Electricity consumption and economic development in Asia: new data and new methods

This study uses a new statistical technique, Panel Analysis of Nonstationarity in Idiosyncratic and Common Components (PANIC) analysis, to examine causal linkages between electricity consumption and economic development in 12 Asian countries over the period 1971–2011. The findings indicate that there was no long‐run equilibrium relationship between electricity consumption and economic development in the region as a whole. More importantly, the causality tests detected unidirectional causality from economic development to electricity consumption for East Asian countries and a reverse causal relationship for South Asian countries. These findings have important policy implications for sustainable energy consumption.     

Exports and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: New insights from innovative econometric methods

This study examined the relationship between exports and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. It employed innovative econometric methods, including the Fourier ADF with structural break test, a comparative analysis of three causality tests and a rolling causality test procedure. The findings suggested that there was a statistically significant relationship between exports and economic growth in several Sub-Saharan countries. However, the causal linkages between exports and economic growth in these countries were found to be weak and unstable. These empirical results have some notable policy implications.     

An econometric analysis of global warming hiatus

There is an avid debate concerning the presence of a hiatus in global warming. Recognizing that this phenomenon has considerable economic implications, this study aims to make a threefold contribution to the climate econometrics literature. Firstly, it formulates a testable hypothesis; secondly, it proposes a systematic empirical procedure; thirdly, it performs the Bai–Perron test to detect the starting point of the global warming hiatus. The findings supported the existence of the global warming hiatus.     

A new test for analysing hysteresis in European unemployment

This article proposes a new unit root test to analyse unemployment hysteresis. The test is able to incorporate cross-sectional dependence, unattended nonlinearity and unknown structural breaks in the time-series data. This study used data on unemployment in five European countries. The findings indicated that conventional unit root tests failed to reject the null hypothesis of hysteresis for all countries. However, the newly proposed unit root test was able to reject the null hypothesis for the Spanish unemployment rate.     

Determinants of China's and Japan's Foreign Aid Allocations in Africa

Foreign aid plays an important role in promoting economic development in Africa. Recently, several countries, most notably China, have emerged as alternative sources of foreign aid. However, their motives for providing foreign aid have been questioned. The present study examines and compares determinants of China's and Japan's foreign aid allocations in Africa. It assumes that the distribution of foreign aid was determined by the aid donors’ self‐interest and also by the aid recipients’ needs. Three panel model methods, namely, the pooled OLS method, the one‐way fixed effects method and the two‐way fixed effects methods, were employed to examine and compare the patterns of China's and Japan's foreign aid allocation in Africa. The main finding was that the provision of foreign aid by China and Japan was primarily driven by the aid donors’ self‐interest. Additionally, the size of population in a recipient country was an important element to determine China's and Japan's aid allocations. The findings also suggest that Japan tended to pay more attention to the aid recipient countries’ needs as well as to the quality of governance and institutions in these countries. Overall, the findings indicate that there was no considerable difference in the motives for the provision of aid between the two aid donor countries.     

Do CLMV countries catch up with the older ASEAN members in terms of income level?

This article examined whether Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam were catching up in terms of real per capita Gross Domestic Product with the older six Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members, namely Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The findings indicated that Cambodia succeeded in reaching Indonesia’s income level and Vietnam was catching up with Indonesia and the Philippines. However, the income gap between Laos and Myanmar and the older ASEAN members was not reduced. These findings have some policy implications.     

Export diversification,mean-reversion of exports,and stability of export–growth causality

ABSTRACT

This study proposes a five-step statistical procedure to examine a linkage among export diversification, mean-reversion of exports, and stability of the export–growth causality. This linkage was assessed for France, Norway, and Switzerland between 1980Q1 and 2016Q4. The findings indicated that the mean-reversion tendency of the export sectors in France and Switzerland was stronger than in Norway, which highlighted the important role of export activities for economic growth in France and Switzerland. Also, the causal relationship between exports and economic growth in Norway was found to be more unstable than in France, but more stable than in Switzerland.     

A new approach to testing unemployment hysteresis

This paper proposes a novel approach to testing unemployment hysteresis. It examined the existence of hysteresis in the unemployment rates of four Nordic countries, namely Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, for the period of 2000–2014. The study applied four alternative methods to analyse the data. The best estimation procedure was chosen in a simple and consistent way. As the findings indicated, the ADF test and FADF test failed to reject the null hypothesis of unemployment hysteresis in all four countries. The ADF–SB test produced mixed results: it rejected the null hypothesis of hysteresis for Denmark and Norway, but failed to reject the null hypothesis for Finland and Sweden. The FADF–SB test yielded more consistent findings: it rejected the null hypothesis for all four countries. Furthermore, findings from the F-tests clearly indicated that the FADF–SB test was the best method among the four proposed alternatives. Despite some discrepancies the findings of this study suggest that unemployment in the four Nordic countries had a mean reversion tendency.     

Unemployment hysteresis in the East Asia‐Pacific region: new evidence from MADF and SURADF tests

This study re‐examined the unemployment hysteresis hypothesis in the context of twelve countries in the East Asia‐Pacific region, namely Australia, China, Guam, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand. It employed the multivariate augmented Dickey–Fuller test and the seemingly unrelated regression augmented Dickey–Fuller test for this purpose. The empirical results confirmed the presence of unemployment hysteresis in these countries, except in South Korea and New Zealand. The findings indicated that the equilibrium rate of unemployment in the East Asia‐Pacific region tended to be path dependent and that cyclical fluctuations in these countries' economies could have permanent effects on the level of unemployment. These results provide additional empirical proof of the validity of the hysteresis hypothesis.