financial development and the fdi growth nexus the malaysian experience this article examines the fdi growth nexus in the small open economy of malaysia by controlling for the level of financial development financial development is proxied by a composite index which is a summary measure of four financial development indicators using time series data from 1965 to 2004 the results show that fdi and financial development are positively related to output in the long run the impact of fdi on output is enhanced through financial development to supplement these findings we assess the causal relationships between the variables using the recent causality tests available in the literature the results indicate that economic growth causes fdi growth in the long run but no feedback relationship is observed

determinants of foreign direct investment in spain this study utilizes panel data as a means of examining the determinants of foreign direct investment fdi in spain data that are taken in the period 1993 2002 are used in order to estimate the determinants of fdi at the sectoral level by differentiating the manufacturing sectors and at the regional level the analysis investigates the sectoral regional and macroeconomic variables that have successfully attracted fdi inflows from those that have not empirical results suggest that the differential between labour productivity and the cost of labour has been an important determinant of fdi in spain during the period 1993 2002 factors related to demand the evolution of human capital the export potential of the sectors and certain macroeconomic determinants that measure the differential between spain and the european union average also play a very important role in attracting flows of fdi certain policy issues that are relevant to the results are also discussed

technical and environmental efficiencies and best management practices in agriculture an input distance function idf is estimated to empirically evaluate and analyse the technical and environmental efficiencies of 210 farms located in the chaudiere watershed quebec where water quality problems are particularly acute because of the production of undesirable outputs that are jointly produced with agricultural products the true idf is approximated by a flexible translog functional form estimated using a full information maximum likelihood method technical and environmental efficiencies are disaggregated across farms and account for spatial variations our results show that there is a significant correlation between the two efficiencies the idf is used to compute the cumulative malmquist productivity index and the fisher index the two indices are used to measure changes in technology profitability efficiency and productivity in response to the adoption of two selected best management practices bmps whose objective is to reduce water pollution we found significant differences acro

natural gas consumption and economic growth the role of foreign direct investment capital formation and trade openness in malaysia the objective of this paper is to reinvestigate the relationship between natural gas consumption and economic growth by including foreign direct investment capital and trade openness in malaysia for the period of 1971 2012 the structural break unit root test is employed to investigate the stationary properties of the series we have applied combined cointegration test to examine the relationship between the variables in the long run for robustness sake the ardl bounds testing method is also employed to test for a possible long run relationship in the presence of structural breaks we note the validity of cointegration between the variables natural gas consumption foreign direct investment capital formation and trade openness have positive influence on economic growth in malaysia the results support the presence of feedback hypothesis between natural gas consumption and economic growth foreign direct investment and economic growth and natural gas consumption and foreign direct investment the policy implications of these results are provided

foreign investment and spillover efficiency in an underdeveloped economy evidence from the mexican manufacturing industry abstract in this paper we consider the question whether differences in technical efficiency of mexican plants in part derive from spillover efficiency associated with foreign direct investment we use labour productivity as a measure of technical efficiency and relate this to capital intensity labour quality and scale of production we measure the degree of competition by different concentration indices and the final factor determining efficiency is the presence of foreign subsidiaries if there is a positive relation between efficiency of domestic plants and the foreign participation of various industries we conclude that there is a spillover of technical efficiency the empirical evidence from the study indicates that this is the case

the effects of prior beliefs and learning on consumers acceptance of genetically modified foods abstract new food products using genetically modified crops appeared in u s supermarkets starting in 1996 and consumers perceived some risks this paper examines the role of consumers prior beliefs about genetic modification and of diverse new information on their willingness to pay for foods that might be genetically modified we use data from economics experiments and show that participants who had informed prior beliefs discounted gm labeled food products more highly than those who had uninformed prior beliefs uninformed participants were especially susceptible to information from interested and third parties in contrast informed participants were generally not affected significantly by new information

