financial development and barriers to the cross border diffusion of financial innovation this paper explores the determinants of financial development by focusing on the role played by barriers to the diffusion of financial technology these barriers are measured using human genetic distance from the technology frontier the results based on cross sectional data for 123 countries suggest that genetic distance to the global frontier has an economically and statistically significant effect on financial development in that countries that are genetically far from the technology leader tend to have lower levels of financial development genetic distance is found to have the largest effect even after controlling for other determinants of financial development established in the literature these findings indicate that cultural barriers to the diffusion of financial technology across borders impact financial development by influencing the follower countries ability to adopt and adapt innovations from the frontier

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

banking soundness indicators and sovereign risk in time of crisis the case of the european union this study examines the impact of the soundness of the banking sector on sovereign risk of eu member countries during the financial crisis using a selection of financial soundness indicators fsis and the sovereign ratings of the three main rating agencies unlike previous literature that typically focuses on the ability of fsis to foresee banking crises we estimate ordered response models to assess the power of these indicators to explain sovereign risk our results show that evaluations made by the rating agencies are related to the lagged values of core fsis such that an improvement in these indicators leads to improvements in upcoming sovereign ratings hence reinforced banking soundness would reduce the sovereign risk accordingly governments supervisors and central banks should pay close attention to the evolution of certain fsis related to the banking sector in addition to other variables that have traditionally been taken into account in analysing sovereign risk

finance and the sources of growth at various stages of economic development this article studies the effects of financial development on the sources of growth in different groups of countries recent theoretical work shows that financial development may affect productivity and capital accumulation in different ways in industrial versus developing countries this hypothesis is tested with panel data from 74 countries using gmm dynamic panel techniques results are consistent with the hypothesis finance has a strong positive influence on productivity growth primarily in more developed economies in less developed economies the effect of finance on output growth occurs primarily through capital accumulation jel o4 g1

china s shallow integration networked production and the new challenges for late industrialization summary chinese enterprises have become extensively linked with the global economy yet in a shallow manner they remain stuck in commodity manufacturing undifferentiated activities for which innovation is absent competition then revolves around cutthroat cost cutting this outcome stems from three factors first it reflects the new challenges to development posed by globally networked production second it reflects tensions between the political economic imperatives of successful post socialist transition and the institutional imperatives for upgrading in networked economies third it reflects uncertainty surrounding the adjustment of traditional industrial policy to the new demands of development through participation in global supply chains

the returns and forecasting ability of large traders in the frozen pork bellies futures market using settlement prices and nine years of daily commitments for large reporting traders in the frozen pork bellies futures market the authors find that these traders generate significant profits and the distribution of trader returns over time is not random further analysis finds that a subset of large elite traders possesses significant forecasting ability indicating that they not only are able to consistently anticipate the direction of price changes but are also on the right side of the market when large price changes occur hence certain futures market traders accumulate trading experience and knowledge permitting them to accrue considerable wealth copyright 1994 by university of chicago press

the ethical challenge of management buy outs as a form of privatisation in central and eastern europe there has been a growing debate about the ethics of management buy outs mbos one possible criticism of the mbo is that it serves the interests of incumbent management at the expense of shareholders in this paper we develop the general arguments concerning the ethical aspects of the mbo to include other forms of buy out beyond going privates and apply the analysis to mbos as a mode of privatisation in central and eastern europe cee mbos are justified in this context postperestroika as a means of incentivising economic activity by giving managers an ownership stake in former state enterprises the actual mode of privatisation though raises issues of social justice and the criticism that mbos are at the expense of the broader social good the ethical problem for the cee is to balance the economic gains of a move to markets with the ethical risks to the agents of these markets

commodity price forecasting with large scale econometric models and the futures market this paper compares the accuracy of major commercial price forecasts for corn wheat soybeans soybean oil soybean meal cotton live cattle and hogs the price forecasting information in futures prices is evaluated by comparison the results among commercial forecasters are mixed but futures prices perform relatively better on average although not universally so these results have important implications for operational risk management

