Export and economic growth: Further time series evidence from less-developed countries

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of export-growth linkage in India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand on the basis of time series data from 1973 to 1993. The empirical results indicate that exports have a positive and significant impact on economic growth when a country has achieved some level of economic development. The result also signifies the importance of liberal market policies by pursuing export expansion strategies and by attracting foreign investments.     

The wedge and sigma convergence among U.S. states

The paper attempts to empirically quantify the factors underlying sigma convergence among the contiguous states of the U.S. Using annual state data the study finds a significant effect of the wedge in explaining the variation in state per capita productivity. Employing a time series framework, the paper finds that an increase in the variation of 1 percent in the wedge will increase the variation in per capita productivity by roughly 0.12 percent in the short run and roughly 0.45 to 0.55 percent in the long run.     

Enemies within and enemies without: The besieged self in Pakistani textbooks

In the process of state formation and nation building, states organize the production, organization and distribution of social knowledge to construct national collective memory. The tendency is even more pronounced in newly independent states that struggle to build new identities by discarding earlier belongings. When new states are formed by amalgamating diverse regional entities into a single and centralized one, the earlier, older and differentiated identities are expected to be discarded in favour of the new homogenized one. In cases where the new state is carved out of an existing one, the national remembering on each side is divergent—the Parent state mourns the loss and remembers the event as wound in the body politic, and the emerging state celebrates its creation with a sense of pride and triumph achieved through suffering and pain. Competing and rival tales of the partition are then woven in the creation of national memory. This is done by relying heavily on the identity forming subjects such as history (sense of time), civics (a sense of power), and geography (a sense of space), together known as social studies. An important requirement of all states, but particularly new ones, is the construction, elaboration and frequent invocation of ‘enemies’ across and within national borders. Without enemies lurking everywhere, and as the moral opposites of the self, the Self is hard to define and consolidate. The sense of threat and fear that enemies help evoke, enables the fractured and differentiated self to merge and solidify into a defensive oneness. The state of Pakistan, in this context, is an interesting, but hardly an exceptional case. Designing education for a post-national world becomes a critical task.     

The impact of tourism on deficit in balance of payments of Pakistan: an application of bounds testing approach to cointegration

The current study is intended to analyze the long-run relationship between deficit in balance of payments (BOPs) and tourism for the period of 1976–2015 using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. The findings of the paper exposed an indirect relationship between tourism and BOP deficit in the context of Pakistan economy, while deficit balance of trade, real effective exchange rate, and deficit in fiscal balance have a positive and significant association with the deficit in the BOPs in the long run. Based on the findings, it is recommended that policies should be devised that promote the tourism industry of Pakistan as it would be helpful in reducing the deficit in the BOPs.     

Convergence (divergence) and the U.S. states

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether established trends in labor productivity convergence have continued among the contiguous states of the U.S. from 1969 to 1990. This paper brings new and additional state data to bear on the question of productivity convergence among the U.S. states. The findings indicate that when the state value-added is deflated by the state-specific price deflator, a dramatically different picture of productivity convergence emerges. The study also finds that there is less evidence of state productivity convergence once the peculiar behavior of mining or extraction industries is taken into account.     

An empirical investigation of forces influencing productivity and the rate of convergence among states

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the productivity performance of state economies in the U.S. over the past two decades and, in particular, to identify the degree to which convergence has occurred in productivity. A key element of this analysis is the identification of the contribution of factor inputs, as well as human capital, gender composition of employment, and shifting industrial mix by state during the period 1969–88. The findings provide strong evidence of convergence even when controlling for other factors.     

Inequality in healthcare R&D outcomes: a model of process disruption

ABSTRACT

The developing world has substantively different healthcare research and development (R&D) needs than the developed world. In this paper it is argued that healthcare inequality is primarily an outcome of the incentives of an innovation system that privileges wealthy markets. Given the difficulties inherent in challenging these incentive structures, it might be the R&D process itself (rather than its incentive structures) that, if disrupted, may ultimately improve access to R&D outcomes for poor populations. The objective of this paper is to spur novel thinking about the problem of healthcare inequality by developing a provocative conceptual model of healthcare R&D process disruption, based on the application of novel technologies to the research process itself, to radically lower the costs of R&D. The model developed here suggests that healthcare inequality might ultimately be mitigated by substantial reductions in time and cost in the biomedical R&D process made possible by novel technologies.     

Turning point: when born globals enter post-entry stage

The literature on firms’ early internationalization includes a huge number of studies investigating the entry stage of companies, while works on the post-entry growth and survival have recently been increasing. In this context, this study aims to better explain which factors determine the evolution of born globals (BGs) during their lifecycles. The authors analyze the growth processes of six Italian manufacturing BGs at different stages of their development, with a particular focus on the transition of the venture from entry to the post-entry stage. The findings show that the entrepreneurial capabilities of the founders have a crucial role during the first international expansion of the companies. As BGs enter the post-entry phase, a trade-off emerges between entrepreneurial capabilities and some specific firm resources aimed at achieving the sustainable growth of the company. Moreover, the authors identify the existence of a turning point when companies switch from the entry to the post-entry stage. During this phase, entrepreneurs manage a process to transform their individual capabilities into an organizational knowledge base. Future research areas and managerial implications are discussed.     

Can total factor productivity explain value added growth in services?

This paper examines the factors responsible for generating the services led growth witnessed in the Indian economy during 1980–2005. A sectoral growth accounting exercise shows that total factor productivity (TFP) growth was the fastest for services; moreover this TFP increase was significant in accounting for service sector value added growth. A growth model with agriculture, industry and services as three principal sectors is calibrated to Indian data using sectoral TFP growth rates. The baseline model performs well in accounting for the evolution of value added shares and their growth rates, but is unable to capture sectoral employment share trends. The performance of the model with respect to value added shares improves when the post 1991 increase in service sector TFP growth following the inception of market-based liberalization reforms is accounted for. A modified version of the model with public capital can better track trends in sectoral employment shares.     

A macroeconometric framework for monetary policy evaluation: A case study of Pakistan

This paper attempts to establish the quantitative importance of the various channels of monetary transmission by constructing, estimating and simulating a small macroeconometric model of Pakistan's monetary sector, while using data from the monetary statistics and the monetary survey of the State Bank of Pakistan over 1976–2007. The paper elucidates that the key feature of the study of monetary policy in Pakistan has been preoccupied with neglect either of the demand or the supply function of money and shows how this may lead to imprecise policy actions and mistaken conclusions. Accordingly, we delineate the transmission mechanism of monetary policy by taking into consideration all structural money demand and money supply linkages along with the historically implied identifying assumption in the framework of a marginalized macroeconometric model. The within-sample and out-of-sample evaluations of the model are found satisfactory. The paper presents results of three policy simulations from the estimated model that highlight the impact of alternative monetary policy instruments on the monetary variables under a rule-based and a discretionary policy environment. We find that (i) the SBP subscribes to an unannounced monetary policy rule, (ii) the determination of the policy rate under the announced rule environment stabilizes the monetary sector in that convergence to full equilibrium is smooth and rapid, (iii) a 100 bps reduction in the discount rate, ceteris paribus, decreases money supply by 4.97%, and (iv) the long term implication of reducing (increasing) the reserve requirement ratio on time (demand) deposits, ceteris paribus, is only higher inflation. Finally, we establish that a 100 bps increase in interest rate increases money supply by 3.14% in full equilibrium.