Inflation, inflation uncertainty, and monetary policy in Turkey: 1960–1998

The authors constructed a time series of monthly inflation uncertainty in Turkey from 1960 to 1998 using GARCH models and investigated the link between inflation and inflation uncertainty using Granger tests. The authors found strong statistical support that inflation significantly raised inflation uncertainty in Turkey over the full sample period and three subsamples. The evidence on the effect of inflation uncertainty on average inflation is mixed and depends on the time period examined. An analysis of the political conditions and the record of macroeconomic policy making in Turkey between 1960 and 1998 reveal institutional and political factors that can help explain the empirical results.     

Innovative performance effects of institutional quality: an empirical investigation from the Triad

ABSTRACT

Using data for a set of 823 R&D-intense manufacturing firms within the Triad and the Quality of Government (QoG) dataset over the 2002–2010 period, this article investigates the effects of institutional quality upon firms’ inefficiency, through the application of a Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA). Empirical evidence, which is robust to alternative specifications of the technology employed and different lag structures in R&D activities, reveals that improvements in the quality of institutions significantly reduce firms’ inefficiency and suggests that, among the set of relevant institutional factors considered, a pre-eminent role is found for the rule of law.     

Adoption of conservation tillage in Australian cropping regions: An application of duration analysis

The diffusion of agricultural innovations is rarely rapid. As a result, adoption decisions over time are very likely to be influenced by changes in generic factors such as the price of complementary inputs and environmental conditions. Despite this, the vast majority of studies aiming to explain innovation adoption are limited to cross-sectional data and analysis techniques that cannot accommodate time-dependent variables. This study departs from these attempts by using a duration analysis technique to investigate the significance of time-dependent economic and environmental variables, along with cross-sectional variables such as technology-specific perceptions, on the adoption of soil-conserving cropping practices by grain growers in southern Australia over the period 1983–2003. Of particular interest is the possible trade-off faced by farmers where adoption of no-tillage cropping technology can lead to greater herbicide reliance and subsequently unsustainable weed management due to high risks of herbicide resistance. Results show that factors affecting the cost-effectiveness of herbicides are important in the adoption of the erosion-reducing cropping systems. Several factors relating to the availability and use of technical information are also shown to be influential. The duration analysis approach allowed changes in time-dependent variables, including the fall in the price of the herbicide glyphosate, to be identified as determinants of the timing of no-till adoption.     

我国高技术产业创新效率的制度贡献及其异质性

高技术产业创新为我国经济转型发展提供新动能,但其现存的低效率创新困局亟待破解。利用1997-2011年高技术产业面板数据,全面考察制度因素对高技术产业技术创新的影响,并就各个制度子因素对技术创新三阶段效率的贡献加以分析。结果显示,整体制度环境优化有利于创新效率提升,制度因素对不同阶段创新效率的贡献具有异质性;以企业为主体的科技创新体制对高技术产业创新效率的影响不显著,表明以企业为主体的创新体系有待进一步完善。最后提出继续深化市场化改革、优化整体制度环境、明确政府职能、真正确立企业创新主体地位等对策建议。     

基于主成分回归分析法的新疆农业经济增长影响因素评价

本文利用C-D生产函数的拓展形式建立农业经济增长模型。基于1990年-2006年时间序列数据及2006年县域数据对新疆农业劳动力、耕地、技术、投资等对农业经济增长的影响进行定量分析。实证分析结果表明,从时间序列数据分析得出的主要影响因素是劳动力和耕地面积等传统因素;从截面数据分析得出劳动力投入、农业技术进步（包括化肥使用、灌溉等）、政府财政对农业的支出等是影响新疆农业经济增长的重要因素。     

