Economies — Open Access Journal

We examine the role of democracy shocks in the cross-country economic growth processes over a period of five decades since 1960. The recent uprisings that arose independently and spread across the Arab world form the main context of our investigation. We study if (i) a shock to democracy in one country triggers institutional reforms and growth upsurge in the neighbouring countries, and (ii) the magnitude and direction of response to democracy shocks are contingent upon income pathways of countries. To estimate the spillover effects of democracy shocks, we model and estimate growth interdependence among individual countries with similar democratic characteristics. To study the nature of responses of democracy shocks on cross-country growth processes, we build and estimate a Global Vector Autoregression (GVAR) model where we allow countries to be interdependent with regard to bilateral migration and geographical proximity. Using the GVAR model, we also stimulate a positive shock to democracy in Egypt—the most populous Arabic country—and study its impacts on institutional reforms and economic growth in the rest of the Arab World. We find that high and upper-middle income countries are immune to democracy shocks in Egypt, whereas the lower middle and low income countries are susceptible to another revolutionary wave. Full article

Debate on tourism-led growth and growth-led tourism is still ongoing today, with much research done for developed countries and those which are popular tourist destinations over the world. Surprisingly, the research is scarce for the Central and Eastern European (CEE) and South and Eastern European (SEE) countries. The contribution of this research is examining the dynamic relationship between spillovers of tourism growth and economic growth for CEE and SEE countries for the first time in the literature. The methodology used in the study (spillover indices) allows for estimating the dynamic relationship throughout rolling indices. Based upon monthly data (with different time spans depending upon availability of data, from January 2000 to January 2003 until December 2017, i.e., October 2018), the following countries were in focus: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia. Results from dynamic rolling spillover indices indicate mixed results for all of the countries throughout the sample. Dynamic results enable policymakers from individual countries to focus on specifics of their economies to develop even better policies in order to achieve best possible results regarding the tourism growth and related economic growth. Full article

This paper presents an endogenous growth model of migration and technological diffusion with transitional dynamics, which provide explanations for the empirical pattern of the mobility transition. A two-skill group extension of this model offers new hypotheses regarding the skill composition of emigration during the mobility transition. Skill-biased technological change (SBTC), which first occurs in the destination, raises the relative return to high skill migration and thus the high-to-low skill emigration ratio. As SBTC eventually diffuses to the source economy, it also raises the relative return to high skill investment there, and causes a decline in the high-to-low skill emigration ratio. Empirical evidence using bilateral migration data from 31 destinations and 195 origins is shown to support this hypothesis, with the average income of origins, at which the peak high-to-low skill emigration ratio is reached, is estimated at $2000 in 2011 US dollars PPP (adjusted for purchasing power parity). Furthermore, research and development intensity as a measure of SBTC in destinations is shown to be empirically, positively linked to the bilateral high-to-low skill emigration ratio. Full article

In this paper electoral disproportionality is split into two types: (1) Forced or unavoidable, due to the very nature of the apportionment problem; and (2) non-forced. While disproportionality indexes proposed in the literature do not distinguish between such components, we design an index, called “quota index”, just measuring avoidable disproportionality. Unlike the previous indexes, the new one can be zero in real situations. Furthermore, this index presents an interesting interpretation concerning transfers of seats. Properties of the quota index and relationships with some usual disproportionality indexes are analyzed. Finally, an empirical approach is undertaken for different countries and elections. Full article

Pork-barrel spending is the use of federal money for localized projects that yield only a narrow geographic benefit. It is a commonly held belief that politicians use this spending to improve their chances of re-election. One way that an incumbent can increase their chances of re-election is through increased fundraising. Political entrepreneurs see this opportunity and attempt to benefit from these projects in exchange for campaign contributions. This paper investigates whether incumbents are able to use their position to bolster their campaign contributions. I find pork-barrel spending and political contributions to be positively related, but this effect is only present when the incumbent properly times the project. I also find that general federal appropriations do not have the same impact. This supports the claim that pork-barrel spending can be used as a currency in the marketplace for political capital. Full article

