Natural disasters,growth and institutions: A tale of two earthquakes

We examine the impact of natural disasters on GDP per capita by applying the synthetic control approach and using a within-country perspective. Our analysis encompasses two large-scale earthquakes that occurred in two different Italian regions in 1976 and 1980. We show that the short-term effects are negligible in both regions, though they become negative if we simulate the GDP that would have been observed in absence of financial aid. In the long-term, our findings indicate a positive effect in one case and a negative effect in the other, largely reflecting divergent patterns of the TFP. Consistent with these findings, we offer further evidence suggesting that a quake and related financial aid might either increase technical efficiency via a disruptive creation mechanism or reduce it by stimulating corruption, distorting the markets and deteriorating social capital. Finally, we show that the bad outcome is more likely to occur in regions with lower pre-quake institutional quality. As a result, our evidence suggests that unanticipated local shocks are likely to change long run growth rates, exacerbating territorial disparities.     

Effects of foreign aid on the recipient country’s economic growth

We introduce an infinite-horizon endogenous growth framework for studying the effects of foreign aid on the economic growth in a recipient country. Aid is used to partially finance the recipient’s public investment. We point out that the same rule of aid may have very different outcomes, depending on the recipient’s circumstances in terms of development level, domestic investment, efficiency in the use of aid and in public investment, etc. Foreign aid may promote growth in the recipient country, but the global dynamics of equilibrium are complex (because of the non-monotonicity and steady state multiplicity). The economy may converge to a steady state or grow without bounds. Moreover, there are rooms for the divergence and a two-period cycle. We characterize conditions under which each scenario takes place. Our analysis contributes to the debate on the nexus between aid and economic growth and in particular on the conditionality of aid effects.     

On the simultaneity problem in the aid and growth debate

This paper shows that foreign aid has a significant positive average effect on real per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth if, and only if, the quantitatively large negative reverse causal effect of per capita GDP growth on foreign aid is adjusted for in the growth regression. Instrumental variables estimates show that a 1 percentage point increase in GDP per capita growth decreased foreign aid by over 4%. Adjusting for this quantitatively large, negative reverse causal effect of economic growth on foreign aid shows that a 1% increase in foreign aid increased real per capita GDP growth by around 0.1 percentage points. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Meta‐Analysis of β‐Convergence: the Legendary 2%

Abstract.  The topic of convergence is at the heart of a wide‐ranging debate in the growth literature, and empirical studies of convergence differ widely in their theoretical backgrounds, empirical specifications, and in their treatment of cross‐sectional heterogeneity. Despite these differences, a rate of convergence of about 2% has been found under a variety of different conditions, resulting in the widespread belief that the rate of convergence is a natural constant. We use meta‐analysis to investigate whether there is substance to the 'myth' of the 2% convergence rate and to assess several unresolved issues of interpretation and estimation. Our data set contains approximately 600 estimates taken from a random sample of empirical growth studies published in peer‐reviewed journals. The results indicate that it is misleading to speak of a natural convergence rate since estimates of different growth regressions come from different populations, and we find that correcting for the bias resulting from unobserved heterogeneity in technology levels leads to higher estimates of the rate of convergence. We also find that correcting for endogeneity of the explanatory variables has a substantial effect on the estimates and that measures of financial and fiscal development are important determinants of long‐run differences in per capita income levels. We show that although the odds of a study being published is not uniform for studies with different p ‐values, publication bias has no significant effect on the conclusions of the analysis.     

