DEMOCRATIC AID AND THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF RECIPIENTS

We investigate whether democratic aid flows, which are directed toward the democratization of recipients by covering democracy‐related programs and government and civil society activities, affect the future political regime of recipient countries. We introduce a multinomial multivariate logit model and we use 5‐yr averaged data covering the period 1972–2004 for 59 democracy aid‐recipient countries categorized into three broad classes according to the prevalent political regime. We find strong evidence that democratic aid flows are positively associated with the likelihood of observing a partly democratic or a fully democratic political regime in democratic aid‐recipient countries and that this result is robust to the potential endogeneity of democratic assistance.(JEL D70, F35, C25)     

Optimal Fiscal Policy with Endogenous Time Preference

This paper studies the role of Ramsey taxation under the assumption that the individual rate of time preference is determined by the publicly provided social level of education. We show how intertemporal complementarities of aggregate human capital can generate multiple equilibria and we examine the role of endogenous fiscal policies in equilibrium selection. Our analysis implies a lower optimal government size due to the effect of human capital on time preference.     

FORECASTING AUSTRALIAN MACROECONOMIC VARIABLES USING A LARGE DATASET

This paper investigates the forecasting performance of the diffusion index approach for the Australian economy, and considers the forecasting performance of the diffusion index approach relative to composite forecasts. Weighted and unweighted factor forecasts are benchmarked against composite forecasts, and forecasts derived from individual forecasting models. The results suggest that diffusion index forecasts tend to improve on the benchmark AR forecasts. We also observe that weighted factors tend to produce better forecasts than their unweighted counterparts. We find, however, that the size of the forecasting improvement is less marked than previous research, with the diffusion index forecasts typically producing mean square errors of a similar magnitude to the VAR and BVAR approaches.