Intellectual capital and productivity of Malaysian general insurers

This study investigates changes in productivity of general insurance firms in Malaysia for the period from 2008 to 2011. Moreover, this study examines the impact of intellectual capital on changes in productivity. In the first stage, this study applies the Malmquist productivity index (MPI) of data envelopment analysis (DEA) and the MPI with bootstrapping approach to evaluate changes in productivity. In the second stage, this study examines the impact of intellectual capital on changes in productivity through OLS and Tobit regressions. Our MPI findings indicate that all but one sample firms experienced growth in productivity over the sample period. Moreover, the use of the MPI with bootstrapping approach provides an effective analysis of MPI estimates. Our regression analysis reveals that VAIC™ and its individual components have significantly positive impacts on changes in productivity. We suggest that general insurers in Malaysia should invest in intellectual capital, including to improve their managerial skills, to gain sustainable growth in productivity. Our findings corroborate the initiative carried out by the Malaysian government, which continuously emphasize the importance of IC. The findings of this study may lead to a better understanding of the relative changes in total productivity of general insurance firms. By identifying changes in efficiency and changes in technology, better management decisions can be made to achieve greater productivity. Moreover, through the bootstrap estimation, we are able to determine whether estimated increases or decreases are statistically significant.     

Health care expenditure and economic growth: Quantile panel-type analysis

This study uses international total health care expenditure data of 31 countries from 1986 to 2007 for exploring the causality between an increase in health care expenditure and economic growth. The empirical procedure is divided into two parts. The first is the panel regression analysis and the second is the quantile regression analysis. The estimation of the panel regression reveals that, expenditure growth will stimulate economic growth; however, economic growth will reduce expenditure growth. With regard to the estimation of quantile regression, when economic growth is quantile, in countries with low level of growth, the influence of expenditure growth on economic growth is different. In countries with medium and high levels of economic growth, the influence of expenditure growth on economic growth is positive; when health care expenditure growth is quantile, the influence of economic growth on expenditure growth is more different.     

Macroeconomic performance index: a new approach to calculation of economic wellbeing

Since the rise of the global financial crisis, there has been revival of interest in performance indexes that measure the overall stance of the economy and the wellbeing of households. Such indexes typically consist of inflation, growth, employment and long-term interest rates. We develop such an index by appending exchange rate and weighting each variable by the inverse of its variance in order to prevent the more volatile variable to dominate the index. We call this macroeconomic performance index (MPI) and argue that such an index better explains the overall economic stance especially in emerging economies. We generate the index using data from three emerging economies, namely Turkey, Brazil and Poland. Our analysis indicates that the index has a nonlinear structure and hence we analyse its behaviour using threshold autoregressive (TAR) model. It is observed that MPI captures the economic stance and main economic incidents quite successfully in each subject country. To further see the relevance of the MPI, we run TAR cointegration analysis with consumer confidence indexes (CCIs) for the subject countries with TAR cointegration test. The results indicate long-term relationship between the MPI and CCI in all three countries.     

国防建设与经济建设协调发展的资源均衡配置——均衡态下的国防支出增长机制研究

国防建设与经济建设协调发展在资源配置上的集中体现是,国防支出对经济增长的负面影响最小,同时又能最大化地满足国防安全需求。实现这一均衡态的基本约束条件是建立政府与军方之间统一有效的国防预算机制。文章从分析国防支出与国防安全及经济增长的关系入手,通过建立政府与军方的博弈模型,分析了资源在国防领域与经济领域的配置达到均衡态时国防支出的增长机制,并通过实证分析验证了模型,评估了20世纪80年代以来中国国防支出的增长机制以及国防建设与经济建设的基本关系。     

Economic growth and budgetary components: a panel assessment for the EU

In this article, we test to determine whether a reallocation of government budgetary components can enhance long-term GDP growth in a set of 15 EU countries. We apply panel data techniques to the period 1971–2006, and use three alternative dependent variables in a growth regression: economic growth, total factor productivity and labour productivity. Our results also identify the distortions induced by public expenditure in the private factors allocation. In particular, we detect a strong crowding-in effect associated to public investment, which has enhanced economic growth by boosting private investment. We also associate a dependence of productivity on public expenditure on social security.     

公共资本性支出、经常性支出与内生经济增长

本文基于一个含有两类不同产出能力的公共商品的内生增长模型,通过数理分析得出在市场经济条件下最优公共支出结构的依据是公共商品各自的产出弹性.进而采用面板数据模型对13个发达国家1972～2009年的公共支出实践进行了实证研究.实证结果表明,经常性(资本性)支出对经济增长有正(负)效应.该研究结论为平衡预算下的公共支出结构决策提供了参考依据.     

