A cross-country analysis of consumption patterns

This paper uses the system-wide approach to analyse the consumption patterns in 18 OECD countries. The results show that, on average, the OECD per capita consumption increased by 3% per annum and prices increased by about 7% per annum; OECD consumers spend about half of their income on food, housing and transport. It is also shown that, in most OECD countries, food, housing and medical care are necessities and clothing, durables, transport and recreation are luxuries, and that the demand for all goods considered are price inelastic. The controversial hypothesis of Stigler and Becker (1977) that tastes are the same across countries is also tested and it is found that the OECD consumption data do not support their claim.     

A dynamic analysis of expenditure patterns in rural India

Recent generalisations of the Linear Expenditure System have concentrated on its restrictive assumption of separable preferences but underplayed its equally restrictive assumption of linearity in income, i.e., constant marginal budget shares. This reflects the data base which has usually been long time series of disaggregated consumer expenditure data. Such generalisations are inappropriated for developing countries which rely on highly aggregated commodity expenditure data from budget surveys with more variation in income responses is introduced, variation in prices. A general procedure for non-linearising income but rather limited applied to some recent LES generalisations to generate still further geenralisations and then used to analyse rural India's expenditure behaviour. The results decisively support the suggested generalisation and, also, provide evidence in favour of dynamic behaviour and habit persistence on budget data.     

Carbon dioxide emission and income: A temporal analysis of cross-country distributional patterns

This paper explores the relationship between the inter-country income inequality and CO₂ emission and temporal shifts in such a relationship. It also examines how the mean per capita CO₂ emission and its distributional inequality are related to the corresponding mean and the distributional inequality of income. The analysis is based on a cross-country panel data set at the level of country-group. Here environmental damage is treated as a private good and the technique of Lorenz and specific concentration curve analysis have been used as the basic analytical framework to argue that distributional inequality of income should be an explanatory variable in the Environmental Kuznets Curve relationship, along with the mean income level. In the empirical exercise, Johansen's cointegration analysis technique is used to explore existence of statistically significant cointegrating vector(s) relating mean emission and Specific Concentration Ratio of emission to mean income level and Lorenz Ratio of income, using a set of country-group specific time series data set which covers four country-groups (viz., Africa, America, Asia and Europe) and the World as a whole. The empirical results confirm that the inter-country income inequality has significant effect on the mean emission level and inter-country inequality of emission level for most of the country-groups considered.     

Estimation and cross-country comparison of capital stocks

While capital stock as the measure of productive capacity and the wealth of a nation figures prominently in policy analysis, capital stocks data is lacking in many countries because of the cost of data collection and other difficulties. Even in those countries where such data is compiled, the data is not always up to date. In this paper, we estimate and report the time series data for the capital stocks of 69 countries. We then use the capital stocks series to assess the future growth potentials of these countries.We would like to Thank an anonymos referee for many helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

Dynamic specification of consumer expenditure on non-durables and services in Austria

Zusammenfassung Jüngste Fortschritte in der ökonometrischen Theorie führten zu erneutem Interesse an einem der am häufigsten analysierten Themenkreise der quantitativen Ökonomie: dem Zusammenhang zwischen Konsumausgaben und verfügbaren Einkommen. Entsprechende Tests ergaben, daß die Konsumausgaben für nichtdauerhafte Güter und Dienstleistungen und das verfügbare Einkommen kointegriert sind. Ausgehend von dieser Tatsache wurde in mehreren Schritten eine Konsumfunktion abgeleitet, die neben zufriedenstellenden statistischen Eigenschaften eine plausible ökonomische Interpretation zuläßt und eine interessante, mit den beobachteten Daten konsistente dynamische Struktur aufweist.

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Helpful suggestions for improvement by M. Deistler, D. F. Hendry, and J. Wolters are gratefully acknowledged.     

