How Bad is Corruption? Cross‐country Evidence of the Impact of Corruption on Economic Prosperity

Most people today would argue that corruption is bad for countries' economic development. Yet, we still lack a reliable empirical estimate of the effect. This study addresses the econometric shortcomings of the literature and provides an estimate of the causal impact of corruption on gross domestic product per capita across countries. Certain dimensions of a country's culture are used as instruments for corruption. These instruments stay strong when the other deep determinants of economic development, geography, and the remaining dimensions of institutions and culture are controlled for. In the process of choosing controls, however, the entire set of variables available in the Quality of Governance online database (QOG) that includes all central variables from the literature on institutions and culture are included. It is found that corruption does exert a significant and negative impact on countries' productivity levels.     

How does financial development influence the impact of remittances on growth volatility?

This paper empirically examines how financial development influences the impact of remittances on GDP growth volatility. This empirical study is conducted using the panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) approach. The results show that the impact of remittances on GDP growth volatility is nonlinear and changes over time and across countries in function of financial development. More precisely, a high level of financial development helps remittances to have a high stabilizing impact. Therefore, public authorities in remittance recipient countries might implement policies that promote the financial sector in order to allow a high stabilizing impact of remittances.     

How Do Neighbors Influence Investment in Social Capital? Homeownership and Length of Residence

This paper uses individual data from Japan to explore how the circumstances of where a person resides is related to the degree of their investment in social capital. Controlling for unobserved area-specific fixed effects and various individual characteristics, I found (1) not only that homeownership and length of residence are positively related to investment in social capital, but also that rates of homeownership and long-time residency in a locality increase an individual’s investments in social capital. Also, (2) the effects of local neighborhood homeownership and local length of residence are distinctly larger than those of an individual’s homeownership or length of residence.     

Federal TAX Competition – How does the Institutional Structure of a Country change Tax Outcomes?

The interrelations of taxation and federal structure have been extensively analysed from various perspectives. The present paper looks at two competing countries of different institutional structures. It examines how the tax rates set at each level of both countries vary in a given setting, when a federal and a unitary country compete for mobile tax base, or both countries are organised as federations. The paper discusses whether or not tax rates set in every jurisdiction will be too high or too low in equilibrium. The externalities triggered by a tax regime change are analysed and the respective impact on revenues is considered. The results essentially hinge on the relative strategic interaction of tax rates, as well as the elasticity of the tax base with respect to the tax rate.     

Does the Degree of Development Matter in the Impact of Banking Crises on International Trade?

This paper analyzes how a country's degree of economic development affects the impact of banking crises on international trade. To this end, we estimate a gravity model of trade using a sample of 139 countries over the period 1975–2012. Our results show that middle income countries are generally the most negatively affected. In contrast, financial turmoil appears to have less impact on bilateral trade flows among high income countries and, more specially, among low income nations. The level of financial development, contract enforcement, as well as the extent of the use of banking credit within international trade all help to explain our findings.     

How does leverage in stock market influence the margin of stock index futures?

In this article, we propose a margin-setting model under the assumption of extreme stock price changes. Specifically, extreme stock price changes are caused by the positive feedback effect of leverage and market impact. By introducing these factors into the futures price changes through a cost-of-carry model for setting the margin of stock index futures, we find that leverage and market impact in stock market are positively correlated with the margin.     

How does the design of international environmental agreements affect investment in environmentally-friendly technology?

In this paper, we investigate how the design of international environmental agreements (IEAs) affects the incentives for the private sector to invest in environmentally-friendly technology. The givens are a transboundary pollution problem involving two asymmetric countries in terms of benefits arising from global abatement. There is a single polluting firm in each country. We account for two types of IEAs: an agreement based on a uniform standard with transfers and an agreement based on differentiated standards without transfers. To carry out this study, we use a two-stage game where the private sector anticipates its irreversible investment given the expected level of abatement standards resulting from future negotiations. Our findings indicate that the implementation of the agreement based on a uniform standard with transfers may be preferable for the two countries, as it creates greater incentives for firms to invest in costly abatement technology. This result arises when this technology’s level of the sunk cost of investment is low. If this level is sufficiently high, the implementation of the same agreement is not beneficial to countries, because it takes away the incentive of each firm to invest in new abatement technology. Moreover, this agreement is not able to generate any positive gains for either country through cooperation, thus no country is motivated to cooperate.     

How justified is abandoning money in the conduct of monetary policy in Australia on the grounds of instability in the money‐demand function?