Relevance of corruption on the effect of public health expenditure and taxation on economic growth

We investigate whether corruption distorts the positive effect of public health expenditure and taxation on growth through panel data analysis of 75 developing countries for the period from 1995 to 2014. The findings indicate that, although both public health expenditure and taxation can increase economic growth, in countries with more corrupt governments this effect is reduced.     

Growth effects of public expenditure on the state and local level: evidence from a sample of rich governments

There is a vast empirical literature investigating the relationship between government size and economic growth. But the empirical evidence of growth effects of public expenditure using cross-country regressions is still inconclusive. According to a number of authors this is not surprising since the negative relationship only applies for rich countries with a large public sector. Restricting their analysis on rich countries only they can show the predicted negative impact. Naturally, a selection of a sub-sample of rich countries is always somewhat arbitrary. Another possibility is to concentrate on governments within a rich country. However, only few studies investigate the effect of state and local spending on economic growth. This study concentrates on the relationship between public expenditure and economic growth within a rich country using the full sample of state and local governments from Switzerland over the 1981–2001 period. The general finding is a fairly robust negative relationship between government size and economic growth. However, in contrast to public spending from operating budgets there is no significant impact on economic growth by expenditure from capital budgets.     

Productivity comparison of European airlines: bootstrapping Malmquist indices

The study explored the operating efficiency and variability of productivity estimates of European airlines. We applied Malmquist productivity indices (MPI) with a bootstrap method to assess the productivities of European airlines in four regions in Europe. The productivity of small-sized airlines lagged further behind that of large-sized airlines because of their inferior technological change (TC) effects derived from inefficient resource allocation to sustain a competitive advantage. This study also indicated that the Western European airlines were more efficient on average than those in other areas of Europe. The applications of Malmquist productivity techniques in assessing the performance of European airlines are highlighted in their effective resource allocation, sustained competitive advantage and optimized operating performance.     

中国国防工业全要素生产率测算与分析

利用2004—2020年中国11大军工集团财务报表数据,从企业微观角度出发,运用LP方法计算国防工业全要素生产率并分析其变化趋势。结果表明,样本期内,我国国防工业全要素生产率总体呈波动上升趋势,其增长率高于制造业整体水平但低于高技术产业增速,说明国防工业技术进步比较明显,但进步速率还不够高;各细分军工行业全要素生产率存在较大差异,电子工业和船舶工业全要素生产率均值比其它军工行业高。收敛性分析表明,国防工业中,全要素生产率较低企业对较高企业具有追赶效应。建议军工行业必须转变增长方式,向集约型发展方式转变,提高发展质量;加大研发投入力度,重点扶持技术发展相对缓慢的行业,促进军工行业协调发展;贯彻军民融合发展战略,促进先进民用技术转军用。     

Using AHP,DEA and MPI for governmental research institution performance evaluation

Under situations of limited resources, soft powers such as technology development and innovation become critical capabilities for a nation’s continuous growth and sustainability. Therefore, we used analytical hierarchy process (AHP), data envelopment analysis (DEA), and Malmquist productivity index (MPI) to evaluate the performance of research projects in 6 main fields of study managed by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) in Taiwan from 2002 to 2012. Among the 6 fields of study, Agriculture and Humanities were two research fields as efficiency; and the sequence of inefficiency 4 fields were sociology, medicine, science, and engineering. Although the field of sociology was inefficiency, it was the only field show continuous growth in result of MPI analysis. Taking the fields as a whole, the result of the analysis of total factor productivity showed recession. However, as seen from the growth in technical change and in scale efficiency change, the MOST was effective to a certain extent during the period. However, the recession in technical efficiency change showed that further improvement in the planning and distribution of manpower and funds is needed.     

‘GUNS OR BUTTER?’ REVISITED: ROBUSTNESS AND NONLINEARITY ISSUES IN THE DEFENSE–GROWTH NEXUS

The relationship between military expenditure and growth is studied taking into account potential nonlinearities and robustness issues in the specification of the econometric models used. Using cross‐country growth regressions and the widely used Feder–Ram model, the partial correlation between defense spending and economic growth appears robust and significantly negative only for countries with a relatively low military expenditure ratio. While the externality effect appears positive in this subgroup of countries, the overall effect turns negative due to the size effect of the military sector.     

The effect of military expenditure on growth: an empirical synthesis

Using a sample of 272 meta-observations drawn from 48 primary studies, this paper conducts a meta-analysis of the empirical literature that examines the impact of military expenditure on economic growth. We find that existing studies indicate growth-retarding effects of military expenditure. The results from the meta-regression analysis suggest that the effect size estimate is strongly influenced by study variations. Specifically, we find that underlying theoretical models, econometric specifications, and data type as well as data period are relevant factors that explain the heterogeneity in the military expenditure–growth literature. Results also show that positive effects of military expenditure on growth are more pronounced for developed countries than less developed countries.     

