financial factors in economic development financial factors have been assigned strategic importance in economic development but very different factors have been isolated in the respective experiences in asia unrepressed financial markets in mobilizing saving and allocating investment have been given prominence in latin america the central question is the role of inflationary finance the scope for deficits to enhance growth and increasingly the feedback from high and unstable inflation to poor economic performance this paper reviews and contrasts the two approaches and concludes that the strong claims for the benefits of financial liberalization are not supported by evidence financial factors are important but probably only when financial instability becomes a dominant force the scope for inflationary finance is small and the risks are larger than commonly accepted when hyperinflation takes over and foreign exchange crises disrupt the price system and shorten the economic horizon to a week or a month normal economic development is suspended moreover difficult to reverse capital flight puts savings outside the home economy attention should focus on these extreme cases and explore deeper the thresholds at which financial factors become dominant and the channels through which this occurs superior growth performance in this perspective may be more a reflection of adaptability than financial deepening this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

development of financial markets and the size distribution of manufacturing establishments international comparisons abstract institutional determinants have largely been neglected in explaining international differences in the size distribution of manufacturing establishments this paper draws on recent developments in institutional analysis to derive certain hypotheses concerning the way in which the size distribution within manufacturing is affected by the degree of development of the markets for debt and equity these hypotheses are tested on the basis of an international cross section of 54 countries the results are generally supportive of the hypotheses especially in the case of developing countries

taxation of financial assets in developing countries in developing countries most financial assets in formal markets are deposits at financial institutions this potentially important tax base could be taxed at a low administrative cost when revenues of financial taxes are significant implicit taxes dwarf explicit taxes the author focuses on the implicit taxation of financial assets through seigniorage reserve requirements lending targets and interest ceilings combined with inflation the last instrument has often been overlooked but it has generated more than a third of implicit revenues in some cases by lowering the cost of government borrowing tax revenues are difficult to measure because of regulations that prevent the use of market prices for computation and distort the meaning of some definitions for some countries the standard method of seigniorage grossly underestimates the revenue from financial taxation the author discusses various sources of distortion but ignores potential impacts on the level of saving and the growth rate although taxes on financial assets have a low administrative cost the excess burden that stems from the misallocation of resources is probably a much higher fraction of revenues than that of other taxes

integrated regressors and tests of the permanent income hypothesis abstract we use recent research on estimation and testing in the presence of unit roots to argue that hall s 1978 t and f tests of whether consumption is predicted by lagged income or by lags of consumption beyond the first are asymptotically valid a monte carlo experiment suggests that the asymptotic t and f distributions provide a good approximation to the actual finite sample distribution

understanding the welfare implications of currency substitution abstract this paper develops a model of endogenous currency substitution where agents decide which purchases will be made with domestic and which with foreign currency in a representative agent economy allowing for this use of alternative means of payments is welfare enhancing the result is an application of ramsey taxation rules by which currency substitution shifts the burden of the inflation tax towards relatively demand inelastic commodities when extending the model to the case in which agents have different productivities we show that inflation has strong income distribution effects with high low income agents benefitting losing when currency substitution is introduced

inflation stabilization the experience of israel argentina brazil bolivia and mexico rampant inflation is a major economic problem in many of the less developed countries two out of three attempts to stabilize these economies fail inflation stabilization provides a valuable description and a critical analysis of the disinflation programs introduced in argentina bolivia brazil and israel in 1985 86 and discusses the possibility of such a program in mexico it documents the initial steps in stabilization as well as the reasons for failure as architects of the programs several of the authors are in key positions to assess which aspects were critical in getting the programs accepted and where to look for difficulties and failures in israel inflation was halted without recession the challenge to policy makers today is in shifting from stabilization to the revival of sustained growth this experience is described fully by michael bruno and sylvia piterman who examine the critical issue of exchange rates and by alex cukierman who uses modeling to analyze the interaction of money wages prices and activity under rational expectations that take the government s policy objectives into account endemic inflation and a sudden increase in external debt burden argentina s economy raising the wider issues of high inflation economies and stabilization that are discussed in the chapter by jose luis machinea and that by guido di tella and alfredo canavese eduardo modiano and mario simonsen take up issues of wages in brazil particularly the problem of finding an equitable way to deal with a wage freeze simonsen develops an ambitious game theoretic rationalization of incomes policy as a coordinating device for imperfectly competitive economies bolivia did reach hyperinflation price increases of more than 50 percent each month before stabilizing juan antonio morales shows how stabilizing the exchange rate in an economy where all pricing was already geared to the dollar achieved stabilization without a wage or price freeze and francisco gil diaz asks whether an incomes policy based program could work to control ever increasing inflation in mexico michael bruno is governor of the bank of israel guido di tella is a fellow of st anthony s college a professor at the di tella institute in buenos aires and a member of parliament in argentina stanley fischer is vice president of development economics and chief economist at the world bank rudiger dornbusch is ford international professor of economics at mit

competition in global markets a case study of american and japanese competition in the british market the results of a three year study of the objectives strategies and organisation of american subsidiaries are presented their operations are compared against a matched sample of competitive british and japanese subsidiaries american subsidiaries were found to be less ambitious more orientated towards delivering short term profit performance and less adapted to local market conditions than their japanese competitors over the five year period only one in three u s subsidiaries exhibited successful profit and market performance against more than three out of four japanese subsidiaries

