Capital market integration in ASEAN: A non-stationary panel data analysis

Motivated by the establishment of ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) at the end of 2015, we examine saving-investment relationship in various subgroups of ASEAN to assess their capital market integration. The results from second generation panel unit-root and cointegration tests that account for cross-sectional dependence as well as estimates of long-run saving-retention rate provide some evidence of market integration in ASEAN. The analysis of short-run dynamics suggests that capital mobility in ASEAN during 1980–2014 appears similar to that in OECD countries during 1970–1999. More importantly, across different panel estimators and subgroups of membership, there is considerable heterogeneity among the member countries. The saving-investment association is very weak, thereby implying very high capital mobility, in more developed members such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei; the association is very strong, implying very low capital mobility, for much less developed members such as Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia. The results call for renewed effort to develop capital markets in less developed nations and integrate them with the rest of the membership in ASEAN. In this paper, we also address several major shortcomings of the original Feldstein-Horioka framework.     

Panel LM unit root tests with level and trend shifts

This paper considers a Lagrange multiplier (LM) based panel unit root test that allows for heterogeneous structural breaks in both the intercepts and slopes of a series. We note that many popular time series variables are likely to exhibit changing means and/or trends over time. Given that the usual tests will depend on the nuisance parameters indicating the locations of the trend breaks, we adopt a transformation procedure that makes our new panel unit root tests invariant to the nuisance parameters. To illustrate the importance of the power gain provided by our test, we examine the convergence hypothesis using relative ratios of per capita health care expenditures in 20 OECD countries. Our results provide evidence that the convergence hypothesis is supported.     

Does corruption slow down innovation? Evidence from a cointegrated panel of U.S. states

I investigate the long-run relationship between corruption and innovative activity using annual data from 48 contiguous U.S. states between 1977 and 2006. Using U.S. data allows me to work with a panel long enough to exploit time series properties of the data. I use two different measures of innovative activity: one measuring the quantity and the other measuring the quality of the patents granted. I also use two different measures of corruption: one based on the number of corruption convictions, the other based on number of corruption stories covered in Associated Press news wires. Following Pedroni (1999, 2000), I estimate the cointegrating relationship between corruption and innovative activity with Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS). The results indicate that corruption indeed slows down innovation in the long-run.     

Tourism as an alternative source of regional growth in Portugal: a panel data analysis at NUTS II and III levels

The role of tourism is of vital economic importance, particularly for small countries with a privileged geographical location and favourable weather conditions. This paper examines the importance of tourism as a conditioning factor for higher regional growth in Portugal by employing the conditional convergence hypothesis of Barro and Sala-i-Martin, associated with the endogenous growth theory. The panel data estimation approach provides evidence of the positive impact of tourism (through the accommodation capacity) on the growth in per-capita income among the Portuguese regions, increasing the rate of convergence. Therefore, tourism can be considered as an alternative source for stimulating higher regional growth in Portugal, if the supply characteristics of this sector are improved.     

转型进程、发展战略转变与金融转型

随着经济转型从体制转型阶段进入到经济发展阶段,中国的经济发展战略也应当从比较优势转向竞争优势。而转型进程以及发展战略的转变都内在统一于经济发展的虚拟化进程当中。现代经济发展的虚拟化强化了金融在整个经济体系中的核心作用,因而随着中国成为完全市场经济国家,金融转型的成败将对中国向好的市场经济迈进起着决定性的作用。     

Efficiency outcomes of market concentration and managed care

The paper examines how hospital cost efficiency has reacted to extensive horizontal integrations of hospitals and rapid growth of managed care in the US health care industry. Cost efficiency is estimated by using panel data approaches to relax the assumptions for the hospital effects imposed in earlier studies. The paper shows that higher managed care penetration over time is associated with greater hospital efficiency, and higher market concentration is positively associated with efficiency when markets are highly competitive or highly concentrated.     

UNEMPLOYMENT, HYSTERESIS AND TRANSITION

In this paper, we quantify the degree of persistence in the unemployment rates of transition countries using a variety of methods benchmarked against the EU. Initially, we work with the concept of linear ‘Hysteresis’ as described by the presence of unit roots in unemployment as in most empirical research on this area. Given that this is potentially a narrow definition, we also take into account the existence of structural breaks and nonlinear dynamics in unemployment. Finally, we examine whether CEECs' unemployment presents features of multiple equilibria, that is, if it remains locked into a new level whenever some structural change or sufficiently large shock occurs. Our findings show that, in general, we can reject the unit‐root hypothesis after controlling for structural changes and business‐cycle effects, but we can observe the presence of a high and low unemployment equilibria. The speed of adjustment is faster for CEECs than the EU, although CEECs tend to move more frequently between equilibria.     

“宪政转轨论”评析

中俄改革的比较研究 ,一直是新兴的转轨经济学关注的热点。1 998年俄罗斯爆发金融和经济危机 ,激进改革的支持者一度趋于沉寂。然而 ,从 1 999年下半年开始 ,俄罗斯经济出现转机 ,2 0 0 0年经济增长居世界第一 ,GDP增幅达 8 3 %。与此同时 ,中国经济改革进入攻坚的中期阶段。在这一关键阶段 ,渐进改革积累的矛盾日趋严峻 ,同时还面临加入WTO市场化改革滞后的外在压力。毫无疑问 ,中国经济仍要进行重大调整和改革。在这一背景下 ,国内外经济学界又在进一步探讨中俄改革的道路和方式问题。本文是对目前讨论的一个著名观点“宪政转轨”论进行分析和批驳。     

产业升级、贸易政策与经济转型

产业升级是经济转型的内驱动力，贸易政策对于产业升级具有制约作用，是经济转型的外驱力量。政府通过设计合理的激励机制，将两种力量聚合，积极推动经济转型，从而缩短经济转型的时间进程。