Productivity Measurement in Manufacturing and the Expenditure Approach

This paper studies conversion factors based on the expenditure approach and evaluates the appropriateness for international comparisons of output levels in manufacturing. We apply a consistency check based on the insight that relative productivity levels should be invariant to the choice of base year. Consequently, convergence parameters and dispersion of productivity across countries should also be unaffected by this choice. The results are disappointing: relative measures of productivity depend heavily of the choice of base year and change systematically as the base years roll forward. The conclusion is insensitive to the applied method for developing conversion factors. The implication is that we cannot measure relative productivity levels in manufacturing across countries using the expenditure approach.     

Assessing the roles that absorptive capacity and economic distance play in the foreign direct investment-productivity growth nexus

We further examine the channels through which Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) develops the national productivity of host countries. We investigate whether FDI is an effective channel of technological transfer across borders and whether that technology transfer is bi-directional: from an investing country to a host country and vice versa. In particular, an analysis is provided of whether FDI helps channel more resources towards the promotion of education activities and hence augments economic growth indirectly through augmenting the host country's absorptive capacity. Also, the analysis uses a novel approach to take into account the possibility that physical distances can act as a barrier to economic and technological interactions amongst countries, by embedding a measure of geographical distance into two specific channels: international trade and FDI. Empirical results obtained all lend strong support to these hypotheses.     

Determinants of non-life insurance expenditure in developed and developing countries: an empirical investigation

The determinants of non-life insurance expenditure in a panel data set covering 36 developed countries and 31 developing countries for the period 2000–2011 are analysed. Results of our instrumental variable analysis indicate that economic freedom, income, bank development, urbanization, culture and law systems are the key drivers of the non-life insurance expenditure across countries. However, their impacts differ significantly between the groups of developed and developing countries, suggesting that the heterogeneity among countries in terms of the level of development plays an important role. The global financial crisis is also found to influence the direction of those effects, especially in developed countries. The article yields useful policy and economic implications for governments and multinational non-life insurance companies with regard to the development of the non-life insurance sector, an important engine for economic growth and prosperity.     

Manufacturing consumption,relative prices,and productivity

I study the patterns of manufacturing consumption expenditures across a broad set of countries that differ in their level of development using disaggregated expenditure and price data. The relative price of manufacturing tends to decline with income and the real share rises with income, particularly for countries in the top half of the income distribution. I find that the nominal expenditure share of manufacturing displays a hump-shape pattern with respect to the level of income per capita. I document that the income elasticities of the relative price of individual manufacturing categories lie in a wide range. However, since most categories have a negative elasticity, the average elasticity for manufacturing is negative. In addition, most aggregations of individual categories, regardless of the criteria used, yield manufacturing sub-sectors that feature a negative income elasticity of its relative price and the variation across income in nominal expenditure shares tends to mask a larger variation across income in real shares. Using a standard development accounting framework, I report large differences in productivity across countries for manufacturing categories. I also find some differences in productivity across countries for manufacturing sub-sectors, but these differences are smaller than the differences between manufacturing and services and considerably smaller than the differences across individual manufacturing categories.     

The Internet,R&D expenditure and economic growth

We examine the effect of the Internet on the relationship between R&D expenditure and economic growth. Data for 105 countries over the period 1994–2014 are used for panel data analysis. The effect of R&D expenditure on economic growth proves to be affected positively by the Internet and the effect of the Internet on the economic growth is positively strengthened by an increase in R&D expenditure.     

Information And Communication Technology And The Measurement Of Volume Output And Final Demand - A Five-Country Study

Information and communication technology (ICT) products have undergone rapid technical change. Where quality improvements occur, they should be reflected in official price and quantity indices, otherwise there is a tendency to over-estimate price movements and under-estimate volume changes of ICT products. Statistical offices deal with this issue but the degree and nature of quality-adjustment of price indices of ICT products varies considerably between OECD countries. The present study simulates measurement effects on key economic variables (real output, private final consumption, government expenditure, investment, exports and imports) and productivity, under the assumption that the price indices of ICT products are fully quality-adjusted. The paper draws on a large selection of empirical studies to identify differences between quality-adjusted and unadjusted price changes and uses detailed information from input-output tables to assess their weights in final demand. Effects on GDP and its components are quantified for five selected OECD countries.     

国防开支与经济增长关系分析——基于面板数据的费德尔-拉姆模型

本文在对国内外国防支出与经济增长的研究文献、方法和结论总结分析的基础上,运用基于面板数据的费德尔一拉姆理论模型,对国防开支与经济增长之间的关系进行了定量分析,得出由于经济增长方式不同,在发展中国家,国防开支对国民经济增长具有显著的正向促进作用,而发达国家,国防开支和国民经济增长之间并没有显著的关系结论。