productivity and environmental regulation the effect of the nitrates directive in the french pig sector this paper measures the ensuing changes in productivity in the french pig sector following the introduction of the european regulation addressing water pollution by nitrates from agriculture productivity is measured using the malmquist luenberger index the sources of changes in productivity observed are examined by breaking down this index into its technical progress and efficiency components the results show that in the early stages increases in productivity were stimulated by increased efficiency before being driven by technical progress the estimations regarding the sources of efficiency gains for the farms in the sample technical efficiency efficiency of scale and environmental efficiency are then used to estimate the indirect costs and benefits or negative costs linked to the introduction of the environmental regulation controlling the disposal of organic manure and the management of nitrogen surplus from pig farms the existence of a win win effect as regards the porter hypothesis relation between efficiency and environmental regulation is highlighted for the french pig sector

foreign direct investment and domestic investment in the host country evidence from panel study this article examines the impact of inward foreign direct investment fdi on host countries domestic investment utilizing data from 50 countries over the period of 1970 to 2004 we find that inward fdi has a negative contemporaneous effect on domestic investment while the cumulative effect of fdi over time tends to be positive in addition we separately study fdi in developed countries dcs and less developed countries ldcs the effect of contemporaneous fdi on domestic investment is negative in dcs and the cumulative effect of fdi is neutral strong evidence suggests that the contemporaneous effect of fdi on domestic investment is neutral in ldcs while the cumulative effect of fdi is positive

shadow pricing of undesirable outputs in nonparametric analysis abstract for three decades a growing interest in the modeling of desirable and undesirable outputs has led to a theoretical and methodological debate in the nonparametric literature on production technology and efficiency the first main discussion is about the way of modeling bad undesirables as inputs or outputs or by transformation functions the second debate concerns the implications of the weak disposability assumption in the modeling of bad outputs in particular the possibility of assigning unexpected signs to shadow prices of bad outputs in addition we point out a current error in the modeling of weak disposability under a variable returns to scale technology in this paper we introduce a hybrid model to ensure the economically meaningful jointness of good and bad outputs while constraining shadow prices of bad outputs to their expected sign we argue that it is a sound compromise to model undesirable outputs with a meaningful primal dual economic interpretation finally we propose an extension to define shadow prices for undesirable outputs following the law of one price loop rule

is foreign direct investment beneficial for mexico an empirical analysis 1960 2001 summary this paper examines the impact of foreign direct investment fdi on labor productivity growth in mexico using cointegration analysis a dynamic labor productivity function for the 1960 2001 period is estimated that includes inter alia the impact of changes in the stock of private and foreign capital per worker the error correction model ecm estimates suggest that increases in both private lagged and foreign lagged investment per worker have a positive and economically significant effect on the rate of labor productivity growth however after taking into account the growing remittances of profits and dividends there is a marked decrease in the economic effect of foreign capital per worker on the rate of labor productivity growth the paper assesses the short term interactions of the relevant variables via impulse response functions irfs and variance decompositions vdcs based on a decomposition process that does not depend on the ordering of the variables

measuring welfare effects of product contamination with consumer uncertainty abstract a methodology is developed for measuring consumer welfare loss from market demand due to contamination when information is imperfect comparison of behavior before and after awareness permits calculation of the cost of ignorance which occurs when news of contamination is withheld or undiscovered for a time as well as when excessive reporting and exaggeration cause overreaction avoidance costs are also calculated for consumers who consume less than they would with perfect information due to risk aversion the methodology is applied to analyzing the heptachlor crisis which reduced milk consumption in hawaii by over 80

effects and value of verifiable information in a controversial market evidence from lab auctions of genetically modified food food products containing genetically modified gm ingredients have entered the market over the past decade the biotech industry and environmental groups have disseminated conflicting private information about gm foods this paper develops a unique methodology for valuing independent third party information in such a setting and applies this method to consumers willingness to pay for food products that might be gm data are collected from real consumers in an auction market setting with randomized information and labeling treatments the average value of third party information per lab participant is small but the public good value across u s consumers is shown to be quite large jel c91 d12 d82