This study assesses contagion from the USA subprime financial crisis on a large set of frontier stock markets. Copula models were used to investigate the structure of dependence between frontier markets and the USA, before and after the occurrence of the crisis. Statistically significant evidence of contagion could only be found in the European region, with the markets of Croatia and Romania being affected. The remaining European markets in our sample and the others, located in America, Middle East, Africa, and Asia, appear to have been isolated from the subprime crisis impact. These results are useful for international investors interested in enlarging the geographical diversification of their portfolios, but also for the considered countries’ policymakers who should attempt to improve the attractiveness of stock markets for domestic and foreign investors while simultaneously attempting to maintain their relative level of insulation against future foreign crises. Full article

There has been growing international interest in the role that wellbeing measures could play within policy making in health and social care. This project explored the opinions of a sample of UK decision-makers on the relevance of wellbeing and subjective wellbeing (by which we mean good and bad feelings or overall evaluations of life, such as life satisfaction) for resource allocation decisions within health and social care. Through these discussions we draw out the perceived advantages and the potential concerns that decision-makers have about broadening out to wellbeing and subjective wellbeing rather than just measuring health. Three focus groups were conducted: with members of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Citizen’s Council, with a Health and Wellbeing Board at a Local Authority and with Public Health England. In addition, eleven semi-structured interviews were held with staff from NHS England and members of a range of NICE committees. We identified a range of opinions about the role of wellbeing and a broadly held view that there was a need for improved consideration of broader quality of life outcomes. We also identified considerable caution in relation to the use of subjective wellbeing. Full article

The purpose of this paper is to assess the importance of geographical location in the banking sector efficiency of the Sino-ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) region, and how the location was affected before, during and after the financial crisis. Using a panel of data from 407 banks from China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam from 2000–2013, this study applies data envelopment analysis, Tobit regression, bootstrapping, and Simar and Wilson double bootstrapping regression. The empirical evidence suggests that the banking market has an important and significant role in the efficiency of the banking sector in the Sino-ASEAN region. The significant country’s coefficients suggest that during the pre-crisis period, banks belonging to China and Indonesia were more likely to be efficient due to the geographical location effect. The study finds the same tendency among Chinese banks in the crisis period as in the period before the crisis. Overall, the results suggest that Chinese banks outperform banks from the ASEAN countries in terms of efficiency. This study raises some significant policy implications for improving bank efficiency. Full article

The macroeconomic outcomes of oil price fluctuations have been at the forefront of the debate among economists, financial analysts and policymakers over the last decades. Among others, the oil price–food price nexus has particularly received a great deal of attention. While an abundant body of literature has focused on the linear relationship between oil price and food price, little is known regarding the nonlinear interactions between them. The aim of this paper is to conduct aggregated and disaggregated analyses of the impact of the Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil prices on international food prices between January 1990 and October 2017. The empirical investigation is based on the estimation of linear and nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models. The findings confirm the presence of asymmetries since the overall food price is only affected by positive shocks on oil price in the long-run. While the dairy price index reacts to both positive and negative changes of oil price, the impact of oil price increases is found to be greater. Finally, the asymmetry is present for some other agricultural commodity prices in the short-run, since they respond only to oil price decreases. All in all, the study concludes that studies assuming the presence of a symmetric impact of oil price on food price might be flawed. The findings are important for the undertaking of future studies and the design of international and national policies in the fight against food insecurity. Full article

