Are remittances good for economic growth? The role of political institutions

Within a sample of 109 developing countries for the period 1975–2014 and controlling for country and time-fixed effects, this article presents evidence that workers’ remittances are more effective in promoting growth in developing countries with strong democratic institutions. The evidence is robust to alternative samples and different measures of democratic institutions.     

Autocracies and regional integration: the Eurasian case

The establishment of the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan in 2010, succeeded by the Eurasian Economic Union in 2015, constituted an important discontinuity in the development of post-Soviet regionalism: while the preceding organisations remained cases of ‘ink-on-paper’ regional integration, in the case of the Customs Union the members actually implemented their commitments. This creates an important theoretical challenge: the literature (which the previous experience of Eurasian regionalism was very much in line with) conjectures that authoritarian states are unable to successfully implement an economic regional integration agreement (RIA). The aim of the article is to explore the conditions under which implementation of economic RIAs by autocracies happens. We argue that the implementation is influenced by the extent of economic, social and political ties between member states, and suggest that, unlike democratic states, which are more likely to implement a RIA where there are strong economic ties, non-democracies are more likely to do so in the case of intermediate economic dependence.     

中国的工业大国国情与工业强国战略

对于一个处于工业化中期后半阶段的发展中大国而言,将工业发展问题仅仅从产业战略层面来认识是不够的,我国缺乏的是从基本国情高度和国家战略层面认识工业发展问题。本文认为,中国的现实基本经济国情是"工业大国",正处于从"工业大国"向"工业强国"转变的阶段。基于这样的国情认识,本文描述了世界工业强国的特征和指标,论述了我国经济发展战略应该是以建立工业强国为目标的工业强国战略,研究了工业强国战略的必要性、目标、重点任务和政策导向。本文判断,中国将在2020年前后初步建成世界工业强国,在2040年前后全面建成世界工业强国。     

Biofuels and the poor: Global impact pathways of biofuels on agricultural markets

This study seeks to assess the future impacts of biofuel production on regional agricultural and related sectors over the next decade with a specific focus on the vulnerable regions of developing nations. Using a modification of the GTAP modeling platform to account for the global interactions of regional biofuel and food markets, the analysis shows that biofuel production levels depend on the assumption about the future price of energy and the nature of the substitutability between biofuels and petroleum-based transport fuels. Low energy prices reduce the demand for biofuels and thus require greater government support to meet the desired production targets. At the other extreme, when prices are high and there is scope for substituting biofuels for petroleum-based fuels, the volume of biofuels produced will exceed the mandates. Even when biofuels are being mainly produced in developed countries, our results indicate that there are impact pathways that extend far beyond the borders of the US, Brazil and the EU. Prices of feedstock and non-feedstock commodities rise in developing countries. There is also a rise in value added from the agricultural sector—a gain that is enjoyed by the owners of land and labor, including unskilled. Hence, to the extent that agriculture is a key sector in getting growth started and addressing poverty needs, the emergence of biofuels can (in this way at least) be a positive force.     

Debt,seigniorage, and the Growth Laffer Curve in developing countries

The endogenous growth literature established the existence of an inverted-U curve between taxes and economic growth, namely a Growth Laffer Curve, but empirical evidence on this relationship in developing countries is rather limited. Given that seigniorage and public debt are also important means of financing public spending in these countries, we take into account in this paper their respective impacts on growth, as they might deform the existing relationship between taxes and growth. To this end, we develop a growth model with public investment as the engine of perpetual growth, and look for the effect of debt, tax and money financing on economic growth. We study in particular the way fiscal and monetary policies deform the Growth Laffer Curve in developing countries. An empirical section based on a panel of 100 developing countries over the period 1980–2010 provides both OLS-Fixed Effects and GMM-system estimations that support our theoretical conclusions, namely the existence of Growth Laffer Curves indexed by the levels of debt and of seigniorage.     

Competition, cooperation, and the neighboring farmer effect

In this paper we propose a model that explains how cooperation can emerge spontaneously between firms in a highly competitive market environment. The basic idea is that the more competitive is the market, the less costly it is for firms to help each other like good neighbors. Cooperation takes the form of sharing technical know-how, which speeds up the adoption of new technologies (normally developed elsewhere) that spur industrial development. The model comports with the development history of Japan's first example of successful industrial development – its cotton spinning industry – whose conditions match those of firms in small open economies today.     