Does foreign aid procurement in resource-rich countries depend on these countries’ financial development and institutional quality? Evidence from PVECM and quantile-on-quantile regression

The underlying structure of the global economy has undergone major structural changes over the last two decades. These transformations have been powered by globalisation, technological development and multilateral trade agreements. The more open global economy has benefitted the global community, but many resource-rich developing countries are struggling to keep pace with more developed countries. As these resource-rich countries attempt to catch up with more developed economies, many rely on foreign aid to develop their institutions of governance and financial sector for a more knowledge-intensive economy. This study analyses the long- and short-run associations between foreign development aid procurement, financial development, and institutional quality in resource-rich countries from 2005 to 2020, employing the panel vector error-correction (PVECM) model and Quantile-on-Quantile Regression (QQR). Our analysis shows that, in the short run, there is a strong endogenous nexus between foreign aid procurement, quality of institutions and financial development. Furthermore, the results reveal that financial development and higher institutional development assist resource-rich countries in procuring foreign developmental aid in the long run. These findings suggest that a financial system which functions well, and favourable institutional governance are critical for these countries to secure foreign aid to put them on a path to sustainable development.     

Business cycle non‐linearities in UK consumption and production

This paper develops non‐linear smooth transition autoregressive (STAR) models with two additive smooth transition components to capture the business cycle characteristics of UK real consumers' expenditure and industrial production. The results indicate consumption has essentially two business cycle regimes: recession and expansion. Industrial production, however, is characterized by the three regimes of recession, normal growth and high growth. The transitions describing recovery from recession are very similar for the two variables. Stochastic simulations illustrate the dynamic responses of these models and emphasize that they are locally linear. Our results also indicate that the two‐transition STAR models have some forecast advantages over other specifications for periods of contraction. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluating alternative models of trend inflation

With the concept of trend inflation now being widely understood to be important to the accuracy of longer-term inflation forecasts, this paper assesses alternative models of trend inflation. Reflecting the models which are common in reduced-form inflation modeling and forecasting, we specify a range of models of inflation that incorporate different trend specifications. We compare the models on the basis of their accuracies in out-of-sample forecasting, both point and density. Our results show that it is difficult to say that any one model of trend inflation is the best. Several different trend specifications seem to be about equally accurate, and the relative accuracy is somewhat prone to instabilities over time.     

Accumulation, Technical Progress, and Increasing Returns in the Economic Growth of East Asia

Adopting homothetic variable returns to scale functional specifications, this study identifies the returns to scale in the aggregate production functions of four East Asian newly industrialized economies–Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan–and the Group of Five economies based on a maximum likelihood estimation. The study finds evidence of increasing returns in the early developmental stage of the East Asian economies. Separating out the scale contribution from the non-scale factor contributions, the decomposition of the sources of East Asian economic growth differs significantly from the conventional constant returns to scale results, indicating that the role of technical progress is overestimated when constant returns to scale is assumed.     

Does competition prevent industrial pollution? Evidence from a panel threshold model

The objective of this paper is to assess the impact of competition on industrial toxic pollution by using, for the first time, a panel threshold model which allows evaluations of the main drivers of toxic releases under two different market regimes. The empirical analysis is based on a micro‐level panel dataset over the five‐year period 1987–2012. We show that this relationship is statistically significant and robust above and below the threshold, even after accounting for alternative specifications of market concentration. Specifically, we unmask an inverted V‐shaped relationship between market concentration and industrial pollution. We argue that the increasing non‐parametric regression line up to a certain concentration (threshold) level indicates a negative effect on facilities' emissions levels, whereas a decreasing line indicates a positive effect. This relationship provides new insights into environmental policy design towards abatement of industrial releases and sustainability. Finally, our empirical model remains robust under different specifications properly accounted for possible endogeneity.     

Comparing the forecasting performances of linear models for electricity prices with high RES penetration

We compare alternative univariate versus multivariate models and frequentist versus Bayesian autoregressive and vector autoregressive specifications for hourly day-ahead electricity prices, both with and without renewable energy sources. The accuracy of point and density forecasts is inspected in four main European markets (Germany, Denmark, Italy, and Spain) characterized by different levels of renewable energy power generation. Our results show that the Bayesian vector autoregressive specifications with exogenous variables dominate other multivariate and univariate specifications in terms of both point forecasting and density forecasting.     

