Nonlinearities and heterogeneity in environmental quality: An empirical analysis of deforestation

We use a panel data set of 59 developing countries over the 1972–1994 period to study the deforestation process. Relying on both parametric and semiparametric models, we examine nonlinearities and heterogeneity in the deforestation process. We first study the existence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) and then analyze determinants of deforestation. Our data sample provides no evidence of an EKC. We also find that political institution failures may worsen the deforestation process in developing countries.     

Potential economic reforms in North Korea: a dynamic general equilibrium model

We use a dynamic general equilibrium model to examine hypothetical market reforms in North Korea. We model partial reform, in which producers choose capital allocations across sectors, with the government still fixing total capital. We also consider two full market reform scenarios. In one, public infrastructure investment remains unchanged, while, in the other, it increases substantially. In all scenarios, we assume a closed economy and a constant military size. Our simulations show little hope for the North Korean economy without boosting infrastructure. Although all of the reforms raise consumption, only significant increases in infrastructure investment bring positive economic growth.     

Changes in social welfare and sustainability: Theoretical issues and empirical evidence

We analyze the time derivative of a Ramsey-Koopmans social welfare function (R-K SWF), as an indicator of genuine investment and current change in social welfare (CSW) conditions, when feedback or arbitrary rules are used for selecting policy variables in non-optimizing economies. When policy variables are selected arbitrarily, their accounting prices should determine current CSW in addition to the accounting prices of the economy's assets and genuine investment should be adjusted accordingly. We use our theoretical framework to characterize CSW conditions for non-optimizing economies, based on direct estimation of accounting prices. We use our theoretical model to provide empirical evidence regarding the CSW conditions for the Greek economy.     

The use of trade measures against illicit fishing: Economic and legal considerations

Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing activities are a threat for both the marine environment and society. By undermining effective management systems, IUU fishing activities affect economic performance, social welfare and compliance decisions. So far, “traditional” control and surveillance-like measures have had a limited success in deterring IUU fishing, so this paper aims at throwing light on several forms of trade-related initiatives that can be more effective. The paper suggests that both the effectiveness and further development of such measures strongly depend on the way they are designed, especially with respect to their trade-law compatibility. However, current discussions on future trade-based policy developments within some key economic areas suggest that trade measures are a sound option for policy makers. While the paper focuses on fisheries issues, it is also expected to inform the international debate surrounding the sustainable use of natural resources in general, as many sectors face similar biodiversity and trade challenges (e.g. tropical forest, mangroves, etc.).     

Efficiency and equity impacts of rural land rental restrictions: Evidence from India

Recognition of the potentially deleterious implications of inequality in opportunity originating in a skewed asset distribution has spawned considerable interest in land reforms. However, little attention has been devoted to the fact that, in the longer-term, the measures used to implement land reforms, especially rental restrictions, could negatively affect productivity. Use of state level data on rental restrictions, together with a nationally representative survey from India suggests that, contrary to original intentions, rental restrictions negatively affect productivity and equity by reducing scope for efficiency-enhancing rental transactions that benefit poor producers. Simulations suggest that, by doubling the number of producers with access to land through rental, from about 15 million currently, liberalization of rental markets could have far-reaching impacts.     

Financial openness,market structure and private credit: An empirical investigation

Consistent with recent theoretical models, this paper finds that financial openness has a positive effect on private credit in economies characterized by a competitive banking sector, but that this effect vanishes and even becomes negative in economies with imperfect banking competition.     

The vanishing role of money in the macro-economy: An empirical investigation for India

The recent de-emphasizing of the role of “money” in both theoretical macroeconomics as well as in the practical conduct of monetary policy sits uneasily with the idea that inflation is a monetary phenomenon. Empirical evidence has, however, been accumulating pointing to an important leading indicator role for money and credit aggregates with respect to long term inflationary trends. Such a role could arise from monetary aggregates furnishing a nominal anchor for inflationary expectations, from their influence on the term structure of interest rates and from their affecting transaction costs in markets. Our paper attempts to assess the informational content role of money in the Indian economy by a separation of these effects across time scales and frequency bands, using the techniques of wavelet analysis and band spectral analysis respectively. Our results indicate variability of causal relations across frequency ranges and time scales, as also occasional causal reversals.     

