Foreign Direct Investment: Flows,Volatility, and the Impact on Growth*

This paper contributes to the literature on FDI and economic growth. We deviate from previous studies by introducing measures of the volatility of FDI inflows. As introduced into the model, these are predicted to have a negative effect on growth. We estimate the standard model using cross‐section, panel data, and instrumental variable techniques. Whilst all results are not entirely robust, there is a consistent finding that volatility of FDI has a negative impact on growth. The evidence for a positive effect of FDI levels on growth is not robust, nor is that for any effect of human capital.     

Foreign Direct Investment,Economic Growth,and the Human Capital Threshold: Evidence from US States*

The United States has experienced a dramatic increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) in recent years. While foreign firms bring immediate benefits of high‐paying jobs, data limitations have prevented detailed study on FDI's long‐term effects on the states receiving it. By creating a new stock measure of FDI based on employment, we are able to capture these long‐term effects. Results demonstrate that FDI has a greater impact on per capita output growth than domestic investment for US states that meet a minimum human capital threshold. Ironically, the most active states in the recruitment of FDI tend to fall below this threshold.     

The Impact of Foreign Real Estate Investment on Land Prices: Evidence from Mauritius

This paper examines the impact of foreign real estate on land prices in Mauritius. Using a panel dataset comprising price, quantity and other information for a variety of luxury villas and apartments, we show that the price of land paid by locals has been pushed up by a modest 4–22% in total as a result of these developments. We also examine the determinants of the prices of the dwellings in these schemes, finding that they are strongly related to the sizes of the plots, whether they have ocean views, and the desirability of the region in which they are sited, although there remains considerable unexplained heterogeneity.     

Impact of Leverage on Investment by Major Shareholders: Evidence from Listed Firms in China

In this paper, we analyze whether leverage had impacts on investment in the period 1999–2009, and whether these impacts, if they exist, differed among companies with different investment opportunities and with different major shareholders. In order to identify governance with different major shareholders, we grouped China’s listed firms into central government owned firms (CSOEs), local government owned firms (LSOEs) and non-state-owned firms (NONSOEs). Our results are as follows. First, our analysis reveals that leverage does have significantly negative impacts on CSOE, LSOE and NONSOE investments. Secondly, in LSOEs and NONSOEs, negative leverage impacts on low-growth firms are stronger than average firms, implying that a disciplinary effect of leverage over investment can be found in LSOEs and NONSOEs. Finally, however, no such effect can be observed in CSOEs. We have provided a first finding that the effect of leverage varies according to a firm’s major shareholders.     

Direct Investment, Monopoly and Welfare

This paper considers foreign direct investment which produces a manufactured good entirely for the market of the host country. It analyzes the welfare implications of an expansion of this activity, and compares the results with ones obtained from the model of export processing zones. It is shown that, contrary to the case of EPZs, an expansion of market-oriented direct investment improves welfare under free trade, and if there is an import tariff, the expansion may improve welfare under certain conditions.     

Financing Public Investment through Foreign Aid: Consequences for Economic Growth and Welfare*

The paper develops a theoretical framework for understanding the mechanism through which foreign aid affects macroeconomic performance. The authors find that the long‐run impact of an aid program and the nature of the transitional dynamics it generates depend crucially on (i) the elasticity of substitution in production, (ii) whether the aid flow is tied to investment activity or not, (iii) how the recipient government chooses to react to the flow of external assistance, and (iv) whether the aid program is permanent or temporary. Structural characteristics of the recipient are important in determining the extent to which external assistance can aid growth and welfare.     

Foreign Aid, Domestic Investment and Welfare

This paper examines the welfare implications of temporary foreign aid in a simple two-period, two-country model of trade. Domestic investment is endogenous, providing an important link between aid in period one and the terms of trade in periods one and two. Transfer-induced changes in the terms of trade redistribute present and future income between the donor and the recipient. In the presence of barriers to international borrowing and lending, such redistribution gives rise to the possibility of temporary aid being both potentially and strictly Pareto improving.     