chile the unbearable burden of inequality summary chile has been cited as a successful case of development relatively fast economic growth over almost two decades has been accompanied by a significant reduction in absolute poverty however persistent economic growth and a mostly pro poor structure of public expenditures have not been sufficient to reduce inequality in one of the most unequal countries in the world we show that the key factors explaining this persistent inequality have been a low level of fiscal expenditures caused by low tax revenues that have not permitted enough public investment in human capital and knowledge generation and diffusion

consumption in developing countries tests for liquidity constraints and finite horizons adjustment programs in developing countries emphasize the importance of reducing fiscal deficits in order to improve aggregate saving and investment performance recent theoretical analyses associated with the ricardian equivalence proposition however suggest that changes in the level of public sector saving may be offset by a change in private saving the empirical relevance of this proposition depends among other things on the length of consumers horizons and on the extent to which households are liquidity constrained empirical tests of a consumption model for a sample of developing economies do not support the equivalence propositions owing to the prevalence of liquidity constraints copyright 1989 by mit press

commercial bank offices and the mobilisation of private savings in selected sub saharan african countries the mobilisation of domestic savings has remained a thriving issue in discussions of ways and means of harnessing resources for development in africa this work attempts to examine the role of a deliberate policy of extending offices of banks to the rural areas in savings mobilisation efforts using ordinary least squares methods data from five african countries that have pursued this policy in recent times are examined to see if there is any significant relationship between the savings rate and their population per bank office ratio our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the extension of branch offices of banks to rural areas could help attenuate the poor savings performance in most african economies

does financial reform raise or reduce saving the effect of financial liberalization on private saving is theoretically ambiguous not only because the link between interest rate levels and saving is itself ambiguous but also because financial liberalization is a multidimensional and phased process sometimes involving reversals using principal components we construct 25 year time series indices of financial liberalization for each of eight developing countries chile ghana indonesia korea malaysia mexico turkey and zimbabwe these are employed in an econometric analysis of private saving in these countries our results cannot offer support for the hypothesis that financial liberalization will increase saving on the contrary the indications are that liberalization overall and in particular those elements that relax liquidity constraints may be associated with a fall in saving

coffee economic fluctuations and stabilisation an intertemporal disequilibrium model with capital market imperfections abstract this paper develops a two period disequilibrium model of a small open economy under keynesian unemployment to analyse the effects of temporary anticipated and permanent coffee price shocks the model includes a government sector that administers a commodity price stabilisation fund and allows for capital market imperfections the type of capital market imperfection makes an important difference to the results of the model in particular when the government borrows on more favourable terms than individuals the coffee price stabilisation fund reduces the multiplier effects of temporary and permanent shocks not only in the first but also in the second period by contrast when individuals face an upward sloping supply of capital curve the stabilisation fund shifts some of these effects from the first to the second period

the impact of terms of trade and real exchange rate volatility on investment and growth in sub saharan africa abstract specialization in primary product exports reduces growth but why adverse trends in and the high variance of primary product prices are possible explanations the impact on investment and growth of the level and volatility of the terms of trade and the real effective exchange rate is estimated for a panel of 14 sub saharan african countries over 1980 1995 growth is negatively affected by terms of trade instability and investment by real exchange rate instability both growth and investment increase when the terms of trade improve and real exchange rate overvaluation is eliminated

real interest rates and growth improving on some deflating experiences tests of the mckinnon shaw hypothesis typically investigate the relationship between real interest rates and growth recent work has concluded that this relationship may be non monotonic this article investigates the role of real interest rate mismeasurement in explaining these non monotonicities when such mismeasurement is systematically related to growth it will produced biased empirical results after addressing these biases the article demonstrates that financial liberalisation may offer substantial economic gains in an average country raising real interest rates from 25 per cent to five per cent will increase real annual per capita gdp growth from zero to a relatively robust rate of two per cent

assessing the impacts of foreign manufacturing on regional economies the cases of wales scotland and the west midlands brand s hill s and munday m 2000 assessing the impacts of foreign manufacturing on regional economies the cases of wales scotland and the west midlands reg studies 34 343 355 this paper examines the direct and indirect contributions made by foreign manufacturing companies to the regional economies of wales scotland and the west midlands survey data derived from foreign manufacturers in each region were used in conjunction with regional input output tables to assess the comparative contributions of defined foreign and domestically owned sectors to regional value added the analyses are a starting point for the more accurate targeting of regional resources to industry sectors in the respective regional economies brand s hills s et munday m 2000 evaluer les retombees de l industrie etrangere sur les economies regionales etude de cas du pays de galles de l ecosse et des west midlands reg studies 34 343 355 cet article cherche a examiner les roles direct et indirect joue par les en

