Do economic reforms and human capital explain post-reform growth?

By employing a conventional production function, this study advances theoretical and empirical research on the role of economic reforms and human capital on the post-reform economic growth. We construct two unique indices – a composite economic reform index and a human capital index – to perform a comparative analysis of a panel data model and to demonstrate that human capital and economic reforms have had a significant positive effect on economic growth in India and South Korea in the post-reform period. This positive effect is revealed in both contemporaneous and lagged estimations. The impact of reforms is found to be much stronger in South Korea than in India. This study also demonstrates the importance of time-invariant country-specific characteristics, and suggests that policies aimed to improve human capital accumulation have complementary effects on the efficacy of economic reforms.     

Structural reforms in a debt overhang

The effects of reforms in product and labor markets are assessed in an economy where credit restrictions and long-term debt combine to produce a persistent recession with slow deleveraging following a negative financial shock. We show that product market reforms stimulate output and employment even in the short run, despite their deflationary effects. By favoring a faster recovery of investment and collateral values, such reforms bring forward the end of the deleveraging phase. This channel is missing in the case of labor market reforms, which have more modest effects on economic activity.     

Foreign Speculators and Emerging Equity Markets

We propose a cross-sectional time-series model to assess the impact of market liberalizations in emerging equity markets on the cost of capital, volatility, beta, and correlation with world market returns. Liberalizations are defined by regulatory changes, the introduction of depositary receipts and country funds, and structural breaks in equity capital flows to the emerging markets. We control for other economic events that might confound the impact of foreign speculators on local equity markets. Across a range of specifications, the cost of capital always decreases after a capital market liberalization with the effect varying between 5 and 75 basis points.     

Equity Market Liberalization in Emerging Markets

Equity market liberalizations, if effective, lead to important changes in both the financial and real sectors as the economy becomes integrated into world capital markets. The study of market integration is complicated because one can liberalize in many ways and many countries have taken different routes. To study the effectiveness of particular liberalization policies, the sequencing of liberalizations, and the impact on the real economy, systematic methods must be developed to date the liberalization of emerging equity markets. We provide a synthesis of the current methods and show the impact of liberalization on the real sector.     

Can economic liberalization and improved governance alter the defense–growth trade‐off?

Because of the presumed guns vs. butter trade-off, defense expenditures in developing countries are coming under increased scrutiny from the international lending agencies as well as key donors. As a result, defense expenditure cuts have often taken place despite rising security concerns. Empirically we find that developing countries may have more options than previously believed in their quest for adequate security and sustained economic growth. Specifically the main finding of the study is that key combinations of reforms and governance measures are likely to exist and are capable of neutralizing many of the adverse economic effects often associated with defense expenditures. The key is to coordinate economic liberalization and governance reforms in the civilian sector with the requirements for improved security in the defense sector.     

Bailing out conflicted sovereigns

How should sovereign bailouts take account of the effects bailouts have on policy reforms? Conflicted recipient governments complicate bailout choices because some reforms that spur growth reduce rents that benefit government decision makers. Our model takes account of whether bailout generosity and policy reforms are strategic substitutes, strategic complements or both, and each case implies a different optimal bailout contract, which generally cannot achieve First Best. Conditional forgiveness of some loan payments when economic outcomes are sufficiently favorable can achieve outcomes closer to First Best, and this is so for a small ex ante amount of the bailout subsidy.     

Assessing Economic and Fiscal Reforms in Lebanon: A Dynamic CGE Analysis with Debt Constraints

Since the early 1990s, Lebanon has undertaken a number of economic reforms, covering international trade and internal fiscal policy issues in particular. Simultaneously, debt has been skyrocketing, partially justified by reconstruction needs after the end of the civil war. Fostering economic growth seems to be the only way out of the debt trap, but reforms intended to stimulate growth may well have adverse short-run effects on public and external deficits. We construct a dynamic open-economy computable general equilibrium (CGE) model with debt constraints in the sense that external debt requires physical capital as collateral. The CGE model allows us to study the effects of a number of important economic policy issues, such as fiscal policy reform, World Trade Organization (WTO) membership, and foreign direct investment, in a multisectoral dynamic setting under the realistic assumption that debt constraints relax when the economy starts growing. Included in the results are reports on scenarios of trade liberalization and political stabilization.     

