Financial development and growth: An empirical analysis

Over the last two decades several countries experienced currency crises. These were characterized both by a huge disruption of economic activity and an extreme speed of diffusion within countries. The financial turmoil happened in a period of very high degree of international financial integration. As a result financial liberalization was associated with greater incidence of crises and this brought an intense debate in both academic and policy circles about the consequences of free capital movements.     

Small firms in Portugal: a selective survey of stylized facts,economic analysis,and policy implications

I survey a number of stylized facts pertaining to the dynamics of firm entry, growth, and exit in competitive industries. I focus particularly on data for Portugal, although I also consider, for comparison purposes, data from other countries. I then present a series of theoretical models that attempt to explain the stylized facts and evaluate the welfare impact of market distortions. Finally, I derive a number of policy implications, all centered around the notion of economic mobility.

Pricing-to-market tests in instrumental regressions: Case of the transportation equipment industry

Pricing-to-market (PTM) theory suggests that exporting monopolistic firms adjust their destination-specific mark-ups in the face of exchange rate shocks. A large proportion of the existing evidence for PTM comes from Wald tests applied to OLS- and IV-estimated parameters of single-equation models. Such tests can seriously over-reject in the presence of endogeneity and weak instruments so that some of the available results supporting PTM could be spurious. In this paper we revisit the PTM evidence for Japanese and German exporting firms in the transportation equipment industry. Using the model of Marston (1990), we apply exogeneity and LR-LIML-based tests for which the error probability is controlled irrespective of the quality of the available instruments. Our results show right-hand-side endogeneity in almost all of the examined PTM equations. In addition, we find that statistical decisions often differ depending on whether they are based on the traditional Wald test or on our proposed test.The authors would like to thank Philippe Barla, Jean-Thomas Bernard, Christos Constantatos, Larry Schembri, seminar participants at the Bank of Canada, and two anonymous referees for useful comments and suggestions. Thanks also to Richard Marston for providing data. Finally, a special thanks to Marjorie Santos for excellent research assistance. All remaining errors are our own and should not be attributed to the Bank of Canada.First version received: May 2002/Final version received: December 2002     

Expectations and intertemporal separability in an empirical model of consumption and investment under uncertainty

An intertemporal model of consumption and investment under uncertainty is formulated, and compared with the existing literature; it is argued that an assumption of myopia is necessary for its empirical applicability. It is estimated by maximum likelihood with quarterly British data. A specification search for a satisfactory form of expectations is made, and the estimated model is compared with a static demand system. Strong intertemporal separability is formulated as a nested hypothesis, and strongly rejected by a likelihood ratio test.     

Financial development and economic growth in Greece: an empirical investigation with Granger causality analysis

This paper empirically examines the causal relationship between the degree of openness of the economy, financial development and economic growth by using a multivariate autoregressive VAR model in Greece for the examined period 1960:I-2000:IV. The results of cointegration analysis suggest that there is one cointegrated vector among GDP, financial development and the degree of openness of the economy. Granger causality tests based on error correction models show that there is a causal relationship between financial development and economic growth, but also between the degree of openness of the economy and economic growth.     

Portuguese emigration 1958-1985: some empirical evidence

Supplying work in the home country or abroad must be seen as the result of the same decisional process. If that is true, the same set of variables should be used to explain the participation in the labor market and the emigration rates.Based upon empirical results, we discuss some of the traditional conclusions of the economic literature. Our empirical results, for example, show that: 1) there is a strong support for considering home wages and the wages in the country of destination asymmetrically, 2) imperfections in the capital markets seem to play an important role when workers must pay for their moving expenses and 3) there is a differential in coefficients between the period before 1974 and after that date, as 1974 is the year most of the Central European countries changed their immigration policies.     

