Fertility and economic development: theoretical considerations and cross-country evidence

The paper presents a theoretical background for the analysis of the relationship between fertility and a number of socioeconomic factors associated with the process of economic development and analyses empirically this relationship within a cross-country framework. Fertility is found to be negatively related with female education, urbanization, and family planning and positively related with the levels of infant mortality and economic development, whereas no significant relationship between fertility and female labor force participation is established. Sensitivity analysis is performed and the policy implications of the empirical findings are briefly discussed.     

State history and economic development: evidence from six millennia

The presence of a state is one of the most reliable historical predictors of social and economic development. In this article, we complete the coding of an extant indicator of state presence from 3500 BCE forward for almost all but the smallest countries of the world today. We outline a theoretical framework where accumulated state experience increases aggregate productivity in individual countries but where newer or relatively inexperienced states can reach a higher productivity maximum by learning from the experience of older states. The predicted pattern of comparative development is tested in an empirical analysis where we introduce our extended state history variable. Our key finding is that the current level of economic development across countries has a hump-shaped relationship with accumulated state history.     

The impact of military technology transfer on economic growth: international evidence

The purpose of this article is to measure the impact of military technology transfer on economic growth for 67 selected countries during the period 2000 to 2005 through the application of the Malmquist productivity index, which is broken down into efficiency change and technical change. Our main findings are as follows. First, technology diffusion is all-pervading in half of the sampled countries due to pure efficiency and scale efficiency changes. Second, a higher-income level and an excess of arms imports lead to innovative activities. Third, middle-income countries have higher efficiency and pure efficiency changes; these contribute to higher total productivity change. Finally, after separating the impact of capital investment from that of arms imports, the diffusion of military technology has a more positive and substantial impact on economic growth, thereby revealing the presence of externalities between countries.     

Institutional obstacles to African economic development: State, ethnicity, and custom

To account for the African growth tragedy and, in particular, for its causes rooted in governance problems, the institutional legacy that African countries inherited from pre-colonial and colonial times must be considered. Three aspects are examined here. First, the relationship between ethnicity and state performance is bi-directional: if strong ethno-regional identities prevent the emergence of modern citizenship, they themselves constitute an endogenous outcome of continuous state failures. Second, the persistence of informal rules and social norms causes legal dualism, which undermines the credibility of modern statutory law. Third, social customs and norms that hinder socio-economic differentiation and individual capital accumulation lower the performance of indigenous enterprises.     

Trade efficiency and economic development: evidence from a cross country comparison

Economic theory suggests that development is enhanced through income growth, which is driven through increased trade. However, the empirical evidence of such a relationship most of the times is proved to be weak. In this study we try to determine the factors influencing this relationship by measuring ‘trade efficiency’. Using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) window method for a sample of 16 OECD countries, we obtained the efficiency scores and the optimal output levels for the inefficient countries for a time period of 5 years under consideration. Results drawn from the broadly used ratio analysis were also compared to the results derived from the DEA model. Our empirical findings show that ‘trade efficient’ countries have clear characteristics like low-exchange rates for exports, low R&D intensity, high-value intra industry trade and positive impact of net trade on their gross domestic product.     

Financial development and economic growth nexus: a time-series evidence from India

This study examines the relationship between financial development and economic growth in India for the period 1951–52 to 1995–96. The long-run equilibrium and short-run dynamic models are estimated using financial interrelations ratio and new issue ratio as the measures of financial development, a la Goldsmith (1969 Goldsmith, RW. 1969. Financial Structure and Development, New Haven: Yale University Press.  [Google Scholar]). The Johansen (1991 Johansen, S. 1991. Estimation and hypothesis testing of cointegration vectors in Gaussian vector autoregressive models’. Econometrica, 59: 1551–80. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) estimator rejects the null of zero cointegrating vector and shows the presence of long-run equilibrium relationship between financial development and economic growth. The error correction model, impulse response and variance decomposition analyses (Sims, 1980 Sims, CA. 1980. Macroeconomics and reality. Econometrica, 48: 1–48. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and the Toda and Yamamoto (1995 Toda, HY and Yamamoto, T. 1995. Statistical inference in vector autoregressions with possibly integrated processes. Journal of Econometrics, 66: 225–50. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) estimator show the presence of bidirectional Granger-causality between financial development and economic growth. The presence of bidirectional Granger-causality suggested by these estimators points towards the possible problem of endogeneity and simultaneity bias in the growth models that examine the contemporaneous effect of financial development on economic growth. The economic reforms that started since July 1991 emphasized on the liberalization and development of financial sector to supplement the efforts aimed at achieving high economic growth in India.     

