Bank credit and debt,income, and causality: The Sims test on measures of credit

By employing the Sims test this study examines the exogeneity, or casual ordering, of bank credit and two measures of debt from the US Federal Reserve Flow of Funds Accounts. Evidence presented here suggests that Bank Credit and Funds Raised by Private Domestic Nonfinancial Sectors are not appropriate targets. The Sims test of causality clearly indicates undirectional causality running from Total Funds Raised by Private Domestic Nonfinancial Sectors to spending.     

Government size,government debt and globalization

This article empirically investigates the effect of globalization on government size and debt. Using panel heterogeneous cointegration techniques to a panel of developing and developed countries, it finds that globalization reduces government size and debt. In terms of components of globalization, government size is found to increase with trade openness but decreases with financial, social and political globalization. On the other hand, government debt increases with financial and trade openness but decreases with social and political globalization. The evidence is robust to different estimation methods and different samples. Our data also indicate unidirectional causality running from globalization measures to government size and debt.     

Green national income and expenditure

Distinguishing between national income and expenditure helps to shed light on some issues in green national accounting, including capital gains. Although their total is the same, different types of depreciation should be defined differently in the income and expenditure accounts. For example, there are two ways to define the depletion of non-renewable resources. If depletion is defined as the resource rent, the unit value of the resource stock exceeds the current rent. If resource rent is viewed in terms of the resource's contribution to national income, the stock can be valued at the current rent but depletion is less than resource rent. JEL classification: E20, Q30
Revenus et dépenses nationaux verts . Le fait de distinguer le revenu national et la dépense nationale aide àéclairer certains problèmes dans la comptabilité nationale verte, y compris en ce qui a trait aux gains de capitaux. Même si leur total est le même, différents types d'amortissement devraient être utilisés dans les comptes de revenus et de dépenses. Par exemple, il y a deux manières de définir l'épuisement des ressources non-renouvelables. Si l'épuisement est défini par la rente sur la ressource, alors la valeur unitaire du stock de ressource est plus grande que la rente courante. Si la rente de la ressource est considérée comme la contribution de la ressource au revenu national, le stock peut être évalué au niveau de la rente courante, mais alors l'épuisement est moins que la rente de la ressource.     

Temporal causality and the dynamics of democracy,emigration and real income in Fiji

This study is the first to explore temporal causality between democracy, emigration and real income in Fiji within a multivariate cointegration model. We find three long run relationships between democracy, emigration and real income. In the long run there is evidence that migration and democracy Granger cause real GDP in Fiji; real GDP and democracy Granger cause migration from Fiji and that real GDP and migration Granger cause democracy in Fiji. In the short run we find unidirectional Granger causality running from migration to real GDP and from democracy to real GDP, but neutrality between democracy and migration in the short run. We also extend the analysis to examine the degree of exogeneity of the variables beyond the sample period through considering the decomposition of variance and impulse response functions.     

Government debt and optimal monetary and fiscal policy

How do different levels of government debt affect the optimal conduct of monetary and fiscal policies? And what do these optimal policies imply for the evolution of government debt over time? To provide an answer, this paper studies a standard monetary policy model with nominal rigidities and monopolistic competition and adds to it a fiscal authority that issues nominal non-state contingent debt, levies distortionary labor income taxes and determines the level of public goods provision. Higher government debt levels make it optimal to reduce public spending, so as to dampen the adverse incentive effects of distortionary taxes, but also strongly influence the optimal stabilization response following technology shocks. In particular, higher debt levels give rise to larger risks to the fiscal budget and to tax rates. This makes it optimal to reduce government debt over time. The optimal speed of debt reduction is missed when using first-order approximations to optimal policies, but is shown to be quantitatively significant in a second-order approximation, especially when technology movements are largely unpredictable in nature.     

The stability assumption in tests of causality between money and income

This note argues that structural stability is an important condition for tests of Grangercausality. Despite this fact the standard causality tests are sometimes applied to data for which structural stability cannot be assumed a priori. Therefore the stability of GNP/M1 systems of the U.S., Canada, and West Germany in the aftermath of the 1973/74 oil crisis is analyzed using formal statistical tests. Prediction tests are particularly useful for that purpose. The stability of the model for Canadian data is rejected whereas stability is not rejected for the U.S. and West Germany.     