Equity market liberalization and corporate governance

Equity market liberalizations open up domestic stock markets to foreign investors. A puzzle in the literature is why developing countries exhibit relatively small financial impacts associated with liberalizations. We use cross-firm variation in corporate governance at the time of the official liberalization of the equity market in Korea to test whether governance can explain the extent to which firms benefit when countries liberalize. The results show that better-governed firms experience significantly greater stock price increases upon equity market liberalization. Following the liberalization in Korea, foreign ownership in firms with strong corporate governance was significantly higher than that in firms with weak governance. Better-governed firms also exhibit higher rates of physical capital accumulation after liberalization.     

A life-cycle model of unemployment and disability insurance

A general equilibrium life-cycle model is developed, in which individuals choose a sequence of saving and labor supply faced with search frictions and uncertainty in longevity, health status and medical expenditures. Unemployed individuals decide whether to apply for disability insurance (DI) benefits if eligible. We investigate the effects of cash transfer and in-kind Medicare component of the DI system on the life-cycle employment. Without Medicare benefits, DI coverage could fall significantly. We also study how DI interacts with reforms of Social Security and Medicare and find that DI enrollment amplifies the effects of reforms.     

On the political economics of tax reforms: survey and empirical assessment

Political constraints and incentives are the true driver of tax reforms. This paper reviews the political economics literature on personal income tax systems and reforms to see how political mechanisms help explain tax reforms. We take some of the implications of these theories to the data using LABREF, a database that identifies labor tax reforms in the European Union for the period 2000–2007, and control for economic and labor market factors. We find that political variables carry more weight than economic variables, and we show empirical regularities that support political economy theories. We also find that governments tended to reform more in better economic times, engaging in pro-cyclical behavior.     

Western management accounting and the economic reforms of China

As China has experimented with economic reforms during the last decade, new management systems designed to facilitate these reforms have been implemented. This papershow how the recent adoption of Western management accounting methods by many state-owned Chinese enterprises has played an integral and demonstrable role in the new management systems and in the economic, social and political reforms of the country.     

Bank fund reallocation and economic growth: Evidence from China

This paper examines bank fund reallocation and regional economic growth based on 1991–2005 provincial-level data of four state-owned commercial banks of China that practice fund reallocation nation-wide. We find no correlation between bank fund reallocation and regional economic growth or between bank loans and regional economic growth. We find, however, a positive association between bank deposits and growth. It appears economic growth leads financial development in China, not the other way around. Furthermore, as China’s market-oriented reforms deepen, fund reallocation and loans start to manifest positive effects on growth even though the banks are government owned.     

金融改革30年

中国金融改革虽然从时间上看落后于中国整体经济改革,但还是卓有成效的,在回顾中国经济改革30年之时,我们有必要回顾一下中国金融改革所走过的路。     

Citizenship and Social Security

The aim of this paper is to elucidate the idea of citizenship that lies behind the Labour government's welfare reforms. There has been no proper statement about this from the government, so the paper is an attempt to make explicit what is latent in the reforms. It does this partly historically by looking at ideas of citizenship that have been presupposed in the development of the British Welfare State. It is claimed that there are two rather different approaches to be discerned: one sees citizenship as a basic status, which in turn is the basis of entitlement; the other view is that citizenship is something that has to be developed or achieved, typically by participation in the labour market and by discharging obligations. This distinction is then used more analytically to assess some of the welfare reforms and to indicate possible sources of future difficulty and tension in so far as the government embraces the obligation‐oriented view of citizenship.     

