The New International Financial Architecture: Progress and Challenges

Recent economic crises have affected different countries in the last decade. Crises shook not only countries that were directly affected but also other more developed countries. Part of the risk of crises derives from the considerable negative effects imposed on economies by the volatility and reversibility of short-term capital flow. International financial reforms should consider (1) regulation and supervision, (2) statistical standards, (3) the goods and services trade, (4) liquidity and lender of last resort, (5) unified action, (6) private-sector involvement, and (7) other contingency measures. The Venezuelan experience suggests some other domestic reforms, but reforming the international financial system, in the direction of globalization, has to be the principle goal of international organizations.     

Impact of population planning on the size distribution of income: a theoretical and methodological framework

Widespread population problems exist in developing countries (LDCs). It is believed that excessive population growth may have a negative effect on improvement in the standard of living and eventually on the country's production capabilities (GNP). In an attempt to stimulate production, LDCs have developed family planning programmes to decrease the rate of population growth. However, many of the family planning programmes have failed in their aims of substantially reducing the rates. A few studies conducted in Pakistan have revealed the widespread use of family planning in urbanized areas. This study supports the claim that urbanization and the practice of family planning are positively related - variables such as education and religion figure prominently in the study. Several studies have been developed to examine the relationship between income distribution and various demographic aspects. These are broken down into: Type 1 studies, which deal with the effect that income has on socioeconomic and demographic and geographic factors; Type 2 studies, which deal with the theory that income has an effect on fertility; and Type 3 studies, which deal with interdependence between income and fertility variables. Income does have an effect on decisions to use contraception, despite government sponsored programmes. Recommendations made for improving the work of government sponsored programmes include: increasing educational opportunities for men and women in both urban and rural areas; providing job opportunities for women in non-agricultural areas; redistributing income from rich to poor; and the improvement of health and nutritional facilities.     

Dynamic panel cointegration approaches to the estimation of money demand functions

This paper investigates properties of the money demand functions of Group of Six (G6) member countries (Canada, France, Italy, Japan, U.K., and U.S.) using the estimation and inference techniques of panel cointegration. Empirical analyses are conducted by estimating money demand equations of G6 countries individually and as a whole, allowing heterogeneity in individual specific fixed effects across countries through dynamic, nonstationary panel estimation techniques. By using recently developed panel cointegration techniques, the paper contributes to the literature of money demand studies by improving the power performance of the relevant estimation and inference procedures. It reports fully modified OLS (FMOLS) estimation results of the money demand model for different data frequencies, to find varying signs and magnitudes of real income, interest rates and inflation elasticities of money demand for G6 nations.     

Drug costs in developing countries and policies to reduce them

Developed countries spend on a per capita basis about 100 times as much on health and 20 times as much on drugs as developing countries do. However, drugs constitute the ‘cutting edge’ of health service activities in the developing countries. This article analyses the estimated pharmaceutical and overall health expenditures for 1981 and gives a projection of those for the year 2000. Five policy options (1. The rational choice of drugs. 2. A public distribution system. 3. The use of bulk import orders. 4. The use of generic names. 5. The domestic production of drugs) that might reduce the current and projected levels of expenditure on drugs by developing countries, without curtailing other services, are examined. Potential savings both in domestic currency and foreign exchange that could be effected by implementing each of the five policy measures have been computed in order to indicate their critical contribution.     

The effect of financial deepening on inequality: Some international evidence

This paper uses an unbalanced panel data analysis of 126 countries for the period 1963–2002 to analyze the effects of financial deepening on inequality. The principal findings can be summarized as follows: (1) financial deepening reduces inequality; (2) economic growth reduces the equalizing effects of financial deepening; (3) inequality increases with an increase in trade openness; (4) the disequalizing effects of trade openness decrease as a country grows; (5) financial deepening and trade openness therefore have asymmetric effects on inequality; and (6) these effects are robust to the choice of financial variables, inequality measures, and model specifications.     