Crowdfunding and social influence: an empirical investigation

The literature so far provides no in-depth investigation of the determinants of decisions to contribute to crowdfunding platforms. The present article draws on work measuring the decisions and prosocial behaviours of individuals in relation to public goods, and uses survey data on crowdfunding behaviour. We surveyed an original sample of individuals in France to explore individual decisions and amounts of funding chosen to support a creative project. We show that in non-equity crowdfunding contributing money is associated with altruism. Our findings suggest that the ‘warm glow’ effect influences the level of the contribution; we show also those monetary incentives could ‘crowd out’ the decisions to contribute of crowdfunders. Our study has some implications for business strategy since understanding why people contribute adds to our knowledge about the incentives that might encourage them to increase their contributions, and allows predictions about how changes to how crowdfunding platforms are managed might affect individual incentives to give.     

Land tenure and investment incentives: Evidence from West Africa

The existing literature on the relationship between property rights in land and agricultural investment in Africa has given results that are often confusing and contradictory. I make two clarifying contributions to this literature. First, I pull together existing studies and investigate whether the results they find have been affected by research methods or local contexts. Studies with small sample sizes, those that use binary investment measures, and those that control for household fixed effects are less likely to find a statistically significant link between land tenure and investment. Self-reported tenure security has been a poor predictor of investment outcomes. Second, I test for a relationship between land tenure and agricultural investment in nine data sets from West Africa. While the link between tenure and investment is significant for fallow and tree planting, it is less robust for labor use and other inputs, such as manure or chemical fertilizer.     

An empirical analysis of euro cash payments

If the denominational structure of the euro is used in an optimal way, there should be no preferences for certain coins and notes when making cash payments. In Kippers et al. [2003. An empirical study of cash payments. Statistica Neerlandica 57, 484-508] it is documented that the Dutch public did have certain preferences concerning the Dutch guilder in the sense that a few notes and coins were used less often than they should have been. With the advent of the euro, which changed the denominational structure from 1--5 (guilder) to 1-2-5 (euro), it is of interest to examine whether there are any preferences for euro coins and notes. In this paper we use a unique dataset for the Netherlands to empirically examine if the euro range is used in an optimal way. We find that there are no preferences for certain euro denominations.     

An investigation of issues relating to where energy should enter the production function

This paper examines the impact of imposing different separability assumptions in the specifications of the standard hierarchical KLEM production function in a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. The appropriate means of introducing energy to production functions has been a source of debate for a number of years. However, while modellers often subject results to parametric sensitivy analysis regarding the values associated with elasticities of substitution between inputs, it is rarely the case that the structure of the production function is subjected to testing. However, the chosen structure reflects the modeller's view about elasticity between different inputs and will have implications for model results wherever there are changes in relative prices. We illustrate our argument by introducing a simple demand shock to a CGE model of the Scottish economy (targeted at the energy supply sector) under different assumptions regarding the structure of the KLEM production function and separability assumptions therein.     

The size and development of the shadow economy: An empirical investigation from states of India

Using the state level data from India, this paper investigates the size of the hidden economy in Indian states over the period 1974/75 to 1995/96. Our analysis has shown that after liberalization of the Indian economy in 1991/92, the growth in the size of the hidden economy has decreased on an average. Our results show that the growth in the size of the hidden economy is approximately 4% less in scheduled election years than in all other years. We also demonstrate that the growth is significantly lower in those states where the coalition government is in power. An increased growth of newspapers and the literacy rates translate to cleaner governance, e.g. to fewer amounts of shadow economy activities in the economy.     