制度落差对跨国技术转移的影响——基于2009—2019年面板数据分析

国家之间制度差异是跨国技术转移的重要影响因素,现有文献缺乏基于制度距离大小和方向对跨国技术转移的探讨。在将制度落差划分为制度逆差和制度顺差的基础上,依据2009—2019年中国技术引进面板数据,探究制度落差对跨国技术转移的影响,并考察技术来源国创新能力在这一影响过程中的调节作用。研究发现,管制逆差和规范逆差对跨国技术转移具有显著促进作用,技术来源国创新能力有助于增强规范逆差对跨国技术转移的促进作用,而对管制逆差影响跨国技术转移的调节作用不显著;管制顺差和规范顺差对跨国技术转移均有显著阻碍作用,且技术来源国创新能力能够削弱其阻碍作用。研究结论证实制度落差对跨国技术转移具有差异化影响,有助于拓展跨国技术转移研究,并为相关部门从制度落差视角指导中国技术引进实践提供参考。     

空间视角下绿色技术创新动力解构：政策推进与市场拉动

绿色技术创新被认为是解决生态环境问题、实现经济社会可持续发展的有效途径。为促进区域绿色技术创新水平提升和协调发展，选取1997—2019年中国内地30个省份面板数据，采用动态空间面板模型实证检验环境政策、市场因素及其空间溢出效应对区域绿色技术创新的影响。研究发现：①环境政策与本地区绿色技术创新存在U型作用关系，并通过示范—模仿机制对周边地区产生正向溢出效应；②市场因素对本地区绿色技术创新具有显著促进作用，并呈现“涟漪效应”；③环境政策和市场因素对绿色技术创新的影响存在时空异质性特征，创新投入发挥部分中介作用。据此，提出制定合理的环境政策、激发绿色技术市场活力、实行差异化绿色创新驱动政策等建议。     

基于技术创新与制度创新的武汉城市圈农业科技发展

在城乡统筹的背景下,积极推进农业技术创新与制度创新,以城带乡、加快农业科技发展是新时期城乡经济社会一体化发展的根本出路。以武汉城市圈为例,分析了其农业科技发展现状、存在的问题及加快农业科技发展的关键要素,并提出了相关对策建议。     

Electricity provision and industrial development: Evidence from India

I investigate the effect of electricity provision on industrialization using a panel of Indian states for 1965-1984. To address the endogeneity of investment in electrification, I use the introduction of a new agricultural technology intensive in irrigation (the Green Revolution) as a natural experiment. As electric pumpsets are used to provide farmers with cheap irrigation water, I use the uneven availability of groundwater at the start of the Green Revolution to predict divergence in the expansion of the electricity network and, ultimately, to quantify the effect of electrification on industrial outcomes. I present a series of tests to show that the electrification channel remains the most important one among alternative explanations that could link groundwater availability to industrialization directly or indirectly. Results show that an increase in one standard deviation in the measure of electrification is associated with an increase of around 14% in manufacturing output for a state at the mean of the distribution.     

Factors that influence transaction costs in development offsets: Who bears what and why?

Environmental policy instruments generate transaction costs to public and private parties. There is a growing literature reporting on the size of transaction costs produced by environmental policy instruments. This paper extends that literature through an analysis of the factors that influence transaction costs in environmental policy and how this influence occurs. The theory based factors that influence transaction costs are categorised as: 1) transaction characteristics; 2) transactor characteristics; 3) nature of the institutional environment; and 4) nature of the institutional arrangements. We examined how these factors influenced transaction costs through the analysis of two Australian-based development offset schemes with different policy designs. We found evidence of all four theory-based categories of influence in the policy case studies. The degree of influence and how each factor influenced transaction costs varies across the two policies and between parties. Policy design as a component of the institutional environment had a particularly large bearing on transaction costs of offset buyers and the policy administrator. An important contribution to transaction cost theory assumes the institutional environment as given.     

The World of Regulatory Influence

Models of firms’ influence over the regulatory agencies that oversee them have traditionally been constrained by several factors, including a lack of direct measures of “influence,” an inability to account for variations in the institutional environment within which firms operate, and a nearly singular focus on industry-level measures of interest group strengths. In this paper, we employ a global database and novel measures to provide a fresh look at the determinants of firms’ influence over regulatory agencies. We find that in addition to traditional industry-level determinants, important country-level institutional and firm-level determinants affect firms’ regulatory agency influence. We also find that regulatory process variations affect firms’ influence over regulators. With these empirical estimates in hand, we generate a Regulatory Influence Index that ranks influence levels of typical firms that operate in each sample country in the dataset, and then discuss the substantial country-level variation in regulatory agency influence that obtains.     