branch plants and the evolving spatial division of labour a study of material linkage change in the northern region of england phelps n a 1993 branch plants and the evolving spatial division of labour a study of material linkage change in the northern region of england reg studies 27 87 101 recent literature has suggested that manufacturing industry including that in peripheral regions is becoming more locally embedded as a result of processes of externalization and localized linkage formation this paper explores the hypothesis that branch plants have in terms of spatial patterns of material linkages become more locally embedded as a result of recent industrial restructuring evidence from a survey of manufacturing establishments in the northern region of england is used to explore hypotheses regarding the contribution of new greenfield investments and in situ restructuring to aggregate changes in spatial patterns of linkages the results suggests that despite processes of externalization northern region branch plants continue to be poorly integrated into the regional economy consequently it is argued that the cont

interest rates saving investment and growth in mexico 1960 90 tests of the financial liberalisation hypothesis the theory of financial liberalisation argues that rising real interest rates induces more saving and investment and therefore acts as a positive stimulus to economic growth this hypothesis is tested for mexico over the period 1960 90 making the important distinction between financial saving and total saving financial saving is found to be positively related to real interest rates partly through capital flows and partly through domestic asset substitution but total saving is invariant with respect to real interest rates investment is positively related to the supply of credit from the banking system but the net effect of interest rates on investment is negative furthermore taking mckinnon s virtuous circle model of economic growth shows no favourable effects of interest rates on economic growth it is concluded that any favourable effect of financial liberalisation and higher real interest rates on economic growth must come through raising the productivity of investment

excess sensitivity of consumption to current income liquidity constraints or myopia this paper asks whether the empirical rejection of the rational expectations permanent income hypothesis occurs because agents are myopic in the sense that the marginal propensity to consume out of transitory income is non zero or because some agents face liquidity constraints the finding that the estimate of the mpc out of transitory income is dramatically affected in both magnitude and statistical significance by the inclusion of a proxy for liquidity constraints suggests that liquidity constraints are an important part of the explanation of the observed excess sensitivity of consumption to current income la sensibilite excessive de la consommation au revenu courant contraintes sur la liquidite ou myopie ce memoire examine la question a savoir pourquoi l hypothese du revenu permanent avec anticipations rationnelles n est pas v6rifiee empiriquement est ce parce que les agents economiques sont myopes i e que leur propension marginale a consommer a partir de leur revenu transitoire n est pas nulle ou bien est ce que certains agents economiques font face a des contraintes sur leur liquidite le fait que l estimation de la propension marginale a consommer le revenue transitoire est affectee par l inclusion d une variable qui tente de capturer l importance des contraintes sur la liquidit6 tant dans l 6valuation de sa taille que dans sa signification statistique suggere que ces contraintes jouent un role important dans l explication de cette sensibilite excessive qu on observe de la consommation aux changements dans le niveau de revenu courant almost all the recent empirical tests of the rational expectations permanent income hypothesis re pih have rejected the hypothesis using a rich variety of data sets and estimation methods the empirical work indicates that the failure of the re pih is significant both statistically and quantitatively the null hypothesis in this empirical literature typically consists of the joint hypothesis that 1 agents expectations are formed rationally 2 desired consumption is determined by permanent income and 3 capital markets are perfect in the sense that agents can lend or borrow against 1 studies rejecting the re pih include blinder 1981 flavin 1981 hall and mishkin 1982 hayashi 1982 and sargent 1978 in his original paper hall 1978 did not reject the re pih decisively however flavin 1981 showed that with a minor alteration in the specification of the alternative hypothesis the re pih could be rejected using hall s test and data set bernanke 1981 studying panel data on automobile expenditures did not find evidence against the hypothesis for an extensive survey of the empirical literature on the rational expectations permanent income hypothesis see king 1983 canadian journal of economics revue canadienne d economique xviii no 1 february fevrier 1985 printed in canada imprime au canada 0008 4085 85 117 36 1 50 canadian economics association this content downloaded from 157 55 39 17 on wed 31 aug 2016 05 08 58 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms

financial liberalization in africa abstract recent evidence has shown that african economies are financially repressed and the underlying motives for perpetuating repressive policies still exist increasing real deposit rates mainly through lower inflation promotes financial savings investment and growth financial liberalization in africa has recorded limited success owing to a high and unstable inflation rate the high cost of financial intermediation low bank demand for deposits and persistent government interference in credit markets chronically high fiscal deficits and their adverse impacts on the balance of payments also constitute hurdles for financial deepening in africa

the permanent income hypothesis estimation and testing by instrumental variables the permanent income hypothesis with rational expectation is restated estimated and tested by an instrumental variables technique on the postwar u s aggregate time series data the hypothesis is accepted on a consumption series which includes service flows from consumer durables if the consumption series is the one in the national income and product accounts the hypothesis is decisively rejected an explanation is suggested to reconcile the conflicting test results

estimation of a macroeconomic model with rational expectations and capital controls for developing countries abstract in many developing countries financial repression and capital controls have implied that the only domestic market determined interests rates have been those in informal markets the absence of data on such interest rates complicates the estimation of key macroeconomic interest rate elasticities this paper describes an econometric technique for extracting representative values of such elasticities from developing country panel data under such constraints and with the maintained assumption that agents form expectations rationally our results confirm the empirical relevance in developing countries of the standard intertemporal and intratemporal substitution assumptions underlying policy prescriptions to get prices right