foreign direct investment and economic growth an increasingly endogenous relationship summary this paper investigates whether foreign direct investment fdi affects economic growth based on a panel of data for 84 countries over the period 1970 99 both single equation and simultaneous equation system techniques are applied to examine this relationship a significant endogenous relationship between fdi and economic growth is identified from the mid 1980s onwards fdi not only directly promotes economic growth by itself but also indirectly does so via its interaction terms the interaction of fdi with human capital exerts a strong positive effect on economic growth in developing countries while that of fdi with the technology gap has a significant negative impact

intra and inter industry externalities from foreign direct investment in the mexican manufacturing sector new evidence from mexican regions summary this paper presents new empirical evidence on externalities from foreign direct investment fdi in several mexican regions in the early 1990s the main findings are threefold first the presence of fdi creates negative externalities within industries and positive externalities between industries through backward linkages second fdi externalities are stimulated by large technological differences between fdi and mexican firms and by geographic concentration of industries third we identify a substantial level of regional heterogeneity of the externality impact of fdi in line with the notion that fdi may have contributed to processes of changing regional prosperity under trade liberalization the findings also imply that maquiladora firms in the border states are generating positive externalities

political governance civil liberties and human capital evaluating their effect on foreign direct investment in emerging and developing economies we study the influence of a country s political governance on its attractiveness to foreign direct investors we argue that democracy is not a unidimensional concept and that the effect of host country political governance on incoming foreign direct investment fdi differs depending on whether fdi originates from a democratic or an autocratic country we also hypothesize that the effect of civil liberties depends on the motivations of investing multinational enterprises mnes and that human capital moderates this relationship we test our hypotheses on a sample of 35 000 investments in emerging and developing countries between 2003 and 2013

tightening environmental standards the benefit cost or the no cost paradigm ms ff ichael porter and claas van der linde have written a paper that is interesting and to us at least somewhat astonishing it is a defense of environmental regulation indeed an invitation to more stringent regulation that makes essentially no reference to the social benefits of such regulation this approach contrasts starkly with the methods that economists and other policy analysts have traditionally used when assessing environmental or other regulatory programs the traditional approach consists of comparing the beneficial effects of regulation with the costs that must be borne to secure these benefits for environmental regulation the social benefits include the reductions in morbidity or premature mortality that can accompany cleaner air the enhanced recreational opportunities that can result from water quality improvements the increased land values that might attend the cleanup of a hazardous waste site the enhanced vitality of aquatic ecosystems that might follow reductions in agricultural pesticide use or any of the other potentially significant benefits associated with tighter standards from this benefit cost approach emerges the standard tradeoff discussed in virtually every economics textbook porter and van der linde deny the validity of this approach to the analysis of environmental regulation claiming it to be an artifact of what they see as a static mindset in their view economists have failed to appreciate the capacity of

economic reforms fdi and economic growth in india a sector level analysis summary booming foreign direct investment fdi in post reform india is widely believed to promote economic growth we assess this proposition by subjecting industry specific fdi and output data to granger causality tests within a panel cointegration framework it turns out that the growth effects of fdi vary widely across sectors fdi stocks and output are mutually reinforcing in the manufacturing sector whereas any causal relationship is absent in the primary sector most strikingly we find only transitory effects of fdi on output in the services sector however fdi in the services sector appears to have promoted growth in the manufacturing sector through cross sector spillovers

is the experimental auction a dynamic market experimental auctions are generally thought of as static markets this paper presents the results of an experimental auction designed to test whether participants perceptions regarding the relative difficulty of delaying or reversing a transaction outside the experimental market systematically affect their willingness to pay bids the results show that auction participants perceptions significantly impact their bids in a manner that is consistent with real option theory these results suggest that economists must be careful to consider the existence of outside markets when designing experimental auctions

