Growth of Real GDP and Total Factor Productivity in Asia with an Emphasis on Malaysian Growth

Atlantic Economic Journal - This paper estimates growth models for a panel of 15 Asian countries during 40-plus years from the early 1970s to 2014. The focus then shifts to Malaysia for which an...     

Options on portfolios with higher-order moments

We develop a simple calibration approach to generate return distributions for multivariate asset distributions and use this technique to price options on portfolios given the first four co-moments of the joint distribution of returns. The technique is fast and captures the impact of covariance, and the co-skewness and co-kurtosis tensors on the value of these options. Given the technique works for a portfolio, the same is also applicable to options on individual securities as a special simpler case.     

The Green Revolution,agrarian productivity and labor

The use of Green Revolution inputs has been responsible for higher levels of agrarian productivity in India. This is both because of the biological structure of high-yield varieties of seeds themselves and because of the structure of the agrarian political economy in the country. But the question is: have the laborers benefited from the rise in productivity made possible by the use of these inputs? I have shown, both conceptually and empirically, that laborers do gain from higher productivity, but not uniformly over space. They gain more where they are more organized. This means that the relation between productivity and wages is, in part, a political relation, and the strength of this relation is characterized by ‘spatial inconstancy’. I have also discussed how the Green Revolution has tended to undermine the relations of personal dependence between the landed and the laborers, and this seems to have helped labor organization to some extent. Labor organization is also affected by the structure of land/asset distribution. In particular, whether or not laborers possess some land/asset makes a difference to the effectiveness of laborers’ bargaining power with landowners over wages, and therefore, to the actual level of wages being paid.     

Determinants of credit availability for high-tech start-ups

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - The availability of financial support for start-ups, especially high-tech start-ups, is an important factor in their growth. This paper...     

A Keynesian explanation of Indian government bond yields

Abstract

John Maynard Keynes held that the central bank’s actions mainly determine long-term interest rates through short-term interest rates and various monetary policy measures. His conjectures about the determinants of long-term interest rates were made in the context of advanced capitalist economies and were based on his views on liquidity preference, ontological uncertainty, and the formation of investors’ expectations. Is Keynes’s conjecture that the central bank’s action is the main driver of long-term interest rates valid in emerging markets, such as India? This paper empirically investigates the determinants of changes in Indian government bonds’ nominal yields. Changes in short-term interest rates, after controlling for other crucial variables, such as changes in the rate of inflation and the rate of economic activity, take a lead role in driving the changes of the nominal yields of Indian government bonds. This suggests that Keynes’s views on long-term interest rates can also be applicable to emerging markets. The empirical findings reveal that higher fiscal deficits do not appear to exert upward pressures on government bond yields in India.     

The Effect of the Adoption of a Pro‐Women Domestic Violence Policy on Dowry Violence: Empirical Evidence from India

Dowry violence against women in India is among the highest in the world. In 2005, India enacted the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA) to help female victims of domestic violence. I develop a model of domestic violence and evaluate the effects of the PWDVA on dowry violence. I estimate an empirical model of dowry violence using district level data from 2001–2012. I find that in the post‐policy period, the reporting rate of harassment for dowry has significantly increased in north and central India where female leadership is high. In these districts, dowry deaths have also declined significantly.     

Factors influencing ‘missing girls’ in South Korea

Despite the massive attention drawn to ‘missing girls,’ there has been no study that specifically focuses on the association between childlessness and the daughter deficit. Using a bivariate probit selection model, this article analysed the data for 6475 married women aged 15–49 years collected from the 2003 Korea National Fertility and Family Health Survey. The results showed that a couple's decision to have a child exerted a significant influence on its daughter deficit. This study also found that the effect of a woman's education on daughter deficit did not correspond to that of her husband's level of education. Additionally, a prediction was made that if a one child family norm were prevailing in South Korea, the probability of a couple's having a daughter deficit would increase by as much as 63.9%.     

Trade Union Growth and Decline in Asia

We examine trends in union density and union influence in several Asian countries. Though we find variation in union density, all countries experienced union decline in the 1990s. Asian countries also vary on our new union influence measure. We use a logics of action framework to examine the institutional context surrounding union growth, decline and influence in each country. Based on our examination of how these institutional contexts are changing, and what we know about the strategies of unions, we are not hopeful regarding the near term prospects for reversing union decline.