Impulse response analysis and Orcutt’s hypothesis in trade: evidence from developing countries

Orcutt’s hypothesis in international economics implies that trade flows respond to exchange rate changes faster than to changes in relative prices. Most previous studies used import and export demand models and tested the hypothesis by imposing and comparing lag lengths on the exchange rate and relative prices. One recent study, however, employed impulse response of trade flows to one SD shock to the nominal exchange rate and one SD shock to relative prices and tested the Orcutt’s hypothesis for several industrial countries. In this article we follow this study and test the hypothesis for six developing countries using impulse response analysis. Like the other study for industrial countries, we do not find much support for the hypothesis.     

How do income and education affect health inequality: evidence from four developing countries

Using household survey data from four countries ? Albania, Nepal, Tajikistan and Tanzania ? this article calculates income-related inequality in health care utilization. We measure health disparity separately for generally and chronically ill individuals by constructing two models: one for the probability of a visit to a physician and another for the number of visits. Following model-based measurements, we decompose inequality into two major parts: one accounted for by identity-related factors and another by socioeconomic and other factors such as education, geography and distance to a clinic. We propose a new method to quantify the effect of changes in income and education on health disparity. One of our important findings suggests that health disparity is pro-rich in all our sample countries. The pro-rich disparity is prevalent among generally ill as well as chronically ill patients, in both visit probability and visit frequency models. Health inequality seems primarily driven by income differences followed by nonidentity factors. Further, the principle of equal treatment for equal need is not fulfilled in any of our countries. Among policy implications, increasing average income and education in a way that also reduces disparity in income and education, respectively, will substantially shrink inequality in health care utilization.     

气候变化背景下发展中国家的低碳经济发展

面对气候变化对人类发展的挑战,没有哪个国家能够独善其身,也没有哪个国家能够独立应对,而且气候变化对发展中国家的冲击比发达国家更甚。因此发展低碳经济是发展中国家的必由之路。由于技术和资金缺乏是制约发展中国家经济转型的最大障碍,所以文章侧重分析了如何在国际合作框架下实现低碳技术转移和解决资金瓶颈问题。