PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH AND TECHNOLOGICAL DIFFUSION THROUGH FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dramatically increased worldwide and is the most important form of all private capital flows to developing countries. Yet, it is an important empirical question whether FDI affects total factor productivity (TFP) positively. We investigate the effect of FDI on TFP growth in a large sample of countries in 1970–2000. Our econometric results indicate that FDI has a positive and direct effect on TFP growth. However, we do not find any evidence that the impact of FDI on TFP growth is only conditional on the recipient country's capability to absorb foreign technology. We carefully address the robustness of the empirical results . ( JEL O11, O40, O47, F21)     

Economic Transition and Regional Growth: The Case of Albania and Comparator SEECs

The focus of this paper is to investigate the growth performance of Albania and other South Eastern European Countries in the period 1990–2006 by examining traditional growth sources as emerge from standard theoretical models. It focuses on macroeconomic performances and GDP per capita growth rates to examine why countries in the SEE region are lagging behind with respect to other transition economies. The analysis is conducted through stylised growth regressions to estimate convergence rates and coefficients of key factors of growth. Results indicate that real GDP growth in all the eight countries is mainly driven by physical capital accumulation, whereas the contribution of human capital is insignificant or even negative.     

HOW IMPORTANT ARE CAPITAL AND TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY FOR ECONOMIC GROWTH?

We examine the relative importance of the growth of physical and human capital and the growth of total factor productivity (TFP) using newly organized data on 145 countries that spans more than 100 years for 23 of these countries. For all countries, only 14% of average output growth per worker is associated with TFP growth. We use priors from theories to construct estimates of the relative importance of the variances of aggregate input growth and TFP growth across countries. Much of the importance of the variance of TFP growth across countries is associated with negative TFP growth. (JEL O47 , O50 , O57 , O30 , N10 )     

Measuring the Quality of Bank Regulation and Supervision with an Application to Transition Economies

This study develops a methodology to evaluate the quality of the legal aspect of bank regulation and supervision (RS). We use both the Basle guidelines and the letter of banking laws to form an extensive set of criteria to evaluate banking laws. As an application, we provide measures of RS for 23 transition economies. Our measurements indicate that legal banking reforms in Poland, Hungary, and Estonia have been more ambitious than the rest of the countries in transition. Controlling for various other relevant factors, empirical evidence reveals a significant positive relationship between RS and real GDP growth in transition economies.     

Public Debt Sustainability in Africa: Building Resilience and Challenges Ahead

The increased access of African countries to international capital markets has put public debt sustainability at the forefront of the continent's policy agenda. Utilising the ‘stabilising primary‐balance’ approach, this article finds that the actual primary balances exceeded those required to keep public debt at the 2007 level in about half the countries studied, and in several cases, those needed to reduce public debt‐to‐GDP to sustainable thresholds. The interest rate‐growth differential (IRGD) drove sustainability, underscoring the importance of growth and borrowing for growth‐enhancing outlays. As the IRGDs are likely to narrow over the longer term, fiscal policies will need to play a greater role.     

Does Remittance Outflow Stimulate or Retard Economic Growth?

This article evaluates the association between remittance outflow (RMO) and economic growth in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The results of this evaluation indicate that RMO Granger creates gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in three countries, namely, Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia. Similarly, the results for causality from GDP per capita to RMO are significant for four countries, namely, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. The findings differ from those of the household consumption model, stating that higher RMO will decrease economic activity. GDP per capita is the main determinant of RMO, suggesting that economic growth promises and encourages continuous RMO and vice versa. The adverse impact of RMO can be minimized by encouraging the local population to be productive in the private sector, as local productivity will reduce the huge influx of foreign workers and provide valuable local investment opportunities to lessen the amount being remitted.     

Main Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in the Southeast European Countries

The growth of foreign direct investments (FDI) in the world has been significant in recent years. Between 1990 and 2000 worldwide FDI inflows increased more than five times, and since 2000 they have declined. During the period of FDI expansion, growth was especially strong from 1997 onward. However, most of the FDI transactions were between the developed countries. The distribution of FDI is unequal and less-developing countries face difficulties in attracting FDI. Despite the fact that FDI is increasingly important to developing countries, over the past few years the share of the developing countries in worldwide FDI inflows has been declining. The paper analyses geographical and sector distribution of FDI in the Southeast European countries (SEEC) and compares its amount with that in Central East European countries. According to economic theory, FDI towards developing countries flows for labor-intensive and low-technology production, while towards developed states, it flows for high-technology production. Identification of determining factors of FDI is a complex problem which depends on several characteristics specific for each country, sectors, and companies. All those factors could be grouped in three broad categories: economic policy of host country, economic performance, and attractiveness of national economy. On the desegregated level, FDI depends on size and growth potential of a national economy, natural resources endowments and quality of workforce, openness to international trade and access to international markets, and quality of physical, financial, and technological infrastructure. An important question is how SEEC can attract more foreign investment. To find the answer, this paper uses data on FDI inflows to SEEC to determine the main host country determinants of FDI and provides regression-based estimation of determinants of FDI. Using a sample of SEEC and panel data techniques, the determinants of FDI in this part of Europe are investigated. The paper researches the relationship between FDI, GDP, GDP per capita, number of inhabitants, trade openness, inflation, external debt, and information and communication technology sectors. For SEEC, FDI inflows are largely dependent on the completion of the privatization process and in this paper we include the level of private sector and privatization as explanatory variables. Our findings suggest that certain variables such as privatization and trade regime, as well as the density of infrastructure, appear to be robust under different specifications. A positive significance of the agglomeration factor is also observed, confirming the relevant theoretical propositions. However, certain differential variables, such as the privatization, could not be fully captured due to the statistical homogeneity of the sample.     