Public capital stock and state productivity growth: Further evidence from an error components model

The contribution of different types of public infrastructure on private production is investigated using time-series of cross-section data for the 48 contiguous states over the period 1970–1986. A Cobb-Douglas production function is estimated with unobserved state-specific effects. Measurement errors in public capital stock and its components are detected and rectified.We would like to thank Baldev Raj and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. Also, Timothy J. Gronberg and Kay McAllister who thoroughly read the earlier draft and offered many constructive suggestions. We are, however, solely responsible for any remaining errors. The data set used in this research was generously provided by Alicia H. Munnell and Leah Cook of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Nat Pinnoi acknowledges the research support provided by the Texas Transportation Institute.     

Price determination and dynamic adjustments: An inverse demand system approach to meat products in the United States

In this study the process of retail meat price determination is depicted in the form of an inverse demand system taking into consideration the dynamic adjustments present in monthly consumption data. The general dynamic framework identifies both long run and short run effects in a systematic manner and allows direct estimation of the long run price and scale flexibilities that are consistent with theory. The empirical application based on monthly U.S. meat products data provides reasonable and promising results.The authors are senior econometrician, Department of Risk Management, TRS, American Express Co., Phoenix, and assistant professor, Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, respectively. The work was performed when the first author was an assistant research scientist at the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, Department of Economics, Iowa State University, Ames. Journal Paper No. J-15784 of the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station, Ames, Iowa. Project No. 3109.     

Fractional integration and business cycle features

We show in this article that fractionally integrated univariate models for GDP lead to a better replication of the main business cycle characteristics. We firstly show that the business cycle features are clearly affected by the degree of integration as well as by the other short run (AR, MA, etc.) components of the series. Then, we model the real GDP in the UK and the US by means of fractionally ARIMA (ARFIMA) model, and show that the time series can be specified in terms of this type of model with orders of integration higher than one but smaller than two. Comparing the ARFIMA specifications with those based on ARIMA models, we show via simulations that the former better describe the business cycles features of the data.Jel classification: C12, C15, C22The authors want to thank two anonymous referees for wise remarks. We have also benefited from questions and comments of the attendances at the econometric seminar of the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and the ESEM2001 congress in Lausanne. Remaining errors and omissions are ours. All correspondence to: Luis A. Gil-Alana.First version received: February 2002/Final version received: December 2002     

Sovereign-Wealth Funds: the institutional dimension

In the recent past, the operations of the capital-rich Sovereign-Wealth Funds (SWFs) went on increasing in the global capital markets. As the global economic crisis that started in 2007 deepened, SWF operations dramatically spurted, leading to further progressive increase in their significance for the global capital markets. For all appearances they are going to be important financial players in the foreseeable future. This article focuses on the basic concept of SWFs, their structure and operations. It attempts to analyze and elucidate on them. Notwithstanding the fact that SWFs are an instrument of enhancing liquidity and financial resource allocation in the international capital market, they managed to become a source of controversies. Consequently they became a source of escalation in financial protectionism in several advanced industrial economies, in particular the USA. The article concludes that this was unwarranted. Recently SWFs have attempted to device an array of best practices to improve the transparency of their global financial operations. These measures are expected to enhance the acceptance of SWFs as well as global recognition of their operations. They would also help in dispelling the negative image that SWFs have held in several advanced industrial economies.

An overlooked explanation of the declining saving rate

With a socioeconomic model of the determinants of savings that takes into account variables reflecting the abrupt changes in the divorce rate that occurred during the 1970s and the 1980s in the U.S., the increase in women's participation in the labour force, and their greater investrnent in education, we explain part of the measured decline in the saving rate. The uncertainty generated by the increased likelihood of divorces encourages households and women, in particular, to substitute human capital to financial or physical capital for precautionary savings.The authors thank Anna J. Schwartz and Pierre Perron for helpful suggestions and Anne-Marie El Hakim for her dedicated assistance on this project. The comments of the editor and of an anonymous referee contributed to improve the final version of the paper. The project was financed, in part, by a grant of the Quebec FCAR Fund.     

