Causal relationship between apparel exports and macroeconomic factors

Apparel exports make a significant contribution to economic growth in major apparel exporting economies such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. This study aims to investigate the causal relationship between apparel export growth and its determinants such as GDP growth, infrastructure, financial development, foreign direct investment (FDI) and labour productivity using panel data from 11 major apparel exporting countries for the period 1996 to 2013. The results confirm a long-run equilibrium association among the variables and reveal that GDP growth, infrastructure, financial development, FDI, and labour productivity have a significant positive influence on apparel export growth. Furthermore, the heterogeneous panel non-causality test results suggest that GDP growth, infrastructure and labour productivity contribute to apparel export growth in the short-run. These findings have several policy implications for the governments of the countries under study.     

The relationship between South Asian stock returns and macroeconomic variables

This article investigates whether economic variables have explanatory power for share returns in South Asian stock markets. In particular, using data for four South Asian emerging stock markets over the period 1998–2012, the article examines the influence of a selection of local, regional and global economic variables in explaining equity returns; most previous studies that have examined this issue have tended to focus on only local and/or global factors. Important factors are identified by distilling the macroeconomic variables into principal components. Economic activities, real interest rates, real exchange rates and the trade balance represent local factors. Regional factors are represented by interregional trade and regional economic activity while global factors are represented by world financial asset returns and world economic activity. The vector autoregression results suggest that the South Asian markets examined are not efficient. Both local and regional factors can directly and indirectly explain Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Sri Lankan stock returns while the lagged returns of the Pakistani stock market and world economic activity can explain Indian stock returns.     

The Effect of the Arab Spring on Preferences for Redistribution in Egypt

This paper investigates the effect of the revolution that occurred in January 2011 in Egypt on the demand for redistribution in that country, which has drastically increased since that period. This shock has been an important event, enhancing freedom and the political structure. In a first step, taking into account the main determinants of preferences for redistribution in the literature, our results differ, showing a positive impact of religion and a negative impact of altruistic attitudes. In a second step, we rely on a diff-in-diff approach to estimate the effect of the revolution, using three similar countries as a control group. We find that Egyptians became much more favorable to redistribution after the Arab Spring. Moreover, the revolution effect is stronger for the poorest people and those who are interested in politics.     

Transaction costs and recorded remittances in the post-Soviet economies: Evidence from a new dataset on bilateral flows

Labour migrants' remittances are a rapidly growing phenomenon in the countries of the former Soviet Union. The size and growth of remittances in the countries of the recipients brought the issue under the scrutiny of researchers and policymakers. In this paper we investigate the main factors behind the growing volume of remittances in the post-Soviet space. By applying panel data techniques we found that a reduction in transaction costs and a depreciation of the currency in the host country were the main factors that influenced the growth of recorded remittances. The size of transaction costs remains a significant predictor of the volume of formal remittances, even after correcting for endogeneity using an instrumental variable estimator. The inverse relationship between transaction costs and recorded remittances suggests that migrants switch from informal channels to formal channels to send remittances when costs are low. Thus lower transaction costs may help curb the proportion of informal flows and lead to increased use of remittances in the formal economy.     

The effects of remittances,foreign direct investment,and foreign aid on economic growth: An empirical analysis

The Sustainable Development Goals have refocused attention on ways of providing external finance to support development. Because they have different motivations and work through different modalities, remittances, foreign direct investment (FDI), and official development assistance may be expected to have different consequences for economic growth. Existing empirical evidence suggests that both positive and negative effects are associated with each source of finance. We use both a dynamic panel model and a fixed effects model to calculate the overall effects of each source of finance in isolation and taken together over the period 1976–2015. We include a range of control variables to allow for other potential influences on economic growth. We disaggregate the effects across geographical regions and income levels to test for heterogeneity. We also undertake a series of robustness checks. Our results suggest that FDI has a significant positive effect on economic growth, whereas remittances have a significant and negative effect. The effect of foreign aid is more ambiguous but is usually insignificant. The article offers an interpretation of the results drawing on ideas from the relevant theory.     

投资与消费失衡对社会利益机制的损害

我国经济运行中长期实施的高投资、低消费,是当前经济、社会生活中诸多矛盾的一个重要根源,它反映了现时期不完善的市场经济体制的弊端,加重了转型期经济利益机制的缺陷。对于投资与消费的失衡造成社会公平缺失,正当利益机制受损的分析,为调整投资与消费关系问题的探讨提供了一个值得思索的角度。     

Local political chief turnover and economic growth: Evidence from China

It is widely believed that the rotation and promotion system of local political chiefs plays an important role in China's economic miracle. In this paper, however, we focus on the potential cost of the inherent frequent turnover of local chiefs. Based on a new manually collected dataset on prefectural‐level local chiefs between 1983 and 2012, our empirical results suggest that the turnover of the local Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chief would lead to a 0.48 percentage point decrease in the local GDP growth rate in the current year. This effect is especially concentrated on more government‐affected fields, such as domestic investments, consumption and government expenditures. We also provide evidence that organization friction, especially the successor CCP chiefs’ unfamiliarity with the city, his/her new colleagues and/or the working conditions, is one of the major potential reasons for such a negative turnover effect.     