Foreign direct investment and air pollution in Asian countries: does institutional quality matter?

This paper empirically studies how foreign direct investment (FDI) affects air pollution, and how this effect depends on institutional quality. By using a panel data for 19 developing Asian countries over the period of 2002–2015, we find that FDI inflows initially increase air pollution in Asia, and the institutional quality improvement helps reduce this effect until the institutional quality achieves a threshold, then beyond this threshold, FDI reduces air pollution. The findings indicate that the pollution haven hypothesis and the pollution halo hypothesis are not contradictory when the institutional quality is taken into consideration.     

Privatizations around the world: economic or political determinants?

The article examines economic, political, and institutional determinants of privatization using a panel of 50 countries over the period of 1988–2006. Our sample includes developed, developing, and transition economies. Privatization activity is measured by the number of privatization deals as well as the revenue raised and analyzed using the negative binomial regression and Tobit regression respectively. Although more privatization activity is usually taking place in countries displaying satisfactory economic performance in some respect, the role of economic factors turns out to be limited. The results identify a number of political and institutional determinants but some effects are specific to a particular type of economy. For example, in developing countries, right‐wing governments are associated with privatizations while new, not necessarily right‐wing governments, are behind privatization in Eastern Europe. The role of financial development is also varied, with sound financial institutions related to successful privatization in developed and developing countries but not in transition economies.     

Do institutions for collective action evolve?

In this paper I will provide an overview of our findings from studying irrigation systems in the field so that readers who are not familiar with our prior research gain at least an initial sense of these findings. I will provide a second short overview —this time of the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework offering a general method for doing institutional analysis. I will then introduce the possibility of looking at the change of rules as an evolutionary process. The method for studying the evolution of rules will be based on the IAD framework and on our long-term study of rules related to irrigation systems. In the conclusion, I return to the question as to why it is important to authorize resource users’ relative autonomy in the development of their own rules and to learn from the resulting institutional diversity.     

ANTIDUMPING POLICY IN THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY: POLITICAL DISCRETION OR TECHNICAL DETERMINATION

This paper demonstrates the prominent role of antidumping laws as an instrument of endogenous trade policy in the EC. In contrast with the U.S. where anti-dumping decisions are largely subject to technical determination and trade barriers result from protectionist rules, the EC application of antidumping laws provides protection through administrative discretion and political influence on administrators. Whereas political influence seems to have increased over time in the U.S., the results of our empirical analysis of the EC antidumping decisions in the 1980 to 1990 period indicate that it has been curbed by the increased formalization of the antidumping investigation in the EC in this period. The estimation results show, however, that the tightening impact of each of the three institutional changes during this period faded within two years.     

Foreign Direct Investment,Female Education,Capital Formation,and Economic Growth in Japan and South Korea

ABSTRACT

The influence of foreign direct investment (FDI) on host country‘s economic growth is a widely explored issues in the existing economic literature. This study attempts to examine the role of foreign direct investment, capital formation, and expansion of female education on economic growth of Japan during the period 1971–2014, using time series observations. The study further makes a comparison regarding the association with FDI and economic growth with South Korea, another major OECD economy of Asia The study utilises the auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds approach to cointegration to examine the long run causality association among the variables. Today, for sustainable economic development the social and institutional policy issues are important. The paper explores one such social issue, namely gender and economic prosperity. This paper has novel contributions in the current research on time series, econometric analysis for the following reasons: (1) it has investigated the relationship between economic growth, foreign direct investment and capital formation in a gendered differential framework (utilising the role of human capital formation among men versus women; (2) the study covers a long period and more recent time period (till 2014), which concurs with the upsurge of world FDI movements and (3) the study also explores the major structural breaks of the two economies and how economic growth is impacted thereof.     