R&D投资对企业绩效的影响:基于浙江永康制造业的实证研究

本文应用企业资源观和组织学习理论,旨在检验R&D投资对企业绩效的影响,并进一步考察其作用机制。来自浙江永康市139家制造企业的数据表明,R&D投资对企业绩效各个维度的影响并非一致。具体而言,R&D投资和企业利润呈倒U形关系,而对企业生产率的影响并不显著。进一步,R&D投资对企业利润的影响是通过新产品作为完全中介变量的。本文的研究结果暗示,对于R&D投资到一定水平的企业,再增加R&D投资需要谨慎决策。此外,除了产品创新,企业管理者需要探索创新其他渠道,并努力发挥多种渠道的协同效应。     

The Effects of Fiscal Consolidation and Welfare Composition of Spending on Electoral Outcomes: Evidence from US Gubernatorial Elections between 1978 and 2006

This study attempts to make a contribution to the field of spending aspects of fiscal policy and their impacts on electoral outcome. Due to varying degrees of financial responsibilities and commitments to provide public goods and services, US state governments serve as a perfectly natural laboratory to test the electoral significance of fiscal policies. We adopt a probit model, with several specifications, to determine significant impacts of fiscal consolidation and increases in welfare spending on US gubernatorial elections from 1978 to 2006. The analyses show that voters are more concerned about the increase in debt than current budget deficits. An increase in welfare spending is negatively associated with reelection. Moreover, the impact of taxation on gubernatorial elections turns out to be insignificant. In particular, findings suggest that the political business cycle model does not hold true in US gubernatorial elections. Expansionary fiscal policy right before the election may not have crucial impacts on the chances of an incumbent winning the election.     

The Effect of Corruption on Investment Growth: Evidence from Firms in Latin America,Sub‐Saharan Africa,and Transition Countries*

Most of the empirical studies that analyze the impact of corruption on investment have three common features: they employ country‐level data on investment, corruption is measured at the country level, and data for countries from several regions are pooled together. This paper uses firm‐level data on investment and measures corruption at the firm and country level, and allows the effect of corruption to vary by region. Our dependent variable is firms' investment growth and we employ six measures of corruption from four different sources—two firm‐level measures and four country‐level measures. We find that the effect of corruption on investments varies significantly across regions: corruption has a negative and significant effect on investment growth for firms in Transition countries but has no significant impact for firms in Latin America and Sub‐Saharan Africa. Furthermore, for Transition countries, corruption is the most important determinant of investment.     

居住模式对老人福利的影响：基于代际关系的视角--来自我国老人膳食质量的证据

在我国老龄化程度不断加深的过程中,老人的居住模式选择及其福利问题变得越来越重要。我国传统的与子女合住的居住模式真的能改善老人福利吗？文章以我国老人的膳食质量为例,基于我国独特的“双向反馈”代际关系,从“亲代需求”和“子代需求”两个方面来讨论亲子合住居住模式对老人福利的影响,并利用2009年与2011年中国居民健康与营养调查(CH NS )的数据加以实证检验。研究表明：(1)与子女合住的居住模式非但没有改善反而降低了老人的平衡膳食得分,尤其在低龄老人、农村老人和女性老人中更为明显。(2)从影响渠道来看,亲子合住居住模式家庭中老人为满足子女的抚幼需求而无私地投入时间和精力,但老人的照料需求却没有得到很好的满足,代际关系重心向下偏移是造成老人膳食质量下降的主要原因。文章为不同居住模式下老人福利干预政策的制定和社会养老服务体系的建设提供了实证依据。     

Domestic R&D,Foreign Direct Investment and Welfare

This paper provides a new rationale to examine the two‐way relationship between domestic research and development (R&D) and foreign direct investment (FDI), as well as their impacts on domestic welfare. Our analysis is based on the strategic interaction in cost‐reducing investment decisions between domestic firms and a foreign firm, which is different from the common factors that are discussed in the literature such as spillovers and technology sourcing. Our results are as follows. We show that domestic R&D investment may either increase or decrease the foreign firm's FDI incentives. Further, depending on the marginal cost of domestic firms, domestic R&D incentives can always increase regardless of the effects of domestic R&D investment on the foreign firm's FDI decision. Finally, we find that domestic welfare improves under domestic cost reduction if the slope of the marginal cost of domestic R&D investment is sufficiently small.     

Testing Prediction Performance of Poverty Models: Empirical Evidence from Uganda

This paper examines the performance of a method of predicting poverty rates. Because most developing countries cannot justify the expense of frequent household budget surveys, additional low‐cost methods have been developed and used. The prediction method is based on a model linking the proportion of poor households to suitable explanatory variables (consumption proxies). These consumption proxies are variables that can be collected at much lower cost through smaller annual surveys. Several applications have shown that such models can produce poverty estimates with confidence intervals of a similar magnitude to the poverty estimates from the household budget surveys. There is, however, limited evidence of how well the methods perform out‐of‐sample. A series of seven household budget surveys conducted in Uganda in the period 1993–2005 allows us to test the prediction performance of the model. We test the poverty models by using data from one survey to predict the proportion of poor households in other surveys, and vice versa. The results are encouraging, as all models predict similar poverty trends. Although in most cases the predictions are precise, sometimes they differ significantly from the poverty level estimated from the survey directly.     