sudden stops banking crises and investment collapses in emerging markets abstract we evaluate whether financial openness leaves emerging market economies vulnerable to the adverse effects of capital reversals sudden stops on domestic investment we investigate this claim in a broad sample of emerging markets during the period 1976 2002 if the banking sector does not experience a systemic crisis sudden stop events fail to have a significant impact on investment bank crises on the other hand have a significant negative effect on investment even in the absence of a contemporaneous sudden stop crisis we also find that openness to capital flows worsens the adverse impact of banking crises on investment our results provide statistical support for the policy view that a strong banking sector which can withstand the negative fallout of capital flight is essential for countries that open their economies to international financial flows

optimal climate change adaptation and mitigation expenditures in environmentally small economies we study the optimal role of mitigation and adaptation strategies for environmentally small economies that is economies that are witnessing an exogenous increase in emissions to which they are contributing very little our results lead to three main conclusions first small economies should concentrate their environmental efforts if any on adaptation this is a recommendation based on cost effectiveness rather than on any idea about these economies indulging in free riding second environmentally small economies that are unable to spend enough on adaptation may end up spending less on mitigation in the long term owing to their impoverishment as a result of negative climate shocks third higher mitigation expenditures may arise not only as a result of greater optimal adaptation expenditures but also because of increased adaptation to the incentives for mitigation provided by richer countries for the simulations we use a calibrated optimal growth model for brazil chile and the united states

macroeconomic adjustment and the poor analytical issues and cross country evidence the author studies the links between macroeconomic adjustment and poverty first he summarizes some of the recent evidence on poverty in the developing world second he reviews the various channels through which macroeconomic policies affect the poor third the author emphasizes the role of the labor market he develops an analytical framework that captures some of the main features of the urban labor market in developing countries and studies the effects of fiscal adjustment on wages employment and poverty fourth he presents cross country regressions linking various macroeconomic and structural variables to poverty the author finds that output growth and real exchange rate depreciations tend to lower poverty while illiteracy income inequality and macroeconomic volatility tend to increase poverty in addition the impact of growth on poverty appears to be asymmetric and to result from a significant relationship between episodes of increasing poverty and negative growth rates

capital flows and saving in latin america and asia a reinterpretation abstract both theory and the empirical evidence for a broad range of countries have identified a negative relationship between domestic and foreign saving still based on the experience of the 1990s a popular view has emerged that domestic and foreign saving are positively related in asia and negatively related in latin america we argue that this popular discussion does not discriminate between trends in domestic saving which are very different in the two regions and the cyclical component of saving which is linked to capital flows we show that when trend and cyclical components of domestic saving and capital flows are properly taken into account the two regions do not differ in the short run response of domestic saving to capital inflows we conclude that the main differences pertain to the long run behavior of saving rates which are driven by trends in demographic factors per capita gdp and other factors that have little to do with fluctuations in capital flows

inflation shoe leather costs and average inflation rates across countries abstract cross country differences in average inflation rates among 30 countries are well explained by differences in estimated shoe leather cost functions relating these costs to the inflation tax the shoe leather costs are estimated by means of the standard cagan semi log demand for real balances modified to take account of variations in reserve ratios and the effects of these variations on the demand for the monetary base the results are consistent with optimization on the part of an efficient government theory but are not adequate to discriminate between efficient government models and many others for which shoe leather costs play at least a substantial role in policy makers decisions the imposition of the semi log form does not seem critical in arriving at these conclusions although this form tends to produce more reasonable looking laffer surfaces than more flexible forms

organizational isomorphism and corruption in financial institutions empirical research in emerging countries the globalizations of capital markets in the last 20 years has led to a historic degree of financial integration in the world it is clear however that globalization is not conducive to a complete homogeneity of financial markets and institutions among others one element of diversity is the importance of the impact of corruption in emerging countries corruption decreases the credibility of financial institutions and markets scandals and unethical behavior in financial institutions erode confidence in such firms relying on neoinstitutional literature this article focuses on the link between corruption and organizational isomorphism in financial institutions in emerging countries therefore our aim is to examine the institutional reasons for corruption in financial institutions in emerging countries our structural equation model is based on empirical research in financial institutions in emerging countries a questionnaire was administrated to 70 top executives of financial institutions in 18 different emerging countries

aggregate consumption interest rates and inflation in ldcs an error correction model this article explores the relationship between the real interest rate and the consumption saving decisions in ldcs following the error correction methodology the model also includes an income term the inflation rate and a term for inflation uncertainty the main conclusion drawn from this exercise is that for low inflation countries there is a positive and stronger interest rate effect on saving while this effect is less clear and not significant for most high inflation countries also the results show that for at least half of the countries in the sample an ec model with a unit elasticity restriction seems to be an adequate representation of the data

financial liberalization and adjustment the cases of chile and new zealand abstract this paper analyzes macrodynamic adjustments during financial liberalization in chile and new zealand during the adjustment to more open capital accounts in the late 1970s or mid 1980s both countries experienced a real exchange rate appreciation and a collapse of net exports while domestic interest rates slowly converged to international levels this paper develops and estimates a two sector dynamic model with current and time varying parameter techniques the domestic interest rate is relatively more responsive to shocks under imperfect capital mobility while the real exchange rate becomes more responsive under perfect mobility therefore capital account liberalization does not eliminate but rather shifts volatility from the domestic interest rate to the real exchange rate jel e65 f33