government ownership of banks institutions and economic growth we present new cross country evidence that reveals that during 1995 2007 government ownership of banks has been robustly associated with higher long run growth rates we also show that previous results suggesting that government ownership of banks is associated with lower long run growth rates are not robust to conditioning on more fundamental determinants of economic growth

financial reforms and income inequality abstract using a panel of 62 countries for 1973 2005 we assess the impact of financial reforms on income inequality we find that removal of policies towards directed credit and excessively high reserve requirements and improvements in the securities market reduce inequality

aggregate savings financial intermediation and interest rate there has been considerable controversy about the role of financial factors as determinants of savings in developing countries this paper explores the importance of two such factors namely real interest rate and financial intermediation using pooled time series cross section data a model of savings is estimated for asia latin america and for the total sample particular attention is paid to the error structure in estimation the results suggest that pooling is not justified further there is no unequivocal support for the effect of either of the two factors some qualified support is found for asia but none for latin america copyright 1987 by mit press

financial development economic growth and banking sector controls evidence from india this paper uses newly collected data from the reserve bank of india to examine the effects of various types of banking sector controls on the process of financial deepening with the exception of a lending rate ceiling these controls are found to influence financial deepening negatively independently of the well known effect of the real interest rate exogeneity tests suggest that financial deepening and economic growth are jointly determined thus policies which affect financial deepening may also have an influence on economic growth the role of banking sector controls in the process of economic development has received considerable attention in the literature the traditional approach due to mckinnon i973 and shaw i973 postulates that government intervention in the pricing and allocation of loanable funds dubbed financial repression inhibits financial development by depressing real interest rates see

valuing managerial flexibility an application of real option theory to mining investments abstract the value of managerial flexibility is assessed using data on prices costs grades reserves ore extraction and metal output for a panel of canadian copper mines a real option model is estimated and solved for project and option values most empirical researchers i consider the initial investment decision but neglect flexible operation thereafter ii assume that price is stochastic but ignore cost and reserve uncertainty and iii model price as a nonstationary stochastic process the evolution of three state variables price cost and reserves is assessed here differences in assumptions compared to others are found to lead to large differences in estimated project and option values

the weak form efficiency of the london metal exchange filter techniques are used to test for dependency and weak form efficiency on the london metal exchange they are applied to daily cash and futures prices for copper lead tin and zinc for the period 1972 1982 the results are adjusted for the bias in filter tests caused by the upward trend of prices an exact test statistic is derived doubts are raised however about its reliability the results show strong evidence of inefficiency for copper weaker but positive evidence for lead and zinc and no evidence at all for tin

the relevance of p star analysis to uk monetary policy recent articles have attempted to restore the use of a simple measure of the money supply as an indicator of future price levels p star and to reestablish a causal link from money to prices in this paper we argue that the p star approach is flawed it is certainly more complex than traditional monetarist approaches but the fundamental questions of causality are in no way either affected or resolved we argue that the p star relationship does not have a causal link with prices but rather the causality runs from prices to money we also find that there is some causality running from money to real income so that monetary conditions do seem to have some predictive power for future levels of activity copyright 1994 by royal economic society

the interest elasticity of savings in developing countries the existing evidence abstract this paper presents a critical analysis of some of the most recent empirical work on the interest elasticity of savings in developing economies supported by a set of empirical results the paper argues that a the real interest elasticity of savings is not easily detected using the existing empirical models which generally yield insignificant interest rate parameters in the seventies b the existing models suffer from serious defects that make if very difficult to interpret the estimated parameters

financial crisis gender and power an analytical framework abstract this paper begins to remedy the neglect of gender aspects of financial crises by exploring a suggestive microfoundational model of unequal gender power and cost bearing in a borrower household this model shows that financial market liberalization can assess women s access to formal sector employment and encourage the growth of household credit both for a household enterprise and for the acquisition of labor saving household assets the price of these gains however is greater household risk because of greater cash flow dependence and financial fragility a financial crisis can force the household to bear heavier adjustment costs than would otherwise be felt and these costs may well be borne disproportionately by women who become more economically vulnerable as a result

the semi strong form efficiency of the london metal exchange 1983 the semi strong form efficiency of the london metal exchange applied economics vol 15 no 5 pp 681 698