Corporate Investment and Tax Disincentive: Evidence from China

This study investigates how taxes influence corporate investment behavior. Based on a census of Chinese industrial enterprises, we utilize a tax-adjusted q model to examine the effects of taxes on corporate investment in fixed assets in China. Results show that the effective tax rate has a relatively small but significantly negative impact on Chinese firms’ investment in fixed assets. We extend the tax-adjusted q model to control for the lagged investment effect and peer effect of investment. Models with these effects do better at explaining the impact of taxes on firms’ investment. The lagged investment models present smaller but significant tax disincentive. Firms compete for investment with other firms both in the same region and in the same industry through peer effect. In addition, the tax disincentive differs among state owned enterprises, private enterprises, and other enterprises in China.     

经济政策不确定性、资产可逆性与固定资产投资

本文利用2012年139部门国民经济投入产出表测算行业资产可逆性,并依据证监会行业分类匹配至非金融类A股上市公司,进而考察资产可逆性如何影响经济政策不确定性与固定资产投资的关系。考虑到资产可逆性与项目投资失败时的清算价值正相关,本文从经济政策不确定性上升会增加项目投资收益率波动的视角构建理论分析框架,并利用2007—2017年季度数据对理论假说进行实证检验。结果表明,随着所处行业的资产可逆性提升,经济政策不确定性对企业固定资产投资的抑制作用被弱化,且该效应在融资约束严重的企业更为凸显。特别地,在控制经济周期特征、投资机会和抵押担保效应后,上述研究结论依旧成立。此外,考虑到模型内生性、经济政策不确定性和资产可逆性的度量方式、行业匹配度及模型设定形式等问题,系列稳健性测试均证实资产可逆性这一传导渠道的重要性。本文结论表明,资产处置成本是企业投资决策的重要决定因素。     

劳动力流动、家庭收入与农村人力资本投入——基于CFPS微观数据的实证研究

该文利用2014年中国家庭追踪调查(CFPS)数据,通过Probit模型与OLS模型实证分析了在不同收入水平下,劳动力流动对全国农村家庭人力资本投入的影响。结果表明,从全国范围的全样本看,农村家庭人均收入水平在7000元左右与26000元左右存在两个阶段"门槛",当农村家庭人均收入水平低于7000元左右时,劳动力流出将会显著地提高农村家庭进行教育投入的概率与投入力度;而当农村家庭人均收入水平介于二者之间时,劳动力流出将会减少农村家庭进行人力资本投入的概率,但有人力资本投资的家庭仍会显著提高家庭人力资本投入的力度。当农村家庭人均收入水平高于26000元左右时,劳动力流出将会显著地降低农村家庭进行教育投入的概率与投入力度。农村家庭生活的宽裕程度与农村劳动力就业选择种类的多少是造成农村家庭进行教育投入概率与投入力度变化的原因。     

The Model of a Gender-Segregated Low-Income Economy Reconsidered: Evidence from Uganda

This paper examines Darity's model of gender-segregated low-income agrarian society in light of evidence from Uganda. It identifies three important features of the interactions between men and women which are likely to have economic effects but which are subsumed within Darity's schematic presentation. It suggests a reformulation of the Darity model in terms of a bargaining framework. This facilitates greater insights into gendered economic processes that otherwise are ignored, and investigation of a wider range of macro outcomes.     

Finance,Investment and Growth: Evidence for Italy

This paper investigates the finance–growth nexus in Italy over a period of more than forty years (1965–2009). After a review of the theoretical and empirical literature, the paper provides evidence that the aggregate indicators of financial depth, constructed by Beck et al. ( 2000a ) and widely used in the literature, played no significant role in spurring economic growth, after controlling for the main determinants of growth and corrected for endogeneity biases. The indicator of private credit to GDP—considered the most important measure of financial development—adversely affected growth in the period studied. By contrast, financial development indicators have a positive impact when are associated directly with the real investment rate. The results are robust to the inclusion of various controls and changes in the conditioning set.