Real exchange rate levels and economic development: theoretical analysis and econometric evidence

According to the development approach to exchange rates, competitivecurrencies have been a key factor in most East and SoutheastAsian successful growth strategies. There is also today an importantempirical literature that relates overvaluations to low percapita growth rates. While the econometric literature on thisissue is relatively rich, theoretical analysis of channels throughwhich real exchange rate levels could affect economic developmentare very scarce. This paper intends to contribute to the debateby bringing more theoretical elements and providing new econometricevidence to the connections between real exchange rate levelsand development.     

Predictor imperfection: international evidence

Pástor and Stambaugh (2009) demonstrate that the relationship between predictors and equity premium is imperfect in US market using a new model named predictive system. This article extends their study by providing international evidence of predictor imperfection using samples from G7 countries. Our results show that predictor imperfection is ubiquitous in all G7 countries and that investors’ prior beliefs about the relationship between predictors and equity premium play a significant role in predictor’s explanatory power.     

多边投资框架与我国经济战略

本刊上一期发表了詹晓宁博士和葛顺奇博士合作撰写的《多边投资框架:趋势与评价》一文,刊出未久,即引起不少读者的关注。中国“入世”后面临的最严峻挑战并不是在资金、技术和人才方面,而是整个社会的规则意识。我们不仅要研究和运用世界贸易和投资规则,同时,还要在未来更加激烈的国际竞争中,在与我国的实际经济利益密切相关的多边规则制订工作中,以前瞻性的战略眼光,积极主动地参与制定包括多边投资框架在内的全球性规则,从而达到构建适合我国国情,维护我国经济发展长远利益的多边框架之目的。为此,特发表本文,以飨读者。     

Exports and economic growth: Further evidence

This paper investigates the relationship between exports and economic growth in a group of eleven developing countries that have already established an industrial base. Separate consideration is given to manufactured and to total exports; in the case of the latter, adjustment is made for domestic and foreign investment and for increases in the labor force.     

Institutional path dependence and international research intensity

Whereas there is informal and formal recognition and understanding of research inertia in driving the intensity of research, there is little formal evidence on the role of historical and political legacy or institutional path dependence in affecting research intensity. This paper uses data on about 100 nations to address this aspect, focusing on the long, medium and short-term research intensity. Across two measures of a nation's institutional history, we find that broader national stability positively affects research intensity both in the long and the medium terms, while the narrower path dependence measure supports these findings, albeit with weak statistical significance. The effects on short-term research intensity lack statistical support across both measures. Comparing institutional path dependence with research inertia, we find that both factors significantly affect research intensity. The main findings are robust to various modifications.     

Financial market development,global financial crisis and economic growth: evidence from developing nations

Emerging and frontier markets in Africa have witnessed various economic and financial reforms aimed at integrating the domestic markets into the global financial market to attract investment. Whether these reforms promote high economic growth remains inconclusive. The paper applies the pooled mean group estimation technique to empirically re-investigate the link between financial market development, global financial crisis, and economic growth in selected African economies. The results strongly support our hypotheses that stock market and banking sector development promotes economic growth in the selected countries. Moreover, financial crisis reduce the positive effects of both the stock market and banking sector developments on economic growth. The study suggests that both the banking sector and stock market are important to deliver the long-run economic growth that the African region desired. Moreover, effort should be made to enact policy measures that would ensure development of the stock market which has received inadequate attention.     

