Measuring health expenditures and outcomes in saarc region: health is a luxury?

The objective of the study is to investigate the link between health care expenditures (HCE), economic growth and health outcomes (i.e., life expectancy (LE), infant mortality and the share of elderly people) for a panel of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries; namely, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka; over the period of 1995–2010. The developed panel cointegration technique is employed for analysis of short and long-run relationship between the variables. The results of panel cointegration found that there is a long-run relationship between health expenditures, economic growth and health outcomes in SAARC region. The estimated results indicate that both, LE and share of elderly people in population have a negative relationship related to the HCEs which signifies that HCEs are luxury goods in SAARC countries. The burden of aging population can be lowered by provision of quality health services and utilization of their experience and knowledge in dynamics of economic development forecasting. Furthermore, there is no significant relationship found between infant mortality rate (IMR) and HCEs which implies that HCEs do not provide sufficient benefits to reduce infant mortality. Similarly, HCEs are not enough in generating GDP, lowering IMR and increasing LE in SAARC region. The implementation of appropriate tax reform, stable food prices and trade promotion for low transaction cost medical equipment is required for the SAARC region.     

Quantitative easing and median income: a state-level analysis

Due to the Great Recession, the Federal Reserve engaged in unconventional monetary policy (QE) to fight the effects of the economic downturn. Literature asserts that QE did have impacts on economic growth and helped alleviate the effects of the recession. Recently, critics have asserted that the benefits of QE may not have been equally distributed across households. In this paper, we build a state-level dataset to investigate the dynamics of QE measures and median income across the U.S states. The findings indicate that, for the period 2008 to 2014, there is statistical evidence that increases in the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet correspond with higher nominal median income. However, once we adjust for inflation, the results become statistically insignificant and the impact of QE on median income becomes almost zero.     

Green banking disclosure,firm value and the moderating role of a contextual factor: Evidence from a distinctive regulatory setting

The idea that green banking disclosure leads to increased firm value has been rightly considered as over-simplistic. This paper builds on key prior insights by investigating whether combining green disclosure with other contextual factor, such as non-performing loans, provides additional insight into the complex green disclosure–firm value relationship in a regulatory setting where green law has recently been enacted for the banking industry. We present an analysis of seven years of data sourced from listed banks in Bangladesh (2008–2014), with data analysed using multiple regression. Our findings indicate that, while green disclosure has a positive effect on the overall firm value of banks, this positive effect is negatively moderated by banks' non-performing loans. This research contributes to the knowledge by showing that green disclosure alone is insufficient for creating market value for banks. Additional contextual matters need attention to understand the impact of green disclosure in contributing to increased market value for banks.     

Understanding the institutional challenges and impacts of higher education reforms in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes to the academic literature on policy-making at the global level by empirically showing the nature and institutional challenges of higher education reforms under NPM principles. The authors explain the key strategies adopted by Indonesia’s government and the problems it faced in reforming its higher education system. The overall result was negative. The Indonesian reforms will not bring about meaningful outcomes unless the existing institutions, and the environment in which they operate, are also reformed.     

Current Account Imbalances and Foreign Investment: A Theoretical Analysis of Interrelationships and Causalities

This paper develops a unified structure to examine the interrelationships between current account, foreign investment, and domestic capital accumulation. In particular, we develop a two‐country, two‐period model with international mobility of both physical and financial capital, and endogenous domestic capital accumulation. We consider cases where (i) current account is endogenous, but foreign investments are exogenous, and (ii) current account is exogenous, but foreign investments are endogenous. For (i), we examine how inflow and outflow of foreign physical capital affects current account. For the second case, we examine how an increase in current account deficit affects foreign investments. The complementarity or substitutability of foreign capital and domestic capital turns out to be crucial to the relationship between current account deficit and foreign investment.     

Elasticity of Substitution and the Persistence of the Deviation of the Real Exchange Rates

Empirical evidence suggests (i) that the real exchange rates of developing economies show less persistence than do those of more advanced economies, and (ii) that the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor tends to increase from below unity for less developed economies to above one for more advanced economies. This paper shows how the introduction of sectoral adjustment costs in a two‐sector model of a small open economy, together with CES production functions, provides a very natural explanation of this empirical regularity. Other aspects of the relationship between the technologies and the speed of convergence of the real exchange rate are also discussed.     

Resolving the Presidential Puzzle

Many financial economists are puzzled by the fact that stock returns are higher under Democratic than Republican presidencies. In this paper, we test whether this return differential is explained by risk using a conditional version of the Fama and French (1993) model that allows risk to vary across political cycles. We find that the presidential puzzle can be explained when risk is properly taken into account. Much of the return differential can be attributed to the fact that Democratic presidencies are associated with higher market and default risk premiums than their Republican counterparts.     

Price convergence among Indian cities: A cointegration approach

Price dynamics in Indian cities were examined using cointegration analysis. We identified and calculated a common trend for prices in 25 major cities in India. Impulse response functions were obtained to calculate the rates of convergence to the prices and we found that the half-life of any shock is very small for Indian cities. Although a close to 3-month half-life seems too fast, there is some indication in the literature that half-life can be much smaller than the conventional rates of 3–5 years. We have calculated half-life using the panel unit root method, and found that estimates of half-life from cointegration analysis provide a faster convergence rate than estimates using the panel unit root method. We also analyzed how shock can be transmitted from one city to another and found no systematic behavior of transmission from one city to another.