Internet diffusion and free riding in insurance markets: An empirical investigation

This paper studies the effect of internet diffusion on free riding in insurance markets, with a focus on automobile insurance. Internet usage affects both the demand and supply sides of insurance markets, while also having a bearing on institutions. Our cross‐sectional analysis based on the United States supports the main hypothesis that greater internet diffusion reduced free riding by uninsured motorists. This response was fairly elastic and the reduction in the prevalence of uninsured motorists holds across different empirical specifications. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Corruption, Growth, and Income Distribution: Are there Regional Differences?

This paper uses panel data from 61 countries at different stages of economic development over a 20-year period to investigate regional differences in the effect of corruption on economic growth and income distribution. Using two measures of corruption, we find that there are statistically significant regional differences in the growth and distributional impacts of corruption. The largest growth impact of corruption is found in African countries while OECD and Asian countries have the lowest growth impact. On the other hand, the largest distributional impact of corruption in found in Latin America. A 10% decrease in corruption increases the growth rate of income by about 1.7% in OECD and Asian countries, 2.6% in Latin American countries, and by 2.8% in African countries. A one standard deviation decrease in corruption decreases the gini coefficient of income distribution (0–1 scale) by 0.05 points, 0.14 points, 0.25 points, and 0.33 points in OECD, Asian, African, and Latin American countries, respectively. The results are robust to various specifications, measurement of corruption, measures of investment, as well as the conditioning variables. The results have interesting policy implications for economic growth, especially in low income countries with high rates of corruption.     

Analysis of treatment response data from eligibility designs

In this paper, we develop and compare two alternative approaches for calculating the effect of the actual intake when treatments are randomized, but compliance with the assignment in the treatment arm is less than perfect for reasons that are correlated with the outcome. The approaches are based on different identification assumptions about these unobserved confounders. In the first approach, which stems from [Sommer, A., Zeger, S., 1991. On estimating efficacy in clinical trials. Statistics in Medicine 10, 45–52], the unobserved confounders are modeled by a discrete indicator variable that represents subject-type, defined in terms of the potential intake in the face of each possible assignment. In the second approach, confounding is modeled without reference to subject-type in the spirit of the Roy model. Because the two models are non-nested, and model comparison and assessment of the approaches in a real data setting is one of our central goals, we formulate the discussion from a Bayesian perspective, comparing the two models in terms of marginal likelihoods and Bayes factors, and in terms of inferences about the treatment effects. The latter we calculate from a predictive perspective in a way that is different from that in the literature, where typically only a point summary of that effect is calculated. Our real data analysis focuses on the JOBS II eligibility trial that was implemented to test the effectiveness of a job search seminar in decreasing the negative mental health effects commonly associated with job loss. We provide a comparative analysis of the data from the two approaches with prior distributions that are both reasonable in the context of the data and comparable across the model specifications. We show that the approaches can lead to different evaluations of the treatment.     

The impact of purchasing strategy-structure (mis)fit on purchasing cost and innovation performance

The organizational design literature strongly supports the notion of “structure follows strategy”, and suggests that a misfit between the two has a negative effect on performance. Building on this line of argument, we examine to what extent the (mis)fit between purchasing strategy and purchasing structure impacts purchasing performance. We focus on cost and innovation purchase category strategies, and examine how the deviation from an ideal purchasing structure defined along three dimensions (centralization, formalization, and cross-functionality) impacts purchasing performance. Analysing data collected from 469 firms in ten countries, we demonstrate that a strategy-structure misfit negatively impacts purchasing performance in both cost and innovation strategies. We also find that purchasing proficiency is a mediator in this relationship between misfit and performance. Our findings aid managerial decision making by empirically validating the necessity of having the right purchasing structure for successfully executing different purchasing strategies.     

Donors and domestic politics: Political influences on foreign aid effort

The vast majority of scholarship on foreign aid looks at either the effectiveness of foreign aid or why particular countries receive aid from particular donors. This paper takes a different approach: what are the domestic sources of support for foreign aid? Specifically, how does the donor's domestic political and economic environment influence ‘aid effort’? This paper uses a time-series cross-sectional data set to analyze the influence of changes in political and economic variables. As governments become more conservative, their aid effort is likely to fall. Domestic political variables appear to influence aid effort, but only for aid to low income countries and multilaterals while aid effort to middle income countries in unaffected. This suggests that models solely emphasizing donor economic and international strategic interests as determinants of donor aid policy may be mis-specified. These results also suggest sources of aid volatility that might influence recipient growth prospects.     