金砖国家在国际创新合作网络中的地位和角色研究

金砖国家是世界科技创新的重要新兴力量,虽受到国际形势的影响其专利合作网络规模有所下降,五国之间的合作并不紧密,但它们的网络地位稳中有升、态势向好。中国在国际专利和论文合作网络中的活跃度和影响力均不断增强,具有信息和资源控制的巨大优势;俄罗斯与印度地位相似,但俄罗斯的国际专利与论文合作地位均有所提升,而印度的地位正在弱化;巴西在论文合作网络中相对较具优势地位,但在专利网络中巴西则与南非共同位于边缘区。     

Comparative financing analysis and political economy of noncommunicable diseases

The pandemic of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) poses substantial challenges to the health financing sustainability in high-income and low/middle income countries (LMICs). The aim of this review is to identify the bottle neck inefficiencies in NCDs attributable spending and propose sustainable health financing solutions. The World Health Organization (WHO) introduced the “best buy” concept to scale up the core intervention package against NCDs targeted for LMICs. Population- and individual-based NCD best buy interventions are projected at US$170 billion over 2011–2025. Appropriately designed health financing arrangements can be powerful enablers to scale up the NCD best buys. Rapidly developing emerging nations dominate the landscape of LMICs. Their capability and willingness to invest resources for eradicating NCDs could strengthen WHO outreach efforts in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, much beyond current capacities. There has been a declining trend in international donor aid intended to cope with NCDs over the past decade. There is also a serious misalignment of these resources with the actual needs of recipient countries. Globally, the momentum towards the financing of intersectoral actions is growing, and this presents a cost-effective solution. A budget discrepancy of 10:1 in WHO and multilateral agencies remains in donor aid in favour of communicable diseases compared to NCDs. LMICs are likely to remain a bottleneck of NCDs imposed financing sustainability challenge in the long-run. Catastrophic household health expenditure from out of pocket spending on NCDs could plunge almost 150 million people into poverty worldwide. This epidemiological burden coupled with population ageing presents an exceptionally serious sustainability challenge, even among the richest countries which are members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Strategic and political leadership of WHO and multilateral agencies would likely play essential roles in the struggle that has just begun.     

Drivers of the real effective exchange rates in high and upper‐middle income countries

This paper revisits the nexus between real effective exchange rate (REER) and total factor productivity (TFP) by controlling for trade openness, financial development and natural resources rents. We use a sample of 60 high‐income and upper‐middle income countries over the period 1995–2015 and employ the GMM estimation framework. Our results advance the empirical knowledge on the drivers of REER by providing robust evidence that the impact of TFP is not uniform across different country clusters. We find that in high‐income countries, increasing productivity causes the REER to depreciate hence becoming more trade competitive while the opposite is true for upper‐middle income countries. Furthermore, financial development and natural resources rents have no meaningful impact in the case of upper‐middle income countries but retain a significant effect in high‐income countries. Trade openness plays a key role in explaining the variation in REER in both country clusters.     

Is there a role for uncertainty in forecasting output growth in OECD countries? Evidence from a time-varying parameter-panel vector autoregressive model

This paper uses a time-varying parameter-panel vector autoregressive (TVP-PVAR) model to analyze the role played by domestic and US news-based measures of uncertainty in forecasting the growth of industrial production of 12 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Based on a monthly out-of-sample period of 2009:06 to 2017:05, given an in-sample of 2003:03 to 2009:05, there are only 46% of cases where domestic uncertainty can improve the forecast of output growth relative to a baseline monetary TVP-PVAR model, which includes inflation, interest rate and nominal exchange rate growth, besides output growth. Moreover, including US uncertainty does not necessarily improve the forecasting performance of output growth from the TVP-PVAR model which includes only the domestic uncertainty along with the baseline variables. So, in general, while uncertainty is important in predicting the future path of output growth in the 12 advanced economies considered, a forecaster can do better in majority of the instances by just considering the information from standard macroeconomic variables.