外部冲击下的中国与世界经济波动协同性研究

本文通过实证分析表明:在样本期内,中国与各国经济波动的相关系数随时间变动较大。进一步使用面板数据对经济协同性演变背后的动因进行了考察,结果表明:双边贸易程度和金融一体化程度对经济协同性的影响显著为正,而产业内贸易的影响为负;中国与各国之间的货币政策协调程度、财政政策协调程度以及汇率波动程度也对经济波动协同性有一定影响。     

CAPITAL MOBILITY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: A PANEL DATA APPROACH

In this paper we are primarily concerned with assessing the degree of capital mobility in sub‐Saharan Africa. Using the methodology as proposed by Feldstein and Horioka (1980)—later termed the “Feldstein‐Horioka puzzle”—we test the hypothesis of perfect capital mobility against the alternative of imperfect capital mobility. Following Vamvakidis and Wacziarg (1998) and Isaksson (2000), provision is made in our model to show the dependency of the lesserdeveloped countries on international finance and aid and how a more open economy contributes towards improving the level of capital movement in these countries. We also assess the change in the degree of capital mobility over the time period in an effort to see whether institutional and political changes have been successful. We show that, compared to the region, South Africa is, to a large extent, more developed and should therefore play a leading role in the “African Renaissance”. Stationary panel data estimation techniques are applied to a sample of 36 sub‐Saharan African countries over the time period 1980–2000. The benefits of using one‐way error component models are derived from simultaneously employing time and cross‐section dimensions of the data, resulting in a substantial increase in the degrees of freedom. The fixed and random effects models enable us to acknowledge country heterogeneity within the panel, making provision for differences across countries like capital control policies, financial and capital market structures and exchange rate regimes.     

Lewis revisited: tropical polities competing on the world market, 1830–1938

Since the seminal work by W. A. Lewis, exports of primary products have been deemed the main or sole source of growth in tropical countries before the Great Depression. However, this conventional wisdom relies on very limited evidence. This article analyses the growth of exports with a constant market share analysis for 84 tropical polities. Exports grew a lot, but less than total trade, while relative prices of tropical products remained roughly constant. We thus tentatively infer that the decline in the tropical shares of world trade reflects an insufficient demand for tropical products. Asia dealt well with these headwinds throughout the whole period, while African polities blossomed after the First World War. The loser was (South) America, and most notably the Caribbean former slave colonies, especially before 1870.     

Size really doesn't matter: In search of a national scale effect

I search for a “scale” effect in countries. I use a panel data set that includes 200 countries over forty years and link the population of a country to a host of economic and social phenomena. Using both graphical and statistical techniques, I search for an impact of size on the level of income, inflation, material well-being, health, education, the quality of a country's institutions, heterogeneity, and a number of different international indices and rankings. I have little success; small countries are more open to international trade than large countries, but are not systematically different otherwise. J. Japanese Int. Economies 20 (4) (2006) 482–507.     

模糊综合评价在土地利用规划环境影响评价中的应用——以武汉市为例

以武汉市为例,建立了土地利用规划环境影响评价指标体系,用层次分析法确定其指标权重,采用模糊综合评判的方法对土地利用规划对环境所产生的影响进行了评价,并对评判的结果进行了分析,并对新一轮规划修编提出了建议。     

Economic Growth and Income Inequality: Evidence from Dynamic Panel Investigation

This paper empirically investigates the effect of income inequality on economic growth using extended panel data covering a broad range of developing and developed countries. We use system generalized method of moments (GMM) techniques in a dynamic panel analysis, which alleviates the possible positive bias in difference GMM due to the persistence of lagged dependent variables as instruments. We find strong evidence of a negative effect on growth from income inequality, which contradicts the findings of Forbes [2000, September. A reassessment of the relationship between inequality and growth, American Economic Review, 90(4), pp. 869–887] and Li and Zou [1998, October. Income inequality is not harmful for growth: Theory and evidence, Review of Development Economics, 2(3), pp. 318–34]. Further analyses using combined Gini coefficients show that the difference can be overall attributed to the problem of omitted control variables and the differences in how the variations in inequality across countries are reflected. We also find that the negative effects of inequality on economic growth can be of great significance when using a sample of less developed countries or more recent inequality data set.     

