Economic and other determinants of infant and child mortality in small developing countries: the case of Central America and the Caribbean

This analysis involves empirically testing a theoretical model among 22 Central American and Caribbean countries during the 1990s that explains differences in infant and child mortality. Explanatory measures capture demographic, economic, health care, and educational characteristics. The model is expected to allow for an assessment of the potential impact of structural adjustment and external debt. It is pointed out that birth rates and child mortality rates followed similar patterns over time and between countries. In this study's regression analyses all variables in the three models that explain infant mortality are exogenous: low birth weight, immunization, gross domestic product per capita, years of schooling for women, population/nurse, and debt as a proportion of gross national product. As nations became richer, infant mortality declined. Infant mortality was lower in countries with high external debt. In models for explaining the birth rate and the child mortality rate, the best fit included variables for debt, real public expenditure on health care, water supply, and malnutrition. Analysis in a simultaneous model for 10 countries revealed that the birth rate and the child mortality rate were more responsive to shocks in exogenous variables in Barbados than in the Dominican Republic, and more responsive in the Dominican Republic than in Guatemala. The impact of each exogenous variable varied by country. In Barbados education was four times more effective in explaining the birth rate than water. In Guatemala, the most effective exogenous variable was malnutrition. Child mortality rates were affected more by multiplier effects. In richer countries, the most important impact on child survival was improved access to safe water, and the most important impact on the birth rate was increased real public expenditure on education per capita. For the poorest countries, findings suggest first improvement in malnutrition and then improvement in safe water supplies. Structural adjustment variables were found to have small impacts on the birth rate or limited impacts on child survival in poorer countries.     

Growth and export expansion in developing countries: Some empirical evidence

This paper analyzes the empirical relationship between economic growth and export expansion in developing countries as observed through an intercountry cross-section. Employing data from 55 middle income developing countries for the period 1960–1977, bivariate tests revealed significant positive associations between growth and various other economic variables including the growth of manufacturing output, investment, total exports, and manufacturing exports. A production function model was also specified and estimated with the cross-sectional data. The results indicated that export performance was important, along with capital formation, in explaining the intercountry variance in GDP growth rates during the 1960–1977 period.     

How Does Foreign Direct Investment Really Affect Developing Countries' Growth?

Two main contributions to literature on foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic growth are made in this paper. First, the paper examines the effect of FDI on economic growth for 44 developing countries using heterogeneous panel cointegration techniques that are robust to omitted variables and endogenous regressors. The main result is that FDI has, on average, a negative effect on growth in developing countries, but there are large differences in the effect across countries. Second, a general‐to‐specific model‐selection approach is used to systematically search for country‐specific factors explaining the cross‐country differences in the growth effects of FDI. The results suggest that the cross‐country heterogeneity in the growth effect of FDI can be explained mainly by cross‐country differences in freedom from government intervention, business freedom, FDI volatility, and primary export dependence.     

Incomes policies,inflation and strikes in Nigeria, 1950—1985: an empirical investigation

The effects of incomes policies and inflation on the incidence of strikes in Nigeria for the 1950–1985 period are examined. Studies have analysed extensively the determinants of strike activity in developed countries, however relatively little empirical analysis of strike determinants in less developed countries exists. An attempt is made to fill this gap by including key economic, organizational, and institutional variables into a model that is capable of predicting the variations in strikes in Nigeria, a developing country with a growing unionized sector. The estimated results of the model show that strikes in Nigeria are positively influenced by the level of inflation, the level of union membership, incomes policies, and time trend.     

工业经济协调发展系统动力学仿真——以青岛市为例

系统动力学研究的是复杂系统的反馈结构,擅长于处理非线性时变的多重反馈问题,比较适合于长期、动态、战略性的研究,是研究区域产业经济协调发展系统的一种重要的定量分析工具.本文采用该方法,建立了青岛市工业经济协调发展的系统动力学模型进行模拟仿真,模型由工业经济子系统、区域技术创新子系统和区域经济环境子系统组成,通过模拟仿真进行工业经济发展趋势预测,仿真值和真实值误差较小,模型能较好的反映青岛市工业经济发展现状.并选择政府科技投入占财政支出比例和投资比例作为控制变量,以工业生产总值和区域GDP为监测变量建立三种发展模式,通过不同发展模式仿真结果的分析和比较,提出青岛市应加大政府科技投入占财政支出比例和投资比例,实现工业经济协调发展.     