development path of china and india and the challenges for their sustainable growth the segmentation of global manufacturing and services provided china and subsequently india with a golden opportunity to make full use of their absolute advantage low cost yet educated labour to integrate into the world economy within a comparatively shorter period of time than some earlier industrialisers though international trade functioned as a vent of surplus in view of the narrowness of their domestic markets at the beginning of their economic catch up the label of export led model may not reflect the real picture as imports underwent dramatic increases during their respective growth periods in particular for china foreign direct investment has played a pivotal role in their economic growth and has major presence in international trade and investment in leading sectors of both countries giving rise to certain special features and weak links for their economic expansion and sustainability of fast

rational expectations risk and efficiency in the london metal exchange an empirical analysis there now exists a number of studies which reject efficiency of the london metal exchange as a joint null hypothesis of rational expectations and risk neutrality in this paper we investigate the presence of time varying risk premia in a number of metal price series conditional on the assumption of rationality our findings include evidence to suggest that forward prices contain information on future spot prices over and above the information contained in current spot prices that there is some evidence of time varying premia in the forward prices for tin and zinc and that the behaviour of these premia are intuitively plausible in particular there appears to be significant covariation between risk premia and the expected spot price change

revisiting the finance growth nexus the turkish case 1980 2010 abstractin turkey the empirical results on the link between financial development and economic growth are mixed the existing studies do not take into account the fact that turkey has experienced endemic political and economic instabilities over extended periods this study aims to analyse the role of macroeconomic instability and public borrowing on the finance growth nexus in turkey by using time series econometric techniques over the 1980 2010 period in doing so we attempt to extend the existing literature by taking into account the role of macroeconomic instability as well as public borrowing our results reveal that there are additional albeit indirect channels between finance and growth via the effects of macro instability and public borrowing on financial development and economic growth after taking into account the effects of overall instability and public borrowing we found that growth financial development relationship is bidirectional and permanent in other words in turkish case eco

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

financialisation institutions and financing constraints in developing countries the paper uses a consistent firm level data from the world banks enterprise surveys to explore the impact of financialisation in the economy on firms access to finance in 138 developing countries access to finance reflects survey based firms perceptions of external financing constraints financialisation is proxied by consistent cross country measures of financial depth these proxies capture separately the role of bank based versus market based financing firm sector and country level information is jointly used for the analysis firm specific characteristics and economic and non economic national factors are included as controls the results show that the proxies of financialisation are broadly robust predictors of financing constraints of firms in developing countries however the magnitude of the financialisation effect varies between bank based and market based channels of financing as well as between low and high income countries and it is influenced by social institutional and religious factors

reform in hungary abstract the paper examines reform issues facing hungary concentrating on sequencing the liberalisation of domestic markets international trade and demonopolisation creating competitive conditions in product and factor markets is a precondition for the success of other reforms trade liberalisation could play a key role but is constrained by the large debt so demonopolisation is a critical first step if privatisation is to be undertaken quickly there is an argument for making transfers proportional to the implied asset value of state pensions and reducing subsequent pension payments

emerging stock markets portfolio capital flows and long term economie growth micro and macroeconomic perspectives abstract the paper examines two major components of financial liberalization stock market development and portfolio capital flows in the context of less developed countries the paper considers microeconomic and macroeconomic perspectives on their implications for long term development and economic growth it concentrates on 1 a the role of stock markets in financing corporate growth 2 b the implications of stock market volatility for resource allocation and productive efficiency and 3 c the interactions between the foreign exchange and stock markets in the context of economic shocks its policy recommendations are that ldcs should promote bank based systems influence the scale and composition of capital inflows and prevent a market for corporate control from emerging

life cycle savings bequest and a diminishing impact of scale on growth the present paper shows that the savings motive critically affects the size and sign of scale effects in standard endogenous growth models if the bequest motive dominates the scale effect is positive if the life cycle motive dominates the scale effect is ambiguous and may even be negative