地方政府消费支出与经济增长非线性门限关系研究——来自我国省级面板数据的经验证据

以我国31个省(市、自治区)1998~2008年间平衡面板数据为样本,运用面板门限模型,以实际GDP中政府消费支出所占的比重作为衡量指标进行门限测试,对地方政府消费支出与经济增长的关系进行实证研究。结果表明存在单一门限效果,其门限值为19.93%,门限值两边影响系数分别为正相关、负相关,并且都显著,即存在一正一负的非线性关系。因此,我国各级政府要合理安排政府消费支出,实现经济健康稳定增长。     

经济增长与能源消费：来自山东省的经验证据

本文运用协整分析和误差修正模型技术．探讨山东省经济增长与能源消费之间的关系。实证研究结果表明，山东省经济增长与能源消费存在长期均衡关系．并存在从经济增长到能源消费的单向因果关系；经济增长与能源消费之间的关系是非线性的，因而不能从能源消费的线性变化推测出经济增长率的变化；山东省经济受电力消费的影响较大，为了在2010年单位地区生产总值能源消耗降低20％的政策目标．山东电力消耗较高的产业必须加以调整。     

当前我国经济面临问题的分析与对策选择

在国家一系列扩大内需政策的作用下,我国的经济形势已经出现了重大转机,但我国的经济发展还面临一些亟待需解决的问题,我国的消费、投资和出口需求不足;而且深层次的体制问题也亟待解决,所以对我国的经济形势不能盲目乐观,因此,调整我国以扩大内需为取向的宏观政策还为时过早。我们必须继续采取措施,促进经济的持久增长。     

The impact of macroeconomic factors on income inequality: Evidence from the BRICS

In this paper we investigate how the evolution of income growth, real interest rates, and inflation have driven income inequality across a variety of countries with particular focus on the BRICS economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) during the period 2001 to 2015. Our work suggests that, when central banks of the BRICS economies use monetary policy for macroeconomic stabilization, they need to consider the impact monetary policy changes have on the distribution of income in their nations. Our estimates reveal that the unintended consequence of policies that induce economic growth and higher prices is higher income inequality. We find that the positive relationship between the three macroeconomic variables and income inequality for the BRICS economies is stronger during the post-2008 period.     

The impacts of social pension on rural household expenditure: evidence from China

In 2009, China began to implement a new social pension scheme in rural areas. We examine the impacts of this social pension on two main components of rural household expenditure, consumption and agricultural production investment. Our findings show that on average, rural households increase consumption by 1–3% and agricultural investment by as high as 6–9% in pilot counties. Further estimations reveal that the pension mainly affects the households with old-aged members and the poorer families, and that the saving rate hasn’t been changed by the pension, which support more the contingent income than the life-cycle hypothesis. We also find that among various types of expenditures, the most dramatic increases have occurred in food consumption and operational inputs on agricultural production.     

从企业投资效率看盈余管理的经济后果——来自中国上市公司的经验证据

文章以2005--2009年沪深两市上市公司为样本,从投资效率的角度检验了中国现实制度背景下盈余管理的经济后果。研究发现,企业盈余管理程度与未来投资效率显著负相关,上市公司盈余管理程度越高,其未来投资效率越低。文章由此得出结论：盈余管理不仅可能误导外部投资者的判断和决策,也对企业的内部决策产生了不利影响,损害了市场资源的有效配置,因此必须采取措施抑制企业的盈余管理行为。     

The causal relationship between natural gas consumption and economic growth: evidence from the G7 countries

This article re-examines the nature of the causality between natural gas consumption and economic growth in G7 countries over the period from 1965 to 2011. We employ the Granger causality procedure proposed by Emirmahmutoglu and Kose (2011) which takes into account cross-sectional dependency and heterogeneity across countries. Our overall empirical results support the neutrality hypothesis for the panel while the individual country results confirm the same result with the exception of the case of UK, where the conservation hypothesis is confirmed, showing that GDP causes natural gas consumption in the country. These results make policies that promote the consumption of natural gas risk-free with regard to their effects to the economic growth and development levels.     