Land tenure differences and investment in land improvement measures: Theoretical and empirical analyses

This article develops a theoretical framework to examine the relationship between land tenure arrangements and households' investment in soil-improving and conservation measures. It then analyzes this relationship with a multivariate probit model based on detailed plot-level data from villages in the Brong Ahafo region of Ghana. A major hypothesis tested is that investment in productivity-enhancing and conservation techniques are influenced by land tenure arrangements. The theoretical analysis and empirical results generally reveal that land tenure differences significantly influence farmers' decisions to invest in land-improving and conservation measures. The findings also show that tenure security does affect farm productivity.     

Interest rate reforms,financial deepening and economic growth in Cameroon: an empirical investigation

The impact of interest rate reforms on financial deepening and growth in Cameroon is examined. We employ five proxies of financial deepening against deposit rate, a proxy for interest rate reforms. The impact of interest rate reforms on financial deepening is sensitive to the proxy used for financial deepening. The impact is almost negative and significant for all the indicators, except for the ratio of broad money to Gross Domestic Product, where it is positive and significant in the first lag. This means that financial repression helps improve broad money and hinders the development of the other indicators of financial development in Cameroon.     

Balance-of-payments policies and structural reforms: An adaptive-control model for India

An adaptive-control model, where parameters of the model will change in response to policy optimizations, is constructed for India and solutions of the optimization process provide the planned paths for some of the most important macro policy instruments of the economy. Comparisons of the planned paths and the actual behavior of the economy show that the capitalistic reform process in India is not a success, but a mixed economic plan would be more beneficial for the economy.     

An empirical investigation of the balance of embodied emission in trade: Industry structure and emission abatement

By constructing the world panel dataset for the pollution emission embedded in international trade of 132 countries for the period between 1988 and 2008, we investigate whether the balance of embodied emission in trade (BEET) is consistent with the implication of pollution haven hypothesis (PHH). By using two differently constructed datasets, we are able to distinguish between the composition (i.e., changes in industry structure of international trade) effect and the technique (i.e., improvement in emission abatement) effect. We find that the composition effect is neither related with the income level nor the democracy level of countries. However, the empirical evidence, with consideration for the technique effect, provides a partial support that income level is negatively related with the BEET. Therefore, the BEET in fact has worsened for developing countries, but not by the composition effect assumed in the PHH.     

Heterogeneous ideas production and endogenous growth: an empirical investigation

Abstract .  We examine the dynamics of ideas production and knowledge-productivity relationship in a panel of 19 OECD countries. A new data set of triadic patents is used. We rigorously address the issues of cross-country heterogeneity and endogeneity. Domestic and foreign ideas stocks exert positive but heterogeneous effects on ideas production. We find evidence of duplicate R&D but little support for endogenous growth. Countries with low domestic ideas bases could considerably improve productivity through ideas accumulation; however, this effect is modest for countries with sizeable ideas bases. An implication is that country-specific R&D policy appears potentially more effective than the one-size-fits-all approach.     

The educational and occupational background of central bankers and its effect on inflation: An empirical analysis

We test the hypothesis that the inflation preferences of central bankers depend on their educational and/or occupational background. In a panel data analysis for the euro area and eleven countries since 1973, we explain inflation either by the weights with which the educational and occupational characteristics of the 391 council members were represented in the various central bank councils or by the education or occupation of the median council members. Control variables are added. Our most robust result is that former members of the central bank staff prefer significantly lower inflation rates than former politicians do.     

Culture and labour productivity: An empirical investigation

Culture is considered as one of the most powerful forces that shape human behaviour and thereby economic activity. This paper investigates the effects of culture on labour productivity and examines the cultural traits driving this relationship. Using panel data analysis, empirical evidence is provided covering a sample of 34 OECD countries over a wide period of three decades. Our empirical results suggest a significant positive relationship between the cultural background and labour productivity. The main channels of this positive impact are control and work ethic environment, while obedience has a negative impact on productivity. These findings are robust to a series of robustness checks, including alternative cultural measures, additional control variables, various country samples, and alternative specifications.