Broadband penetration and economic growth nexus: evidence from cross-country panel data

This article investigates whether there are Granger causal relationships between broadband penetration, degree of urbanization, foreign direct investment and economic growth using a panel data set covering the G-20 countries for the period 1998–2011. Using our multivariate framework, we first find that all of the variables are cointegrated. Our findings further reveal a network of causal connections between the variables including short-run bidirectional causality between broadband penetration and economic growth among the more developed countries within the G-20. On the other hand, for the developing countries within the G-20, there is evidence of unidirectional causality from economic growth to broadband penetration.     

The impact of China’s WTO accession on trade and economic relations across the Taiwan Strait

This paper evaluates the impact of China’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) accession on trade and economic relations across the Taiwan Strait and its implications for the rest of the world by a recursive dynamic, 17‐region, 25‐sector computable general equilibrium (CGE) model according to actual market access commitments that China and Taiwan have made to date. The simulation results show that both China and Taiwan will substantially benefit from their WTO memberships, and their economic interdependence and their dependence within the rest of the world will further deepen. The rest of the world may also benefit because of the expansion of world trade and improvement of their international terms of trade, but some developing countries with an endowment structure similar to China, like those in South America and Southeast Asia, may experience keener competition in labour‐intensive exports and lower prices for their products. JEL classification: F1, F02, C68, P52.     

Family planning in developing nations: a global concern,our concern

Rapid population growth is a serious problem in many developing countries and family planning policies developed in response to the problem raise many ethical issues; home economists can help the citizens in their respective countries increase their knowledge of population dynamics and help them assess the ethical implications of population and family planning policies. Most developing countries have high population growth rates. The annual population growth rates for 1975-79 were 2.8% for Africa, 2.6% for Latin America, and 2.1% for Asia. Population grows exponentially: a population growing at an annual rate of 3% increases. 1900% in a century. If current population trends continue the world's population will stablize toward the end of the 21st century at about 10 billion persons, compared to the world's present population of 4.3 billion. Rapid population growth not only threatens the future welfare of society as a whole, but currently impedes the economic development of the world's poorest nations. Consequently, the governments in many developing countries have adopted vigorous family planning programs. It is difficult to reduce population growth in developing countries because these countries have a high proportion of young people in their populations, i.e., a high number of persons of reproductive age. Barriers to family planning acceptance include 1) high illiteracy rates 2) high infant mortality rates 3) the high economic and socialvalue placed on children in developing countries and 4)religious beliefs. Methods used by governments to alter population growth include 1) manipulating access to contraceptives, 2)developing programs to alter social determinants of fertility, 3) using propaganda to encourage or discourage birth control and repressing information contrary to the government's policies, 4) offering incentives to those who further government policies and imposing disincentives on those who do not comply with government policies, and 5) exerting political pressure to force individual to comply with the govermnent's policies. The use of some of these methods raises ethical issues. When does pressure become coercion? Is coecion justified by the need to ensure the future welfare of the world? In India, sterilization was promoted by making payments to sterilization acceptors and promoters and to physicians who performed sterilizations. In Taiwan, savings deposits were made for children of couples with 1 or 2 children, and the deposits were decreased in additional childred were born. In China incentives, disincentives, and polititcal and peer pressure are used to promote the governt's family planning policies. Do these strong measures lead to infaticide and to the abuse of children whose births result in economic loss for other family members? Do they violate human rights? These issues should be discussed in home economics classes, and additional efforts must be made to ensure that male students are also provided with population information. Home economists can promote the critical assessment of the population problem and its solutions.     