Does Audit Market Concentration Harm the Quality of Audited Earnings? Evidence from Audit Markets in 42 Countries*

Audit regulators around the world have expressed concern over market dominance by Big 4 accounting firms and the potential adverse effect it may have on the quality of audited financial statements. We use cross‐country variation in the audit market structure of 42 countries to examine two separate aspects of Big 4 dominance: (1) Big 4 market concentration as a group relative to non–Big 4 auditors; and (2) concentration within the Big 4 group in which one or more of the Big 4 firms is dominant relative to the other Big 4 firms. We find that in countries where the Big 4 (as a group) conduct more listed company audits, both Big 4 and non–Big 4 clients have higher quality audited earnings compared to clients in countries with smaller Big 4 market shares. In contrast, in countries where there is a greater concentration within the Big 4 group, we find that Big 4 clients have lower quality audited earnings compared to countries with more evenly distributed market shares among the Big 4. Thus concentration within the Big 4 group appears to be detrimental to audit quality in a country and of legitimate concern to regulators and policymakers. However, Big 4 dominance per se does not appear to harm audit quality and is in fact associated with higher earnings quality, after controlling for other country characteristics that potentially affect earnings quality.     

管理效率与全要素生产率——基于“中国企业-劳动力匹配调查”(CEES)的新证据

基于"中国企业-劳动力匹配调查"（CEES）数据,文章创新性地选择了管理效率这一微观视角,就其对企业全要素生产率的影响效应进行了稳健地实证检验。通过回归发现,对于现阶段的中国企业而言,管理效率基于当前的均值每提升10%,全要素生产率将提高1.72%~2.92%,管理效率对企业全要素生产率的增长具有显著的促进作用。在此基础上,文章进一步就管理效率对全要素生产率的影响机制展开了进一步验证,分析发现：管理效率可以通过企业自动化、信息化和开放性程度的提升显著促进全要素生产率的增长。因此,文章建议企业在加强管理的同时,也应配合对相应的机器设备和交流环境进行优化,以实现企业的高效和持续发展。     

The utilisation of engineering services bulk infrastructure components in integrated development planning

In practice, infrastructure planning has generally tended to follow land-use planning, with infrastructure costs seeming to play no role in the generation of land-use strategies. To address this problem, a bulk infrastructure cost model has been developed to provide a tool for planners to ensure the incorporation of bulk infrastructure capacity and cost considerations into the early, land suitability assessment phase of the integrated development planning process. The output of the model is in the form of potential cost contours, which facilitates the relative comparison of infrastructure costs for different density scenarios. Bulk engineering services infrastructure relating to water, sanitation and electricity has been included in the model. The theoretical underpinning of the model is threshold analysis, and the three essential elements are threshold, density and cost. They are incorporated into the model through capacity analysis. The set density levels convert into the number of additional person units required which, in turn, is translated into infrastructure capacity demand. Existing infrastructure network and facility design capacities are compared with the current utilisation of infrastructure in order to quantify the capacity supply situation. The comparison of capacity demand with capacity supply determines whether or not additional infrastructure is required. If infrastructure is required, the required infrastructure investment is calculated. The resulting relative costs are mapped and incorporated into a wider land suitability assessment model. Infrastructure costs vary with location according to local land use, geotechnical, environmental and built conditions, making the role of the geographic information system in the model appropriate and important.     

The New CFS Divisia Monetary Aggregates: Design, Construction, and Data Sources

The Center for Financial Stability (CFS) has initiated a new Divisia monetary aggregates database, maintained within the CFS program called Advances in Monetary and Financial Measurement (AMFM). The Director of the program is William A. Barnett, who is the originator of Divisia monetary aggregation and more broadly of the associated field of aggregation-theoretic monetary aggregation. The international section of the AMFM web site is a centralized source for Divisia monetary aggregates data and research for over 40 countries throughout the world. The components of the CFS Divisia monetary aggregates for the United States reflect closely those of the current and former simple-sum monetary aggregates provided by the Federal Reserve. The first five levels, M1, M2, M2M, MZM, and ALL, are composed of currency, deposit accounts, and money market accounts. The liquid asset extensions to M3, M4-, and M4 resemble in spirit the now discontinued M3 and L aggregates, including repurchase agreements, large denomination time deposits, commercial paper, and Treasury bills. When the Federal Reserve discontinued publishing M3 and L, the Fed stopped providing the consolidated, seasonally adjusted components. Also the Fed no longer provides the interest rates on the components. With so much of the needed component quantity and interest-rate data no longer available from the Federal Reserve, decisions about data sources needed in construction of the CFS aggregates have been far from easy and sometimes required regression interpolation. This paper documents the decisions of the CFS regarding United States data sources at the present time, with particular emphasis on Divisia M3 and M4.     