Government debt spillovers and creditworthiness in a federation

Estimates are presented for the impact of debt accumulation by the central and subcentral governments of a federation on the creditworthiness of other federation member governments. The estimates, calculated using an ordered probit model and Canadian provincial data, indicate that debt accumulation by the central government has reduced the creditworthiness of indebted provincial governments. Interprovincial debt accumulation effects are negative but relatively small, except for the debt of the largest province, which has a strong positive effect on the creditworthiness of the other provinces. These findings may have implications for other federations and associated jurisdictions, such as the European Union. JEL Classification: H63, F36
Les effets de retombée de la dette gouvernementale et la cote de crédit dans une fédération. On calcule l'impact de l'accumulation de la dette par les gouvernements fédéral et sub-fédéraux dans une fédération sur la cote de crédit des autres gouvernements de la fédération. Ces calibrations, à l'aide d'un modèle probit en utilisant les données provinciales canadiennes, montrent que l'accumulation de la dette par le gouvernement central a réduit la cote de crédit des gouvernements provinciaux endettés. Les effets trans-provinciaux de l'accumulation de la dette sont négatifs mais relativement faibles, sauf dans le cas de la province la plus grande, laquelle a un fort effet sur la cote de crédit des autres provinces. Ces résultats peuvent avoir des implications pour d'autres fédérations comme l'Union Européenne.     

Money,income and sterilization: tests for causality in the oil economy of Kuwait

The purpose of this investigation is to provide some evidence on two widely held hypotheses dominating monetary analysis in the small oil economy of Kuwait and other Gulf states. The first posits that causality should run from money to income, while the second emphasizes the neutral impact of external transactions on the domestic money supply.     

Temporal causality and the dynamics of judicial appellate caseload,real income and socio-economic complexity in Australia

This paper shows that, during the 1970s and 1980s, MENA economies were characterized by a significant overvaluation of their currency. This overvaluation has had a cost in terms of competitiveness. To determine the degree of overvaluation of the MENA currencies, an indicator of misalignment was developed based on the estimation of an equilibrium exchange rate (Edwards, Exchange Rate Misalignment in Developing Countries, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1988). The empirical work was based on a panel of 53 developing countries, ten of which are MENA economies. Although overvaluation decreased in the 1990s, probably due to flexibilization of the exchange rate regime in some MENA countries and to better macroeconomic management in others, misalignment remained higher than in other regions. This may be explained by the MENA countries’ delay in adopting more flexible exchange rates, as well as in reforming their economies. In terms of competitiveness, the estimation of an export equation has shown that manufactured exports have been significantly affected by the overvaluation of the MENA currencies. Countries that already had a more diversified economy benefited more from the decreased overvaluation in the 1990s. These countries also saw a continuous rise in diversification of their manufactured exports, resulting from the significant decline in exchange rate misalignment.     

Crime rates,male youth unemployment and real income in Australia: evidence from Granger causality tests

This article applies Granger causality tests to examine the relationship between seven different categories of property crime and violent crime against the person, male youth unemployment and real male average weekly earnings in Australia from 1964 to 2001 within a cointegration and vector error correction framework. It is found that fraud, homicide and motor vehicle theft are cointegrated with male youth unemployment and real male average weekly earnings. However, there is no evidence of a long-run relationship between either break and enter, robbery, serious assault or stealing with male youth unemployment and real male average weekly earnings.     

对中国国债管理目标的探讨

对国债管理目标的探讨对完善国债管理体制至关重要。文章通过对国内学者观点的综述和一些国家国债管理目标的对比、分析,提出当前中国的国债管理应该是一个目标+三个条件。一个目标是实现长期筹资成本的最小化,三个条件是风险最小化、效率最大化和法规完善化。     

Exploring the link between household debt and income inequality: an asymmetric approach

We investigate the relationship between household debt and income inequality in the USA, allowing for asymmetry, using data over the period 1913–2008. We find evidence of an asymmetric cointegration between household debt and inequality for different regimes. Our results indicate household debt only responds to positive changes in income inequality, while there is no evidence of falling inequality significantly affecting household debt. The presence of this asymmetry provides further empirical insights into the emerging literature on household debt and inequality.     