FDI inflows,economic growth,and governance quality trilogy in developing countries: A panel VAR analysis

This study provides evidence of the triangular relationship between governance quality, foreign direct investment, and economic growth. Unlike previous studies in the governance—foreign direct investment—growth literature, this study employed the panel vector autoregressive model to examine the impact of governance quality and foreign direct investment on economic growth. Moreover, we used the impulse response function tool, which was developed in the same context, to better understand the reaction of the two main variables of interest, foreign direct investment, and economic growth, after shocks to the governance quality variable. Finally, the analysis was completed by the variance decomposition of all variables. These analyses were conducted for 102 developing countries from 1996 to 2014. Overall, the results show that inward foreign direct investment has a significant impact and can strongly encourage economic growth. These results indicate that the quality of governance in developing countries does not affect foreign direct investment and economic growth.     

International migration,foreign direct investment,and development stage in developing economies

The existing empirical results on the relationship between FDI and migration are rather mixed. This study reevaluates, both theoretically and empirically, how inward FDI relates to emigration in developing countries. Our model illustrates that the relationship between inward FDI and emigration flows depends on the development stage of a developing country, that is, there is a positive association between inward FDI and emigration flows for relatively less‐developed countries but a negative association between these two variables for relatively developed countries. We confirm the empirical validity of our model prediction using the panel data of 21 OECD and 51 non‐OECD countries during the period from 2003 to 2012. Our results argue that as economic development proceeds in a developing country, the home effect of inward FDI associated with intensified labor demand would dominate the linkage effect that induces the brain drain problem through enhancing the socioeconomic ties with migrant networks.     

Trade, investment and growth: nexus, analysis and prognosis

Patterns of causation between income, export, import and investment growth for 39 developing countries are examined using model selection techniques which are based on ex ante predictive ability criteria to identify the best predictive model for each country. In particular, we look at the incidence of causation and reverse causation between various economic variables which are commonly believed to lead economic growth and find that there is less reverse causation from income to these variables than previously thought. We also construct an index of global business cycle conditions and find that models of countries with high trade exposure, growth rates and investment rates tend to gain in predictive ability from the addition of this variable.     

EXTERNAL MACROECONOMIC IMBALANCES AND FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT INFLOWS TO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

We employ relative size of International Monetary Fund (IMF) credit as a proxy for interdependent macro variables that are associated with external macroeconomic imbalances or balance of payment (BOP) crisis to investigate how they impact foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. Relative size of IMF credit as a share of gross domestic product sends two mixed signals to multinational enterprises (MNEs). First, it is a signal that a country is facing an actual or potential BOP crisis. Second, countries that seek IMF credit typically agree to implement a set of “IMF conditionality” before financial credit is disbursed. This may signal to MNEs that policy reforms that must accompany IMF financial credit may result in ex ante positive economic outlook and stability. We find that relative size of IMF credit is negatively (positively) correlated with FDI inflows to developing countries below (above) a threshold value of economic freedom. The main implication of these findings is that MNEs may view developing countries with below average index of economic freedom as lacking institutional capabilities to implement recommended IMF policy reforms when faced with an actual or potential BOP crisis. Our results are robust across alternative model specifications and consistent with the theory of catalytic finance. (JEL F21, F23, F33)     

Searching for empirical linkages between demographic structure and economic growth

Demographic structure could affect economic growth through many channels. However, little is known about how demographic structure affects economic growth since no study has examined an extensive collection of channels through which demographic structure could affect economic growth in a single context. This paper overcomes this limitation by examining 45 potential mediating variables between demographic structure and economic growth. A causal search algorithm is used to identify channels through which demographic structure affects economic growth. Our results suggest that demographic structure affects economic growth differently between developed and developing countries. For developed countries, we find that an increase in the share of middle-aged workers has a positive effect on economic growth through institutions, investment and education channels. On the other hand, an increase in the share of the senior population has a negative effect on economic growth through institutions and investment channels. For developing countries, we find (but with weak evidence) that an increase in the share of young workers has a negative effect on economic growth through investment, financial market development and trade channels.     

The exploration of economic crises: parameter uncertainty and predictive ability

Over a long horizon, this paper examines joint economic crises and determines the power of 49 variables in predicting such episodes. While incorporating dynamism in the prediction, we generate the predictive power of various specifications and model the uncertainty in the parameters of interest. The results reveal that growth of real gross domestic product per capita, regulation, bank non‐performing loans, interest rate and inflation rate are the most significant variables in predicting the joint economic crises. These variables predict economic crises with about 93% accuracy and can predict joint economic crises in developing countries and recent joint crises.     