Moral hazard and the composition of transfers: theory and evidence from cross-border transfers

We study how a donor can use restricted transfers to control the moral hazard behavior of a recipient and how the composition of unrestricted and restricted transfers is adjusted in response to changes in the moral hazard behavior of the recipient. Under certain conditions, our game-theoretic model predicts that the donor reduces the proportion of restricted transfers in total transfers as the moral hazard behavior of the recipient declines. Using foreign aid transfers (i.e., project aid and program aid) and panel data covering the period 1991–2007, we find econometric support for the prediction of the model. Our results suggest that some variables that affect the size of foreign aid may have no effect on the composition of aid.     

The effects of higher education policy on the location decision of individuals: Evidence from Florida's Bright Futures Scholarship Program

Over the past two decades, numerous states have adopted merit-based aid programs to subsidize higher education for in-state students. One of the main objectives of these programs is to increase the stock of educated labor in the state by retaining those whose education is subsidized. This study provides evidence on the extent to which such a program in Florida has affected the location decision of college-educated Florida natives. The analysis utilizes a difference-in-difference approach and data from the Census and American Community Survey (ACS). The results indicate that those eligible for the program are significantly more likely to locate in Florida after completing their education than those who were not eligible. These results are robust to a number of alternative specifications, including a comparison with neighboring states.     

Credit-based early warning indicators of banking crises in emerging markets

This article explores the role of credit-based variables as early warning indicators (EWIs) of banking crises in the context of emerging economies. We collect data on bank and total credit to the private sector in emerging markets and evaluate the signalling performance by using the area under the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve (AUC). Our results show that nominal credit growth and the change in the credit-to-GDP ratio have the best signalling properties and significantly outperform the credit-to-GDP gap in almost all specifications for policy-relevant horizons. These findings are in stark contrast with the results on advanced economies, where the credit-to-GDP gap is the single best performing EWI. Our results emphasize the importance of caution when applying statistical methods calibrated for advanced markets to emerging economies.     

The economic impact of migration: productivity analysis for Spain and the UK

Over the past 20?years labour has become increasingly mobile and whilst employment and earnings effects in host countries have been extensively analysed, the implications for firm and industry performance have received far less attention. This paper explores the direct economic consequences of immigration on host nations?? productivity performance at a sectoral level in two very different European countries, Spain and the UK. Whilst the UK has traditionally seen substantial immigration, for Spain the phenomenon is much more recent. Our findings from a growth accounting analysis show that migration has made a negative contribution to labour productivity growth in Spain and a negative but negligible contribution in the UK. This difference is driven by a positive impact from migrant labour quality in the UK. This finding broadly holds across all sectors, but we note considerable variation in magnitudes. Labour productivity growth has a neutral contribution from migrant labour in construction and personal services in the UK, whilst in every case in Spain the effect is negative, most strongly in agriculture. Using an econometric approach to production function estimation we observe a positive long term effect on total factor productivity from migrant workers in the UK and a negative effect in Spain. Our findings suggest that either the UK is better at assimilating migrants or is more selective in terms of who is permitted to migrate.     

The impact of institutional quality on manufacturing sectors: A panel data analysis

We use data on Russian regions to examine the effect of institutional quality on institutionally dependent manufacturing sectors in terms of both output levels and growth rates. Unlike the existing literature on this topic, which mostly uses cross-sectional or pooled specifications for either country-level or regional data, we use panel data. This approach allows us to distinguish between short-term and long-term impacts and mitigates endogeneity concerns. As an additional contribution to the literature, we estimate the full marginal effects of institutions on manufacturing sectors with different degrees of institutional dependence. In terms of policy recommendations, our results imply that significant institutional improvements would be needed for the Russian economy to diversify away from heavy reliance on oil and natural gas.