中国农业基础设施的规模效应及其区域差异研究

基于动态性视角,运用系统性广义矩估计方法,构建经济增长与财政支出规模理论模型,依据2000-2013 年中国农业基础设施的省级面板数据,考量中国农业基础设施对农业经济增长的规模效应.结果显示:中国农业基础设施存在规模效应,北方地区规模效应明显强于南方地区,南方地区农业基础设施正由规模经济向规模不经济转变.鉴此,应转变农业基础设施重点区域投向与农业基础设施的项目投向,促进农业经济增长.     

The balance sheet channel of monetary policy: the panel evidence of Egypt

This paper examines the effects of monetary policy on firms’ investments in Egypt using disaggregated data and generalized method of moments (GMM) technique. It develops the neoclassical investment model by adding the interaction between user cost of capital and cash flow (CF). Therefore, monetary policy affects investment through three effects: user cost of capital, CF and interaction between them. Using a sample of 124 firms, the empirical finding supports the relevance of balance sheet channel (BSC) and the heterogeneous effect of monetary policy on investment. This finding signals that monetary authority should take cognizance of the stability of interest rate to stabilize firm-level investment.     

Terrorism and travel advisory effects on international tourism

The paper applies dynamic panel modeling to investigate the impact of terrorism and travel advice on global tourism. Annual arrivals data for 49 destinations and 15 leading countries of origin for the period 2010–2014 are used. Results indicate that casualties or fatalities from terrorism, absent travel advice, significantly reduce tourism demand. However, casualties (fatalities) combined with travel advice have a relatively larger adverse impact on tourism demand. The effects identified, however, are sensitive to country characteristics. Casualties (fatalities) as well as travel advice significantly weaken tourism demand for low-income countries but have no significant effect in high-income countries.     

Political stability and growth: An application of dynamic GMM and quantile regression

This paper studies the effect of political stability on economic growth by taking 120 developing countries over the period of 1996–2014. We apply relatively advanced dynamic two step system-GMM and quantile regression. Political stability is found to be a key determinant of economic growth. More importantly, political instability (or risk) is found to be higher in the OIC countries and is a deterrent to economic growth. Also, for the lower and middle income OIC countries, political instability appears to affect economic growth more severely perhaps due to the absence of strong economic and political institutions. Moreover, political instability is also found to be significantly higher in the oil-dependent OIC countries. Notably, political instability is likely to affect growth through the channels of investment and human capital accumulation in the developing countries. Finally, the impact of political stability and political instability on growth is found to be equally distributed across the OIC countries with higher or lower growth level. Therefore, the development of political and economic institutions along with human capital development is recommended for all the developing countries in general and the OIC countries in particular.     

环境责任承担与企业绩效——理论与实证

在全球经济进入“绿色经济”的大背景下，近年来，生态环境已成为社会各界关注的一个重点问题，也是我国“十三五”规划所关注的重要论题之一。本文以上交所与深交所的上市公司2008～2014年的数据为基础，运用GMM模型，从理论层面阐述了环境责任对企业绩效产生的效应，实证探讨了二者间的关系。文章也创造性地探讨了两者之间的非线性关系，研究发现，承担环境责任对中国企业绩效存在显著的正效应，而且二者之间的非线性关系呈现出倒“U”型。     

后危机时期的中国工业部门产能过剩测度——基于数据包络分析法

目前理论界对“后危机时期”尚无定论，本文特指2008年国际金融危机爆发以来这一时期。文章结合数据包络分析和系统GMM模型分析了 2008~2015 年我国工业部门的产能过剩情况及主要影响因素，结果发现：这一时期我国工业部门的平均产能利用率约在69.57~73.09%左右，其中制造业部门的产能利用程度优于采矿业和电力、热水、燃气及水的生产和供应业；与一些发达经济体相比仍存在不小差距，相比德国2015年制造业产能利用率84.35%的水平，我国只有72.46%；需求因素与产能利用率显著正相关，现期汇率因素、企业数量因素与产能利用率显著负相关，经济发展程度、行业开放度和固定资产投资因素不显著。     

Impacts of climate change,agroecology and socio-economic factors on agricultural land use diversity in Bangladesh (1948–2008)

The paper examines the impacts of climate change, agroecology and socio-economic factors on agricultural land use diversity (ALUD) using a panel data of 17 regions of Bangladesh covering a 61 year period (1948–2008) by applying a dynamic panel GMM estimator. Results revealed that ALUD and total rainfall have actually increased @ 0.19% and 0.02% per year whereas variability in temperature has declined @ 0.06% with significant differences across agroecological zones (AEZs). Among the climatic factors, total rainfall significantly increases ALUD. ALUD is also significantly influenced by agroecological characteristics. ALUD is significantly higher in Ganges River Floodplains but lower in Meghna River Floodplains and Chittagong Coastal Plain. Among the socio-economic factors, ALUD increases significantly with increase in the prices of vegetables, jute and phosphate fertilizer and R&D investment. ALUD significantly decreases with increase in the prices of lentil, onion, sugarcane, nitrogen and potassium fertilizers and extension expenditure. Policy implications include price policies to improve vegetable and jute prices, stabilise/reduce fertilizer prices and investments in R&D to develop crops that are suitable for high rainfall areas as well as specific AEZs in order to promote ALUD in Bangladesh.     

Re-examining the Determinants of Non-Performing Loans in Ghana’s Banking Industry: Role of the 2007–2009 Financial Crisis

This paper uses robust econometric methods to estimate the determinants of non-performing loans (NPLs) with a specific focus on the role of the 2007–2009 financial crisis in explaining NPLs in the banking industry of Ghana. Findings suggest that non-performing loans are significantly affected by bank-specific, industry, and macroeconomic variables. We observed heterogeneity in the determinants of NPLs for sub-samples of the data. The effect of the financial crisis on NPLs is observed to be conditional on the level of credit risk in our sub-sample analysis. The results from the impulse response corroborate that of the regression estimation.     

Does trade openness contribute to food security? A dynamic panel analysis

Despite significant progress in the fight against hunger during the last decades, food insecurity remains a major problem in many countries, especially developing ones. In this study, we use a large cross-country data to investigate the impact of trade openness and other factors on food security, measured by dietary energy consumption. We employ a system GMM approach to account for unobserved heterogeneity, correlated individual effects and potential endogeneity of the explanatory variables. The empirical results reveal that trade openness and economic growth exert positive and significant impacts on dietary energy consumption, and also contribute to improvements in dietary diversity. The results are robust to the inclusion of additional variables capturing specific agro-climatic constraints (e.g. weather-related) and regional/country characteristics and to the sample composition. Most geographical regions are found to have significantly higher food security levels compared to Sub-Saharan Africa. Additional results indicate that besides calorie consumption, trade openness also improves dietary diversity and diet quality-related aspects of food security.