an empirical dependent economy model for pakistan abstract pakistan s recent macroeconomic experience has been characterized by rapid growth relatively low inflation and the absence of severe balance of payments crises in spite of very large fiscal deficits this paper addresses the possible role that external inflows in the form of workers remittances and concessional lending may have played in generating these outcomes by conducting counterfactual simulations using an empirically estimated dependent economy macroeconomic model

economic information versus quality variation in cross country data data quality in the penn world tables varies systematically across countries that have different growth rates and are at different stages of economic development thus intro ducing measurement error correlated with variables of economic interest we explore this problem with three examples from the literature showing that the problem appears to be minor in growth convergence regressions but serious in estimating the effect of income volatility on growth and in a cross country lest of the permanent income hypothesis the results suggest at the least a need for performing appropriate sensitivity tests before draw

cross country evidence on the link between inflation volatility and growth it is generally accepted that short run monetary mis management as reflected in inflation volatility affects the long run growth rate of the economy this proposition is tested for a cross section sample of 78 countries over the period 1965 85 the evidence suggests that after controlling for other country specific growth correlates high inflation volatility is associated with lower mean growth inflation volatility was also found to have a negative effect on the productivity of investment but does not appear to affect the share of investment of gdp these results are also robust to an alternative data set that extends the sample period to 1994

computing business as usual with a representative agent and a pollution externality abstract computing the no policy equilibrium business as usual in a representative agent ra model is complicated by the presence of a pollution externality since simple optimization internalizes the pollution cost many researchers use ad hoc methods but there is no way to know how reliable these are a solution is presented in which the ra model is divided into n identical components each identified with its own sub agent sub agents play a dynamic game leading to a nash equilibrium for sufficiently large n this approach keeps most of the pollution cost external and in the limit it is equivalent to a myopic firms model in which the entire cost is external this approach has the advantage of theoretical consistency and empirical applications indicate that it is easily implemented

fiscal policy and private consumption instrumental variables tests of the consolidated approach since barro s 1974 restatement of the debt neutrality proposition economists have directed considerable research toward determining whether fiscal policy can affect aggregate demand most of the debate both theoretical and empirical has focused on the net wealth content of privately held government debt although existing research has hardly provided a definitive resolution to this debate see for example blinder and deaton 1985 bernheim 1987 barro 1989 recent efforts feldstein 1982 kormendi 1983 aschauer 1985 leiderman and razin 1988 have followed bailey 1971 and broadened the scope of the investigation to include the possibility that government expenditures substitute for private consumption expenditures in doing so feldstein kormendi and aschauer have shown that fiscal neutrality implies certain restrictions on private consumption behavior the first of these restrictions is what feldstein 1982 calls ex ante crowding out for complete ex ante crowding out government spending on goods and services must substitute dollar for dollar for private spending consequently an increase in government expenditures on consumption goods should lead to an equivalent decrease in private consumption expenditures a second restriction is that government finance decisions should not affect private consumption barro 1974 has derived conditions under which this result will obtain essentially maximizing consumers are assumed to be rational and forward looking accurately foreseeing future taxes implied by

foreign currency pricing a special case of dollarization is analyzed quotation of prices in dollars the proposed explanation is price stickiness when price adjustment is costly firms prefer to fix their prices in a stable foreign currency in order to avoid frequent price changes the proposed model demonstrates that there are often two nash equilibria in an economy populated by symmetric firms an equilibrium with uniform domestic currency pricing and one with uniform dollar pricing hence foreign currency pricing may exhibit hysteresis the model also demonstrates that the degree of competition in the economy is important in determining the pricing currency

household saving in developing countries first cross country evidence although most studies have relied on domestic or private sector saving data this article uses household data available from the u n system of national accounts for a sample of 10 countries household saving functions are estimated using combined time series and cross country observations in order to test households responses to income and growth rates of return monetary wealth foreign saving and demographic variables the results show that income and wealth variables affect saving strongly and in ways consistent with standard theories inflation and the interest rate do not show clear effects on saving which is also consistent with their theoretical ambiguity foreign saving and monetary assets have strong negative effects on household saving which suggests the importance of liquidity constraints and monetary wealth in developing countries

private saving in india this article studies the evolution of the private saving rate in india during 1960 9s its distinctive feature is that it proposes three new measures of private saving which are incremental improvements to the naive national accounts measure the improvements consist of accounting for capital losses to private net worth due to inflation including expenditures on durable goods as a form of saving and expanding the definition of saving to include human capital expenditures after examining descriptive trends and reviewing the related literature the article tests the hypothesis that households that save in india pierce the corporate veil the evidence shows that in fact changes in corporate saving are offset by changes in household saving indicating that the unit of analysis should be aggregate private saving the core analytical section of the article studies how the behavior of the private saving rate is related to the real interest rate per capita income the dependency ratio financial depth the government saving rate and the share of agriculture in gross domestic product the empirical analysis is done by estimating error correction models on aggregate annual data although most of the discussion centers on long run effects