深化改革是构建和谐社会的根本途径

当前影响我国构建和谐社会的主要因素是资源行政性配置量中的权力市场化、市场体系的不完善、社会保障制度滞后、经济转轨和社会转型中的分配不公及利益失衡等体制性因素。因此,构建和谐社会必须从继续深化行政性垄断部门的改革、完善市场体系和运行机制、建立和完善社会保障制度、调节收入分配差距和完善分配制度等体制改革,从根本上革除影响我国构建和谐社会的制度性因素,不能因为改革过程中由于改革不完善而出现的经济社会的不和谐而废止改革。     

地下水灌溉系统产权制度的创新与理论解释——小型水利工程的实证研究

水资源管理制度和政策越来越被认为是解决日益严重的水资源短缺问题的重要手段。本项研究的主要目的是分析我国地下水灌溉系统产权制度的创新过程和诱导因素 ,为国家引导和制定合理的水资源管理政策提供理论和实证依据。本项研究采用了定量研究的方法 ,建立了地下水灌溉系统产权制度创新模型 ,分析数据来源于作者对河北省 3县 3 0个村的实地调查。研究结果表明 ,80年代以来 ,以河北省为代表的地下水灌溉系统的产权制度逐渐从集体产权向非集体产权演变。影响地下水灌溉系统产权制度创新的主要因素是水资源开发利用程度、生存环境、社区经济条件、社区人力资本、市场发育程度、水利财政政策和水利信贷政策等因素。本项研究还对如何引导产权制度创新更快更有效的发展提出了一些政策建议。     

Determinants of labour productivity: Comparison between developing and developed countries of Asia‐Pacific

The current study investigates the trends in labour productivity of the major developing and developed economies of the Asia‐Pacific region and examines its determinants over the period 1980–2014. The study analyses capital deepening, human capital, technology, share of agriculture in GDP, financial development, institutional quality, inflation as well as macroeconomic variables as potential determinants of productivity, and identifies the differences in the impact of these factors on the productivity of developing and developed countries. Using panel cointegration and group‐mean fully modified ordinary least squares estimation, the study finds that capital deepening, human capital, technology, institutional quality and macroeconomic variables (i.e. government size and openness) are significant determinants of labour productivity of both developing and developed economies of the Asia‐Pacific region. The study further finds that while both trade openness and foreign direct investment affect productivity of developing economies positively, only trade openness has a positive and significant impact on the productivity of developed economies. The share of agriculture in GDP affects the labour productivity of developing Asia‐Pacific economies significantly but not that of developed economies. Furthermore, capital deepening has a much higher impact on the productivity of developing Asia‐Pacific economies than that of developed economies.     

Convergence,divergence, or multiple steady states? New evidence on the institutional development within the European Union

Convergence in institutions and in per capita income across the European Union (EU) Member States are key goals of the European integrations process. Especially in the course of the various EU enlargement waves starting in 2004, it was intensively discussed whether institutional and structural homogeneity are necessary preconditions for real convergence and the smooth functioning of the EU or whether a (further) catching up in the institutional and economic development will endogenously occur after the EU accession. Our paper is dedicated to the analysis of these institutional dynamics within the EU. In particular, we analyze the formation of institutional convergence clusters using Phillips and Sul's (2007, 2009) log t-test over the period 2002 to 2018. Our results indicate the existence of multiple institutional clubs with various countries being stuck in a poor institutional trap. Moreover, we find that institutional convergence clubs are formed mainly on the basis of geographic region; in particular, we identify a northwest-southeast divide. When analyzing per capita income clubs, a rather similar picture emerges, suggesting that the underlying institutional clusters might drive the formation of income clubs. We also study the factors that determine institutional club membership by using an ordered probit model. Most importantly, we find that the initial levels of human capital and institutional quality are decisive for determining whether a country is on a high or low institutional growth path.