Examining the effect of IMF conditionality on natural resource policy

Can International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending improve natural resource governance in borrowing countries? While most IMF agreements mandate policy reforms in exchange for financial support, compliance with these reforms is mixed at best. The natural resource sector should be no exception. After all, resource windfalls enable short-term increases in discretionary spending, and office-seeking politicians are often unwilling to forgo this discretion by reforming the oil, gas, or mining sector. I investigate how and when borrowers go against their political interests and establish natural resource funds—a tool often promoted by the IMF—in the wake of a loan agreement. Using text analysis, statistical models, and qualitative evidence from natural resource policy and IMF conditionality for 74 countries between 1980 and 2019, I show that borrowers under an IMF agreement are more likely to create or regulate a resource fund, particularly if the agreement includes binding conditions that highlight the salience of natural resource reforms. This study contributes to extant research by proposing a new method to extract information from IMF conditions, by introducing a novel dataset on country-level natural resource policy, and by identifying under what circumstances international reform efforts can help combat the resource curse.     

浅论中国经济发展的周期性及投资策略

中国经济发展具有周期性。在一个完整的经济周期中,不光有通货膨胀和通货紧缩,还存在着经济的四季：复苏、繁荣、衰退和萧条。根据经济周期进行投资,周期性就可能实现财富的阶梯式增长。     

Chinese interests in the global investment regime

China is rising as a major source of outward direct investment (ODI), but barriers to and protectionism against Chinese investment have been strengthened as well. This situation reflects inherent flaws in the architecture governing international investment. This article identifies three of China’s key interests in the global investment regime: (1) to reduce investment barriers and depoliticize foreign regulatory review processes; (2) to ensure better protection of its overseas investment; and (3) to secure international recognition of its unique identity in terms of institutional characteristics and development strategy. As China shows more and more interest in building the architecture governing international investment, we suggest that improving investment governance at the bilateral, regional, and multilateral levels is the best strategy for China to adopt. Strategies that China should pursue include (1) accelerating the negotiation and revision of bilateral investment treaties (BITs); (2) promoting regional and sub-regional cooperation; and (3) contributing to the architecture governing global investment.     

The money demand and the loss of interest for the euro in Romania

We generalize a money demand micro-founded model to explain Romanians’ recent loss of interest for the euro. We show that the reason behind this loss of interest is a severe decline in the relative degree of the euro liquidity against that of the Romanian leu. Our empirical findings also suggest that the two currencies are rather complements than substitutes, providing thus evidence for a reduced level of monetary integration of Romania with the Euro area. These results put into question the interest for the euro adoption in the next period.     

Impact of economic uncertainty in a small open economy: the case of Chile

We construct the first news-based economic uncertainty index for Chile, which allowed us to rebuild 23 years of the history of economic uncertainty in the country and quantify its impact on the economy. We find that an increase in economic uncertainty conveys a fall in GDP, investment, and employment, even after accounting for the small open economy nature of Chile. In contrast to previous studies for big and developed economies, we do not find evidence of an overshooting effect when uncertainty dissipates; therefore, increases in economic uncertainty have negative effects on the economy, even in the long-run. Our estimates suggest that these impacts range from 10% to 20% for aggregate investment, 2.5% to 5% for GDP, and 1.3% to 4.2% for employment. Extensions suggest that economic uncertainty affects both mining and non-mining investment, with the former showing a more pronounced decline. We also find that the bulk of effect of economic uncertainty on aggregate investment is via private investment, with some short-run impacts on public investment. Moreover, compared to the GDP response, aggregate consumption responds in almost the same way to an economic uncertainty shock.     

Dynamics of volatility transmission between the U.S. and the Chinese agricultural futures markets

The U.S. and China are two of the biggest players in the world agricultural market. The literature documents that volatility in the U.S. agricultural futures market spills over significantly to that of China. This article provides further insights into the spillovers from China to the U.S. as well as the time horizon and dynamics of the bidirectional spillovers through the application of a multivariate extension of the heterogeneous autoregressive model, in relation to four commodities – soybean, wheat, corn and sugar. The results confirm the existence of significant spillovers from the U.S. to China for four commodities, which are primarily generated by the shorter-term volatility components in the U.S., and provide evidence for the increasing pricing power of the Chinese market. The findings are robust against various specifications and have important investment and policy implications.     