the real exchange rate and macroeconomic performance in sub saharan africa abstract pooled time series and cross section data for 33 countries in sub saharan africa ssa confirm the negative relationship between the real exchange rate rer misalignment and economic performance economic growth imports exports saving and investment macroeconomic instability also slows growth and other indicators of performance higher levels of misalignment are accompanied by higher levels of macroeconomic instability both lower levels of rer misalignment and instability lead to better economic performance the edwards model of rer determination performs well for the region black market premia tend to show a greater degree of misalignment in rer than alternative measures

are there limits to growth a simple theoretical model of pollution is developed that generates an inverted u shape relationship between per capita income and environmental quality this model is then used to study long run growth the same inverted u shape is shown to appear in time series and the prospects for sustained growth are shown to hinge on whether increasingly strict environmental regulation is compatible with a constant rate of return on capital implementation is also studied tax and voucher schemes are shown to have an advantage over direct regulation because they provide the correct incentives for capital accumulation copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

of finance and development neglected and unsettled questions abstract the article analyzes some of the neglected and still unsettled issues on the interrelationship of finance and development and in the subdiscipline of finance notably the implications of the dichotomy of formal and informal finance the modalities and sequencing of financial reform the challenge of maintaining competition in oligopolistic systems the scope for market related monetary policy instruments the case for autonomy of central banks and divestiture of their developmental role and revamping of their prudential functions it argues for a sharply focused country specific issues oriented research agenda

the role of macroeconomic instability in public and private capital accumulation and growth the case of turkey 1963 1999 this study investigates the empirical relationship s between macroeconomic instability public and private capital accumulation and growth in turkey over the period 1963 1999 time series econometric techniques such as cointegration and impulse response analysis are used the results of this paper suggest that the chronic and increasing macroeconomic instability of the turkish economy has seriously affected her capital formation and growth furthermore the turkish experience indicates that chronic macroeconomic instability seems to be a serious impediment to public investment especially to its infrastructural component and shatters or even reverses the complementarity between public and private investment in the long run

adjustment policies and economic development the principal objective of the international monetary fund imf as defined by its articles of agreement is the correction of balance of payments disequilibrium in member countries the policies the imf recommends to reduce the degree and duration of external and internal imbalances that give rise to balance of payments difficulties must however be set within the context of achieving and maintaining price stability and satisfactory rates of economic growth in analyzing imf policies designed to achieve these multiple objectives it is useful first to consider the circumstances in which the imf is

governance and real estate markets performance in nigeria are they related governance has been identified as a key determining variable capable of influencing the performance of any economy activity on this note the study undertakes to investigate the relationship between governance and the real estate markets performance in nigeria the study employs ardl methodology of bound testing approach for the quarterly series spanning 1996q1 to 2010q4 of the variables considered the prominent role of real gdp and governance index were clearly brought to fore both in the short and long run while that of inflation and interest rates were less pronounced statistically the result of ecm further accentuates connection between governance and the real estate market through the establishment a stable long run relationship between them in the final analysis a few policy prescriptions are advice for the attention of all stakeholders in the built environment

real exchange rate behavior and economic performance in ldcs in recent years policy discussions have included increasing references to real exchange rate rer stability and correct exchange rate alignment as crucial conditions to improve economic performance in less developed countries ldcs 1 evidence from latin american asian and african countries is often quoted to support the view that the link between rer behavior and economic performance is strong it is argued that while unstable rers inhibited export growth in some of latin america their stability was fundamental in promoting east asian expansion in many african countries on the other hand persistently misaligned local currencies harmed the development of agriculture reducing domestic food supply 2 but in spite of its importance no empirical work has been attempted either to test the relationship between rer behavior and performance indicators at a broad multicountry level or to investigate the sources of rer variability and misalignment in ldcs the theoretical literature on rer determinants has been recently surveyed by sebastian edwards 3 he distinguishes between equilibrium and disequilibrium rers and between external and domestic rer determinants although domestic policies are often said to account for significant rer variations empirical work has only concentrated on the effect of nominal devaluations4 or speculative crises arising from expansionary monetary policies in a system of fixed ex

open economy macroeconomics developments in theory and policy this paper views developments in open economy macroeconomics through the lens of the debate over european monetary unification the empirical tendency for nominal exchange rate regimes to affect the variability of nominal and real exchange rates alike can be rationalized by sticky price theories or models of asset market liquidity effects but plausible liquidity models have difficulty generating enough persistence to match the data thus the macroeconomic stabilization costs of forgoing the exchange rate realignment option seem pertinent it is argued that our theories of efficiencies due to a common currency remain unsatisfactory despite recent advances the paper concludes by reviewing theories of currency crisis

crisis and consumption smoothing the dramatic impact of the current crisis on performance of businesses across sectors and economies has been headlining the business press for the past several months extant reconciliations of these patterns in the popular press rely on ad hoc reasoning using historical data on currency crisis episodes across the world we show that the impact of the crisis on a firm s business is best understood by focusing on the impact of the crisis on the behavior of consumers our analyses show that consumer behavior in a crisis is characterized by consumption smoothing at various levels intertemporal intercategory and intracategory these behavioral adjustments result in significant reallocation of consumption expenditures more importantly the smoothing decisions because of a crisis are distinct and independent of the impact of changes in income and prices that accompany a crisis interestingly there is marked variation in the patterns of consumption smoothing across different types of economies taken together these results have important and interesting implications for managers policy makers and academics