Banking Sector Development and Economic Growth in Central and Southeastern Europe Countries

The aim of this paper is to empirically examine the relationship between banking sector development and economic growth in 16 transition countries in Central and Southeastern Europe in the period from 1995 to 2010. We apply fixed-effects panel model and control for other relevant determinants of economic growth and endogeneity. We measure the level of banking sector development using the amount of bank credit allocated to the private sector as a share of GDP. The second variable for the level of financial sector development is the margin between lending and deposit interest rates. According to our results the amount of bank credit allocated to the private sector, apparently does not speed up economic growth in transition countries. The second variable, interest rate margin is negatively but not significantly associated with economic growth.     

Healthy, educated and wealthy: A primer on the impact of public and private welfare expenditures on economic growth

In this paper, we provide first evidence of the impact of public and private expenditures in health and education on economic growth, via their influence on people's health, skills and knowledge. We consider a growth accounting framework in order to test whether countries that devote a larger amount of resources to the consumption of health and educational services experience higher growth rates. We also test whether the effects on economic growth of public expenditure in health and education differ from those of private expenditure. Our empirical analysis is based on a panel of 19 OECD countries observed between 1971 and 1998. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that health and education expenditure affects positively growth. The estimated impact is stronger for health than for education. More importantly, we find some evidence that public expenditure influences GDP growth more than private expenditure.     

Growth Effects of Remittances in Bangladesh: Is there a U‐shaped Relationship?

This article shows that the effect of remittances on economic growth involves a U‐shaped pattern, which is negative initially but later becomes positive. The analysis differs significantly from earlier studies in that it examines important methodological issues on the specification and estimation of the long‐run growth effects of remittances by estimating their impact on total factor productivity (TFP) rather than on the growth rate of GDP, using time series data from Bangladesh. The use of single‐equation cointegration methods shows that remittances’ effect on long‐run growth in Bangladesh is negative and falling until the remittances‐to‐GDP ratio is roughly eight per cent. The benefits of remittances receipts outweigh their costs and their net effects start to become positive when the ratio exceeds 14 per cent.     

The Insurance Industry in Jordan

This paper examines the structure and performance of the insurance industry in Jordan during the period of 2000–2005. The Jordanian insurance industry is free of state ownership in both primary insurance and reinsurance markets and has been spared the pervasive premium, product, investment, and reinsurance controls that have bedeviled the insurance markets of so many developing countries around the world. Despite these positive features, the insurance industry is not developed, which mainly reflects the underdevelopment of life insurance that has annual premiums of only 0.27 percent of GDP. In contrast, the level of general insurance is comparable to that of several other developing countries in the region. To overcome this situation a major modernization effort should be undertaken.      

Liberalization, FDI, and Growth in Developing Countries: A Panel Cointegration Approach

Using a panel cointegration framework, the article explores the two-way link between FDI and growth for a panel of 23 developing countries. In addition, it investigates the impact of liberalization on the dynamics of the FDI and GDP relationship. A long-run cointegrating relationship is found between FDI and GDP after allowing for heterogeneous country effects. The cointegrating vectors reveal a bidirectional causality between GDP and FDI for more open economies. For relatively closed economies, long-run causality appears unidirectional and runs from GDP to FDI, implying that growth and FDI are not mutually reinforcing under restrictive trade and investment regimes.     

International Student Mobility and Tertiary Education Capacity in Africa

In Africa, 5.8 per cent of enrolled tertiary students go outside their homelands for tertiary study. No other world region has this high a share of outbound student mobility. In this study, I examined why African countries have larger student outflows than other regions and, in particular, I considered the importance of tertiary education capacity in the region for student mobility. I evaluated the determinants of student outflows from African countries for three different measures: the total number of tertiary students abroad, the percentage of the tertiary age cohort studying abroad and the percentage of total enrolled students abroad. In addition to showing that country rankings differ on these mobility measures, the findings indicate that their determinants also differ. The study premise was that student outflows should be lower from countries that have a greater supply of tertiary training capacity and that thesis received strong support in models that estimated the percentage of total enrolled students abroad. In models for that outcome, student outflows were also larger if countries had high tertiary demand and populations under 2 million. The findings for models that estimated total numbers abroad and share of the tertiary cohort abroad were similar after controlling for interactions between tertiary education supply and GDP per capita. In addition, population size and per capita GDP were stronger correlates of student mobility in those models, which suggests that it is more difficult for education supply and demand measures to account for student outflows when crude outflow measures are used. I concluded that strengthening tertiary education supply at home would be a cost‐effective way for African governments to increase their human capital and reduce brain drain losses.     

