained only primary or vocational education (who actually experience a decrease in the returns to their education) as well as those younger workers which acquired most of their education after the collapse of communism (that is, after the main reforms were in place)."

"The vast literature on the effects of immigration on wages and employment is plagued by likely endogeneity and aggregation biases. Ours is among the first papers to address both of these issues by means of causality analysis and by accounting for human capital endowments. Our analysis confirms the previous finding of limited effect of immigration on unemployment and wages in aggregate analysis. We do find, however, evidence of distributional effects when accounting for human capital of non-migrants."

"This chapter provides a critical overview of the state of the art in the economics literature on structural reforms. It takes stock of theoretical developments, measurement efforts and of the econometric evidence. We start with a simple theoretical framework for the relationship between structural reforms, economic growth and income inequality. We argue that whether structural reforms have a positive or negative impact depends on various factors. The type of reform, timing, sequence and political constraints play crucial roles in determining the effectiveness of reforms on economic growth and income inequality. We conclude by proposing a 7-point agenda for future research."

"Reforms in labour and product markets play a central role in government policies. The Political Economy of Structural Reforms in Europe takes stock of current frontier work. It brings together leading contributions from academia, the central banks in Europe, and the OECD to argue that structural reforms can make a fundamental contribution to improve economic performance across Europe.

The Political Economy of Structural Reforms in Europe brings together theoretical and empirical studies that address the potential role of structural reforms in restoring macroeconomic stability, resuming economic growth, addressing income inequality, and grappling secular stagnation. It throws new light on the determinants and effects of structural reforms and on how these shape the European integration experience. "

"We investigate whether and how economic integration increases state capacity. This important relationship has not been studied in detail so far. We put together a conceptual framework to guide our analysis that highlights what we call the Montesquieu, Weber and Smith channels. Each of these correspond to a series of mechanisms in three distinct institutional arenas: judiciary, bureaucracy, and competition policy. To test our framework, we introduce a new panel of institutional reform measures which allow us to investigate how changes in these three arenas interact with each other and what sequence of changes yields increase in state capacity. The yearly data set covers all the 17 countries that became candidates to join the European Union (EU) after the 1995 enlargement. Our main finding is that the relationship between bureaucratic independence and judiciary capacity seems to be the key engine of the process of state capacity building engendered by the prospect of EU membership. Deep integration, we find, can induce broad institutional change by providing incentives for simultaneous change in core state institutions. Yet early and abrupt removal of external anchors might generate significant backsliding, or reversals, in domestic institutional change."

"This paper surveys the economics academic literature on Brexit. It is organised in: pillars, channels, and consequences. The two building blocks to understand Brexit are the economic history of the UK-EU relationship and the literature on the political economy of globalisation and populism. The paper then reviews the evidence on the standard mechanisms through which the UK benefited from EU integration (trade, migration and FDI). Next it surveys the short-run effects of the vote and discuss expected long-term consequences of "Brexit proper." It concludes by identifying some main gaps in the economics literature on Brexit."