plant level productivity efficiency and environmental performance of the container glass industry this paper presents a methodology and empirical results based on themalmquist productivity index we measure productivity while treatingpollution as an undesirable output our estimates show that technicalchange has contributed to productivity and environmental performancegrowth in the container glass industry an energy and pollution intensivesector changes in inter plant efficiency over time have made thisproductivity growth more rapid than otherwise would have occurred withthe underlying technical change the efficiency estimates show that thereare both opportunities to improve productivity and reduce pollution in thisindustry as well as productivity losses associated with the emissionscontrol the shadow prices for nox the undesirable output we analyze is quite high compared to other regulated sectors

exact consumer s surplus and deadweight loss consumer s surplus is a widely used tool in applied welfare economics both economic theorists and cost benefit analysis often use consumer s surplus despite its somewhat dubious reputation the basic idea is to evaluate the value to a consumer or his willingness to pay for a change in price of a good from say pricep to pricep because price changes affect consumer welfare an evaluation of this effect is often a key input to public policy decisions yet consumer s surplus is probably the most controversial of widely used economic concepts both paul samuelson and ian little conclude that the economics profession would be better off without it it is my feeling of the situation that substantial agreement exists on the correct quantities to be measured the amount the consumer would pay or would need to be paid to be just as well off after the price change as he was before the price change the quantities correspond to john hicks compensating variation measures an alternative measure which takes ex post price change utility as the basis of comparison is hicks equivalent variation the controversy arises in the measurement of these quantities the usual measurement procedure is to use the area to the left of the marshallian market demand curve between two price levels jules dupuit originated this measure of welfare change and alfred marshall and hicks derived appropriate conditions for its use the primary condition for the area to the left of the demand curve to correspond to the compensating variation is to have constant marginal utility of income marshall gave this condition and if it holds the same quantity will be derived as the area to the left of the compensated hicksian demand curve this area to the left of the compensated demand curve is exactly what the compensating variation and equivalent variation measure thus the constant marginal utility of income is a sufficient condition for marshallian consumer s surplus to be equal to hicks consumer s surplus in this case arnold harberger s plea to use the welfare triangle as one half times the product of the price change times the quantity change to measure deadweight loss corresponds to the correct theoretical amount of welfare change in a recent paper robert willig derives bounds for the percentage difference between the correct measure of either the compensating or equivalent variation and the marshallian measure derived form the market demand curve his bounds which depend on the income elasticity of demand for the single good in the region of price change being considered as well as the proportion of the consumer s income spent on the good demonstrate that the marshallian consumer s surplus is often a good approximation to hicks consumer s surplus the fact that the proportion of the consumer s income spent matters as well as the income elasticity was first pointed out by harold hotelling willig contends that the approximation error will be less than the errors involved in estimating the demand curve thus he hopes to remove the need for apology that applied economists often need to give to theorists who remark on the inappropriateness of using marshallian consumer s surplus to measure welfare change however in this paper i show that for the case primarily considered by willig of a single price change which is also the situation in which consumer s surplus is often used in applied work no approximation is necessary professor of economics massachusetts institute of technology and research associate national bureau of economic research i would like to thank peter diamond erwin diewert daniel mcfadden robert merton robert solow hal varian joel yellin and the referees for help and comments research support from the national science foundation is acknowledged the reason that we still have two rather than one of samuelson s six measures of consumer s surplus arises from an index number problem of the correct basis for the welfare comparison i will give both measures but plan to concentrate on the compensating variation

foreign direct investment and endogenous growth in vietnam foregin direct investment s fdi s contribution to growth has been a controversial topic in economic literature and appears to be country specific in this article we use time varying coefficients in an augmented production function and let fdi indirectly affect gross domestic product growth through labour productivity this approach creates built in heteroskedasticity so the feasible generalized least square estimation is employed the results show that fdi has significant and positive effect on labour productivity and economic growth in vietnam but the effect is not equally distributed among economic sectors

