Gary Clayton, Northern Kentucky University—USA

Gary Clayton, Northern Kentucky University—USA

Christina Cheung, University of British Columbia—Canada

Presentation Title: Eliminating the Penny in Canada: An Economic Analysis of Penny-rounding on Grocery Items. Canada has eliminated the penny from circulation and adopted a nearest-nickel rounding scheme since 2013. Proponents of penny removal suggest that the sales tax and number of items purchased neutralize the effect of rounding, rendering no financial gains for anyone at the end of the day. This study examines the microeconomic consequences of penny-rounding on grocery items in Canada, specifically at whether the current rounding system places monetary burden on firms or consumers. This paper examines the effects of two parameters—purchasing one- to ten- item under the six different provincial sales taxes—on penny rounding. 10,000 transactions are simulated on Python for each combination of parameters, with items randomly selected from a dataset of 18,095 prices that has been collected from three representative grocery stores. The results show that that the rounding scheme financially benefits the firms at the expense of the consumers: net rounding is positive for one- and two- item purchases and statistically zero for three- or more items. The author estimates that penny rounding imposes a net transfer of $3.91 million CAD from consumers to grocery vendors every year.

Jessica Green, Nottingham Trent University—United Kingdom

Presentation Title: To what extent does immigration lead to displacement effects and subdued growth in earnings for UK workers? This paper explores, how immigration has impacted employment and wages for UK natives over 2000-2016. By first identifying that the supply side shock created by immigration doesn’t suggest negative employment effects for natives, the paper then explores earnings for the lower end of the skills distribution. The paper concludes by suggesting that subdued growth in earnings identified for ‘low skilled, low pay’ workers cannot be attributed solely to immigration. Rather, it is the nature of these labour markets, i.e., their low-skill characteristics and high labour demand that depresses wages.

Gytautas Karklius, University of Warwick—United Kingdom

Presentation Title: The Effect of Central Bank Informal Communication on Bond Markets: The Evidence from the Bank of England. This paper analyses the sentiment conveyed in speeches by the Bank of England and its effect on bond markets in the United Kingdom. The novelty of the research is that it combines Latent Dirichlet Allocation together with dictionary methods in order to calculate the sentiment index about economic conditions. The analysis that uses this methodology can be easily replicated and extended for other countries or time periods. Among other findings, the effect of the sentiment in speeches is found to vary by the position of a speaker. Speeches made by the Governor and the Chief Economist have a similar impact on bond yields as the surprise components of CPI data releases. Keywords: monetary policy, communication, speeches, LDA

Yin Li Toh, University of Warwick—United Kingdom

Presentation Title: The Role of Land Wealth on Child Labour in Vietnam. Recent papers in the literature have casted doubt that the primary cause of child labour is poverty, showing evidence that greater land wealth leads to higher child labour. This wealth paradox has motivated the research in studying the impact of household owned land on child labour in Vietnam, as research on this area in South East Asia is scarce. Using a panel dataset from the Young Lives Survey, the Tobit model estimates support the hypothesis of an inverted-U shaped relationship between land and child labour. Further, it is shown that the estimation results hold for an alternative measure of agrarian wealth using number of cattle. It is argued that domestic work could be the channel in which the wealth paradox is explained by labour market imperfections. The findings add another factor in challenging the notion that child labour emerges from the poorest households.

First Round Judges:, :—USA ; Mohammad Ali, University of Maryland Eastern Shore—USA ; Heeho Kim, Kyungpook National University—Korea, Republic of (South) ; Iuliana Matei, Scientific Institute of Economics and Management—France ; Gianluca Mattarocci, University of Rome Tor Vergata—Italy ; Bertram Okpokwasili, Georgian Court University—USA ; Mark Potter, Babson College—USA ; J K Sachdeva, Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women's University (SNDT)—India ; Sofoklis Vogiazas, Black Sea Trade and Development Bank—Greece ; Chih-Hsien Yu, University of Baltimore—USA ; Ying Zhen, Wesleyan College—USA ; Parameswar Krishnakumar, Slippery Rock University—USA ; Second Round Judges:, :—USA ; Ansgar Belke, University of Duisburg–Essen—Germany ; Carlos Liard-Muriente, Central Connecticut State University—USA ; Paul L. Hettler, California University of Pennsylvania—USA ; Sumru Altug, Koc University—Turkey ; Nacasius U. Ujah, South Dakota State University—USA and Steve Muchiri, Eastern Connecticut State University—USA