Financial System Reform in Kazakhstan from 1993 to 2006 and Its Socioeconomic Effects

Voluminous theoretical and empirical literature examines the relation between financial-sector development and economic growth. However, previous studies have largely ignored progress in former Soviet Central Asian republics engaged in transition from socialist command economies to market economies. This paper seeks to fill this gap in the literature by considering Kazakhstan's experience with financial-sector liberalization and the socioeconomic effects of these reforms. We summarize the prereform economic circumstances prevailing in Kazakhstan, outline the major characteristics of its postcommunist financial system, and provide a detailed chronicle of financial-sector reform measures from 1993 to 2006. The paper focuses on the evolution of Kazakhstan's banking structure, policies adopted by the National Bank of Kazakhstan, and the approach taken to the privatization of state banks, as well as the steps taken to improve bank accounting standards and banking supervision. The development path of nonbank financial institutions and capital markets is also examined. We consider the outcomes of financial-sector reforms and their effects on the economy as a whole.     

Changes in Income Distributions and the Role of Tax‐Benefit Policy During the Great Recession: An International Perspective

In this paper, we examine the impact of the economic crisis and the policy reaction on inequality and relative poverty in four European countries: France, Germany, Ireland and the UK. The period examined, 2008–13, was one of great economic turmoil, yet it is unclear whether changes in inequality and poverty rates over this time period were mainly driven by changes in market income distributions or by tax‐benefit policy reforms. We disentangle these effects by producing counterfactual (‘no reform') scenarios using tax‐benefit microsimulation and representative household surveys for each country. For the first stage of the Great Recession, we find that the policy reaction contributed to stabilising or even decreasing inequality and relative poverty in the UK, France and, especially, Ireland. Market income changes nonetheless pushed up inequality and relative poverty in France. Relative poverty increased in Germany as a result of policy responses combined with market income changes. Subsequent policy reforms, in the later stage of the crisis, had markedly different cross‐country effects, decreasing overall poverty in France, increasing it in Ireland, and giving mixed effects for different subgroups in Germany and the UK.     

Decentralization,Economic Development,and Growth in Turkish Provinces

There have been important developments in the decentralization of the government structure in Turkey since the early 1980s. This paper examines economic development and growth in Turkish provinces. It first discusses local government reforms throughout the history of Turkey with the focus on recent reform efforts. It then empirically analyzes the effects of recent decentralization reforms in Turkish provinces using cross-sectional and panel data approaches as well as spatial econometrics. The panel data set consists of sixty-seven provinces from 1976 to 2001. Using the number of local governments per capita and number of local governments per square kilometer of land to indicate decentralization, the analysis examines whether variations in local decentralization across these provinces and across time have significantly affected economic development and growth in those provinces. The findings suggest a weak negative economic effect of decentralization through a number of municipalities per capita. However, the findings do not show any significant effect from the creation of new provinces by separation from the existing ones.     

Economic Globalization and Financial Development in East Asia: A Panel Cointegration and Causality Analysis

This study examines the role of economic globalization in financial development in eight East Asian economies. The heterogeneous panel cointegration test reveals that cointegration is present among economic globalization, institutions, financial development, real gross domestic product per capita, and financial reforms. The Granger causality test results indicate that economic globalization has a significant causal influence on institutional quality, and institutional reforms have in turn facilitated and supported financial development, in particular of the banking sector in East Asia. Economic globalization is also found to have a favorable causal impact on stock market development without going through the institutional quality channel.     

中国金融垄断的一个例证--实际利差扩大化

随着股份制商业银行的壮大和中小金融机构的兴起以及外资银行的进入，我国国有商业银行一统天下的局面有了很大改观，但是国有商业银行的垄断地位却没有发生根本性改变。国有商业银行依然凭借其垄断地位，直接或间接地获取垄断利润。本从国有商业银行存贷款利差分析入手，阐述了实际利差扩大化的产生机理，指出国有商业银行垄断地位是实际利差扩大化的制度基础，从而表明实际利差扩大化正是我国金融垄断的一个有力证据。     

Board diversity reforms: Do they matter for EU bank performance?

We examine the impact of governance reforms related to board diversity on the performance of European Union banks. Using a difference‐in‐difference approach, we document that reforms increase bank stock returns and their volatility within the first 3 years after their enactment. The type of reform matters, with quotas increasing return volatility. The effectiveness of reforms depends on a country's institutional environment. The impact of reforms on return volatility is found to be beneficial in countries more open to diversity, with common law system and with greater economic freedom. Finally, reforms play a bigger role in banks that have ex ante less heterogeneous boards.