multilateral productivity comparisons when some outputs are undesirable a nonparametric approach multilateral productivity comparisons of firms producing multiple outputs some of which are undesirable are obtained by making two modifications to the standard farrell approach to efficiency measurement the restriction that production technology satisfy strong disposability of outputs is relaxed to allow for the fact that undesirable outputs may be freely disposable and the efficiency measures are modified to allow for an asymmetric treatment of desirable and undesirable outputs performance measures that satisfy these requirements are calculated as solutions to programming problems the methodology is applied to a sample of mills producing paper and pollutants

externalities and growth accounting this paper tackles two puzzles the high empirical elasticity of aggregte output with respect to the measured capital input and the seemingly high variability of growth rates over countries in the medium run we find that one need not invoke increasing returns or externalities to capital to explain these two puzzles rather they are consistent with a constant returns to scale aggregate production function so long as the exogenous solow residual process has enough persistence in it in our model causality runs exclusively from knowledge to capital and therefore the apparent absence of an external effect to the capital input says nothing about the importance of spillovers in the creation of knowledge copyright 1991 by american economic association

energy abatement in chinese industry cost evaluation of regulation strategies and allocation alternatives abstract for chinese industry the costs of different energy consumption abatement scenarios are evaluated by the method of directional distance function these scenarios are based on the combinations of regulation strategies and allocation alternatives the former are sectors and provinces and the latter include the five principles of average intensity share absolute share discriminatory absolute and discriminatory intensity for all the scenarios the quantitative impacts in terms of output potential loss are calculated and compared due to less output potential loss for all the allocation alternatives the sector regulation strategy is shown to be more effective than the province regulation strategy it is also demonstrated that among all the scenarios considered the sector regulation based on the intensity share principle and the province regulation based on the absolute share principle are the two optimal the performances of energy abatement allocation of the 11th and 12th five year plans of china are assessed against the simulated scenarios

does human capital constrain the impact of foreign direct investment and remittances on economic growth in ghana this article empirically investigates whether human capital constrains the impact of foreign direct investment fdi and remittances on economic growth in ghana an economic growth model for ghana is specified and estimated using fully modified ordinary least squares fmols estimator and employing annual data spanning the period 1965 to 2008 empirical results indicate that fdi and remittances are key determinants of economic growth in ghana results indicate that human capital enhances the impact of fdi and remittances on economic growth although both government expenditure and trade openness are growth enhancing government expenditure appears to crowd out private investment empirical results also indicate that domestic inflationary pressures unstable political environment and volatile global economy exert a negative impact on economic growth in ghana

the economic value to smokers of graphic warning labels on cigarettes evidence from combining market and experimental auction data abstract many countries now require prominent pictorial health warning labels hwls on the front and back of cigarette packages in the us pictorial hwls have been adopted but tobacco industry litigation has delayed their implementation this intervention could have value to smokers if it increases their information and changes their smoking behavior in this paper we estimate the value of two different health warning labels for cigarette packages relative to the current us labeling policy our methodology does not depend on the personal values of policy makers or other individuals as the value of information estimates we derive are based solely on smokers own consumption choices not any public health or other effects we introduce an approach to valuing information with a surplus measure that couples willingness to pay from non hypothetical experimental auctions with time series revealed preference demand estimates we find that a pictorial hwl has a large value to smokers and a higher value than a label that only contains text insofar as changing purchase behavior

foreign direct investment pollution and economic growth evidence from malaysia the bounds test developed by pesaran et al 2001 is applied to examine the existence of a long run relationship between foreign direct investment fdi inflows pollution and output of malaysia granger causality tests are also utilized to test for the presence of the short run and long run causal relationship between these variables both fdi inflows and pollution have short run causal relationship on output output only has long run causal relationship on fdi inflows

