Monetary Policy and Polish Labour Market in the years 1999 - 2008

This article sets out to analyse how the monetary policy pursued by the National Bank of Poland (NBP) determined the labour market situation in the country in the decade 1999-2008. The article consists of introduction as well as five sections. Section one discusses NBP's strategy of monetary policy in the defined period against monetary strategies implemented in other countries. Section two uses the growth rates of money supply and of real GDP to verify whether the primary purpose of monetary policy, i.e. the inflationary target, was achieved. Section three generally characterises the country's labour market using the levels and dynamics of employment and of unemployment. Section four discusses major instruments of NBP's monetary policy, mainly analysing changes in the central bank's interest rates and their effect on the economic situation and on the labour market. The article concludes with a summation providing synthetic conclusions.Celem artykułu jest analiza wpływu polityki monetarnej Narodowego Banku Polskiego (NBP) na sytuację na rynku pracy w Polsce w ciągu dekady obejmującej lata 1999-2008. Opracowanie składa się z wprowadzenia oraz pięciu części. W pierwszej z nich omówiona została strategia polityki monetarnej NBP w badanym okresie wraz z porównaniem ze strategią przyjmowaną w innych krajach. W części drugiej sprawdzono, czy realizowany był podstawowy cel polityki monetarnej, czyli cel inflacyjny, w kontekście kształtowania się stóp wzrostu podaży pieniądza oraz realnego PKB. W punkcie kolejnym ukazana została ogólna charakterystyka rynku pracy na podstawie kształtowania się poziomu i dynamiki zatrudnienia oraz bezrobocia. W części czwartej omówiono podstawowe instrumenty polityki pieniężnej NBP. Uwaga skoncentrowana została głównie na analizie zmian stóp procentowych banku centralnego oraz ich wpływu na sytuację gospodarczą i rynek pracy. Całość zamknięta została podsumowaniem, w którym zawarto syntetyczne wnioski końcowe

Are individuals more risk and ambiguity averse in a group environment or alone? Results from an experimental study

Most decision-making research in economics focuses on individual decisions. Yet, we know, from psychological research in particular, that individual preferences can be sensitive to social pressures. In this paper, we study the impact of a group environment on individual preferences for risky (i.e., known probabilities) and ambiguous (i.e., unknown probabilities) prospects. In our experiment, each participant was invited to make a series of lottery-choice decisions in two different conditions. In the Alone condition, individuals made private choices, whereas in the Group condition, individuals belonged to a three-person group and group members' choices were aggregated according to either a majority or unanimity rule. This design allows us to study the impact of a group environment on individuals' attitude towards both risky and ambiguous prospects, while controlling for the decision rule used in the group. Our experimental results show that when individuals are in the Group condition, they tend to be less risk averse and more ambiguity averse than when they are not part of a group (Alone condition). Our experiment also suggests that the decision rule matters as it shows that these two trends tend to be stronger when the group implements a unanimity rule. Specifically, we found that individuals who belong to a group implementing a unanimity rule are significantly less risk averse than individuals who belong to a group that relies on the majority rule. We obtained a similar-but non-significant-result under ambiguity

The disruption of proteostasis in neurodegenerative diseases

Cells count on surveillance systems to monitor and protect the cellular proteome which, besides being highly heterogeneous, is constantly being challenged by intrinsic and environmental factors. In this context, the proteostasis network (PN) is essential to achieve a stable and functional proteome. Disruption of the PN is associated with aging and can lead to and/or potentiate the occurrence of many neurodegenerative diseases (ND). This not only emphasizes the importance of the PN in health span and aging but also how its modulation can be a potential target for intervention and treatment of human diseases.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Treatment decisions and employment of breast cancer patients: Results of a population‐based survey

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142258/1/cncr30959.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142258/2/cncr30959_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142258/3/cncr30959-sup-0001-suppinfo1.pd

Vertical Specialization, Tariff Shirking and Trade

The core idea behind the paper is that trade policy matters for the organization of global value chains, a notion largely neglected by economists but which has important implications for our understanding of trade and the international transmission of trade policy shocks. We develop a theoretical model in which a firm's ability to spatially separate manufacturing from headquarter services gives them the flexibility to circumvent economy-specific tariff changes by switching their assembly location abroad. We show that tariff shirking increases the elasticity of bilateral trade to economy-specific tariff hikes due to an extra extensive margin effect. Furthermore, we show that tariff shirking affects the vulnerability of headquarter services and manufacturing to trade policy shocks in opposite ways. While tariff shirking dampens the vulnerability of headquarter services to trade policy shocks, it amplifies the vulnerability of manufacturing to trade policy shocks. Using firm-level and province-level export data from the People's Republic of China, we provide evidence in line with the theoretical model

