The continuing depreciation of the dollar stands out as one of the big policy issues, it has started to impinge on U.S. monetary policy; it influences the chances for international commercial diplomacy, and it is enhancing the move toward European monetary integration. Above all it leaves most observers with a puzzle as to the causes of the ongoing depreciation. This paper will, of course, not ...

The degree of offshore outsourcing in the high-tech industries has increased rapidly in past decades. Because of this trend, economists have been debating whether offshore outsourcing is hollowing out U.S. high-tech firms’ core competencies in intangibles. To contribute to the debate, I first develop a forward-looking profit model and use Compustat dataset to measure the capital stock and depre...

In 2011, Switzerland announced a floor for the Swiss franc, and it immediately depreciated by 10 percent. Many argue that depreciations should not matter for Switzerland’s export basket because luxury brands and high value added products predominate, and these should compete on quality rather than price. We measure the sophistication of Swiss exports using Hausmann et al.’s (2007) and Kwan’s (2...

One of the most difficult problems in medicine is the correct estimation of the value of any new method of treatment which is not absolutely specific. Not only is enthusiasm liable to run riot at the incidence of a series of successful cases, but the reverse may also occur, and undue depreciation of the value of a useful method be engendered by an initial series of tmsuccessful cases.

This Economic Letter looks at the relationship among changes in the exchange rate value of the dollar and in import prices and overall consumer prices, with a particular focus on the current circumstances. It appears that the lower value of the dollar at this point is affecting U.S. prices less than it has historically.The reasons for the difference include changes in trading partners, changes ...

Using firm-level data from the manufacturing sector of Chile for the period 1995-2002, we examine whether access to finance increase the probability of exporting. To do that, we exploit information of firms ́ access to banking debt and changes in the real exchange rate (RER) to identify the causal effect of finance on exporting. This is an interesting setting given that the Chilean economy exper...

Many self-employed workers return to the wage and salaried sector of the labor market after some time. It is possible that the self-employment spell will lead to lower earnings or earnings growth upon return, due to depreciation of firm or sector-specific human capital. Using longitudinal data from the NLS, this paper examines the effects of spells of self-employment on the future wage and sala...

This paper proposes a measure to assess the monetary policy for a highly inflationary small open economy: Turkey. The empirical evidence suggests that positive innovations in the spread between the Central Bank’s interbank interest rate and the depreciation rate of the local currency mimic the properties of the tight monetary policy. These innovations, when they are positive, decrease income an...

In a life-cycle model, a retiree faces stochastic health depreciation and chooses consumption, health expenditure, and the allocation of wealth between bonds, stocks, and housing. The model explains key facts about asset allocation and health expenditure across health status and age. The portfolio share in stocks is low overall and is positively related to health, especially for younger retiree...

This paper develops Michael Grossman's demand-for-health model by letting the depreciation rate depend upon the level of health, by letting the incidence and size of illness be uncertain and by investigating how the individual's demand for health would be affected by the introduction of insurance. Beside the more theoretical results, there are also some results with important policy implication...