The role of money in the design and conduct of monetary policy has reemerged as an important issue in both advanced and developing economies, especially since the 2007 global financial crisis. A growing body of recent literature suggests that the causal relationship between money supply growth and inflation remains intact across countries and over time and that this relation is not conditional on the stability of the money‐demand function or whether money is endogenous or exogenous. Moreover, critical for a rule‐based monetary policy is the presence of a long‐run stable money‐demand function, rather than a short‐run money‐demand model that may exhibit instability for many reasons, including problems with estimating a money‐demand model with high‐frequency data. Provided that a stable money‐demand function exists, it could be useful to establish long‐run equilibrium relations among money, output, prices, and exchange rates, as the classical monetary theory suggests. Within this analytical framework, this paper addresses the question of whether money has any role in the conduct of monetary policy in Australia. The conventional wisdom is that the money‐demand function in Australia has been unstable since the mid‐1980s due to financial deregulation and reforms; this led to a change in the strategy of monetary policy for price stability in the form of inflation targeting that ignores money insofar as inflation and its control are concerned. This paper reports empirical findings for Australia, obtained from a longer quarterly data series over the period 1960Q1–2015Q1, which suggest that instability in the narrow‐money‐demand function in Australia was primarily due to the exclusion of variables which have become important in the deregulated environment since the 1980s. These findings are confirmed by an expanded form of the narrow‐money‐demand function that was found stable over the past two decades, although it experienced multiple structural breaks over the study period. The paper draws the conclusion that abandoning the monetary aggregate as an instrument of monetary policy in Australia, under a rule‐based monetary policy such as inflation targeting, cannot be justified by instability in the money‐demand function or even by lack of a causal link between money supply growth and inflation.     

How much does money really matter? Estimating the causal effects of income on happiness

There is a long tradition of psychologists finding small income effects on life satisfaction (or happiness). Yet the issue of income endogeneity in life satisfaction equations has rarely been addressed. The present paper is an attempt to estimate the causal effect of income on happiness. Instrumenting for income and allowing for unobserved heterogeneity result in an estimated income effect that is almost twice as large as the estimate in the basic specification. The results call for a reexamination on previous findings that suggest money buys little happiness, and a reevaluation on how the calculation of compensatory packages to various shocks in the individual’s life events should be designed.     

Empirical Examination of the Effects of Competition and Regulation on Public Universities and Colleges＇ Performance in China

Competition and regulation are indispensable entities for a university＇s improved performance. Using university rating as an index to performance, empirical analyses with the data from 145 public universities and colleges in China show that increased competition in the education service market is associated with higher university＇s （college＇s） performance. And increased competition in R＆D may make a quadratic effect on university＇s （college＇s） performance. University＇s performance improves when a university is directed as a branch of the central government because they enjoy some degree of management flexibility more than the local government controlled ones. A major implication of the study is the need to reform competition and regulation for improving universities and colleges＇ operating performance in China.     

How does leverage affect R&D intensity and how does R&D intensity impact on firm value in South Korea?

We examine how leverage affects corporate research and development (R&D) intensity, as well as examine the impact of R&D on firm value in South Korea, a country in which corporate-funded R&D intensity is one of the highest in the world. Among our main results, we find that growth opportunities have a positive effect on R&D intensity, while leverage has a negative effect on R&D intensity. When leverage is at an extremely high level, the relationship between growth opportunities and R&D intensity turns from positive to negative. Using instrumental variables, we find that R&D generates an increase in firm value.     

Analyzing the Interaction of Monetary and Fiscal Policy: Does Fiscal Policy Play a Valuable Role in Stabilisation?

This paper provides an overview of recent papers which use estimatedNew Keynesian models to study the extent to which fiscal policycan be used to stabilize the economy. We use a variety of differentNew Keynesian models, estimated on data for both the US andfor the Euro area, and highlight the diverse transmission channelsthrough which fiscal policy acts in these models. Although wefind that fiscal policy can provide a useful complement to monetarypolicy, especially in models where consumers have finite horizons,there are important limitations to the value added of fiscalpolicy. (JEL E58, E62, E63)     

Do Financial and Institutional Variables Enhance the Impact of Remittances on Economic Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean? A Panel Cointegration Analysis

Using recently developed panel unit root and panel cointegration tests and the Fully-Modified OLS methodology (FMOLS), this paper estimates the impact of remittances on the economic growth of selected upper and lower income Latin American & Caribbean (LAC) countries over the 1990–2007 period. Despite the large flow of remittances to the region, there have been relatively few empirical studies assessing the impact of remittances on economic growth in LAC. Panel unit root tests suggest that several of the macro variables included in the model exhibit unit roots, yet, at the same time, Pedroni’s panel cointegration test determined that there is a cointegrating relationship among the variables in the estimated model. The FMOLS estimates suggest that remittances have a positive and significant effect on economic growth in both groups of countries. The estimates also indicate that both the degree of economic freedom and credit provided by the banking system have a positive and significant effect on economic growth in upper (middle) income LAC countries. The sign of the interaction term between remittances and the credit (and EFI) variables suggest that remittances act as substitutes for these variables. Finally, the effect of remittances on both sets of countries is stronger in the presence of a financial (credit) variable.     

