Political Institutions, Capital Flows, and Developing Country Growth: An Empirical Investigation

The paper examines the real per-capita growth effects of the quality of democracy, the rule of law, and capital flows in developing countries. The direct growth effects of democracy are positive and often statistically significant. Moreover, the estimates from a three-stage least-squares regression offer evidence that democracy has indirect growth effects that work by encouraging schooling and that the rule of law influences growth indirectly by encouraging foreign direct investment. A higher FDI to GDP ratio is associated with a faster growth rate. The estimated growth effect of the FDI to GDP ratio is several times higher than the estimated growth effect of the domestic investment to GDP ratio. By contrast, this study does not find a clear asso-ciation between other types of capital flows and growth.     

The knowledge production of ‘R’ and ‘D’

Many studies investigate the relationship between R&D and patents applying knowledge production functions. Using aggregated R&D may underestimate the productivity of ‘R’, as mainly ‘R’ but not ‘D’ leads to patents. Disaggregating ‘R’ and ‘D’ shows a significant premium of ‘R’ towards patenting.     

‘Time-series’ versus ‘econometric’ forecasts : A non-linear regression counterexample

A non-linear regression model is presented in which a deterministic, model-based forecast of the dependent variable may have greater mean square error than a purely extrapolative forecast, in contrast to the result on relative forecast efficiency in linear models.     

The EPAC ‘Growth Papers’: An Assessment*

During 1986 the Economic Planning Advisory Council published a series of six papers examining the role of economic policy in fostering long-term growth. This article provides a review and critical assessment of the EPAC analysis. The fundamental issue at stake is whether long-term growth is a supply-driven or a demand-driven process. In particular, the crucial issue neglected by EPAC is the relationship between aggregate demand, the inducement to invest and the growth of productive capacity. The conclusion is that in order to promote sustained growth, policy must provide the structural and macroeconomic requirements for a sustainable growth of aggregate demand.     

An ‘oil’igopoly theory of exploration

This paper develops a theory of ‘oil’igopoly exploration of an exhaustible resource. Strategic exploration and production are jointly derived in a three period subgame perfect equilibrium. While the ‘oil’igopoly theory of exploration shares many features with non-strategic models of exploration and production, there is one important difference. The ‘oil’igopoly theory of exploration predicts that firms who exhaust their proved reserves before they can convert their unproved reserves into proved reserves have an incentive to over-explore, relative to the Nash equilibrium level of exploration. A simple empirical prediction is that firms holding smaller proved reserves should be observed doing more exploration. This prediction is consistent with country-level production and reserve data in the post-World War II era.     

‘Us’ and ‘Them’: the origin of identity,and its economic implications

Abstract We investigate the origins of identity and the innate proclivity to draw a distinction between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. We propose an evolutionary explanation: we argue that identity arises because it facilitates survival. In an evolutionary setting we endogenize preferences and demonstrate that the evolutionarily stable preferences fashioned by natural selection would distinguish between insiders and outsiders. We then work out the implications of such preferences in two contemporary scenarios, one entailing rent‐seeking behaviour and the other involving public good provision. Our results are in conformity with empirical evidence.     

What’s Causing Overreaction? An Experimental Investigation of Recency and the Hot‐hand Effect

A substantial body of empirical literature provides evidence of overreaction in markets. Past losers outperform past winners in stock markets as well as in sports markets. Two hypotheses are consistent with this observation. The recency hypothesis states that traders overweight recent information; they are too optimistic about winners and too pessimistic about losers. According to the hot‐hand hypothesis, traders try to discover trends in the past record of a firm or a team, and thereby overestimate the autocorrelation in the series. An experimental design allows us to distinguish between these hypotheses. The evidence is consistent with the hot‐hand hypothesis.     

Introducing ‘Journeys Home’

Homelessness, despite being a major social policy issue in Australia, is an area that is not well served by data. Most sorely lacking is any large‐scale panel study that follows a broad sample of persons with recent experience of homelessness and unstable housing histories. In 2010, the Australian Government set about rectifying this deficiency when it commissioned the Melbourne Institute to undertake a new panel study, now known as ‘Journeys Home’. This study draws its sample from the population of Centrelink income‐support recipients, targeting persons identified in the administrative data as having recent experience of homelessness, as well as others with similar characteristics who may be vulnerable to housing difficulties in the future. This article summarises the design of this new study and reports on fieldwork outcomes from the first two waves of data collection.     

‘BRAIN DRAIN’ OR ‘BRAIN CIRCULATION’: EVIDENCE FROM OECD'S INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND R&D SPILLOVERS

This paper empirically investigates whether labour mobility can transfer technology across borders based on the panel cointegration method. Estimates of specifications on a cross‐section of 19 OECD countries during 1980–1990 lend strong support to this thesis. Data indicate that international labour movement may help transfer technology across borders in both directions: from donor countries to host countries and vice versa. This suggests that migration may more likely create a ‘brain circulation’ rather than a ‘brain drain’. In addition, human capital has a significant impact on the research and development (R&D) diffusion process as it enhances a country's capacity to learn from a foreign technology base.     

