Cultural values and public policy: The case of international development aid

This paper investigates whether the quantity and character of aggregate expenditures on foreign aid by donor governments are related to the cultural values held by the people of the donor countries. In particular, we study whether any association exists between three measures of donors’ foreign aid expenditures and two dimensions of culture. We find that the shares of national income governments spend on aid, the proportion of total aid provided in the form of grants, and the proportion of aid directed to humanitarian relief are all related in statistically significant and quantitatively important ways to the location of the cultural values of people in the donor countries on two continua, one from “traditional” to “rational” beliefs about social organization and authority, and the other from “survival” to “self-expression” as the focus of individual aspirations. These results contribute to our understanding of the political economy of aid, and to a growing literature on how culture shapes economic policies, institutions, and performance.     

On the simultaneity problem in the aid and growth debate

This paper shows that foreign aid has a significant positive average effect on real per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth if, and only if, the quantitatively large negative reverse causal effect of per capita GDP growth on foreign aid is adjusted for in the growth regression. Instrumental variables estimates show that a 1 percentage point increase in GDP per capita growth decreased foreign aid by over 4%. Adjusting for this quantitatively large, negative reverse causal effect of economic growth on foreign aid shows that a 1% increase in foreign aid increased real per capita GDP growth by around 0.1 percentage points. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Youth unemployment and terrorism in the MENAP (Middle East,North Africa,Afghanistan, and Pakistan) region

This paper builds on existing research investigating the root causes of terrorism by considering youth unemployment as a measure of economic deprivation. In particular, the study focuses on terrorism in Middle Eastern and North African (MENAP) countries and features terrorism incident count data for the period 1998–2012 using negative binomial regression models. In our exogenous model, we find that while youth unemployment tends to increase domestic terrorism, it does not have any significant effect on transnational terrorism. Given concerns about endogeneity of youth unemployment in these models, we use two kinds of corrections-instrumental variables and lagged variables. We control for endogeneity by using military expenditure, under-five mortality rate and foreign direct investment as instruments. We are not able to reject the null hypothesis that youth unemployment is exogenous. Using lagged variables, we find a similar result as noted in the exogenous specifications with regard to the effect of youth unemployment on domestic and transnational terrorism. We also find evidence that domestic terrorism tends to have a positive relationship with press freedom, religious and linguistic fractionalization, and area of the country. Transnational terrorism has a positive association with the quality of democracy and a negative association with political stability and regulatory quality. The amount of natural resources tends to be negatively associated with domestic terrorism and positively associated with transnational terrorism.     

Foreign inflows and economic growth: An emiprical study of the SAARC region

The study examines and highlights the impact of selected foreign inflows (aid, trade, FDI, debt and remittances) on the economic growth of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries. The existent literature lacks a comprehensive analysis of the SAARC countries as countries like Afghanistan, Bhutan and the Maldives have largely been ignored due to the shorter time periods of available data. The study is empirical in nature and utilizes panel data techniques on macroeconomic data for the period 2008–2015. Foreign aid and foreign direct investment are found to impact economic growth positively. Foreign debt and trade flows are found to adversely affect economic growth. No relationship is established between the flow of remittances and the economic growth of these countries. The obtained results are robust to different proxy variables and the addition of macroeconomic variables. For the first time, the study provides policy implications based on the data of all SAARC countries. The study recommends focusing on increasing the inflows of resources in the form of aid and foreign direct investment (FDI) from the developed world to achieve higher economic growth.     

Political Variables in Cross-country Growth Analysis

The recent boom in cross-country growth analysis has renewed the empirical interest in political sources of economic growth. A large number of studies have tested political variables in growth regressions and a very heterogenous set of variables has been proposed to measure economically relevant differences in the political systems of countries. This paper distinguishes five categories of relevant political variables: democracy, government stability, political violence, policy volatility, and subjective perception of politics. For each of these categories, the specification, testing method, and results of the most relevant studies are presented and are critically discussed. The paper concludes that measures of democracy are least successful and measures of policy volatility and subjective perception of politics most successful as explanatory variables in cross-country growth regressions.     

The Foundations of Rapid Economic Growth

A bstract The fast pace of economic growth of the East Asian nations known as the " Four Tigers "– South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore –has become a legend It is usually claimed that the export-oriented industrialization (EOI) strategy was the basic cause of that rapid growth However, it is contended that the growth strategy of these countries was the result of certain unique historical and geo-political factors The colonial government had created the necessary infrastructure and international linkages which set the stage for initiating the EOI strategy Furthermore, because of the political support accorded to them from foreign governments, these countries, with the exception of Hong Kong, excluded major oppositional groups from sharing political power, and thus they were able to pursue effectively growth and export-oriented policies South Korea and Taiwan also received a large amount of foreign aid from the U S This aid, and the fact the U S laid open its huge market for cheaper Asian exports without insisting on reciprocity , prepared the conditions for export-led growth in those countries     

Assessing the economic knowledge and economic opinions of adults

This study investigates public knowledge of basic economics and public opinion on economic issues. The primary data sources are five national surveys, administered from 1992 to 1999, which contain a rich set of questions to conduct multiple tests and comparisons of the factors that affect economic knowledge and public opinion. As a whole, the results offer significantly stronger evidence of factors that influence knowledge and opinion than is possible from a study of a particular sample of adults using a single set of survey questions.The analysis proceeds in two ways following methods that were originally used with one of the five data sets, a 1992 survey of adults (Walstad, 1997). First, a regression model is specified and estimated with each data set to identify how personal characteristics, general education, course work in economics, income, and political party affect economic knowledge. Second, probit analysis is used to evaluate the effect of economic knowledge on public opinion on selected economic issues after controlling for the above variables. The results from the 1992 data serve as the baseline for comparing the findings across the other surveys.     