This paper analyzes the effects of the real policy interest rate on the banking sector lending rate, the deposit rate, real stock prices, and the real exchange rate using the Engle Granger cointegration method (EG), the vector error-correction model (VECM), and the nonlinear vector error-correction model (NVECM) with monthly Turkish data over the period January 2002–April 2018. (1) EG results indicate bivariate cointegration relationships between the real interest rate, lending rates, and the deposit rate. The real interest rate increases all lending rates, mainly the housing rate. However, the long-run coefficient for the real exchange rate is not statistically significant. The pass-through is higher for the deposit rate than for lending rates. Moreoever, real stock prices shrink substantially where the finance sector has been affected the most. (2) VECM results indicate a cointegration relationship between all the variables except for the real exchange rate, which has a statistically non-significant pass-through coefficient. The real interest rate has a noteworthy long-run positive effect on the housing loans lending rate compared to others. The affirmative effect on real stock prices is the highest for the technology sector. The short-run effect of the real interest rate on lending rates, real stock prices and the real exchange rate are statistically non-significant except for the overall stock price index, and the vehicle loans lending rate which has a higher coefficient than the deposit rate. (3) NVECM results allow testing of eleven hypotheses and highlight the symmetric relationship and the valid pass-through effect, and reject the strong exogeneity assumption for all variables. Full article

The purpose of this paper is to verify the long-range correlation between the stock markets of the largest economies in the world and the respective exchange rate with the USD. According to theory, a negative correlation is expected, meaning that an increase in the return of one of the assets will cause a decrease in the return of the other. Using detrended cross-correlation and detrended moving average cross-correlation analyses and the respective correlation coefficients, we analysed this possibility, analysing behaviour according to different time scales. Our main results showed that in European markets, the exchange rate does not have a significant effect. This significant effect just occurs in the case of the Indian stock market, while in the case of the Japanese one, the relationship is positive. Japanese authorities’ monetary policy could be the reason for this different result. Full article

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impacts of some prominent macroeconomic factors on the Turkish Stock Market index, BIST-100 (Borsa Istanbul-100). For centuries, and mostly since the 20th century, stock markets are at the heart of economies. In our era, the largest economic crises arise from the stock market instabilities and thus, the stock markets are the focus of interest of the economy. Economists, investors, and policymakers try to predict the tendency of share prices, which substantially depend on foreign and domestic macroeconomic factors. Within this purpose, this study tries to investigate the impact of some selected macroeconomic factors on BIST-100 index over the 2003Q1–2017Q4 period. The findings obtained from the quarterly data via the ARDL Bounds Test suggest that economic growth, the relative value of the domestic currency, portfolio investments and foreign direct investments raise the stock market index while interest rate and crude oil prices negatively affect it. The results briefly reveal that the Istanbul Stock Exchange Market needs stronger domestic currency, higher international capital inflows, and lower energy and investment costs. Full article

This paper examines the efficient market hypothesis by applying monthly data for 15 international equity markets. With the exceptions of Canada and the U.S., the null for the absence of autocorrelations of stock returns is rejected for 13 out of 15 markets. The evidence also rejects the independence of market volatility correlations. The null for testing the absence of correlations between stock returns and lagged news measured by lagged economic policy uncertainty (EPU) is rejected for all markets under investigation. The evidence indicates that a change of lagged EPUs positively predicts conditional variance. Full article

This article investigates empirically the effect of aid for trade policies and regulations on the volatility of tariffs in the recipient countries. The analysis has used an unbalanced panel dataset of 107 countries over the period from 2002 to 2015. The empirical results, based on the two-step system Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) approach, show that aid for trade policies and regulations influences negatively and significantly tariff policy volatility in recipient countries. Additionally, the findings indicate that the better the institutional and governance quality in recipient countries, the higher is the reducing effect of aid for trade policies and regulations on tariff policy volatility. These results, therefore, suggest that a scale up of aid for trade policies and regulations to, inter alia, build the capacity of policymakers in recipient countries to contribute to reducing tariffs volatility in these countries, which would, in turn, likely benefit donor countries. Furthermore, improving domestic institutions and governance in recipient countries would further enhance the reducing impact of this aid on tariff volatility, which, once again, benefits both the recipient countries and donor countries. Full article

