Pooled Mean Group Estimation of the Bilateral Trade Balance Equation: USA vis‐à‐vis her Trading Partners

The autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL), even though it distinguishes between the short run and the long run effect, allows both the intercepts and slopes to vary across countries. Static panel estimations, such as fixed‐effects estimation (FE), cannot distinguish between the short run and the long run behavior. To address the issue of short run heterogeneity as well as long run homogeneity of the estimated coefficients in a panel framework, the pooled mean group (PMG) estimator has gained popularity since 1999. In this paper, we estimate the bilateral trade balance model for the USA vis‐à‐vis her 19 OECD trading partners for the period 1973q1–2004q4 using the PMG estimator and find that PMG performs better than ARDL, FE, and MG estimators and provides significant and theoretically consistent results.     

Is there a Core of Macroeconomics that Euro Area Forecasters Believe In?

The quantity theory of money, Okun's law, and the Phillips curve are cornerstones of macroeconomic theory. But are they also of practical relevance? Using survey data for the euro area, we found that professional economists’ forecasts are consistent with a version of the quantity theory in which forecasts of the growth rate of money supply correlate in a proportional way with forecasts of the inflation rate. We also found that forecasts of changes in the unemployment rate and forecasts of the growth rate of real output are consistent with Okun's law. Evidence of a systematic link between forecasts of the inflation rate and forecasts of the unemployment rate, however, is not strong.     

Financial development and financial openness nexus: the precondition of banking competition

We examine the dynamic relationship between financial development and financial openness using the pooled mean group estimator developed by Pesaran et al. (1999). Our results show that financial openness has a positive effect on financial development in the long run, but may have a negative effect in the short run. Using estimates of country-specific short-run coefficients, we also find that the adverse short-run effects of financial openness are associated with a lower degree of banking competition. The system GMM estimator also supports these findings, suggesting that the financial development and financial openness nexus is contingent on the degree of banking competition. A key policy implication is that a higher degree of banking competition is a precondition for financial openness to promote financial development.     

Monetary policy effectiveness and stock market cycles in ASEAN-5

This article examines the asymmetric effects of monetary policy on real output in bull and bear phases of stock market in five ASEAN economies (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand) using the recently developed pooled mean group (PMG) technique. Stock market cycles are identified by employing Markov switching models and the rule-based nonparametric approach. Estimating the models using monthly data from 1991:1 to 2011:12, the results show that monetary policy (measured by short-term interest rate) has a negative and statistically significant long-run effect on real output in bull and bear market periods while the effects are stronger in bear periods than bulls. In the short run, there is no statistically significant relationship between monetary policy and real output. These results are consistent with finance constraints (capital market imperfection) models that predict that monetary policy is more effective during bear periods than bulls.     

Do economic sanctions affect protectionism? Evidence from agricultural support

The objective of this paper is to examine whether economic sanctions contribute to influencing the target countries’ protectionist policies in the agricultural sector. Using pooled mean group estimations in a dynamic heterogeneous panel setting, we find robust empirical evidence that, in the long‐run, economic sanctions decrease agricultural protection in the target counties, and this effect is mitigated by the wealth of the target's economy. However, the relationship is insignificant in the short run. Furthermore, our results also suggest that the impact of sanctions on agricultural protection (a) increases with the severity of economic sanctions, (b) is greater for multilateral sanctions than unilateral sanctions, and (c) is more severe on agricultural protection when sanctions span a longer duration.     

How should Engel's law be formulated?

Engel's law expresses a “negative stochastic association” of income and the proportion of income that is spent on food. However, there are many quite different notions of “negative stochastic association” and consequently there are different ways of defining Engel's law. We relate these different concepts to Engel's original statistical analysis and show that one must give credit to Engel for the first non-parametric statistical analysis of budget-data.     

Bibliometrics-based evaluation of the Blockchain research trend: 2008 – March 2017

The aim of this study is to review the literature growth and author productivity of Blockchain technology research from 2008 to March 2017. 801 articles were retrieved from Scopus database and analyzed with bibliometrics approach using different perspective views. The author productivity was derived using the Lotka’s law and K-S test was performed to verify the reliability. The result indicates that the number of literatures on Blockchain is still increasing. Three stages of Blockchain research change were discovered. In 2008 to 2013, the topics were related to the Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies; in 2014 to 2015, the number of Bitcoin literatures grew rapidly; after 2016, a lot of researchers are paying attention to the techniques of Blockchain and smart contract. Moreover, the distribution of author productivity meets the study of Lotka. This study presents state-of-the-art and abstract the trend of Blockchain research regarding several perspectives of bibliometrics analysis.     