Restricting capital outflow

According to the “Capital Asset Pricing Model”, an individual can increase his utility by diversifying his capital across countries. If that is the case, then why do governments impose restrictions on capital outflow? This paper argues that foreign owners of capital have less political power than domestic ones and therefore capital liberalization weakens the political power that protects capital, increases the taxation of capital and thus reduces total investment. Indeed, most of the empirical evidence suggests that capital liberalization is positively correlated with government expenditure, social security spending and corporate taxation.     

The path to renewable energy consumption in the European Union through drivers and barriers: A panel vector autoregressive approach

Renewable energy consumption brings sustainable economic growth and pollution reduction. Despite the worldwide increase in renewable energy consumption, global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions are rising and there are still considerable differences in the share of renewable energy consumption in national energy portfolios. These concerns require further effort at the policy level, especially by countries that make extensive use of energy imports. These countries could improve their lack of energy independence by using renewable energy sources and leveraging a few factors to facilitate their transition. This study aims to investigate renewable energy consumption drivers, focusing on the role of socio-technical (rather than economic) aspects such as policy stringency, lobbying, public awareness, and education. We employ a panel vector autoregressive model in first differences to test the complex dynamic relationships among renewable energy consumption, policy stringency, lobbying, public awareness, and education, controlling for variables such as per capita income and import levels, for 12 European Union net energy importing countries. Results show that the positive income effect prevails in the influence of the level of carbon dioxide emissions (negative) on renewable energy consumption, despite the latter being more significant in countries with higher levels of education. Increasing energy needs push traditional sources towards complementarity with renewable energy consumption, implying a positive lobbying effect. Public awareness is not enough to facilitate the transition to renewable energy consumption. By contrast, policy stringency has positive direct and indirect effects on renewable energy consumption, suggesting that the approach adopted by the European Commission in the recent Green Deal is a step in the right direction. Moreover, as shown, policymakers are able, through renewable energy consumption, to generate a decrease in carbon dioxide emissions and electricity production from oil, gas, coal, and nuclear sources in the first instance, but also in net energy imports, even if at a later stage.     

Iterative pricing for planning foreign trade

In many industrialized countries there exist large idle production capacities. Conceivably, these might be used for increased economic aid to developing countries and for the stimulation of trade with incompletely convertible currency territories. Concurrently, a stimulation of the economic development of the industrialized countries might be achieved. In developing countries, there may be need for using available export resources in an efficient way to obtain required imports. In the Soviet sphere of influence, there is the problem of how the state foreign trade monopolies should allocate available export quantities and scarce convertible currencies, so as to obtain required import quantities. Related problems were encountered by Western boards of trade after the war in allocating import and export licences. This paper deals with the problem how to attain efficient allocations in foreign trade with the help of modern electronic computational technique. The computational system may be developed to account for inter-industry relations and industrial investments in order to achieve a high rate of economic growth. Editor's note: This is the first of a series of articles on foreign trade planning scheduled to appear inEconomics of Planning, 1963. The author wants to express his sincere gratitude to Professors Gunnar Myrdal, G?ran Ohlin, Ragnar Frisch and Aron Yakovlevich Boyarskij for generous scientific support and criticism; to Dr. Ketternath Bhagwandin, Gunnar Ehrling, and Lars Nilsson for advice in connection with the computer program and for the generous grant of computing time by the Swedish Board for Computing Machinery.     

谈发达国家的对外直接投资

伴随着全球经济一体化和投资自由化程度的进一步加深,对外直接投资的深度和广度不断增加,而且长期以来发达国家在这一领域一直占据了主导地位。本文通过分析发达国家的对外直接投资情况,从中总结我国对外直接投资发展过程中可以学习的经验,希望为我国对外直接投资的发展提供建议。     

管理贸易的政治市场供求分析

一国贸易政策的制定不仅要考虑国与国之间的政治、经济关系,而且还要考虑国内公众、利益集团、政府等行为主体间的政治、经济关系.管理贸易既是一种贸易理论,也是一种贸易政策、贸易体制.在一些经济学家建立的贸易政策的政治供求基本模型基础上对管理贸易从政治需求、供给、均衡的角度进行分析后发现,一国的政治和社会体制对管理贸易政策有一定的决定作用,而一国管理贸易政策也会对该国的政治有一定影响,管理贸易政策与政治利益是相互作用、密不可分的.     

