Intertemporal Consumption Smoothing and Capital Mobility: Evidence from Australia

This paper examines the optimality of international capital flows to Australia, a persistent net importer of capital, during its post‐capital controls period 1984–99. The evolution of Australia’s current account balance is compared against a benchmark derived from an optimising model of intertemporal consumption smoothing. The consumption‐smoothing approach to the determination of the current account implies that international capital flows act as a buffer to smooth aggregate consumption in the face of temporary shocks to the economic fundamentals: changes in national cash flow (that is, changes in the level of output, investment or government spending). It is found that in the early 1990s a structural break occurred in the relationship between consumption and national cash flow, which coincides with a switch from debt‐financing to equity‐financing of the current account deficit. In the decade of the 1990s following this structural break (and unlike the decade of the 1980s which preceded this break), international capital flows to Australia implied a path for consumption which was broadly consistent with expected‐utility maximisation under the consumption‐smoothing model of the current account.     

The Financing of Foreign Aid and Welfare: Income Versus Consumption Tax

Empirical evidence shows that developed countries use income or consumption taxes to generate tax revenue, of which they transfer a certain fraction as aid to less developed countries. This paper constructs a two-country general equilibrium trade model that takes into account these realities, and examines the terms of trade, employment and welfare effects of international transfers when the donor country increases the fraction of its income or consumption tax revenue transferred as aid. The desirability of each method of aid financing is discussed from the viewpoint of national and world welfare, and conditions are identified under which aid improves world welfare with the one method of financing, and may worsen it with the other.     

Devaluations and Consumption Smoothing

The paper considers the effect of a nominal exchange rate devaluation on the current account, using an intertemporal model that highlights the interaction between leisure and consumption. An analytical solution demonstrates that household behavior may differ markedly from the simple consumption smoothing emphasized in most previous literature. This distinction has special significance for demand shocks, in which output rises through a rise in labor input and hence a fall in leisure. In particular, consumption tends to move closely with increased output in this context, so a devaluation tends not to improve the current account. This result may cast doubt on the effectiveness of competitive devaluations.     

自然灾害及政府救助对农户收入与消费的影响:来自汶川大地震的经验

本文基于独特的2007年和2009年四川省农村家庭微观调查数据,分析汶川大地震对农户家庭收入和消费的影响。我们发现地震造成农户收入下降,但人力资本和非农务工对于缓解地震对收入的负向冲击具有显著作用。政府发放的生活补助款项起到对于收入下降的弥补作用,也使得农户的消费水平在震后保持较快增长。然而,政府提供的住房重建补贴和贷款却不足以负担农户的建房成本。     

Foreign debt and financial hedging: Evidence from Australia

We investigate the role of foreign currency denominated debt (FCDD) as a natural hedging instrument using a sample of Australian firms. Our results show that the incidence of foreign debt use among industrial sector firms is associated with a lower level of exchange rate exposure. The practice of issuing foreign debt within the industrial sector also conforms better to the hypothesis that firms do so to satisfy a demand for hedging. In contrast, although the incidence of foreign debt issues is higher in the resource/mining sector, the underlying motive for such arises from a demand for financing.     

Foreign Plants and Industry Productivity: Evidence from Chile

This paper presents new evidence on foreign plants and their effects on a host industry. I test the predictions of a Melitz‐type model using a panel of domestic and foreign plants in the Chilean manufacturing sector. Foreign ownership is a strong predictor of plant productivity and size advantages. Moreover, productivity gains for a domestic incumbent are positively associated with foreign plants' presence in the same industry and region. I also find a positive correlation between foreign entry and exit of less productive domestic plants, but inconclusive evidence on the effects on productivity of new domestic plants.     

Foreign entrants and domestic entrepreneurship: Evidence from Vietnam

This paper examines the impacts of foreign entrants and international trade on potential entrants in Vietnam. Based on a discrete entry model, estimates show that foreign direct investment (FDI) stimulates more domestic entrants in the short run, while the aggregate effect of FDI varies across FDI types. Horizontal FDI tends to have no impact on local start‐ups while vertical FDI is found to have a positive impact on the inflow of domestic entry for only the backward linkage and not for the forward linkage. Moreover, industries with more exports accommodate more domestic entrants, whereas imports tend to deter domestic start‐ups.     

Food Aid Disincentives: the Tunisian Experience

An econometric model is used to assess the short‐term (impact), interim, and cumulative effects of food aid on the economy of Tunisia for the period 1960–92. Food aid displaced neither domestic production nor commercial imports of food grains. Rather, food aid provided incentives to promote growth through its income and policy effects. Food aid provided increased public revenue that enabled the government to take an active role in domestic pricing, preventing disincentive prices and promoting domestic production. The results indicate a positive role for food aid when disincentive effects are managed through public policies.     

Consumption tilting and the current account: Evidence from Canada

This paper estimates the consumption tilting motive in Canada. A common empirical technique (vector-error correction model) is applied to a well-established theory (the small-open economy present-value model) in order to estimate the long-run behavior of the current account. The results suggest that households are patient. They modify intertemporal consumption profiles in order to tilt consumption toward the future through the accumulation of wealth, which improves the current account in the long run.     

