Remittance,Institutions and Investment Volatility Interactions: An Intercontinental Analysis

Generating massive investment for growth and development has been one of the main policy goals of most economies around the globe. Countries, most especially developing ones, are highly susceptible to investment volatility owing largely to the fragile nature of their economies as well as weaknesses in terms of dysfunctional institutions. Therefore, sound economic management suggests the need to better understand possible sources for mitigating the adverse effects of investment volatility. Remittances have been identified as important capital flows which do a good job of dousing macroeconomic volatilities. It is on this basis that the study sought to uncover the causal relationship between remittances and investment volatility via the intermediating role of institutions. Using a panel of 70 countries and the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator, three insightful outcomes come to the fore. First, remittances played countercyclical roles across the estimated regressions. Second, institutional quality had no significant role in mitigating investment volatility and lastly, the interactive terms of both remittances and institutions significantly mitigated the negative impacts of investment volatility with the exception of the political component of the institutional architecture. Policy suggestions are drawn based on our results.     

The importance of firing costs and the Hosios condition in search models with endogenous job destruction

We construct a DSGE search model with endogenous job destruction, incorporating wage rigidities, firing costs and unemployment benefit. We investigate the most important factors in matching the model’s cyclical properties with empirical data, particularly those of job creation rates (JCR) and job destruction rates (JDR). Firing costs assist significantly in explaining the procyclicality of JCR, the negative correlation of JCR and JDR, and the persistence of vacancies. They also decrease the counter-cyclicality of job turnover. We also postulate that the Hosios condition helps explain the negative correlation of JCR and JDR and vacancies’ persistence. Varying wage rigidities and unemployment income, however, do not improve the results.     

The puzzle of greenhouse gas footprints of oil abundance

The present inquiry lays a groundwork for the analysis of the net greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint of oil in the oil-abundant settings. To address the research question, the study puts forward a three-sector decision model, which provides a common ground for the assessment of the interaction of the structuralist and institutional factors influencing environmental pollution in the oil-reliant economies. The study shows that fossil-fuel abundance triggers forces, which induce diametrically opposed effects concerning atmospheric pollution. These are the rising carbon-intensive oil extraction and processing and fossil-fueled power generation versus shrinkage of the carbon-intensive manufacturing and growth of the low-carbon tertiarization. The theoretical analysis enables compartmentalization of the essential factors, which determine GHG emissions in the respective countries. To assess the significance of the proposed theoretical framework, the study employs multivariate panel co-integration techniques and two-stage fixed effects estimations for a dataset of 38 oil-producing countries for the time period between 1960 and 2018. In contrast to the existing literature, this study drives apart from the black box approaches that employ just one omnibus variable, per capita income.     

The effects of regional trade integration and renewable energy transition on environmental quality: Evidence from South Asian neighbors

Improving environmental quality across South Asia has become one of the utmost important policy agendas of the concerned governments. The susceptibility of the majority of the South Asian countries to multifaceted climate change adversities has motivated the need to identify the factors that can function to ensure environmental sustainability across South Asia. Although several studies have highlighted the importance of globalization and cleaner energy use in tackling the environmental degradaton issues of the South Asian countries, very little is known regarding the impacts of regional trade and renewable energy transition in this regard. Hence, this paper aims to scrutinize the effects of enhancing intra-regional trade integration and undergoing renewable energy transition on per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the context of six South Asian nations between 1990 and 2016. The results from the recently developed cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag regression approach, accounting for cross-sectional dependency and slope heterogeneity issues, reveal that facilitating trade among the South Asian neighbors reduces carbon emissions in both the short and long run. Moreover, enhancing the share of renewable energy in the aggregate energy consumption figures is also found to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in both the short and long run. Furthermore, both regional trade integration and renewable energy transition are found to jointly reduce carbon dioxide emissions in South Asia. The results also authenticate the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis, while financial development and urbanization are found to boost carbon dioxide emissions only in the long run.     

