Is it one break or ongoing permanent shocks that explains U.S. real GDP?

The relative importance of permanent versus cyclical shocks to GDP has been found to depend on the presence or absence of a single break in mean growth. We estimate unobserved components models conditional on a trend break having occurred in any specified quarter and use the Bayesian model averaging to combine the conditional estimates. We estimate a break occurred around 2006:1. Allowing for a break significantly reduces estimates of trend variance. However, enough spread remains in the posterior distribution to indicate that available data does not definitively settle the question of the relative importance of trend versus cycle.     

Financial stress,sovereign debt and economic activity in industrialized countries: Evidence from dynamic threshold regressions

We analyze how the impact of a change in the sovereign debt-to-GDP ratio on economic growth depends on the level of debt, the stress level on the financial market and the membership in a monetary union. A dynamic growth model is put forward demonstrating that debt affects macroeconomic activity in a non-linear manner due to amplifications from the financial sector. Employing dynamic country-specific and dynamic panel threshold regression methods, we study the non-linear relation between the growth rate and the debt-to-GDP ratio using quarterly data for sixteen industrialized countries for the period 1981Q1-2013Q2. We find that the debt-to-GDP ratio has impaired economic growth primarily during times of high financial stress and only for countries of the European Monetary Union and not for the stand-alone countries in our sample. A high debt-to-GDP ratio by itself does not seem to necessarily negatively affect growth if financial markets are calm.     

“省直管县”财政体制如何促进经济增长——基于江苏省2004-2009年数据的实证分析

近几年来,"省直管县"财政体制在各省陆续实施,其主要目的在于克服既有的市管县体制存在的各种弊端。可以预期,这项改革措施有减少行政管理成本、解决县乡财政困难、促进县域经济增长等多种潜在作用。但可能存在的问题是,该财政体制如何促进经济增长?文章利用江苏省51个县(市)2004-2009年的空间面板数据进行分析发现,"省直管县"财政体制对经济增长的作用主要是通过县(市)扩权而产生的"政府竞争效应"实现的。     

Local banking and local economic growth in Italy: some panel evidence

This article provides new evidence on the contribution of local banking to local economic growth (i.e. at county level – the Italian ‘province’) in Italy. A comprehensive data set is used, which includes control variables for social capital and human capital as well as indicators of the quality of local infrastructures and the production structure of the local economy. A linear within-estimator technique with fixed effects is applied to a modified version of the so-called Barro regression in order to address the well-known econometric issues of reverse causality and estimation bias resulting from unobserved district-specific influences.     

An economic evaluation of market development programmes for US dairy products

‘This study measured the effectiveness of US dairy export promotion programmes on increasing foreign demand and enhancing producers’ revenues. An import demand equation based on panel data was used to test whether export promotion has a positive and significant impact on US dairy exports. The effects of various promotion scenarios on the dairy market were then simulated, and benefit–cost ratios (BCRs) for these programmes were estimated. There were three key findings. First, the combined effort of public and private dairy export promotion expenditures had a positive and statistically significant impact on demand for US dairy products in the world market. The findings indicated that export promotion stimulated total dairy exports by 4.14 billion pounds, on average, per year, which represented 55.8% of total exports. Second, US dairy export promotion has been highly profitable for the nation’s dairy farmers. The calculated BCRs, based on assumed elasticity of supply, ranged from a low of 8.54 for the most elastic assumption to a high of 30.12. Third, from an optimality standpoint, dairy farmers are underinvesting in export promotion. The marginal BCRs ranged from a low of 3.79 to a high of 15.22, which means that, at the margin, increasing export promotion expenditures would be profitable for dairy farmers.     

Socioeconomic Determinants of Child Health: Empirical Evidence from Indonesia

This paper characterizes the socioeconomic determinants of child health using height‐for‐age z‐score (HAZ), a long‐run measure of chronic nutritional deficiency. We construct a panel data that follows children between ages 3 and 59 months in 1993 through the 1997 and 2000 waves of the Indonesian Family Life Survey. We use this data to identify the various child‐level, household‐level and community‐level factors that affect children's health. Our findings indicate that household income has a large and statistically significant role in explaining improvements in HAZ. We also find a strong positive association between parental height and HAZ. At the community level, we find that provision of electricity and the availability of paved roads are positively associated with improvements in HAZ. Finally, in comparison to community‐level factors, household‐level characteristics play a large role in explaining the variation in HAZ. These findings suggest that policies that address the demand‐side constraints have greater potential to improve children's health outcomes in the future.     

Biotechnology as a Technological Paradigm in the Global Knowledge Structure

The aim of this study is to analyse whether the receipt of public R&D funding determines firm's R&D strategy selection. This issue is crucial, as previous studies have shown that each R&D strategy is associated to a higher, or lower, innovation performance. We consider three R&D strategies – make, buy, make–buy – and three different sources of public funding – regional, state and other (such as EU). The model estimation is performed through a multinomial logit model with random effects with a sample of 457 large firms for the period 1992–2005, taken from the Spanish Survey of Business Strategies. The main finding is that the source of the funding influences whether firms select the make, buy or make–buy strategy. Additionally, because of the panel structure of the sample, we observe that the effect of public funding on the R&D strategy selection lasts longer for state and regional funds than for other funds.     

Entry dynamics of self-employment in South Korea

The purpose of this paper is to clarify whether the entry into self-employment was an inevitable move due to economic recession (push hypothesis) or a voluntary move due to entrepreneurship (pull hypothesis) in Korea. It also examines how this decision is affected by changes in socio-economic conditions. The empirical analysis in this study exploited the matched sample for the adjacent months in the Economically Active Population Survey (EAPS) conducted by Korea National Statistical Office in 2000–2004. The empirical results showed that the push aspect of self-employment was strong in Korea over the whole sampled periods. The entry into self-employment in South Korea is largely attributable to economic sluggishness and an increase in unemployment rather than a voluntary transition resulting from entrepreneurship. Policy environment (such as providing information and financial support for new start-ups after the Asian financial crisis), which is a country-specific factor magnified the pushed effects. For the pushed (unprepared) self-employed people, not only is there a need to expand the coverage of vocational training programmes, but also it is vital that social safety nets are strengthened and supplemented.     

河南省农村公共物品投资的经济增长效应研究

本文运用面板数据模型分析了河南省农村公共物品固定资产投资对农村经济增长的影响。固定效应模型表明,农村公共物品固定资产投资是造成地区间农业总产值差异的因素;随机效应模型表明,农村公共物品固定资产投资也是造成同一地区不同年份农业总产值变化的因素,即农村公共物品固定资产投资促进了农村经济增长。最后分析了河南省当前农村公共物品供给存在的问题及解决对策。     

Corruption and Tourism: An Empirical Investigation in a Non‐linear Framework

This article investigates the effect of corruption on tourism demand for a panel of countries during 1999–2009 by using panel least square and fixed effects regressions. Prior research has considered only the linear effects of corruption on tourism. We examine the relationship between corruption and tourism in a non‐linear framework after controlling for economic and heritage factors. The findings suggest that corruption has a significant effect on tourism demand and that this effect is non‐linear. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.