中国纸制品消费趋势:城市化增长的效应分析和预测

基于对近期未来的人口—经济增长的预测,分析了城市化增长对未来纸制品消费的影响。用"自相关误差回归"的方法检验人口和城市化增长的不同发展路径对于纸制品消费的影响。中国的城市化过程对纸制品消费影响很大,更快的城市化进程,相应的影响会更强烈。比较人口变量和经济变量,城市家庭经济因素相对更加明显。在近期的未来,随着纸制品消费的增加,其对环境污染的压力也会增大。     

Labour-market institutions, (un)employment,wages, and growth: theory and data

We analyse the implications of labour-market institutions on wage inequality in favour of skilled labour, on relative unemployment of unskilled labour, and on the economic growth rate in two clusters resulting from 27 OECD countries: Cluster 1, closely related with the Anglo-Saxon model, and Cluster 2, dominated by the Continental-European model. By linking the unskilled wage to the skilled one in Cluster 2, due to the indexation of social benefits to per-capita income, we accommodate the observed paths of the three variables in both clusters between 1991 and 2008: Cluster 1 presents a higher wage inequality in favour of skilled labour, a lower unemployment of the unskilled labour, and a better economic growth rate.     

A structuralist North–South model on structural change,economic growth and catching-up

This paper presents a structuralist North–South model on structural change, industrialization and economic convergence. In a balance-of-payments-constrained macro-setting, we assume a cumulative process between industrialization and growth. Differently from the traditional post-Keynesian models, we endogenize the productive structure of developing countries. We enquire how industrialization affects uneven development and convergence processes. Multiple growth paths and a long-run path-dependent equilibrium emerge. Industrialization proves to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for catching-up. Good management by the domestic institutions of domestic industrialization is a complementary requirement.     

Optimal time paths with age-dependence: a theory of population policy

A mathematical model is established whereby optimal accumulation paths of population and the economy can be figured when the basic feature of population dynamics, age dependence, is taken into account. This model series links 2 previously separate disciplines and literatures - i.e., formal policy dealing with the dynamics of age and time. An integral-equation control theory is utilized. Recognition of age structure in analyzing fertility trends is important at both macro- and microeconomic levels. The present model was constructed by embedding an age-disaggregated population in a simple economic growth model where the fertility level and rate of savings can both be influenced by government policy. Such policy should balance the lifetime value of births and capital against the social costs necessary to create them. One the problem has been defined and a dynamic theory developed, optimum static theories can be establihsed where the variables are held constant over time.     

政府支出与私人消费的关系研究——基于跨国数据（1983—2008年）的面板协整分析

文章运用面板协整分析方法和世界上36个国家（20个发达国家和16个发展中国家）1983—2008年的面板数据进行跨国研究,通过建立变系数面板模型并结合可支配收入和宏观经济环境的影响,分析了政府支出和私人消费的关系。研究结果显示,总体上而言,样本国家的政府消费支出与私人消费成互补关系,可支配收入仍然是影响私人消费的主要因素,宏观经济环境（经济开放程度和失业率）对消费的影响在统计上很不显著。为了扩大消费,中国政府应实施积极的财政政策、扩大财政支出和提高社会保障水平以及切实解决民生基本难题。     

Simulating the spatial distribution of population and emissions to 2100

Urbanization and economic development have important implications for many environmental processes including global climate change. Although there is evidence that urbanization depends endogenously on economic variables, long-term forecasts of the spatial distribution of population are often made exogenously and independent of economic conditions. It is common for research concerning long-run projections of global environmental change to use population density as the primary means to spatially distribute emissions projections. However, researchers typically utilize year 1990 cross-sectional population data to distribute their emissions projections for both the short- and long-term, without projecting any changes in population density. Thus, a beta distribution for individual countries/regions is estimated to describe the geographical distribution of population using a one-degree-by-one-degree latitude–longitude global population data set. Cross-sectional country/regional data are then used to estimate an empirical relationship between parameters of the beta distribution and macroeconomic variables as they vary among countries/regions. This conditional beta distribution allows the simulation of a changing distribution of population, including the growth of urban areas, driven by economic forecasts until the year 2100.