The Changing Transmission of Uncertainty Shocks in the U.S.

This article investigates if the impact of uncertainty shocks on the U.S. economy has changed over time. To this end, we develop an extended factor augmented vector autoregression (VAR) model that simultaneously allows the estimation of a measure of uncertainty and its time-varying impact on a range of variables. We find that the impact of uncertainty shocks on real activity and financial variables has declined systematically over time. In contrast, the response of inflation and the short-term interest rate to this shock has remained fairly stable. Simulations from a nonlinear dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model suggest that these empirical results are consistent with an increase in the monetary authorities’ antiinflation stance and a “flattening” of the Phillips curve. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Globalization and the Quality of Government: an Analysis of the Relationship

This research seeks to investigate the relationship between globalization and the quality of government. By using the Quality of Government Institute data, the paper analyzes the relationships between globalization and the government quality. The paper uses both KOF scores and the scores by the Heritage Foundation to measure globalization. The results show that economic and political globalization is a significant predictor of the quality of government. When all the variables on economic freedom are taken into consideration, fiscal, business and trade freedoms are critical factors influencing the quality of governance.     

Child Sexual Abuse in Zimbabwe

Although child sexual abuse is a significant public health problem globally, its incidence, prevention, and management is less well described in resource-poor settings. In poorer settings prevention initiatives assume even more importance since resources for managing abused children are severely limited. This article examines the current status of policy and practice related to the prevention of child sexual abuse in Zimbabwe. It identifies implementation challenges and highlights opportunities that could be embraced to reduce CSA in Zimbabwe, based on evidence synthesized from recent work. Although Zimbabwe has a well-established legal and regulatory framework to protect children from child sexual abuse, implementation of existing policies is weak. Financial, human, and material resource constraints are frequently cited to explain limited prevention activity. Effective strategies for the prevention of child sexual abuse should focus on implementing existing legislation, targeting schoolchildren, and getting community involvement. A dedicated budget would help entrench these strategies, but gains can be achieved even in the absence of this.     

Gene‐environment correlations in the cross‐generational transmission of parenting: Grandparenting moderates the effect of child 5‐HTTLPR genotype on mothers' parenting

Evidence suggests that parenting is associated cross‐generationally and that children's genes may elicit specific parenting styles (evocative gene‐environment correlation). This study examined whether the effect of children's genotype, specifically 5‐HTTLPR, on mothers' parenting behaviors was moderated by her own parenting experiences from her mother. Two independent samples of three‐year‐olds (N = 476 and 405) were genotyped for the serotonin transporter gene, and observational measures of parenting were collected. Mothers completed measures of the parenting they received as children. The child having a short allele on 5‐HTTLPR was associated with more maternal hostility (Samples 1 and 2) and with less maternal support (Sample 1), but only if the mother reported lower quality grandmothers' parenting (abuse and indifference in Sample 1 and lower levels of grandmother care in Sample 2). Results support the possibility of a moderated evocative gene‐environment correlation.     

EVOLVING INTERNATIONAL INFLATION DYNAMICS: WORLD AND COUNTRY‐SPECIFIC FACTORS

The decline in the level and persistence of inflation over the 1980s is a common feature of the most industrialized economies in the world. The rise in inflation volatility of the late 1970s and the subsequent fall of the 1980s is country specific for the UK, Canada, and, to a lesser extent, the United States, Italy, and Japan. Since the late 1980s, inflation predictability has declined significantly across the industrialized world. We link the empirical results to recent theories of international inflation.     

A Note on Measuring the Depth of Minimum Wage Violation

In the empirical literature on minimum wage enforcement, the standard approach is to measure the number of violations, not their depth. In this paper we present a family of violation indices that, by analogy with poverty indices, can emphasize the depth of violation to different degrees. The standard measure is a special case of this family of indices, but other members of the family highlight the depth of violation. We present an application to South Africa to show that the depth of violation matters, and is not captured by the standard measure in actual situations.     

The cost of "doing business" and labour regulation: The case of South Africa

The "Employing Workers" indices compiled from the World Bank's Doing Business (DB) survey for 2006 presented mixed results as to the nature and extent of labour regulation in South Africa. Arguing that these measures – with their narrow focus on legislation – provide only a partial picture, the authors suggest and investigate three possible extensions to the DB framework with the aim of achieving a more realistic representation of labour regulation in practice, namely: "micro-legislation", labour market institutions and judicial interpretation. They conclude with a plea for taking account of the crucial importance of these features in the assessment of labour regulation frameworks.     

THE INTERNATIONAL TRANSMISSION OF VOLATILITY SHOCKS: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

This paper proposes an empirical model which can be used to estimate the international transmission of volatility shocks. Using this model we estimate that a one standard deviation increase in the volatility of the shock to US real GDP leads to a decline in UK GDP of 1% relative to trend and a 0.7% increase in UK CPI relative to trend at the two‐year horizon. Using a nonlinear open‐economy DSGE model, we find that these empirical estimates are consistent with the response to a perturbation to the volatility of foreign “supply” type shocks, while an increase in the volatility of demand shocks has a negligible impact.