Intra-Industry specialization: A cross-country analysis

This paper tests various hypotheses as to the determinants of intra-industry trade in thirty-eight developed and developing countries exporting manufactured goods. The econometric estimates for the entire group of countries show that the extent of intra-industry trade increases with the level of economic development (GNP per head), the size of domestic markets (GNP), and the openness of national economies. The existence of trading partners with common borders and geographical proximity further contributes to intra-industry trade.These hypotheses have also been confirmed for the developing country group. And while similarities in regard to trade orientation and the existence of border trade, as well as intercorrelation between the gross national product and per capita GNP, have reduced the statistical significance of the regression coefficients for these variables for the developed country group, this equation also has a high explanatory power.     

A cross-country consumption comparison based on divisia variances and covariances

A preliminary analysis of price and quantity data of the consumption in 16 countries, based on Divisia variances and covariances, indicates that poor countries are pairwise much more different than affluent countries are.     

A non-linear sensitivity analysis of cross-country growth regressions

We extend the sensitivity analysis of cross-country growth regressions of Levine and Renelt (1992) by introducing a semi-parametric formulation of their regression function. Our results differ from theirs in how certain policy variables affect growth rates. We find that distortion variables, such as the standard deviation of gross domestic credit and inflation and real exchange rate distortions, have a robust negative effect on growth. JEL Classification: O47, C14
Une analyse de sensibilité non-linéaire des régressions de croissance pour divers pays. Les auteurs utilisent une formulation semi-paramétrique des équations de croissance de Levine et Renelt (1992) pour divers pays afin de rendre leur analyse de sensibilité plus compréhensive. Les résultats different de ceux de Levine et Renelt en ce que certaines variables de politique affectent les taux de croissance. On découvre que certains facteurs comme l'écart type du crédit intérieur brut et de l'inflation, et des distorsions des taux de change réels, ont un effet négatif important sur la croissance.     

Specification and sensitivity analysis of cross-country growth regressions

We compare the sensitivity analysis of cross-country growth regressions based on extreme bounds analysis to a more direct specification testing approach using non-nested hypotheses tests. The results suggest that those specifications that are adequate are also those that include two of the only few conditioning variables that are found to be robust, namely the standard deviation of inflation and the standard deviation of domestic credit. First Version Received: November 2000/Final Version Received: May 2001     

Corruption and public debt: a cross-country analysis

Using data from a large panel of countries over the period 1995–2015, this article empirically investigates the effect of corruption on public debt. Overall, the estimates reveal that corruption increases public debt. The effect, however, appears to be heterogeneous across income-related sample splits: it is stronger for advanced economies, but weaker and less statistically robust for less-developed countries, where external factors such as foreign aid may also affect public debt. The analysis suggests the inadequacy of conventional wisdom assuming that more detrimental fiscal effects of corruption arise in low-income countries.     

Health expenditure models: A comparison using panel data

In this article, we focus on the estimation of outpatient expenditures with panel data. We model the logarithm of expenditures and consider five different models. The first two are two-part and sample selection cross-section models. Two-part panel data models turn out to be inappropriate for dealing with expenditures. We thus estimate sample selection models with panel data: one without a lagged dependent variable and two with a lagged dependent variable. These two latter models differ in their assumptions on the variance of the residuals. Modelling heteroscedasticity may indeed be important to avoid the bias due to the retransformation problem. We show that lagged dependent variables are important factors for heteroscedasticity. For the models with state dependence, we provide a new solution to the initial conditions problem by controlling for generalised residuals. We establish that panel data models highly improve the correlation explained by the model in the time-series dimension without damaging the fit in the cross-section dimension. For all indicators of fit, the model with state dependence and heteroscedasticity seems to dominate the others.     

The effects of national culture on corporate social responsibility disclosure: a cross-country comparison

This article presents a cross-country analysis of the influence of national culture on corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure. We analyse the relationship between the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and the sustainability disclosure with the GDP per capita (GDPPC) of 44 countries, using panel data with information based on the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. The governance effectiveness and the foreign direct investment are also included in the analysis. The results show that in countries with higher GDPPC, the CSR disclosure is negatively related to individualism and masculinity and positively related to uncertainty avoidance and indulgence. When focusing in countries with lower GDPPC, the results suggest that CSR disclosure is negatively related to power distance and positively related to uncertainty avoidance. Moreover, five of the six Hofstede’s cultural dimensions negatively affect sustainability disclosure in countries with middle GDPPC.     