USAID,official development assistance and counter terrorism efforts: Pre and post 9/11 analysis for South Asia

The 9/11 terrorist attacks in United States and the subsequent declaration of war on terror have upturned worldwide issues including terrorist attacks, fatalities, disbursement of foreign aid and development assistance. Since 9/11 attacks, US economic and military aids and official development assistance have played a vital role in the South Asian region. Present study is the pioneer to examine the reaction of different types of foreign aid toward counter-terrorism policies. For this purpose, the paper used annual data of studied factors for the period 1991 to 2016 and employed three models as preferred and full specification, pre and post 9/11 analysis and financial crisis analysis. For econometric estimations, the study used quantile regression method, negative binomial regression, system GMM and two stage IV regression techniques with different control variables. Accordingly, the study documented that all types of foreign aid namely; development assistance, economic aid, military aid fuels terrorism in recipient countries, due to institutional problems or ongoing civil conflicts. We also find evidence that military expenditures and media freedom tends to have negative relationship on terrorism.     

AGRICULTURAL POLICY AS A SOCIAL ENGINEERING TOOL: A NEW JERSEY CASE STUDY

This study uses logistic regression to examine the preferences for social engineering policies in the agricultural sector in a New Jersey case study. It finds that farm operators are unlikely to support a policy allowing countries to restrict trade to pursue domestic economic and social policy goals if the policies affect international trade. In particular, it suggests that farm operators with annual gross sales including government payments between $500 000 and $999 999 are 80 percent less likely to indicate such a preference. Farm operators with advanced degrees, some college education, and a high school diploma are also unlikely to indicate such a preference. In contrast, farm operators who receive no income from farming or ranching and those who receive a percentage of family income from farming or ranching indicate that countries should be allowed to restrict trade to pursue domestic economic and social policy goals even if the policies affect international trade.     

Are financial spreads useful indicators of future inflation and output growth in EU countries?

This paper seeks to address the policy issue of the usefulness of financial spreads as indicators of future inflation and output growth in the countries of the European Union, placing a particular focus on out-of-sample forecasting performance. Such analysis is of considerable relevance to monetary authorities, given the breakdown of the money/income relation in a number of countries and following increased emphasis of domestic monetary policy on control of inflation following the broadening of the ERM bands. The results confirm that for some countries, financial spread variables do contain some information about future output growth and inflation, with the yield curve and the reverse yield gap performing best. However, the relatively poor out-of-sample forecasting performance and/or parameter instability suggests that the need for caution in using spread variables for forecasting in EU countries. Only a small number of spreads contain information, and improve forecasting in a manner which is stable over time. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

World Bank lending and regulation

Does World Bank lending promote deregulation with stronger incentives and critical resources or slow the process by blunting the impact of crises and indirectly promoting state control? This paper analyzes empirical links between aid flows and regulatory burden. Econometric estimates based on panel data for 83 aid receiving countries over 5 year periods from 1970 to 2000 find that World Bank lending, while not specifically targeting high or low regulatory states, is linked to lower subsequent regulation. This link holds for multilateral donors more broadly while bilateral donor funds apparently fail to influence the level of regulation.     

Determinants of Intercountry Internet Diffusion Rates

This article employs cross-sectional data from 100 countries to analyze the main determinants of intercountry Internet diffusion rates. We set up an empirical model based on strong theoretical foundations, in which we regress Internet usage on variables that capture social, economic, and political differences between these countries. Our results support past findings that economic strength, infrastructure, and knowledge of the English language positively affect Internet connectivity. In addition to these indicators, the openness of a country, tertiary enrollment, and income equality are found to also have a significant positive effect on Internet diffusion.     

经济增长主动力的国际比较

本文运用灰色关联法比较分析了中国与美国、印度、印度尼西亚、墨西哥四个人口大国的经济增长主动力的差异。实证结果表明,国内需求是中国与这四个国家经济增长的主动力,然而不同的是,这四个国家的消费需求对经济增长的影响大于投资需求的影响,而中国则是投资需求对经济增长的影响大于消费需求的影响;另外,净出口对中国经济增长的影响也大于这四个国家。据此,本文强调中国应加快形成内需尤其是消费需求为主,同时积极利用外需共同拉动经济增长的格局,促使经济更加稳定的可持续发展。进一步,本文也提出了相关扩大内需的政策建议。     

Does Monetary Aid Catalyse New Business Creation? Analysing the Impact of Global Aid Flows on Formal and Informal Entrepreneurship

Official development aid – monetary transfers to developing countries to promote social and economic development – reached more than $140 billion in 2016. However, traditional forms of government bilateral aid continue to decline, while private aid is rising. Nevertheless, the impact of this aid, including its potential to stimulate economic development through new business formation, remains uncertain. In this study, we examine the impact of three sources of monetary aid flows on formal and informal entrepreneurship. Drawing from the international political economy literature we argue that bilateral aid and private aid are associated with higher levels of informal entrepreneurship, while multilateral aid is accompanied by lower levels. Moreover, we show that bilateral and private aid are linked with lower levels of formal entrepreneurship, while multilateral aid has no impact. The analyses of a panel of 313 observations from 49 countries provide robust support for these arguments.