A Note on the Labor Market Effects of Remittances in Latin American and Caribbean Countries: Do Thresholds Exist?

The labor market effects of remittances have long been examined in the empirical literature. To date, the results have been mixed: some authors observe a negative association between remittances and unemployment while others report that remittances increase unemployment. This study empirically examines the impact of remittances on unemployment using macroeconomic data for a sample of 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries. Specifically, the study tests whether there is a nonlinear relationship between the variables. Results suggest that when the remittance‐to‐GDP ratio is low, remittances have a positive and significant impact on unemployment. However, as they increase, remittances are negatively associated with unemployment. This suggests the possibility that estimations based on the assumption of a linear relationship between remittances and labor may mask the true relationship between the variables.     

The rise and fall of Spain (1270–1850)1

Two distinctive regimes are distinguished in Spain over half a millennium. The first one (1270s–1590s) corresponds to a high land–labour ratio frontier economy, which is pastoral, trade‐oriented, and led by towns. Wages and food consumption were relatively high. Sustained per capita growth occurred from the end of the Reconquest (1264) to the Black Death (1340s) and resumed from the 1390s only broken by late fifteenth‐century turmoil. A second regime (1600s–1810s) corresponds to a more agricultural and densely populated low‐wage economy which, although it grew at a pace similar to that of 1270–1600, remained at a lower level. Contrary to pre‐industrial western Europe, Spain achieved its highest living standards in the 1340s, not by mid‐fifteenth century. Although its death toll was lower, the plague had a more damaging impact on Spain and, far from releasing non‐existent demographic pressure, destroyed the equilibrium between scarce population and abundant resources. Pre‐1350 per capita income was reached by the late sixteenth century but only exceeded after 1820.     

Uganda's experience with aid

This paper presents Uganda's experience with aid flows overthe period 1970-96. It discusses the compilation of aid dataand also reviews the chronological developments in aid flowsto Uganda. Over this period, the sectoral distribution and typeof aid is largely dictated by the government's economic programmesin place. The period 1962-71 largely reflects government borrowingfor on-lending to agriculture and industry whereas the period1979-85 shows a wider range of sector-specific programmes drivenby the need to reconstruct and rehabilitate the economy. Althoughthe need to reconstruct and rehabilitate the economy continued,support for policy reform began to take up an increasing proportionof aid over the period 1987-96. We also analyse the impact ofaid on some major macroeconomic variables and find that investmentand real exchange rate developments have been largely drivenby official development aid flows. Although we find a similarrelationship between aid and improved policy environment, thefindings show that in the latter part, i.e., 1992-6, the continuedpolicy reform was driven more by ownership of the programmethan by aid. Indeed, in this latter period, the aid/GDP ratiosdeclined. The major lesson drawn from this study is that ownershipof a reform programme is more critical for its success, henceour conclusion that aid should be used for financing ratherthan buying reforms.     

Optimal monetary policy,endogenous supply and rational expectations

In this paper we demonstrate that the choice of monetary policy regime will affect the variability of output when private agents, in forming their supply decisions, take into account the authority's selection of a policy rule. A striking feature of the analysis is that the choice between policy rules in Sargent-Wallace (1975) framework, but with endogenous aggregate supply, depends only on the variability of aggregate demand under each rule and not on the variability of aggregate supply. It follows that the choice of monetary policy rules reduces to the problem analyzed by Poole (1970) in the stochastic Keynesian structure.     

新时期西部农村贫困特征与反贫困对策

新时期西部农村反贫困,对于推进城乡统筹、和谐社会以及社会主义新农村建设具有特殊的重大战略意义。对大量的调查数据资料分析表明,新时期西部农村贫困除了人口数量大分布广之外,还呈现贫困程度深、边境性、民族性与脆弱生态环境空间分布高度一致性等新的特征。西部地区城乡统筹必须将农村反贫困问题纳入其要义之中。