Delimitation of the class of budget-constrained utility maximizing partially linear consumer expenditure functions: An alternative approach

Zusammenfassung Dieser Aufsatz behandelt eine alternative Herleitung notwendiger und hinreichender Bedingungen, denen Nachfragefunktionen, die linear im Einkommen jedoch nicht notwendigerweise linear in den Preisen sind, genügen müssen, um zu sichern, daß bei gegebenem Einkommen ein Nutzenmaximum realisiert wird. Diese Bedingungen erscheinen weniger einschränkend als jene, die Gorman (1953, 1961) abgeleitet hat. Beispiele für derartige Funktionen werden im dritten Abschnitt angeführt. Einige kritische Anmerkungen beschließen den Aufsatz.

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The author is indebted to Mr. P. M. C. de Boer, Dr. J. van Daal, and Mr. W. J. Keller, staff members of the Netherlands School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam, for their helpful criticisms and suggestions.     

Heterogeneity of consumer preferences and trade patterns in a monopolistically competitive setting

The paper considers a two-sector two-country trade model of monopolistic competition featuring the heterogeneity of consumer preferences and incomes within and across countries. The incorporation of heterogeneity into a monopolistic competition setting is achieved by assuming a nested Cobb–Douglas and CES utility function exhibiting both country and sector-specific consumer tastes and expenditure shares on manufacturing and traditional goods. The key question analyzed in the paper is how consumer heterogeneity affects the home bias of trade in different countries. The key finding here is that the heterogeneity in tastes and incomes of consumers can provide a substantial influence on degree of home bias in trade but only in combination with high transportation costs.     

An analysis of government expenditure and trade liberalization

The effect of trade liberalization on government's role in the economy is investigated. It is shown that, contrary to received expectations, as small open economies liberalize their trade, the size of government decreases.     

政府支出与贸易自由化分析

原载:Applied Economics,Vol.37,No.16,Sept.,2005人们研究了贸易自由化对政府在经济中作用的影响。研究显示,与被普遍接受的预测相反,当小型开放经济实行贸易自由化时,其政府的管理范围缩小了。一、引言贸易自由化问题(以及关于这个问题的争论)可以追溯到亚当·斯密。根据Edwa     

An alternative semiparametric estimate of the base-independence equivalence scale: an application to US consumer expenditure survey data

The deficit debate is a recurring theme in academic and political circles. The controversy is over the effect of deficits on inflation and interest rates. The existing body of empirical evidence does not resolve the controversy. This paper focuses on the inflationary impact of deficits. The model used is derived from a comprehensive IS-LM analysis which incorporates a foreign trade sector and a general price (adoptive expectation) adjustment mechanism. We test the model using time series data for the United states. From our results we conclude that NIA deficits have no significant bearing on the rate of inflation.     

An analysis of housing expenditure using semiparametric cross-section models

In this paper we model expenditure on housing for owners and renters by means of endogenous switching regression models using cross-section data. We explain the share of housing in total expenditure from family characteristics and total expenditure, where the latter is allowed to be endogenous. We apply various existing parametric and semiparametric techniques for cross-section data. Exogeneity of total expenditure is rejected for the parametric models but not for most semiparametric models. The results are compared on the basis of budget elasticities and graphs of the estimated relationship between the budget share spent on housing and the logarithm of total expenditure. First version received: November 1997 / Final version received: January 2000     

The effects of lay participation in courts — A cross-country analysis

Legal philosophers like Montesquieu, Hegel and Tocqueville have argued that lay participation in judicial decision-making would have benefits reaching far beyond the realm of the legal system narrowly understood. From an economic point of view, lay participation in judicial decision-making can be interpreted as a renunciation of an additional division of labor, which is expected to cause foregone benefits in terms of the costs as well as the quality of judicial decision-making. In order to be justified, these foregone benefits need to be overcompensated by other – actually realized – benefits of at least the same magnitude. This paper discusses pros and cons of lay participation, presents a new database and tests some of the theoretically derived hypotheses empirically. The effects of lay participation on the judicial system, a number of governance variables but also on economic performance indicators are rather modest. A proxy representing historic experiences with any kind of lay participation is the single most robust variable.