foreign direct investment and growth in india a cointegration approach the two way link between foreign direct investment and growth for india is explored using a structural cointegration model with vector error correction mechanism the existence of two cointegrating vectors between gdp fdi the unit labour cost and the share of import duty in tax revenue is found which captures the long run relationship between fdi and gdp a parsimonious vector error correction model vecm is then estimated to find the short run dynamics of fdi and growth our vecm model reveals three important features a gdp in india is not granger caused by fdi the causality runs more from gdp to fdi b trade liberalization policy of the indian government had some positive short run impact on the fdi flow and c fdi tends to lower the unit labour cost suggesting that fdi in india is labour displacing

liberalization fdi and growth in developing countries a panel cointegration approach using a panel cointegration framework the article explores the two way link between fdi and growth for a panel of 23 developing countries in addition it investigates the impact of liberalization on the dynamics of the fdi and gdp relationship a long run cointegrating relationship is found between fdi and gdp after allowing for heterogeneous country effects the cointegrating vectors reveal a bidirectional causality between gdp and fdi for more open economies for relatively closed economies long run causality appears unidirectional and runs from gdp to fdi implying that growth and fdi are not mutually reinforcing under restrictive trade and investment regimes

corporate tax rates and foreign direct investment in the united states a significant research effort has been directed at establishing the determinants of foreign direct investment fdi with taxation policy identified as an important factor however the empirical literature has been limited in several respects with most work focused exclusively on host country tax regimes this paper seeks to extend the boundaries of fdi empirical inquiry by using a panel of nine investing tax exemption and tax credit countries over the period 1982 2000 constituting more than 85 of total us fdi inflows and incorporating home country tax rates to analyse two as yet unanswered questions first are corporate income tax rates an important determinant of fdi in the us secondly do investors from tax credit countries differ significantly in their tax response relative to those from tax exemption countries

measuring the welfare effects of nutrition information cost benefit analysis justifies regulations altering the amount of health related information presented to consumers the current method of benefit analysis the cost of avoided illness is limited it assumes the benefits of health related information are adequately represented by changes in illnesses the manuscript develops a benefit estimation method to measure the welfare impacts of providing nutrient information nutrient labeling significantly affects purchase behaviour but may not lead to increased consumption of health foods nutrient labeling may increase welfare without any change in health risk thus the cost of avoided illness approach can underestimate the social benefits of providing nutrient information copyright 2001 oxford university press

government size and economic growth a new framework and some evidence from cross section and time series data a study of the impact of government size on economic performance and growth is important theoretically one point of view suggests that a larger government size is likely to be detrimental to efficiency and economic growth because for example i government operations are often conducted inefficiently ii the regulatory process imposes excessive burdens and costs on the economic system and iii many of government s fiscal and monetary policies tend to distort economic incentives and lower the productivity of the system at the other extreme one can identify some points of view that assign to the government a critical role in the process of economic development and could argue that a larger government size is likely to be a more powerful engine of economic development there are several arguments on which the latter point of view is based these include besides others i role of the government in harmonizing conflicts between private and social interests ii prevention of exploitation of the country by foreigners and iii securing an increase in productive investment and providing a socially optimal direction for growth and development

quality disclosure and certification theory and practice this essay reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on quality disclosure and certification after comparing quality disclosure with other quality assurance mechanisms and describing a brief history of quality disclosure we address two sets of theoretical issues first why don t sellers voluntarily disclose through a process of unraveling and given the lack of unraveling is it desirable to mandate seller disclosure second when we rely on certifiers to act as the intermediary of quality disclosure do certifiers necessarily report unbiased and accurate information we further review empirical evidence on these issues with a particular focus on healthcare education and finance the empirical review covers quality measurement the effect of third party disclosure on consumer choice and seller behavior as well as the economics of certifiers jel d18 k32 l15 m31