financial structure and reforms in central and eastern europe in the 1980s abstract the paper analyzes the evolution of the financial structure of the countries of central and eastern europe during the 1980s in these countries the financial system is assigned a limited and mostly passive function this needs to be seen in the context of the allocative system of centrally planned economies where the transfer of financial resources between sectors is largely performed directly by the state through the price system taxes and subsidies the analysis focuses specifically on hungary poland and czechoslovakia the development of their financial structure is assessed through a number of quantitative indicators we find that the partial economic and financial reforms introduced in hungary and poland before 1989 did not substantially modify the role and performance of the financial system whose size in relation to the real economy remained modest at the same time however the reforms exacerbated some of the distortions of the planned system and generated larger macroeconomic imbalances the effects of which tend to cloud the interpretation of financial indicators at the end of 1980 the banking systems of hungary and poland although formally decentralized continued to allocate credit mostly according to automatic criteria and had virtually no experience in assessing and monitoring borrowers and investment projects in this respect they differed little from that of czechoslovakia which remained based on the classic model of a single state bank

sourcing strategies of european and japanese multinationals a comparison based on a typology of sourcing strategies this study identifies various sourcing patterns adopted by european and japanese multinational manufacturing firms in serving the u s market the study has found that the product s market performance is not at all related to its life cycle stage in world trade or to production location but is positively related to the internal components sourcing and negatively related to the product adaptation the findings strongly support levitt s call for a global product

factories or warehouses a welsh perspective on japanese transplant manufacturing munday m morris j and wilkinson b 1995 factories or warehouses a welsh perspective on japanese transplant manufacturing reg studies 29 1 17 critics of japanese direct manufacturing investment have argued that the japanese transplant manufacturing sector tms represents an attempt to circumvent trade barriers rather than a genuine globalization of japanese capital and that host regions will find themselves with warehouses or low value added final assembly plants rather than fully integrated manufacturing operations which will contribute significantly to the development of the local economy this paper presents a detailed study of the economic impact of japanese manufacturing in wales a region within the uk which has one of the highest concentrations of japanese manufacturing investment in europe it finds that there are some problems with japanese investment but although japanese companies do appear to operate their businesses in different ways to other inward investors many of these are be

linking product and process innovations and modes of international sourcing in global competition a case of foreign multinational firms in increasingly complex global competition multinational firms u s and foreign alike have stepped up international sourcing of components and finished products to serve various markets since an increasing portion of global competition is shaped by european and japanese multinational firms with due emphasis on product quality and manufacturing it is an opportune time to examine the like among their product development manufacturing and sourcing activities those european and japanese multinational firms marketing products in the united states are chosen as subjects of this study

the financial repression liberalization debate taking stock looking for a synthesis financial repression and liberalization became the object of fierce debates between academics and policy makers since the early 1970s as of the late 1980s financial liberalization became also part of the structural adjustment programs sponsored by the international monetary fund and the world bank however the literature on financial repression and liberalization remains controversial on its theoretical conclusions and policy implications given its importance for both the theory and policy of economic development and growth this paper looks for a possible synthesis after reviewing the theoretical contributions and empirical studies under the headings of the mckinnon shaw and new structuralists models the survey concludes that a new synthesis might be found in the post keynesian attempt to take an institutional perspective within a globalised financial and economic environment

macroeconomic stability investment and growth in developing countries abstract it is widely hypothesised that sound macroeconomic policies promote growth by providing a more secure environment for private sector investment decisions this proposition is tested for a cross section of developing countries over the period 1980 1990 using a variety of measures of the quality of macroeconomic management the evidence suggests that good macroeconomic management is associated with faster growth for a given rate of investment it is less clear that the volume of investment is significantly affected there is little evidence of non linearities the results are robust to an extension of the data period back to 1972

external and budget deficits in some developing countries abstract this paper documents and explains the positive comovement between the external and budget deficits of developing countries for which post 1960 time series data are available first the estimates indicate that the empirical covariance between these deficits is always positive and is statistically significant for many cases second the empirical covariance is close to that predicted from a tractable small open economy overlapping generation model with heterogeneous goods capturing the joint behavior of the external and budget deficits also the predicted covariance is induced by shocks which are closely related to internal conditions such as domestic resources and fiscal policies and to a much lesser extent to external conditions such as the world interest rate real exchange rate and terms of trade

real exchange rate uncertainty private investment in ldcs this paper examines empirically the link between real exchange rate uncertainty and private investment in developing countries using a large cross country time series data set the paper builds a garch based measure of real exchange rate volatility and finds that it has a strong negative effect on investment after controlling for other standard investment determinants and taking into account their potential endogeneity the effect of uncertainty is not uniform however there is some evidence of threshold effects so that uncertainty only matters when it exceeds some critical level in addition the negative effect of real exchange rate uncertainty on investment is significantly larger in economies that are highly open and in those with less developed financial systems

ricardian equivalence empirical evidence from developing economies abstract the strong underlying assumptions of the barro ricardo equivalence proposition rep raise doubts on its validity especially for developing countries this paper attempts to analyze the validity of the rep and the sources of deviation from rep for a large sample of developing countries although the results are of a mixed nature they suggest that the presence of liquidity constrained individuals may be the source of deviation from the rep the analysis also indicates that public spending is a poor substitute for private consumption and hence implies that temporary increases in public spending may have some expansionary effect on aggregate demand