How did it all begin? Adam Smith on the early and rude state of society and the age of hunters

Abstract

Scholars tend to examine Smith's historical approach as a whole from the perspective of the four stages theory. This leads to a neglect of Smith's ability to use history in different ways as his different purposes require. This article distinguishes Smith's recourse to primitive society with respect to his purposes in Wealth of Nations and in Lectures on Jurisprudence. In the former, Smith analyses the capitalist economy, thereby laying emphasis on capital and the division of labour in his account of wealth. In the latter, he explains the evolution of institutions in order to challenge contractarian accounts of government.     

How does historical trauma affect political participation? Evidence from the send‐down movement in China

Taking advantage of China's send‐down movement as a natural experiment, we investigate how experiencing a political movement during adolescence affects political participation decades later. Using data from the China Family Panel Survey and the regression discontinuity design, we find that the send‐down experience significantly reduces individuals’ political participation, measured by their participation in community committee elections, time spent on community service activities and how much they care about public news. Further analysis suggests that the send‐down experience negatively affects political participation through poorer mental health and less trust in local government.     

Breaker of Barriers? Notes on the Geopolitics of the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham

In the last two years, the so-called “Islamic State in Iraq and Sham” has transformed the Syrian Civil War, effecting serious confrontations in Iraq and Lebanon, dismantling security regimes along the Iraq-Syria border, and causing the mass exodus of ethno-religious communities across the region. These dramatic events are often interpreted through the official rhetoric of the group itself, which draws on discourses of the “Sykes-Picot” conspiracy and narratives of returning to Islamic principles. Tempting though it is to deconstruct such rhetoric on its own, efforts in this direction have over-emphasised its Islamic and territorial elements to the detriment of a deeper understanding of the locally varying, strategic nature of ISIS’s activities in the Middle East. Accordingly, this paper considers how local interests articulate with ISIS’s transnational movement, looking at their activities along the border region of Syria, Iraq, and Turkey. It begins with a discourse analysis of one important narrative in early analysis of ISIS’s “border-breaking” rhetoric, the narrative of Sykes-Picot, before laying out how geographers have engaged with the geopolitics of radical Islamist militant groups more generally. Then drawing on a combination of secondary sources and ethnographic fieldwork in Turkey and Jordan, it elaborates how the politics of place shapes ISIS’s political practice, using the example of the Syrian-Iraqi borderland (the Jazirah). In doing so, I hope to emphasise the relative importance of historical-geographic context over discourse and narrative for understanding the actions of ISIS.     

How Do Political Factors Shape the Bank Risk–Sovereign Risk Nexus in Emerging Markets?

This paper studies the role of political factors for determining the impact of banking sector distress on sovereign bond yield spreads for a sample of 19 emerging market economies in the period 1994–2013. Using interaction models, I find that the adverse impact of banking sector distress on sovereign solvency is less pronounced for countries with a high degree of political stability, a high level of power sharing within the government coalition, a low level of political constraint within the political system, and for countries run by powerful and effective governments. The electoral cycle pronounces the bank risk–sovereign risk transfer.     

Does it Matter Who You Sign With? Comparing the Impacts of North–South and South–South Trade Agreements on Bilateral Trade

Free trade agreements (FTAs) lead to a rise in bilateral trade regardless of whether the signatories are developed or developing countries. Furthermore, the percentage increase in bilateral trade is higher for South–South agreements than for North–South agreements. The results are robust across a number of gravity model specifications in which we control for the endogeneity of FTAs (with bilateral fixed effects) and also take account of multilateral resistance in both estimation (with country‐time fixed effects) and comparative statics (analytically). Our analytical model shows that multilateral resistance dampens the impact of FTAs on trade by less in South–South agreements than in North–South agreements, which accentuates the difference implied by our gravity model coefficients, and that this difference becomes larger as the number of signatories rises. For example, allowing for lags and multilateral resistance, a four‐country North–South agreement raises bilateral trade by 53% while the analogous South–South impact is 107%.     

Long swing in appreciation and short swing in depreciation and does the market not know it?—the case of Taiwan

This paper finds an asymmetric swing in Taiwan's exchange rate. In contrast to the developed countries, whose exchange rates exhibit long swings in both appreciation and depreciation regimes, the long swing only exists in an appreciation regime for Taiwan. A short swing, however, is found during a depreciation regime in Taiwan. These results may reflect to some extent the central bank's preference, which is to have a let‐it‐go policy during depreciation and a slowdown policy in appreciation. In addition, it may simply reflect the Japanese yen's influences.