do spillover benefits grow with rising foreign direct investment an empirical examination of the case of china using data from the chinese manufacturing industry for 2001 this article examines the impacts of foreign presence on the performance of locally owned chinese firms our key result supports a curvilinear functional form foreign penetration rates in excess of just about two thirds of industrial capital are associated with declining spillover benefits indicating the dominance of negative spillovers the curvilinear relationship is found to be particularly strong in labour intensive industries contrasting with a standard linear relationship in technology intensive sectors the finding of the complexity of spillover effects challenges the laissez faire view that the more inward foreign direct investment fdi the better and that inward fdi into all types of domestic industry is equally valuable in terms of performance benefits our findings argue for policy measures to strengthen domestically owned chinese industry to provide effective competition to foreign firms and to absorb the benefits from spill

measuring and decomposing sustainable efficiency in agricultural production a cumulative exergy balance approach environmental efficiency measures constructed using the materials balance principle have two important shortcomings 1 the ambiguity in the treatment of immaterial inputs and the various types of energy and 2 the lack of universally accepted weights for various material inputs these two limitations are primarily caused by the fact that the materials balance condition is strictly regulated by the law of mass energy conservation and that mass energy content cannot be a good physical common unit of various inputs the use of cumulative exergy content overcomes these problems the use of cumulative exergy content allows the inclusion of life cycle assessment hence facilitates the analysis of the cumulative pollution and total affects on natural resources the present study uses cumulative exergy content to construct new efficiency sustainable measures and decomposes them into technical efficiency and cumulative exergy allocative efficiency in agricultural production empirical applications on oecd agriculture yielded a number of important findings 1 oecd has the potential to save 72 3 of cumulative exergy consumption and improvements can be achieved by being more technically efficient and choosing a better combination of inputs 2 the sustainable efficiency varied enormously across countries and 3 the efficiency levels in 2003 was lower than in 1990 copyright 2010 elsevier b v all rights reserved

investigating geography and institutions as determinants of foreign direct investment in africa using panel data this article uses a cross country econometric approach to identify the determinants for foreign direct investment fdi in africa the contribution is 3 fold firstly we recognize that the estimation techniques used elsewhere such as ordinary least squares may be flawed we therefore use a dynamic one step generalized method of moments gmm estimator due to arellano and bond 1991 the gmm estimates identified a number of robust determinants of fdi namely government consumption inflation rate investment governance political stability accountability regulatory burden rule of law and initial literacy it is concluded that geography does not seem to have a direct influence on fdi flows to africa neither market seeking nor re exporting motives of fdi seem to dominate with different policy instruments being significant in the different specifications this does not discount the importance of good policies but probably indicates the importance of good policies made by good institutions institu

increasing agricultural productivity while reducing greenhouse gas emissions in sub saharan africa myth or reality the motivation for this study stems from two major concerns that are interlinked the first is the decades long food insecurity crisis faced by sub saharan african ssa countries which is still prevalent the second is the negative impact greenhouse gas ghg emissions from agriculture may have on future food production and which is likely to worsen the food insecurity problem the conundrum ssa farmers face is how to increase food output through productivity growth while minimizing ghg emissions to measure changes in productivity growth and ghg emissions this study evaluates the agricultural performance of 18 ssa countries by utilizing the malmquist luenberger index to incorporate good and bad outputs for the years 1980 2012 the empirical evidence demonstrates that productivity is overestimated when bad outputs are not considered in the production model the analysis provides a better understanding of the effectiveness of previous mitigation methods and which informs an appropriate course of action needed to achieve the twin objectives of increasing agriculture productivity while reducing ghg emissions

consumer welfare effects of introducing and labeling genetically modified food abstract non hypothetical valuations obtained from experimental auctions in three united states and two european locations were used to calculate welfare effects of introducing and labeling of genetically modified food under certain assumptions we find that introduction of genetically modified food has been welfare enhancing on average for united states consumers but not so for europeans and while mandatory labeling has been beneficial for european consumers such a policy would be detrimental in the united states