Introducing ‘Young Minds Matter’

Young Minds Matter: The second Australian Child and Adolescent Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing provides updated national prevalence estimates of mental disorders in children and adolescents and measures the burden and impact of these disorders and the use of services and unmet need for services in the health and education sectors. The field work for Young Minds Matter included face‐to‐face interviews with the primary carer of 6,310 children and adolescents aged 4–17 years who were randomly selected from across Australia. This article describes the survey, the response rates achieved and the representativeness of the sample.     

中国资本市场“框架效应”现象的实证研究——基于中组部18号文的自然实验

基于2013年10月中组部发布18号文所产生的特殊情境,本文实证检验了18号文引发的官员独董辞职事件,对辞职原因的不同表述引起的市场反应。本文研究表明,同为18号文引发的官员独董辞职事件,对于将辞职原因披露为个人原因/工作原因的样本公司,市场出现了显著的负向反应;而对披露为依照18号文要求辞职的样本公司,市场则未有明显反应。市场对同一事件、不同披露的差异反应,表明投资者在决策过程中存在非理性的认知偏误,资本市场上存在框架效应现象。本文是国内首篇基于经验证据研究框架效应的实证文献,弥补了现有框架效应研究主要采用实验方法和问卷调查的不足,也为后续研究框架效应现象,提供了可资借鉴的分析思路和检验方法;同时,对于当下的中国资本市场,也具有重要的政策意义。     

国际资本流动对中国货币政策影响的实证研究

在开放经济的"三元冲突"中,中国选择了固定汇率,较严格的资本管制和较大的货币政策独立性,即用少量货币政策独立性的丧失换取有限度的资本流动.但在这种组合下,随着我国资本流动规模的扩大,货币政策独立性也将进一步丧失.对于中国,货币政策的自主权至关重要,除非有能力继续维持更严格的资本管制,我国必须逐步扩大汇率的浮动区间.     

Major transitions in ‘big’ history

‘Big’ history treats events between the Big Bang and contemporary technological life on Earth as a single narrative, suggesting that cosmological, biological and social processes can be treated similarly. An obvious trend in big history is the development of increasingly complex systems. This implies that the degree to which historical systems have deviated from thermodynamic equilibrium has increased over time. Recent theory suggests that step-wise changes in the work accomplished by a system can be explained using steady-state non-equilibrium thermodynamics. This paper argues that significant macro-historical events can therefore be characterized as transitions to steady states exhibiting persistently higher levels of thermodynamic disequilibrium which result in observably novel kinds or levels of organisation. Further, non-equilibrium thermodynamics suggests that such transitions should have particular temporal structures, beginning with sustainable energy innovations which result in novelties in organisation and in control mechanisms for maintaining the new organisation against energy fluctuations. We show how events in big history which qualify as historically significant by these criteria exhibit this internal structure. Big history thus obeys law-like processes, resulting in a common pattern of major transitions between steady-state historical regimes. This common process from cosmological to contemporary times makes big history a viable and relevant field of scientific study.     

A Dynamic Analysis of Licensing: The ‘‘Boomerang'’ Effect and Grant‐Back Clauses*

This article develops an incomplete contract model of the licensing relationship to analyze the dynamic effects of licensing on R&D competition in the innovation market and to examine the rationale for often observed ‘‘grant‐back'’ clauses. Of particular concern are how the consideration of future competition distorts the licensing relationship and how the grant‐back clause can mitigate this distortion. I also evaluate the validity of the casual antitrust argument that grant‐back clauses may adversely affect competition because they reduce the licensee's incentive to engage in R&D and thereby limit rivalry in innovation markets.     

Money, Sex and Happiness: An Empirical Study

The links between income, sexual behavior and reported happiness are studied using recent data on a sample of 16,000 adult Americans. The paper finds that sexual activity enters strongly positively in happiness equations. Higher income does not buy more sex or more sexual partners. Married people have more sex than those who are single, divorced, widowed or separated. The happiness‐maximizing number of sexual partners in the previous year is calculated to be 1. Highly educated females tend to have fewer sexual partners. Homosexuality has no statistically significant effect on happiness.     

The ‘New Federalism’ and Horizontal Equalization*

Under Stage I of Australia's ‘New Federalism’ policy a given share of Commonwealth tax revenue is to be distributed to the States. This paper examines the States (Personal Income Tax Sharing) Act 1976 and proposes a concrete fiscal equalization criterion consistent with the provisions for equalization in the Act. Distribution models proposed in Mathews (1979) and Commonwealth Grants Commission (1981) are examined and shown not to satisfy this criterion. An alternative is presented.