Keynes and a post-Keynesian controversy over the effect of debt on income expansion

The paper considers arguments of Robertson (1938) and Asimakopulos (1983) that the Keynesian multiplier expansion of output may be constrained by debt implicitly incurred in the financing of autonomous investment necessary to start the multiplier process. The task of this essay is to show that within the ‘short-period’ and static analytical framework of Keynes, this line of reasoning regarding the adverse effects of debt on multiplier-induced expansions of output is unwarranted. Nevertheless it is concluded that if the Keynesian framework is abandoned in favour of a dynamic framework in the manner of a steady trend rate of growth - a choice dependent on how one conceives of the economy, as inherently static or dynamic - then such arguments have troubling implications. In particular, the dependence of Keynes's approach on credit and hence debt forges links between ‘short-periods' whose distinctness from one another is crucial to Keynes's result.     

A farewell to critical junctures: Sorting out long-run causality of income and democracy

We consider the empirical relevance of two opposing hypotheses on the causality between income and democracy: The Democratic Transition hypothesis claims that rising incomes cause a transition to democracy, whereas the Critical Junctures hypothesis denies this causal relation. Our empirical strategy is motivated by Unified Growth Theory, which hypothesizes that the present international income differences have roots in the prehistoric past. Thus, we use prehistoric measures of biogeography as instruments for modern income levels, and find a large long-run causal effect of income on the degree of democracy. This result rejects the Critical Junctures hypothesis, which is an important part of the Primacy of Institutions view.     

Note on a model of Chinese national income determination

A macroeconomic model of Chow (1985) explaining aggregate consumption by the permanent income hypothesis of Robert Hall and aggregate investment by the accelerations principle was found to fit Chinese annual data from 1952 to 1982 well. This note shows that the same model can successfully explain Chinese annual data from 1978 to 2006.     

Finance,income inequality and income redistribution

Using a panel fixed effects model for a large sample of countries covering 1975–2005, we test the hypothesis that income inequality caused by finance (financial development, financial liberalization and banking crises) is related to more income redistribution than inequality caused by other factors. Our results provide evidence in support of this hypothesis. We also find that the impact of inequality on redistribution is conditioned by ethno-linguistic fractionalization. Our findings are robust to the inclusion of several control variables suggested by previous studies.     

The role of natural capital in supporting national income and social welfare

Using life satisfaction as a proxy for social welfare, this study contributes to the extant literature by empirically demonstrating that natural capital contributes to social welfare, functioning in part through increasing national income and in part through its direct effect on life satisfaction; the direct effect is approximately 40% greater than the indirect effect. This suggests that the true welfare benefits of natural capital may not be adequately reflected in conventional economic data and, therefore, studies seeking to evaluate the contribution of natural capital to human well-being should consider employing data sets that capture subjective elements of welfare. The magnitudes of the reported marginal effects of natural capital on social welfare, however, are small. This is perhaps due to the fact that (1) there are shortcomings in the measure of natural capital; (2) life satisfaction effects are unlikely to reflect the poorly understood benefits that natural capital provides; and (3) keystone species (such as mosquitoes) and integral ecosystems (such as wetlands) may be negatively associated with life satisfaction, even though such components of natural capital are vitally important to sustaining ecosystems and human life     

Consumer prices,wholesale prices,and causality

This paper uses the Wald variant of the Granger direct causality test recently prescribed by Geweke, Meese, and Dent (1983) to assess the causal nature of the pairwise relationship between U.S. consumer and wholesale (producer) prices. For the sample period, January 1947 to December 1983, as well as for the two sample subperiods, January 1947 to June 1971 and May 1974 to December 1983, the test reveal that bidirectional causality, or feedback, exists between monthly observations on seasonally unadjusted consumer and wholesale price changes. The finding of bidirectional causality corroborates other empirical evidence suggesthing that a simultaneous equation approach represents the appropriate way to estimate a bivariate model that consists of consumer and wholesale prices.