Consumption and Government Spending Substitutability Revisited: Evidence from Taiwan

Bailey (1971) first documented the idea that there may be a degree of substitutability of the relationship between government spending and private consumption. In this paper, this issue is embedded in a Markov–switching framework where the relationship is subject to shifting between two different regimes. To control small–sample bias, the bootstrap maximum likelihood estimator is used. Evidence from Taiwan indicates that the crowding–in effect dominated the pre–1980 period; the substitutability dominates the post–1980 period. It renders unconvincing the Keynesian plea for expansionary fiscal policy of Taiwan since the 1980s. A Mundell–Fleming approach is proposed to explain this dating.     

能源消费与经济增长:基于广东省的实证分析

运用协整模型和格兰杰因果关系模型分析广东省1987年以来能源消费与经济增长的关系.结果表明:(1) 广东省能源消费和经济增长关系显著;(2)能源消费是经济增长的单方向格兰杰原因;(3)这种长期关系是稳定的 ,并没有随时间而发生结构性变化.所以,广东经济增长过分地依靠能源消费.     

Foreign Aid and the Business Cycle

This paper documents empirical regularities in the foreign aid flows to developing countries over three decades. In spite of a large body of literature on foreign aid and its impact on recipients, surprisingly little is known about its business cycle characteristics. The authors show that for the vast majority of African recipients, aid flows are a major source of income that is highly volatile and, most importantly, overwhelmingly procyclical. For recipients outside of Africa, there is a similar—if somewhat less pronounced—pattern of aid procyclicality. In contrast, there is little evidence of aid procyclicality with the business cycle of donors. In light of the very high volatility of output in developing countries, the procyclicality of foreign aid flows from the recipients' perspective raises serious questions related to their welfare and growth.     

Foreign Aid and Recurrent Cost: Donor Competition, Aid Proliferation, and Budget Support

Recent empirical studies reveal that effectiveness of aid on growth is ambiguous. The authors consider aid proliferation—excess aid investment relative to recurrent cost—as a potential cause that undermines aid effectiveness, because aid projects can only produce sustainable benefits when sufficient recurrent costs are disbursed. They consider the donor's budget support as a device to supplement the shortage of the recipient's recurrent cost and to alleviate the misallocation of inputs. However, when donors have self-interested preferences for the success of their own projects over those conducted by others, they provide insufficient budget support relative to aid, which results in aid proliferation. Moreover, aid proliferation is shown to be worsened by the presence of more donors.     

民营化、外资股东和嵌入性:来自中国的证据

与传统经济学研究以代理理论为主对民营化的讨论不同,本文通过整合演进理论、制度理论和代理理论,研究了民营化企业改进绩效必须解决的组织和管理问题。以2001年经历了民营化并且在1998～2003年间持续运营的企业为样本进行实证研究,发现,外资股东参与的民营化企业更有可能改进治理结构,进行组织学习和资源能力的培养。但是,这种关系会受到改制企业组织和制度嵌入性的影响。因此,如何管理好组织和制度嵌入性的双重影响,是影响民营化企业改制后绩效改善的关键。     

Aid for Trade and Global Growth

Aid for trade increases a recipient's public services, which lower its import and export transport costs. Formulating a two‐country endogenous growth model, we obtain two main results. First, a permanent increase in the donor's aid/gross domestic product (GDP) ratio raises the steady‐state growth rate as well as both countries' long‐run fractions and cost shares of imported varieties if and only if it lowers the product of transport costs. Second, under a plausible condition, there exists a unique interior growth‐maximizing aid/GDP ratio. These results are robust to alternative specifications for congestion and stock‐flow nature of public goods.     

Cointegration, Government Spending and Private Consumption: Evidence from Japan

Assuming a CRRA preference, this paper shows that there is a cointegration restriction implied by the intra-temporal first-order condition in the consumption function. This restriction predicts a cointegrated system of government consumption, private consumption, and their relative price. Our analysis indicates that, first, Johansen's VECM confirms the theoretical prediction that is supported by the data of Japan; moreover, Bierens' (1997) nonparametric estimator severely contradicts with the theoretical model and fits the data poorly; second, Japanese people have increasing willingness to rearrange their consumption over time. Besides, the intratemporal relationship between private and government consumption remains relatively stable over time.     

Remittances and the Effectiveness of Foreign Aid

We argue that donors could improve the effectiveness of foreign aid by pursuing complementary and coherent non‐aid policies. In particular, we hypothesize that aid has stronger growth effects if recipients receive more aid from donors who allow for (temporary) worker mobility and (more permanent) migration. We focus on overall remittances paid by the donor countries to proxy for worker mobility and migration. Our empirical results support the hypothesis that higher remittances paid by donor countries strengthen the growth effects of foreign aid.     

Foreign Aid, Domestic Investment and Welfare

This paper examines the welfare implications of temporary foreign aid in a simple two-period, two-country model of trade. Domestic investment is endogenous, providing an important link between aid in period one and the terms of trade in periods one and two. Transfer-induced changes in the terms of trade redistribute present and future income between the donor and the recipient. In the presence of barriers to international borrowing and lending, such redistribution gives rise to the possibility of temporary aid being both potentially and strictly Pareto improving.     

Financial Student Aid and Enrollment in Higher Education: New Evidence from Germany*

Means‐tested student aid might affect enrollment in higher education. To derive the potential influence of student aid, we use a tax‐benefit microsimulation model. The effect is a non‐linear function of parental income, with variation as a result of bracket creeping and various reforms. Therefore, the effect of student aid on enrollment can be separated from the effects of income and other family characteristics. Using the German Socio‐Economic Panel, we find a small but significant positive effect, similar in size to the effects reported in previous studies for European countries but smaller than in the US.