投资--中国经济增长的主动力

中国经济一直保持快速的增长势头。但通过对统计资料的分析可以看出,中国经济是明显的投资拉动型的发展模式,是一种靠要素的大量投入的“外延式”增长方式。本文分析了中国高投资的原因以及由此产生的弊端,指出了改革经济增长方式的迫切性。     

Chinese foreign direct investment in Australia: policy issues for the resource sector 1

The past 18 months have seen Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Australian resource sector become an issue of policy interest. There are two big questions that the prospects of a significant rise in FDI from China into the Australian resources sector have raised. Is the surge of FDI into Australian mining and energy consistent with achieving the traditional gains from foreign investment? And are there any particular problems associated with investment from foreign state-owned enterprises or state-managed sovereign wealth funds? These are among the questions addressed in this paper. The paper argues that there are no issues that cannot be dealt with under the umbrella of the established test of ‘national interest’ in managing the growth of Chinese FDI into the Australian minerals sector. It argues that a confusion has been introduced into policy over the questions of state ownership and supplier–buyer relations in respect of Chinese investments and that clarifying these issues is likely to be important to Australia's capturing the full benefits from the growth of Chinese resources demand and longer term economic and strategic interests in China.     

开放经济下我国财政政策的有效性分析

笔者通过对开放经济条件下财政政策有效性检验变量的确立,借助协整和因果检验方法,考察了财政政策整体及其构成措施的效力,并根据其表现和特点概括出现阶段我国财政政策执行的效果和原则。     

The political economy of state-level adoption of natural resource damage programs

U.S. states can implement programs to pursue damage recovery when firms cause natural resource damages (NRDs). We present new empirical evidence that such programs have effectively reduced oil spills in states that adopt them. However, only 34 states had implemented such programs by 2003. We analyze data on 50 states and the District of Columbia from 1980 to 2003 to ascertain the likely determinants of NRD program adoption. We find that states with many environmental accidents adopt programs more rapidly, while income and interest-group pressure have no significant impact on the process. While non-adopting states might benefit from such programs, at least NRD programs are being adopted most rapidly where they can do the most good.      

Forecasting the Australian economy with DSGE and BVAR models

Reflecting the importance of commodities for the Australian economy, we construct a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of the Australian economy with a commodity sector. We assess whether its forecasts can be improved by using it as a prior for an empirical Bayesian vector autoregression (BVAR). We find that the forecasts from the BVAR tend to be more accurate than those from the DSGE model. Nevertheless, for output growth these forecasts do not outperform benchmark models, such as a small open economy BVAR estimated using the standard priors for forecasting. A Bayesian factor augmented vector autoregression produces the most accurate near-term inflation forecasts.     

中国固定资产投资的影响因素分析

本文以古典投资理论、加速数理论、预期利润理论以及政治周期理论等相关投资理论为基础,分析了投资活动的决定因素,并结合我国实际建立了一个包括国民产出、利润率、利率和中央政府换届等多个解释变量的多元线性回归模型.本文采用1980-2009年期间中国的固定资产投资总额等相关数据,对各种投资理论假说进行实证检验.回归结果证实了投资与产出之间存在正相关关系,支持投资的加速数假说;估计结果还表明投资与利润率之间存在正相关关系,证实了投资的预期利润假说;但实际利率和中央领导换届这两个解释变量均未通过显著性检验.研究还发现我国的投资富有产出弹性远大于利润率弹性,最后就政府调节投资水平给出相应的政策含义.     

基于资源消耗的中国城市规模研究

本文首先构建了城市规模-资源消耗理论模型,然后利用变截距模型对我国1996-2005年的面板数据进行分析.结果显示:我国的城市规模一资源消耗经验模型为正N型曲线,最优城市规模为1060万人.适度城市规模是400-600万人和1000-1200万人.进一步对分区域的模型进行比较发现:东部经验模型是单调递减直线,中、西部都是正N形曲线.除部分省会城市外,我国大部分城市正处于资源消耗上升阶段,不利于资源的可持续利用,要求在城市化过程中要强调集约化的内涵发展,以缓解资源对可持续发展的制约.     