employment responses of skilled and unskilled workers at mexican maquiladoras the effects of external factors summary this paper compares a standard labor demand model to another augmented by the real exchange rate rer when studying the growth of dynamic mexican maquiladoras from 1990 to 2006 the basic question is whether the real value of the peso changes the responses of employment to wages and to capital in the augmented models skilled labor employment becomes very sensitive to its own wages also the user cost of capital has a larger negative impact on skilled employment and a weaker currency has a negative impact on unskilled employment only overall skilled labor benefits relatively more under globalization

foreign direct investment and economic growth in less developed countries an empirical study of causality and mechanisms we examine the causality between foreign direct investment fdi and economic growth for 66 developing countries taking into account their interaction with exports and technological change time series analysis for each country is conducted based on a method introduced by toda and yamamoto 1995 for testing granger causality in the presence of nonstationary time series the main findings of this article are fdi causes growth in several of the developing countries but the mechanism through which this works differs across countries and reverse causality from growth to fdi exists for many countries

nonparametric estimation of exact consumers surplus and deadweight loss we apply nonparametric regression models to estimation of demand curves of the type most often used in applied research from the demand curve estimators we derive estimates of exact consumers surplus and deadweight loss which are the most widely used welfare and economic efficiency measures in areas of economics such as public finance we also develop tests of the symmetry and downward sloping properties of compensated demand we work out asymptotic normal sampling theory for kernel and series nonparametric estimators as well as for the parametric case the paper includes an application to gasoline demand empirical questions of interest here are the shape of the demand curve and the average magnitude of welfare loss from a tax on gasoline in this application we compare parametric and nonparametric estimates of the demand curve calculate exact and approximate measures of consumers surplus and deadweight loss and give standard error estimates we also analyze the sensitivity of the welfare measures to components of nonparametric regression estimators such as the number of terms in a series approximation

the causality between fdi and sector specific production in turkey evidence from threshold cointegration with regime shifts abstractthis article considers bidirectional nonlinear cointegration relation between fdi and industrial output in turkey the data cover the monthly period 2005 1 2013 10 for the time series of total industrial production 36 sub industrial sectors production and fdi following nonlinear threshold cointegration and vecms the article yields that i total industrial production and nine sub industrial productions have positive long run impact on fdi with significant error corrections ii six sub industrial productions have short term influence on fdi iii fdi has long run positive impulse on total industrial production and nine sub industrial productions with some significant error corrections and iv fdi affects four sub industrial productions in the short run as well as in the long run the results of vecms from i also reveal that the all short term adjustment parameters are found significant and powerful in 10 typical regimes regime 1s and in 5 extreme regimes regime 2s finally the outcom

the 45 years of foreign direct investment research approaches advances and analytical areas what are the main tenets associated with foreign direct investment fdi what research has been performed in the area of fdi to date which direction should research in this field proceed in the days to come as there is no article with comprehensive coverage of all the studies on fdi we review empirical research in this area between the years 1970 and 2014 as an attempt to answer these questions we identify the advances and analytical areas of fdi research list out the impactful research papers and authors theoretical and methodological approaches leading journals and variables of interest that exist in the area of fdi research as the research into the fdi has advanced significantly over the last two decades we have also tried to point out the gaps in the literature taken together our paper highlights the heterogeneous nature of fdi across countries and firms

environmental innovations and firm profitability unmasking the porter hypothesis we examine impacts of different types of environmental innovations on firm profits following porter s sci am 264 4 168 1991 hypothesis that environmental regulation can improve firms competitiveness we distinguish between regulation induced and voluntary environmental innovations we find that innovations which do not improve firms resource efficiency do not provide positive returns to profitability however innovations that increase a firm s resource efficiency in terms of material or energy consumption per unit of output have a positive impact on profitability this positive result holds for both regulation induced and voluntary innovations although the effect is greater for regulation driven innovation we conclude that the porter hypothesis does not hold in general for its strong version but depends on the type of environmental innovation our findings rest on firm level data from the german part of the community innovation survey 2008 cis 2008