This paper examines the asymmetrical relationship between exchange rate and consumer prices in 40 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries from 1990Q1 to 2017Q4. We estimate the exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) to consumer prices for each country by using the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) framework and dynamic panel techniques robust to cross-sectional dependence. First, our findings suggest an asymmetrical ERPT in the SSA region during the short term, whereas there are mixed results across subregions in the long term. Second, the results of the panel analysis suggest incomplete and significant ERPT to consumer prices in the entire SSA region, which is higher during depreciation of the local currency than after appreciation in the short-term, especially in the CFA Franc zone. Third, we find nonlinear ERPT with respect to the size of the exchange rate. Finally, we find that pass-through is higher in countries with fixed exchange rate regimes (CFA franc zone) in a low inflationary environment than in countries with floating exchange rate regimes and high inflation levels. Pass-through is greater during large exchange rate changes than after small changes. Therefore, the policy implication is to consider these asymmetries and nonlinearities to improve monetary policy’s credibility, enhance trade liberalization, and promote competitive market structures in the SSA region. Full article

In Vietnam, agriculture is a key sector that promotes economic growth and poverty reduction. Therefore, improving productivity in agriculture is indispensable to the sustainability of the country. This research examined productivity and its determinants from 420 enterprises operating in agriculture. Productivity was measured as the total factor productivity (TFP) obtained from fixed and random effects models. The determinants of TFP including size and age, share of state and foreign ownership, export, accessibility to Internet and bank loan of firms, controlled for year fixed effects, were analyzed. It was shown that 74.6% companies in the agricultural sector were small in size (< 10 < 200 employees). Although the number of large firms (>300 employees) explained 10.6%, they had a remarkable and positive TFP (38.8%, p < 0.01), while both small and very small (<10, and <200 employees, respectively) had strikingly negative TFP values (−71.3% and −32.1%, respectively, p < 0.01), as compared to the medium sizes (< 200 < 300 employees). It was also revealed that although foreign ownership was only 3.8% on average, it had a notably positive effect on TFP (55.0%, p < 0.01). In contrast, state ownership accounted for 30.7%, but it had a negative influence on TFP (−7.5%). The export contributed a negligible and statistically significant effect to TFP (2.6%), which might be attributed to a limited number of firms (4.5%) having mobility in agricultural export. 73% received a bank loan, and only 18.2% had access to the Internet, but both of them yielded remarkable TFP values (18.5%, p < 0.01 and 3.4%, p < 0.05 respectively). The Hausman test indicated that the fixed effects (FE) model was more effective than the random effects (RE) model to estimate the TFP. The findings of this study suggested that reform efforts should focus on improving the productivity of small agricultural enterprises. In addition, foreign investment, effective use of bank loan and Internet accessibility should be further enhanced. The results of this study may provide insights for policymakers who aim to improve the productivity in agricultural enterprises and thereby contribute to the sustainable growth of the country. Full article

What factors determine federal spending on environmental goods? Is severity of the hazard the only metric of consideration, or do other factors play a vital role in explaining spending? This paper seeks to answer this question and to identify disbursement patterns within the context of the Abandoned Mine Land Fund (AMLF) program, a fund created as an aspect of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977. We explore whether political factors, as well as environmental and health factors, have an explanatory role in disbursement of AMLF monies. The political factors examined include environmental interest group influence and legislator preferences and/or pressures to fund sites in their home states or districts. The results found here suggest that there exists a mix of public and private interests present in AMLF disbursement decisions during the overall span of the program, and that political influences have gained strength in the decision-making calculus in response to changes in the funding structure of the AMLF. Full article

After more than half a year of elections (yielding three voting stages and nine voting rounds), the 2017 Rector election at Ghent University (Belgium) resulted in a victory for the duo leading all nine voting rounds, and in a resounding defeat for the electoral system. Significant regulation changes were needed in order to break the institutional deadlock in which Ghent University found itself. In this paper, we follow the timeline of the election and dissect what went wrong in the election planning. Full article