Measuring environmental efficiency of industry: a case study of thermal power generation in India

Technical and environmental efficiency of some coal-fired thermal power plants in India is estimated using a methodology that accounts for firm’s efforts to increase the production of good output and reduce pollution with the given resources and technology. The methodology used is directional output distance function. Estimates of firm-specific shadow prices of pollutants (bad outputs), and elasticity of substitution between good and bad outputs are also obtained. The technical and environmental inefficiency of a representative firm is estimated as 0.06 implying that the thermal power generating industry in Andhra Pradesh state of India could increase production of electricity by 6/ while decreasing generation of pollution by 6%. This result shows that there are incentives or win–win opportunities for the firms to voluntarily comply with the environmental regulation. It is found that there is a significant variation in marginal cost of pollution abatement or shadow prices of bad outputs across the firms and an increasing marginal cost of pollution abatement with respect to pollution reduction by the firms. This result calls for the use of economic instruments like pollution taxes instead of command and control regulation used currently in India to reduce air pollution.

Distribution dynamics and convergence in Latin America: A non-parametric analysis

This paper examines the dynamics of income distribution and convergence in Latin America during the period 1960 to 2000. Our results, based on the intradistribution dynamics approach, reveal a “twin peaks” dynamics, which echoes findings reported for the OECD, the Asia Pacific Basin and worldwide. Notable differences, however, are found between the income dynamics in Latin America and in these other regions. Further, our findings indicate that physical capital investment and health capital serve to explain Latin America’s “twin peaks” polarization. Other factors, such as geographical proximity, trade openness and human capital, are also found to help explaining it to some extent. We gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of the referee.     

A system approach for measuring the euro area NAIRU

This paper addresses the issue of measuring the NAIRU for the euro area and assessing the robustness and precision of the obtained estimates. The empirical framework adopted is based on systems combining an Okun-type relationship between cyclical unemployment and the output gap with a Phillips curve and stochastic laws of motion for the NAIRU and potential output. Such systems have been estimated using Kalman-filter techniques. The results obtained point to an estimate of the area-wide NAIRU that is robust to changes in the underlying models. This robustness is shown to hold both in terms of the mean – i.e., the shape of the resulting NAIRU – and the variance of the process. The latter is derived through bootstrap exercises using the models alone or pooled together. The evidence found suggests that the increase in the aggregate NAIRU that took place in the early part of the sample period has come to a halt and may be about to be reversed.Jel classification: C11, C15, E31, E32The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institutions they belong to. The authors are grateful to Per Jansson for providing parts of the econometric RATS code and to Gonzalo Camba-Mendez and Frank Smets of the ECB for useful comments. Comments and recommendations by two anonimous referees are also gratefully acnowledged. All the remaining errors are the authors responsibility. All correspondence to Ricardo Mestre.First version received: January 2002/Final version received December 2002     

Usefulness of linear transformations in multivariate time-series analysis

Much progress has been made in recent years in multivariate time-series analysis. In this paper we summarize some of the methodological developments that are particularly relevant to empirical economics and highlight especially the usefulness of linear transformations in analyzing multivariate time series. The topics considered include vector ARMA models, principal component analysis, scalar component models, canonical correlation analyses, co-integration, and unit-root tests. We illustrate the methods considered by an example using Taiwan's interest-rate series and provide critiques of these developments.     

Endogenous fertility, international migration and growth

An endogenous growth model with heterogeneous agents and endogenous rates of fertility is developed to study the relationships between population growth, human capital, migration and economic development. A variety of patterns of migration, from the migration of the unskilled to the brain drain is considered, where the decision to migrate reflects the agents’ optimising behaviour. The analysis yields implications which accord with the empirical evidence on the relationships between demography and development. Macroeconomic policy can foster growth by influencing labour mobility through taxation and the provision of public goods such as social infrastructure, sanitation, environmental control and medical research that affect locational preferences and child quality. The author is grateful for the comments of an anonymous referee on an earlier version of the paper. The usual disclaimer applies.