Well-being effects of self-employment: A spatial inquiry

Our paper presents an empirical analysis of entrepreneurial well-being using a large-scale longitudinal household survey from the UK that tracks almost 50,000 individuals across seven waves over the period 2009–2017, as well as a number of exploratory case studies. We contribute to the existing literature by investigating how entrepreneurial well-being varies across locations along the urban-rural continuum, and across wealthy-deprived neighbourhoods. We use a Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM) approach to compare the well-being outcomes of individuals who switch into self-employment from waged employment, and show that entrepreneurial well-being, in the form of job satisfaction, is significantly higher for those living in semi-urban locations, relative to those living in urban and rural locations. We argue that semi-urban locations provide an optimal combination of ease of doing business and quality of life. Our results also show that individuals in wealthy neighbourhoods who switch into self-employment experience higher job satisfaction than otherwise comparable individuals living in materially deprived neighbourhoods, although the latter experience greater levels of life satisfaction following the switch.     

HOLDINGS OF NATIONAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS IN COMPANIES IN FINLAND: PERSISTENCE AND CHANGE IN THE LONGER TERM

Applying an approach of neo‐institutional research, this article examines the history of company holdings of the national government and local governments in Finland in the longer term. The article examines the genealogy of the institutional forms of these holdings, the diffusion, adoption and adaptation of these forms, and the political legitimacy of new forms and the political de‐legitimation of earlier forms. For theory, the results indicate that the individual tailoring of institutional forms offers flexibility but increases complexity. For practice, the results suggest that the company form may too easily marginalize alternative institutional forms such as co‐operatives, associations, and foundations.     

World Human Development: 1870–2007

How has wellbeing evolved over time and across regions? How does the West compare to the Rest? What explains their differences? These questions are addressed using a historical index of human development. A sustained improvement in world wellbeing has taken place since 1870. The absolute gap between OECD and the Rest widened over time, but an incomplete catching up—largely explained by education—occurred between 1913 and 1970. As the health transition was achieved in the Rest, the contribution of life expectancy to human development improvement declined and the Rest fell behind in terms of longevity. Meanwhile, in the OECD, as longevity increased, healthy years expanded. A large variance in human development is noticeable in the Rest since 1970, with East Asia, Latin America, and North Africa catching up to the OECD, and Central and Eastern Europe and Sub‐Saharan Africa falling behind.     

科技哲学视角下的P2P观察思考与展望

网络信贷起源于英国,2007年引入到中国,模式从最初的资产抵押到纯信用借贷,人群从普通工薪阶层覆盖到在校大学生,形式从最初的现金业务拓展到购物消费分期。行业背后的投资来源也逐步广泛随着网贷的不断发展,诸多问题相继产生,值得我们深入探讨。     

Predictors of export performance in developing economies: a longitudinal analysis of Moroccan SMEs

Purpose: To help increase understanding of the export performance, we investigate the influence of firm size, research and development (R&D), advertising expenditures and network relationships, and develop a conceptual model to increase export intensity. Design/methodology/approach: The research involved a four-year longitudinal study of export performance of 168 exporting SMEs in Morocco (672 observations). The two-stage least square estimation (G2SLS) was used to test the hypotheses. Findings: The findings of the two-stage least square estimation (G2SLS) suggest that export sales and domestic sales are interdependent and influence each other. R&D expenditures and network affiliation have positive and significant impact on export sales, while advertising expenditure has a negative and significant influence on export sales. Research limitations/implications: Readers should use caution in generalizing the findings unless verified in other developing contexts. Practical implications: The findings of this study are useful for managers and export policy makers in developing countries. A proper understanding of the predictors of export performance may help them encourage the growth and diversification of exports that is so vital for developing countries. Originality/value: Export performance is a key element in the field of international marketing. Unfortunately, the literature exhibits a lack of empirical studies in developing countries, particularly in Maghreb regions. The empirical testing of the theoretical model in a developing economy is a significant contribution to fill the needed gap in the literature toward generalizing findings.     

EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY: EAST VS. WEST GERMANY

The case of German reunification has been subject to extensive research on earnings inequality and labour market integration. However, little is known about the development of equality of opportunity (EOp) in East and West Germany after 1990. Using German micro data, we empirically analyse how circumstances beyond the sphere of individual control relate to inequality in East and West Germany. Our results show that EOp is larger in East than in West Germany. However, despite increasing income inequality, EOp remained surprisingly constant.