Nexus between economic risk and political risk in the United Kingdom: Evidence from wavelet coherence and quantile-on-quantile approaches

This study examines the linkage between economic risk and political risk in the United Kingdom. This linkage has attracted the attention of policymakers; however, there is no consequence of the linkage in the existing literature. The study aims to close this gap for the UK case by applying wavelet coherence (WTC) and quantile-on-quantile regression (QQR) approaches and using quarterly data between 1984/Q1 and 2020/Q4. The results of the WTC reveal that there is time–frequency dependency between economic risk and political risk majorly in the medium and low frequencies. Moreover, the direction of the causality changes over time. Furthermore, the outcomes of the WTC show that economic risk leads political risk between 1995 and 2005, whereas political risk leads economic risk from 2006 to 2019. The outcomes of the QQR approach disclose that in the higher tail (0.7–0.95) of political risk and lower and medium tail (0.05–0.60) of economic risk, the effect of political risk on economic risk is positive and strong. On the flip side, at all quantiles (0.05–0.95) of economic risk and lower quantiles (0.10–0.30) of political risk, the effect of political risk on economic risk is positive and strong. The results are also validated by the outcomes of partial wavelet coherence, multiple wavelet coherence, and quantile regression. Hence, the results highlight the importance of political risk (economic risk) for economic risk (political risk) in the UK case.     

经济增长中三大需求作用的实证分析——以天津为例

文章利用天津1980～2007年的年度统计数据,对推进天津经济增长的消费、投资和出口的作用进行了实证研究。从长期来看,天津消费、投资、出口与经济增长之间存在长期的均衡关系;从短期来看,消费对同期的天津经济增长具有促进作用,投资和出口带动了后一期的经济增长。消费在促进经济增长中发挥了主要的作用,其次是投资和出口贸易。最后,根据实证结论,提出了利用消费、投资、出口协调发展,促进天津经济持续稳定增长的政策建议。     

将消费看成是人力资本积累的一个来源及其意义--一个动态经济增长模型和基于中国数据的实证检验

本文发展了一个动态经济增长模型,发现消费与收入之间的短期关系非常不同于长期关系.相对于其他消费理论分析框架而言,该模型具有明显包容性,并与Granger-Engle非经典时间序列方法成功实现了"对接".凯恩斯边际消费倾向递减律、永久性收入假说、生命周期假说、随机游走假说,以及曼昆的λ假说等消费理论或假说,也都可以在这一框架下得到解释,或者说上述理论流派或假说都属于特例.实证分析结论不但支持该理论框架,而且比较恰当地刻画出了我国转型经济中的重大政策和制度变迁的影响.将消费看成是人力资本积累的一个来源,是解释消费与收入之间的短期非稳定关系和长期均衡关系的重要途径.在这个框架下也很容易认识到,从长期视野来看,公平与效率本质上存在一致性.对于寻求解决诸如扩大内需、社会主义新农村建设、集约增长方式选择等诸多中国当前面临的现实问题,以及有关发展政策、公共政策和宏观政策等而言,本文不失为一个具有启发意义的参考基准.     

The causal relationship between equipment investment and infrastructures on economic growth in China

There is agreement in the literature on economic growth concerning the transitory effects of capital accumulation on the process of economic development. However, controversy arises if this effect is permanent. In this sense, the key point is the embodied technological progress and whether supply factors predominate among the determinants of capital accumulation. Only in this case should expect long-run effects of capital accumulation on economic growth. Inspired by this idea, I focus the study on two elements accounting for economic development—equipment investment and productive infrastructure and I also analyze the type of the empirical relationship that exists between them. The results indicate that equipment investment and infrastructures have played a significant role in accounting for long-run growth in China. However, I do not find empirical evidence supporting any relationship between the two types of investment. In addition, I find that foreign trade has stimulated output and equipment investment in the long run. Finally, it is found that innovation activities encourage equipment investment in the long run.     

The causal relationship between financial development and economic growth in Africa

ABSTRACT

Previous empirical studies on the causal relationship between financial development and economic growth are not instructive given their failure to unearth the causality trend across the different time periods. Using a more recently developed and robust indicator of financial development, we revisit the causal relationship between financial development and economic growth within the framework of a frequency-domain spectral causality technique which allows the causality to vary across time. Using data from 47 African countries over the period 1980–2016, our findings largely suggest that, even though there is some evidence of demand-following, supply-leading and feedback hypotheses, for most part, we find strong support of neutrality hypothesis. Thus, financial development and economic growth at most frequency levels evolve independently. We infer that caution must be exercised in making general conclusions about the causal nexus between financial development and economic growth.     

山东省能源消耗结构与经济增长的动态分析

能源是经济增长的动力源泉,是经济社会运行的根本保障。建立在能源基础上的现代社会,能源消耗结构是否合理决定了其经济发展能否可持续。研究山东省能源消耗结构的变动状况,以及能源消费与经济增长的关系,可以促进山东省经济的持续增长。