Statistika: Statistics and Economy Journal - No. 1/2023

 

Minimum wage hikes increase the consumption of affected households. This paper studies the structure of the additional consumption across various low-income household types. Using a unique set of cross-sectional data at the household level in the Czech Republic, I simulate the impact on consumption categories of additions to disposable income due to minimum wage increases between 2011 and 2019. My findings suggest that the additional income is predominantly allocated to essentials, despite a drop in their budget share. Consumption of addictive goods represents a luxury for low-income households, among whom the demand is even more elastic for those with children. Similarly, health and education expenditures are substantially income sensitive for households with children.

 

Minimum wage, income elasticity, household consumption, low-income households, household data

 

 

 

Sustainable development, metropolitan cities, consumption, consumption

 

 

 

The purpose of this study is to investigate and evaluate the impact of the global Covid-19 crisis on consumer spending tendencies in Turkey. The data of the study, which are weekly data, consists of the "Debit Card and Credit Card Expenditure" amounts of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) for the period 6/3/2015–5/8/2022. Changes in consumer expenditures during the Covid-19 pandemic process were examined with the help of structural break tests. The main contribution of this article subsists in an empirical study to examine structural breaks in Turkey using personal debit and credit card disaggregated total expenditure data during the Covid-19 period. According to the research findings; the change observed at the beginning of the Covid-19 period in card expenditures is less than the change observed at the end of the period. With the end of the pandemic, an upward breakout was observed in most of the expenditure items.

 

Covid-19, pandemic, consumer, spending, structural break

 

 

The main objective of this paper is to assess the impact of a change in household income inequality on macroeconomic variables of a developing country, in this case Morocco. To this end, we run a static CGE model calibrated to the 2016 Moroccan SAM. Among the main results, we find that a 1% increase in household income inequality leads to a decrease of (–1.60%) in GDP at market prices, which implies a loss of (–1.93%) in primary sector value added (agriculture and fishing) which remains a key sector in this economy. Furthermore, we find that a fiscal and budgetary policy that targets reducing inequality can also improve social and economic outcomes.

 

Income inequality, socioeconomic impact, public policy, North Africa, computable general equilibrium model

 

The paper tries to find an answer to how to perceive the term balance of payments (dis)equilibrium. The text follows the individual editions of the IMF Balance of Payments Manual and concurrent opinions on balance of payments (dis)equilibrium from the point of view of both the IMF and economists outside the IMF. Despite the difficulty and complexity of balance of payments analysis, there was a considerable demand among the economic and lay communities for a "single figure" covering balance of payments (dis)equilibrium. Eventually, the current account balance was selected as the "single figure." The simplest way to perceive the current account balance equilibrium is as a tendency to return to its zero value. However, some more complex approaches allow considering a longterm non-zero balance of the current account as a state of equilibrium.

 

International Monetary Fund, balance of payments, balance of payments equilibrium

 

 

 

This paper investigates the impact of digital banking on greenhouse gas emissions in a case of developing economy, Turkey. Digital banking means more technological innovations in banking transactions. If banking transactions can be made in digital rather than physical environments, environmental effects are expected. We assume the environmental effect is positive, so the examination of this relationship is quite important. Technological innovations mean an increase in cost of digital banking transactions in the short run but in the long run this cost-increased effect is expected to turn opposite by an increase of active users in digital banking. We analyse the long-run relationship for the period between 2011/1 and 2019/4 by employing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model. The results show that the increase in digital banking transactions have a positive and statistically significant effect on greenhouse gas emissions in Turkey. The findings reveal the positive trend in increasing transactions in digital banking in Turkey.

 

Digital banking, greenhouse gas emissions, Turkey, environmental Kuznets curve

 

 

 

Antoch, Mola and Vozár (2022) proposed recently new randomized response technique for population mean or total of a quantitative variable. The aim of the paper is to solve the open problem to derive unbiased variance estimator of these procedures. In their proposal, unlike other randomized response techniques for population mean or total the randomized response is not a linear function of a sensitive variable. However, standard techniques to derive variance estimators in this setting are based on this assumption. That is why an interviewer needs also to know values pseudorandom numbers (i.e., results of individual randomization experiments). Respondents might perceive this relaxation of privacy protection negative. The performance of the approximate two-sided confidence intervals of distributions with different shape including their coverage is assessed by a simulation study for simple random sampling without replacement.

 

Unbiased variance estimator, randomized response techniques, survey sampling, Horvitz-Thompson estimator, simple random sampling without replacement, population mean

 

 

 

In demography, mortality modeling with respect to age and time dimensions is often associated with the traditionally used Lee-Carter model. The Lee-Carter model considers a constant set of parameters of agespecific mortality change for forecasts, which can lead to the problem of overcoming the biodemographic limit. The main motivation of this paper is the use of more flexible models for mortality modeling. The paper explores the use of state space models for modeling and predicting mortality in a form not typically used in demography. In this context, it is a generalized Poisson state space model with overdispersion parameters. Concerning the empirical results, a comparison is made between the predictive abilities of the Lee-Carter and the generalized Poisson state space model with overdispersion parameters. The state space Poisson model with overdispersion parameters led to better results with respect to the comparison of modeled and historical observations. However, when comparing the predictions in the cross-validation area, both models were represented with similar overall mean squared error.

 

Generalized state space models, extended Kalman filter, exponential smoothing, Lee-Carter model, mortality, prediction comparison