What explains gender inequalities in HIV/AIDS prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa? Evidence from the demographic and health surveys

Abstract Background Women are disproportionally affected by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The determinants of gender inequality in HIV/AIDS may vary across countries and require country-specific interventions to address them. This study aimed to identify the socio-demographic and behavioral characteristics underlying gender inequalities in HIV/AIDS in 21 SSA countries. Methods We applied an extension of the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition approach to data from Demographic and Health Surveys and AIDS Indicator Surveys to quantify the differences in HIV/AIDS prevalence between women and men attributable to socio-demographic factors, sexual behaviours, and awareness of HIV/AIDS. We decomposed gender inequalities into two components: the percentage attributable to different levels of the risk factors between women and men (the “composition effect”) and the percentage attributable to risk factors having differential effects on HIV/AIDS prevalence in women and men (the “response effect”). Results Descriptive analyses showed that the difference between women and men in HIV/AIDS prevalence varied from a low of 0.68 % (P = 0.008) in Liberia to a high of 11.5 % (P < 0.001) in Swaziland. The decomposition analysis showed that 84 % (P < 0.001) and 92 % (P < 0.001) of the higher prevalence of HIV/AIDS among women in Uganda and Ghana, respectively, was explained by the different distributions of HIV/AIDS risk factors, particularly age at first sex between women and men. In the majority of countries, however, observed gender inequalities in HIV/AIDS were chiefly explained by differences in the responses to risk factors; the differential effects of age, marital status and occupation on prevalence of HIV/AIDS for women and men were among the significant contributors to this component. In Cameroon, Guinea, Malawi and Swaziland, a combination of the composition and response effects explained gender inequalities in HIV/AIDS prevalence. Conclusions The factors that explain gender inequality in HIV/AIDS in SSA vary by country, suggesting that country-specific interventions are needed. Unmeasured factors also contributed substantially to the difference in HIV/AIDS prevalence between women and men, highlighting the need for further study

Wage differentials associated with race between 2002 and 2014 in Brazil: Evidence from a quantile decomposition

Throughout the 2000s Brazil went through a great phase of economic development. The present study seeks to investigate whether this movement was accompanied by a reduction in inequality in the labor market, measured here by the wage gap between whites and non-whites. To do so, three cohorts of time (2002-2004, 2007-2009 and 2012-2014) were analyzed from the microdata of the National Household Sampling Survey (Pesquisa Nacional de Amostragem Domiciliar - PNAD). The applied method is the counterfactual Oaxaca-Blinder along with the Recentered Influence Function Regression (RIF-Regression) so that the main determinants of wages inequalities can be detailed throughout the salary distribution. Our results showed that wage gap (totals, due to observed factors and discrimination) are higher in the higher quantiles of the distribution, that is, in professions or activities with higher wages. The results also point to a salary approximation between the groups during the analyzed period, which was mainly due to observable characteristics, specially education levels. However, discrimination decreased only between the first and second triennium and in low magnitude. Apart from that, the main determinants of racial wage gap are returns to education, experience and professions considered unregulated (self-employment and informal workers)

How expectations became governable: institutional change and the performative power of central banks

Central banks have accumulated unparalleled power over the conduct of macroeconomic policy. Key for this development was the articulation and differentiation of monetary policy as a distinct policy domain. While political economists emphasize the foundational institutional changes that enabled this development, recent performativity-studies focus on central bankers’ invention of expectation management techniques. In line with a few other works, this article aims to bring these two aspects together. The key argument is that, over the last few decades, central banks have identified different strategies to assume authority over “expectational politics” and reinforced dominant institutional forces within them. I introduce a comparative scheme to distinguish two different expectational governance regimes. My own empirical investigation focuses on a monetarist regime that emerged from corporatist contexts, where central banks enjoyed “embedded autonomy” and where commercial banks maintained conservative reserve management routines. I further argue that innovations towards inflation targeting took place in countries with non-existent or disintegrating corporatist structures and where central banks turned to finance to establish a different version of expectation coordination. A widespread adoption of this “financialized” expectational governance has been made possible by broader processes of institutional convergence that were supported by central bankers themselves