a quantitative reassessment of the finance growth nexus evidence from a multivariate var abstract the long run relationship between financial development and economic growth is examined in a multivariate vector autoregression var framework using 10 sample countries difficulties surrounding the cross country regressions and bivariate time series studies are outlined the long run financial development and output relationships are identified in a cointegrating framework through tests of over identifying restrictions we find bi directional causality between financial development and economic growth in all the sample countries conclusions that stand distinct from those in the existing empirical literature we attribute our findings to i analysis of a higher dimensional system ii a new method of identifying the long run economic relationships and iii a new approach to long run causality testing

ricardian equivalence in the presence of capital market imperfections abstract it is a common claim that ricardian equivalence fails if capital markets are imperfect the validity of this claim is examined for the case of informationally imperfect capital markets we present three alternative models of adverse selection and analyze the effects of debt finance in these models it is shown that a debt financed tax cut can lead to pareto improvement in some cases in the theoretically most preferable model however ricardian equivalence survives in spite of genuine imperfections in the capital market the results point to the importance of specifying the exact nature of imperfection

macroeconomic stability and the distribution of growth rates it is often argued that macroeconomic instability can form a binding constraint on economic growth drawing on a new index of stability threshold estimation is used to divide developing economies into two growth regimes depending on a threshold level of stability for the more stable group of countries the output benefits of investment are greater conditional convergence is faster and measures of institutional quality have more explanatory power suggesting that instability forms a binding constraint for the less stable group macroeconomic stability is also shown to dominate several other candidates for identifying distinct growth regimes

economic development and time preference schedule the case of japan and east asian nics the constancy of the time preference rate has been a traditional assumption of the literature on intertemporal choice of consumers this chapter examines empirically the validity of the constancy hypothesis of the time preference schedule three alternative hypotheses concerning the time preference rate are investigated the first hypothesis posits that the time preference rate decreases as the economy develops fisher hypothesis the second hypothesis posits that the time preference rate increases as the economy develops uzawa hypothesis the third hypothesis which is a combination of the second and third hypotheses posits that as a nation develops the time preference rate decreases up to a certain point and thereafter the time preference rate increases fukao hamada hypothesis post war annual time series data from taiwan japan and korea are employed to examine these hypotheses i find that the fukao hamada hypothesis is supported for taiwan and japan while the time preference rate is constant for korea

the dynamics of inflation and currency substitution in a small open economy abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between money and inflation in a small open economy where domestic and foreign currencies are perfect substitutes as means of payment it is shown that if the path of domestic money supply is such that individuals find it optimal to change the currency in which transactions are settled there will be an adjustment period during which domestic inflation adjusts to equal the foreign inflation rate the model captures the stylized fact that temporary increases in the inflation rate may have permanent effects in the use of foreign currency even without the introduction of dollarization costs

private investment and democracy in latin america abstract this paper argues that the deterioration of latin american private investment in the 1980s may have been largely due to debt difficulties and not the concurrent wave of democratization after reviewing why more political systems may actually be conducive to investment we test an investment function for seven countries over 1973 1986 that includes traditional economic factors two debt measures and several political variables including measures of democracy worker power international monetary fund support and risk the results are quite congenial for our hypothesis under several reasonable alternative specifications for the economic determinants our democracy measure is positively signed and significant

governance and growth a simple hypothesis explaining cross country differences in productivity growth cross country evidence shows that a subset of developing countries isgrowing very rapidly taking advantage of opportunities to catch up atthe same time that other developing countries are growing slowly we arguethat this is due to differences in the quality of governance inparticular we show that productivity growth is higher in better governedcountries

determinants of household saving in taiwan growth demography and public policy this article examines the determinants of household saving in the process of economic development in the light of the taiwanese experience during the period 1952 99 the methodology involves the estimation of a saving rate function derived within the life cycle framework it is found that the household saving rate rises with both the level and the rate of growth of household disposable income the real deposit rate has a significant positive impact but the magnitude of the impact is modest public saving seems to crowd out private saving but less than proportionately while both old and young dependency in population have a negative impact on the saving rate the magnitude of the impact of the former is far greater than that of the latter increased availability of social security provisions and enhanced credit availability also seem to reduce saving as regards methodological implications the study casts doubt on the usual practice of lumping together public corporate and household savings in savin

the relationship between offshore sourcing and innovativeness of u s multinational firms an empirical investigation in increasingly complex global competition u s multinational firms have stepped up imports under items 806 30 and 807 00 of the tariff schedules of the united states as a part of offshore sourcing of components and finished products to serve the u s market

private saving interest rates and liquidity constraints in ldcs recent evidence there is still considerable controversy about the interest rate responsiveness of private saving in developing countries this paper provides recent evidence based on individual country estimations for a sample of 16 countries the model used here follows the uler equation approach and includes rational and forward looking permanent income consumers together with liquidity constrained consumers overall for this sample of countries the results obtained in this paper offer new evidence of a low responsiveness of saving to changes in the interest rate my results also support a strong role of liquidity constraints in these countries