Financialisation and Real Investment in the European Union: Beneficial or Prejudicial Effects?

This article presents an empirical analysis of the relationship between financialisation and real investment for non-financial corporations using panel data composed of 27 European Union countries over 19 years (1995 to 2013). On the one hand, financialisation leads to a rise in financial investments, diverting funds from real investments (‘crowding out’ effect); on the other, pressures from shareholders to intensify financial payments restrict the funds available for new real investments. We estimate an aggregate investment equation with the traditional variables (lagged investment, profitability, debt, cost of capital, corporate savings and output growth) and two further measures of financialisation (financial receipts and financial payments). The findings demonstrate that financialisation has damaged real investment in European Union countries, mainly through the channel of financial payments, either by interest or dividend payments. It is also found that the prejudicial effects of financialisation on investment were more severe in the pre-2007 crisis period. It is concluded that financialisation contributed to a slowdown of real investment by 1 to 8 per cent in the full and pre-crisis period, respectively. During the pre-crisis period, financialisation was the main driver of the slowdown of investment in the European Union.     

东北亚国家出口多样化与经济增长的关系——基于动态面板数据的系统GMM估计

利用1996—2010年东北亚国家的贸易数据,验证了出口多样化与人均GDP之间的关系,并采用系统广义矩方法建立动态面板数据模型,估计了出口多样化对经济增长的贡献。结果表明:就东北亚单个国家而言,出口多样化与人均GDP之间呈U型变动关系,但就东北亚整体而言,这种U型关系并不明显;从东北亚国家的经验来看,出口多样化对经济增长具有积极作用;目前我国出口正处于从多样化向集中化转变的上升阶段,尚未达到U型曲线的拐点。     

Should Bangladesh Export to Countries with Better Institutional or Comparatively Similar Institutional Form?

Using panel data for the years 2006–2015, this study empirically investigates the effect of rule of law as an institution on Bangladesh's exports to 28 European Union countries (EU28) based on gravity model analysis. Two-step econometric results suggest that institutional rule of law is strongly associated with Bangladesh's exports, and institutional quality provides evidence of this significant effect. Furthermore, exports of Bangladesh are driven by economic size, market size, and the real exchange rate as well as rule of law. These results are suggestive of an important joint role for both trade and institutions in the long run.     

ROLLING REGRESSION VERSUS TIME‐VARYING COEFFICIENT MODELLING: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE OKUN'S LAW IN SOME EURO AREA COUNTRIES

During the last decade, economists have shown that the inverse relationship between economic growth and unemployment rate varies over time. Rolling regression has been the main tool used to quantify such a relationship. This methodology suffers from several well‐known problems which lead to spurious non‐linear patterns in the Okun's coefficient behaviour over time. Here, we take a penalized regression spline approach to estimate the Okun's time‐varying effects. As a result, spurious non‐linearities are suppressed and hence important time‐varying coefficient features revealed. Our empirical results show that the inverse relationship in some Euro area countries is spatially heterogeneous and time‐varying. The findings are complemented by the calculation of the rate of output growth needed for a stable unemployment rate, as proposed by Knotek.     

Explaining divorce rate determinants: new evidence from Spain

This article examines the main determinants of divorce rates in Spain for the period 1995 to 2010. According to the results, the so-called Express Divorce Law (passed in 2005) seems to be positively associated with divorce rates in the short term. Income level and growth, female employment rate, and the proportion of foreign population are also positively related to divorce rates. However, as expected, the percentage of conservative vote seems to have a negative impact.     

The hot hand fallacy re-examined: new evidence from the English Premier League

Previous studies have illustrated human misperceptions of randomness and resultant suboptimal decision-making with reference to the ‘hot hand’ or momentum effect in sport, the notion of serial dependency between outcomes. However, issues of omitted variables bias have plagued many due to a reliance on nonparametric techniques or basic regression models. This article examines across-game and within-game momentum in the English Premier League (EPL) football competition using fixed effects regressions to control for time-invariant heterogeneity in conjunction with traditional nonparametric techniques. Although the results show evidence of performance reversal following winning streaks, no such evidence is found for streaks of draws or losses or in goal-scoring performance within games. This suggests that momentum is better suited as a post hoc label of performance than a robust causal phenomenon.