投资、投资效率与投资制度:文献视角的探讨

本文从文献角度对投资相关研究进行了概括性地描述与讨论,将现有的研究概括为研究视角、研究方法和投资环境等几个方面,着重分析了投资计量模型发展的内在逻辑关系和以我国为对象的转轨经济投资研究.鉴于目前对投资制度理论研究较少,论文探讨性地分析了利用演进博弈分析转轨投资制度的可能性,并对CES生产函数特征进行了解析,说明了借用其对转轨投资制度效率进行实证分析的可能性.     

中国世界遗产地投融资状况刍议

世界遗产是人类历史发展的活化石,是大自然赐给我们的瑰宝。然而人类在开发利用世界遗产的过程中,却面临着非常严重的融资困境。就当前中国世界遗产地在投融资中存在的问题进行了剖析,并结合国外在世界遗产投融资中的成功经验,提出了自己的看法。     

东西部地区经济增长路径比较研究--基于储蓄投资转化视角的实证分析

由于东、西部地区原有的经济基础不同，因而经济体制市场化改革和对外开放的时序、广度和深度不同。金融机构的效率和金融市场的发育程度也不同．使得东、西部地区在储蓄——投资转化的各个环节均存在一定的差异．最终导致了二者在经济增长速度和持续性上始终存在一定的差距。     

Constitutions and the resource curse

Utilizing the fact that natural resources are randomly distributed among countries, we investigate how public income shocks have different long run economic effects dependent on constitutional arrangements. We find that (i) the so-called ‘resource curse’ is present in democratic presidential countries—but not in democratic parliamentary countries, (ii) being parliamentary or presidential matters more for the growth effects of natural resources than being democratic or autocratic, and (iii) natural resources are more likely to reduce growth when proportional electoral systems are in place than when the electoral systems are majoritarian. The two first effects appear very robust, the last effect less so.     

Open innovation and intellectual property strategy: the catch-up processes of two Chinese pharmaceutical firms

We explore the interaction of open innovation and intellectual property (IP) in two Chinese latecomer pharmaceutical firms in their catch-up process. Studying archival data, documentation, and interviews, we found that the two firms exhibited five periods that were characterised by different open innovation activities and R&D capabilities. In their early stages, the two firms lacked R&D functions; thus, they imported technologies and pursued production-oriented strategies. As they gradually entered into collaborations and established their R&D departments, open innovation and IP protection played important and dynamic roles in this process. Thus, a catch-up process involves not only acquiring technological capabilities and innovative competencies but also transforming a firm's capacity to strategies.     

Thermodynamic implications for natural resource extraction and technical change in U.S. copper mining

Motivated by the lack of integrated approaches that do justice to both the thermodynamic and economic aspects of natural resource use and the lack of empirical studies combining the two disciplines, this paper provides an integrated framework for the valuation of technologies, substitution and technical change. The paper determines empirically the relationships between thermodynamic states of materials and the use of high-quality energy sources for the case of copper mining in the United States. The empirical analysis provides the basis for a nonlinear dynamic simulation of optimal resource extraction and endogenous technical change in the light of changing resource quality. The study assesses the potential for future improvements in U.S. copper mining.     

A Measurement of the Contribution Made by Foreign Investment to Chinese Economy

The author uses the statistics from 1981 to 2002 to perform a logarithmic regression analysis on the contribution made by foreign investment to Chinese economy. The measurement shows that the following effects on Chinese economy are brought by large amount of foreign investment： 1） Foreign investment, as an important investment source, boosts the increase of the stock of production factors and improves the supplying potentials of Chinese economy. 2） The application of foreign investment speeds the rapid growth of the total production value and the increases the value of Chinese industry. 3） Foreign investment changes the employment structure of Chinese labor force. 4） The tax in China, to some extent, owes its growth to the adoption of foreign investment.