Determinants of the income velocity of money in Portugal: 1891–1998

This paper performs a long-run time series analysis of the behaviour of the income velocity of money in Portugal between 1891 and 1998 by assessing the importance of both macroeconomic and institutional factors and looking for particularities in the Portuguese case. We estimate two cointegration vectors for the income velocity of money, macroeconomic variables and institutional variables. It is apparent that one of these vectors reflects the relationship between income velocity and macroeconomic variables, while the other reflects the relationship between income velocity and institutional variables. Moreover, a regression analysis reveals that the usual U-shaped pattern is displayed with a relatively late inflection point located around 1970, which is consistent with the Spanish case. It is further noted that this is a feature of countries with a late economic and institutional development process.     

Are electronic government innovations helpful to deter corruption? Evidence from across the world

Electronic government innovations have been a critical development in public administration in recent years. Many countries have implemented e-government policies to enhance efficiency and transparency and combat corruption. This paper examines the impact of e-government on corruption using longitudinal data for more than 170 countries from 2002 to 2020. The empirical results suggest that e-government serves as a deterrent to corrupt activities. We analyse which e-government domains affect corruption, which types of corruption are more affected by e-government and the circumstances under which e-government is more effective in reducing corruption. The empirical results suggest that online service completion and e-participation are important features of e-government as an anticorruption tool. Evidence suggests that e-participation reduces corrupt legislature activities, public sector theft, executive bribery, and corrupt exchanges. The potential of e-government to deter corruption is higher in countries where corruption is moderate or high and economic development is lower. Higher levels of GDP per capita, foreign direct investment, and political rights are also associated with lower levels of corruption.     

Capabilities as causal powers

The author argues that Sen's capability approach is primarilya philosophical under-labouring exercise aimed at elaboratingcertain central economic categories, and that the philosophicaland methodological underpinnings of Sen's approach are radicallydifferent from those of contemporary welfare economics and mainstreameconomic practice. Sen's notion of ‘capabilities’as the potential functionings to achieve well-being is interpretedhere as a specification of the ontological category of ‘causalpower’, presupposing an open system conception of realitythat contrasts with much of contemporary economic practice.     

Education public financing and economic growth: an endogenous growth model versus evidence

Using an Endogenous Growth Model with physical and human capital and unemployment (Mauro and Carmeci in J Macroecon 25:123–137, 2003), we study the effects of subsidies to education in economic growth. According to the model, we conclude that government subsidies to education only enhance economic growth conditional on unemployment and that this relationship is negatively influenced by unemployment. We provide evidence from a broad panel data of countries that confirms the importance of unemployment in the relationship between subsidies to education and economic growth but dismiss its importance as a direct determinant of economic growth.      

Do large capital inflows hinder competitiveness? The Dutch disease in Ethiopia

This article investigates whether large inflows of foreign aid and remittances have had a damaging impact on the Ethiopian Real Exchange Rate (RER). We improve the current empirical literature by: (i) compiling a unique quarterly dataset to provide a larger sample size and enable the modelling of important intra-year dynamics – which should lead to better model specifications; (ii) providing a new empirical approach (Unobserved Components (UC)) to test the ‘Dutch disease’ hypothesis; and (iii) using several cointegration approaches to further test the robustness of our conclusions. Our results suggest that there are two main long-run determinants of the RER in Ethiopia: trade openness is found to be correlated with RER depreciations, while a positive shock to the terms of trade tends to appreciate the RER. Foreign aid is not found to have a statistically significant impact, while there is only weak evidence that remittances are associated with RER appreciations. The lack of empirical support for the ‘Dutch disease’ hypothesis suggests that Ethiopia has been able to effectively manage large capital inflows, thus avoiding major episodes of macroeconomic instability. We believe that most African countries will therefore be able to absorb large inflows of foreign capital without damaging their external competitiveness.     

Budgets,expenditure composition and political manipulation

Abstract

This paper analyses the presence of political cycles in Portuguese Governments’ expenditures using monthly data over the period 1991–2013 for the main categories of government expenditures. The results indicate that Portuguese Governments act opportunistically regarding the budget surplus and that they favour capital instead of current spending near to the elections. Moreover, right-wing governments are more prone to reduce expenditures and deficits after the elections than left-wing ones. A deeper disaggregated analysis of the components of government expenditures corroborates these findings while disentangling other relevant patterns of political manipulation in Portugal.     

CAPE VERDE: THE CASE FOR EUROISATION

After a decade of a successful peg to the euro, the authorities of Cape Verde are considering the official euroisation of the country. For an ex ante economic evaluation of such a move, this paper assesses whether Cape Verde fulfills key economic criteria devised by the optimum currency areas literature, using as benchmark the comparable records of the 27 European Union (EU) countries. The answer is positive. Overall, we find that Cape Verde is not less suited for euroisation than some of the current euro area members and most of the remaining members of the EU.     

Level,slope, curvature of the sovereign yield curve,and fiscal behaviour

We study fiscal behaviour and the sovereign yield curve in the US and Germany. We obtain the latent factors, level, slope and curvature, with the Kalman filter, and use them in a VAR with macro, fiscal and financial stress variables. In the US, fiscal shocks generate an immediate response of the short-end of the yield curve, associated with monetary policy, lasting 6–8 quarters, followed by a response of the whole yield curve lasting 3 years, with an implied elasticity of long-term yields of 80% for the government debt shock and 48% for the budget balance shock. In Germany, fiscal shocks have entailed no significant reactions of the yield curve shape and no response of the monetary policy interest rate, notably after 1999; only in the case of debt shocks there is a short-lived decrease in the medium-end of the yield curve in the following 2nd and 3rd quarters.     

Globalized Labour Markets? International Rent Sharing Across 47 Countries

We present evidence about the role of rent sharing in fostering the interdependence of labour markets around the world. Our results draw on a firm‐level panel of more than 2,000 multinationals and over 5,000 of their affiliates, covering 47 home and host countries. We find considerable evidence that multinationals share profits internationally by paying higher wages to their workers in foreign affiliates in periods of higher headquarter profits. This occurs even across continents, and not only within Europe, as shown in earlier research. The results are robust to different tests, including a falsification exercise based on ‘matched’ parents. Finally, we show that rent sharing is higher when the affiliate is located in countries with specific relative characteristics, such as lower economic development or taxation, while it falls with the number of affiliates. We argue that these results are consistent with transfer pricing and bargaining views.