20 Table 8: Significant Cyclical Elasticities from Unemployment and GDP CounterProNonCyclical Cyclical Significant Sums: 26 33 133 192 GDP Elasticity 36 20 136 192 Unemployment Elasticity 62 53 269 384 Sums: Chi-Squared Statistic: Q-Statistic:
4.8350 p-value: 4.8749 p-value:
0.0891 0.0874
Table 8 shows more non-significant coefficients than those showing a significant cyclical pattern of any kind. But recall from the time series in Table 3 and the panels in Tables 4 and 5 that the overall pattern on GDP and Unemployment is counter-cyclical. (This is driven by values of different industries, and not just numbers of industries.) Note also that change in the number of unemployed, a lagging business cycle indicator, shows more significant counter-cyclical coefficients than does change in GDP. This is consistent with the argument that WIR’s initial counter-cyclical response is from smaller Registered firms – more sensitive to Unemployment risk than larger Non-Registered firms. But we seen Non-Registered firms as also be affected, since they agree to accept more WIR transactions from their small-business customers and distributors. 2) Non-Registered Firms show more significant cyclical effects – both counter- and pro-cyclical – than do Registered Firms: Table 9: Significant Cyclical Coefficients in Registered and Non-Registered Firms CounterProNonCyclical Cyclical Significant Sums: 25 13 154 192 Registered 37 40 115 192 Non-Registered 62 53 269 384 Sums: Chi-Squared Statistic: 21.7316 Q-Statistic: 22.4333
p-value: p-value:
1.9101 E-05 1.3449 E-05
Our previous panel regressions showed Non-Registered firms more counter-cyclical than Registered, and Table 9 shows that Non-Registered firms also have a far greater number of significant cyclical coefficients, with a slight preponderance of the pro-cyclical.