The role of human capital and innovation in economic development: evidence from post-Malthusian Prussia

The effect of human capital on growth involves multiple channels. On the one hand, an increase in human capital directly affects economic growth by enhancing labor productivity in production. On the other hand, human capital is an important input into R&D and therefore increases labor productivity indirectly by accelerating technological change. In addition, different types of human capital such as basic and higher education or training-on-the-job might play different roles in both production and innovation activities. We merge individual data on valuable patents granted in Prussia in the late nineteenth-century with county-level data on literacy, craftsmanship, secondary schooling, and income tax revenues to explore the complex relationship between various types of human capital, innovation, and income. We find that the Second Industrial Revolution can be seen as a transition period when it comes to the role of human capital. As in the preceding First Industrial Revolution, “useful knowledge” embodied in master craftsmen was related to innovation, especially of independent inventors. As in the subsequent twentieth century, the quality of basic education was associated with both workers’ productivity and firms’ R&D processes. In a final step, we show that literacy had also a negative effect on fertility which increased with innovation. In general, our findings support the notion that the accumulation of basic human capital was crucial for the transition to modern economic growth.     

Foreign direct investment,economic freedom and economic growth: International evidence

In this paper, we investigate the systemic link between economic freedom, foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic growth in a panel of 85 countries. Our empirical results, based on the generalized method-of-moment system estimator, reveal that FDI by itself has no direct (positive) effect on output growth. Instead, the effect of FDI is contingent on the level of economic freedom in the host countries. This means the countries promote greater freedom of economic activities gain significantly from the presence of multinational corporations (MNCs).     

Stock and credit market expansion and economic development in emerging markets: further evidence utilizing cointegration analysis

This paper empirically investigates the relationship between equity and credit market development and economic growth, in a sample of five very important ‘emerging’ markets. In particular, employing a multivariate time-series methodology to test for long-run trends and causality between variables that proxy for stock market development, credit market development and economic development. The results seem to suggest that equity markets have a role to play only in relatively liberalized economies, like Chile and Mexico. In financially repressed economies, like India, the equity market does not affect real sector growth. Furthermore, the banking crises in the 1980s and 1990s in Chile and Mexico resulted in a negative relation between economic growth and the credit market. In South Korea, equity and credit markets both affect economic growth, but not vice versa. In countries where the nature of the stock market has been speculative, like Taiwan, a negative relationship is detected between equity market development and economic development.     

Nurse-supported breastfeeding promotion: a framework for economic evaluation

Increasingly, economic evaluation results are considered by policymakers, although few nurse-led interventions have undergone such an evaluation. Nurse-supported breastfeeding promotion is used as an exemplar to illustrate economic evaluation. Past work is critiqued and lessons learned are described.     

当代国际经济合作的趋势及特点

上世纪90年代至今,经济全球化的进程和高科技术革命的发展,对传统的国际经济合作产生了深刻的影响,这个影响至今仍在继续。笔者认为,除了七八十年代已经形成的趋势,如发展中国家在国际经济合作中的地位增强,国际贸易适当的增速支持经济增长以及服务贸易异军突起等以外,对本世纪经济发展至关重要的还有如下几个新的趋势,值得我们做深入的研究和思考。一、WTO成为世界范围维护和完善贸易秩序的重要机制国际贸易的进行和发展,需要比较合理的国际贸易秩序作为支撑环境,战后的几十年时间里,从林林总总的商品组织到联合国贸发会上震…     

Export expansion and economic growth: Further empirical evidence

This paper examines the relationship between export expansion and economic growth in a sample of seventy-three developing countries, using data for the period 1960–1978. It shows that in both groups of low- and middle-income countries, export expansion is associated with better economic performance and that an important cause of this association is the favorable impact of exports on total factor productivity. The paper also demonstrates that the effect of commodity composition of exports on the relationship between export expansion and economic growth is substantial in more advanced developing economies.     

Nonlinear economic growth: Some theory and cross-country evidence

This paper aims to test the existence of different growth regimes, that is of different relationships between growth rate and income level. We propose a simple nonlinear growth model and test its empirical implications by estimating Markov transition matrices and stochastic kernels. We show that growth is indeed nonlinear: a first phase of slow or zero growth is followed by a take-off and, finally, by a phase of deceleration. We discuss the relevance of these results with respect to the issue of convergence and reversibility of development, in the light of models of structural change and technological diffusion.