中外高铁发展的公共政策规划比较研究

合理的公共政策规划是促进高铁产业持续健康发展的基本保障。基于国际铁路联盟公布的数据资料，总结中外高铁的发展现状，进而分析相关国家在宏观管理、体制改革、产业规制、土地开发和运价调整领域的经验做法。结果发现，尽管我国与日本、法国等国在发展高铁过程中的做法有所差异，但合理的公共政策规划保证了高铁项目的顺利开展。未来在开展高铁建设的过程中，要理性借鉴其他地区在协调政府市场关系、提高土地利用效益方面的实践经验。此外，要将高铁发展的“事前规划”与“事后评价”相结合，重视高铁发展所带来的社会经济效益。     

反向技术溢出、技术进步和我国经济增长——基于面板协整模型的分析

本文选取了1990～2007年间中国进口和对中国FDI前十位的国家和地区,扩展了CH模型,建立了包含进口和FDI两个物化型技术溢出指标的面板模型,利用面板单位根和协整技术,得到随机效应模型,分析溢出国对华出口和FDI对溢出国的反向技术溢出效应,结果表明:从溢出国角度看,对外投资比对外贸易更有利于这些国家和地区全要素生产率的提高,因此,溢出国更倾向于对华FDI,我国招商引资政策需要做出调整。     

Commodity problem: What next?

Export commodity prices of developing countries are now at their lowest point since 1980–1981. International action to stem the decline in prices or provide sufficient compensatory finance has been limited, and no overall plan is under way to improve the situation. Under these circumstances the developing countries must fend for themselves, through expansion of their mutual trade with a minimum use of scarce convertible foreign exchange, and through improvement of their bargaining position in the world market, where feasible, through coordinated selling of their products. These actions call for: (1) an expansion of South-South compensable trade (“counter-trade”) and its better organization in order to reduce the excessive discounts and marketing margins which now prevail; (2) centralized selling in the world market at better prices of commodities for which the demand is price-inelastic (tropical beverages and to some degree metals); and (3) expansion of volume of sales at competitive prices of products which face substitution of synthetics or goods produced in developed countries, provided such expansion is profitable.This paper discusses these alternatives and the potential problems which may continue to interfere with progress. The author concludes that the need for international cooperative action will grow pari passu with the need to cooperate in money and finance, which are in as much trouble as commodities and international trade.     

On exchange-rate movements and gold-price fluctuations: evidence for gold-producing countries from a nonparametric causality-in-quantiles test

The links between exchange-rate movements and gold-price fluctuations have been extensively studied in earlier research using various econometric techniques. Our contribution to this research is that we apply a novel nonparametric causality-in-quantiles test to study the causal links between exchange-rate movements and gold-price fluctuations. We use daily data for the sample period 1994–2015 for major gold-producing countries to illustrate the novel test. We find that, for the majority of countries, gold-price fluctuations help to predict in sample the returns and the volatility of exchange rates. While exchange-rate movements predict in sample gold volatility, they do not predict gold returns.     

A survey of empirical studies using transaction level data on exports and imports

This paper presents a tabular survey of 147 empirical studies for 39 countries, plus 8 studies for multiple countries, that use transaction level data on exports or imports of firms. I hope this survey is useful for readers who want to get an impression of the huge number of different topics that have been investigated with transaction level data for a large number of countries already; who want to learn whether transaction level data have already been used for a particular (maybe, their own) country, by whom they have been used to investigate which topics, and what the important results found are; who have access to transaction level data and an idea how to use them, and who want to find out whether others pursued the same or a similar topic already; who want to compare results from their own study based on transaction level data to results from other (similar, neighbor) countries and who are looking for suitable studies; who have access to transaction level data and who are looking for studies based on data from other countries that they can replicate with their data to uncover and investigate differences across countries, or to contribute to the unravelling of stylized facts that hold across countries (and time).