Institutions matter: The case of Vietnam

The paper investigates institutional reforms in Vietnam and their impact on the economic performance of firms. Using the provincial competitiveness index 2006 (PCI06) and firm-level data in Vietnam in 2005, the results show that provincial competitiveness is economically and statistically significant in explaining cross-province differences in firm performance. We find that a 1% point improvement in government practice could increase the daily value-added of an average firm by an amount equivalent to nearly three times per capita GDP per day. The results show that an improvement in providing market information, more secure land tenure and labor training assistance has a positive effect on firm performance. By contrast, weaknesses in the judiciary system and administrative reforms impede growth of non-state firms. The findings indicate that governance is an important obstacle to the development of the non-state sector in Vietnam.     

Are Shocks to Real Output Permanent or Transitory? Evidence from a Panel of “Asean” Per Capita GDP Data

Since economic theory provides reasons for nonlinearity in economic variables due to frictions/distortions in the economy, the use of linear unit root tests to examine the nonstationary properties of per-capita GDP (PCGDP) may provide misleading results. With this background we have analyzed the mean reversion properties of per capita real GDP of Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries (for the period 1950–2010) using the recently developed Ucar and Omaga (Econ Lett 104:5–8, 2009) nonlinear panel unit root test. The results indicate that the PCGDP of ASEAN countries are nonlinear process and are stationary.     

何谓没有水分的经济增长

在我国的GDP统计中,存在着没有质量的GDP增长,即有水分的GDP增长。我国要实现有质量的GDP增长,重点是要控物价、促消费、讲效率和求回报,力求:监管物价,将全社会的通货膨胀限定在一个可控的政策调控的空间内;适量增加高于通货膨胀率的劳动者收入报酬,以增加内需、增加就业;促进政府采购讲求效率和公平、注重发挥重大基础设施和城市功能的有效性;讲求投资回报的社会和经济效益,改变只顾眼前带动GDP增长的投资、不讲求社会回报的做法。     

NONLINEAR BUSINESS CYCLE DYNAMICS: CROSS-COUNTRY EVIDENCE ON THE PERSISTENCE OF AGGREGATE SHOCKS

We look for asymmetries in the dynamics of real GDP growth for the G7 countries, using a model by Beaudry and Koop that allows the depth of a recession to influence the rate of growth of output. We find evidence supporting these nonlinearities in four countries, including the United States, but we do not find evidence that the asymmetries are common even among the four countries exhibiting asymmetric behavior. A modification of the model to distinguish between the recession and recovery phases of a business cycle does not change this general finding. The asymmetries discovered by Beaudry and Koop do not appear to be common among the G7 nations. (JEL E32)     

Ergonomics and sustainability--challenges from global supply chains

The development of globalised supply chains is a major challenge for sustainability. For several years, there has been discussion within the profession whether and how ergonomics and human factors can play a role. Based on our research, we have identified five major challenges from global supply chains especially related to the social aspects of sustainability: (1) criteria for social sustainability, (2) the role of key performance indicators in the management of supply chains, (3) the constant changes in supply chains, (4) the challenge in establishing participation, and (5) the development of agency and regulatory mechanisms. There are obviously no clear and simple solutions to these challenges. One possible avenue for progress might lie in acquiring a greater understanding of the challenges from global supply chains and developing a strategy which combines social and long-term business sustainability. Starting from such a basis, the next step would be to find ways for the ergonomics and human factors community to create international collaboration which can impact specific global supply chains.     

Aid and Fiscal Deficits: Lessons from Uganda on the Implications for Macroeconomic Management and Fiscal Sustainability

This article contributes to the ongoing debate on the macroeconomic management of large aid inflows to low‐income countries by analysing lessons drawn from Uganda, where the fiscal deficit before grants, which was largely aid‐funded, doubled to over 12% of GDP in the early 2000s. It focuses on the implications of the widening fiscal deficit for monetary policy, the real exchange rate, debt sustainability and the vulnerability of the budget to fiscal shocks, and argues that large fiscal deficits, even when funded predominantly by aid, risk undermining macroeconomic objectives and long‐run fiscal sustainability.     

Informatization, voter turnout and income inequality

In recent years, voter turnout has been decreasing in most industrial countries, and about 40% of all electors abstain from voting. This may affect income inequality and the GDP growth rate through a redistribution policy determined by majority voting. In this paper, we explore the reasons for this continuing decrease in voter turnout and assess its social costs. We conclude that informatization lowers voter turnout by generating an information overload, and that a decrease in voter turnout lowers GDP growth by limiting income redistribution.