finance is good for the poor but it depends where you live i examine whether or not the incomes of the poor systematically grow with average incomes and whether financial development enhances the incomes of the poorest quintile following the methodology of dollar and kraay 2002 i find once extending dollar and kraay s data their findings are robust to the lucas critique and economic growth is important for poverty reduction universally however in comparison to other authors work i show financial development aids the incomes of the poor in certain regions whilst it may be detrimental in others this proposes evidence against a one size fits all model adding a further contribution to the literature on financial development and poverty

financial liberalisation stockmarkets and economic development abstract during the 1980s and 1990s many developing countries dcs have been engaged in far reaching reforms of their financial systems liberalising them and making them more market oriented this liberalisation involving inter alia financial de repression has been inspired partly by the work of the mckinnon 1973 and shaw 1973 m s school this paper suggests that in addition to financial de repression there has been a major new element in the development of dc financial systems in recent years the establishment and fast expansion of stockmarkets these markets have played a key role in the internal as well as external financial liberalisation processes in leading dcs further the paper finds that the actual behaviour of these markets in many countries has led to outcomes which undermine the effects of the higher real interest rates arising from financial de repression

good bye financial repression hello financial crash some unintended consequences of financial liberalization in latin america are analyzed in this paper intrinsic imperfectious in financial markets and the policy dilemmas they pose are reviewed first the stylized facts of southern cone experiments in financial liberization are then presented alternative ways of organlzing domestic capital markets under latin american conditions are discussed and an eclectic reform mongering program is proposed

life cycle individual thrift and the wealth of nations this paper provides a review of the theory of the determinants of individual and national thrift that has come to be known as the life cycle hypothesis lch of saving applications to some current policy issues are also discussed part i deals with the state of the art on the eve of the formulation of the lch some 30 years ago part ii sets forth the theoretical foundations of the model in its original formulation and later amendment calling attention to various implications distinctive to it and sometimes counter intuitive it also includes a review of a number of crucial empirical tests both at the individual and the aggregate level part iii reviews some applications of lch to current policy issues though only in sketchy fashion as space constraints prevent fuller discussion this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

thresholds in the finance growth nexus a cross country analysis thresholds of inflation government size trade openness and per capita income for the finance growth nexus are investigated using five year averages of standard variables for 84 countries from 1965 to 2004 the results suggest that i high inflation crowds out positive effects of financial depth on long run growth ii small government sizes hurt the finance growth nexus in low income countries while large government sizes hurt high income countries iii low levels of trade openness are sufficient for finance growth nexus in high income countries but low income countries need higher levels of trade openness for similar magnitudes of the finance growth nexus and iv catch up effects through the finance growth nexus are higher for moderate per capita income levels

econometric modelling of non ferrous metal prices abstract this article evaluates the significance of the empirical models and the distributional properties of prices in non ferrous metal spots and futures markets published in leading refereed economics and finance journals between 1980 and 2002 the survey focuses on econometric analyses of pricing and return models applied to exchange based spot and futures markets for the main industrially used non ferrous metals namely aluminium copper lead nickel tin and zinc published empirical research is evaluated in the light of the type of contract examined frequency of data used choice of both dependent and explanatory variables use of proxy variables type of model chosen economic hypotheses tested methods of estimation and calculation of ses for inference reported descriptive statistics use of diagnostic tests of auxiliary assumptions use of nested and non nested tests use of information criteria and empirical implications for non ferrous metals

overview and summary this symposium analyzes the recent liberalization and stabilization attempts in chile argentina and uruguay attempts remarkable for their speed and coverage to bring these analyses together in one volume seems natural because the three experiences were so similar all three countries started with highly protected economies inflation balance of payments crises widespread government intervention and production systems in considerable disarray all three countries launched liberalization policies that spanned commodity and factor markets and all three followed the same path toward stabilization the battle against inflation was first based on control of the money supply then the exchange rate was used to reduce inflationary expectations the initial results were as remarkable as the reforms inflation was reduced fiscal deficits were controlled and growth was restored but in the early 1980s all three countries were again in crisis the objective of the reforms was to realize the gains from better allocations of resources and investment this objective was to be achieved by moving to market regulated economies one intention was to eliminate the traditional bias against exports and thus to spur the growth of exports which required an increase in the effective exchange rate for exportables and a decrease in that for import competing sectors a second intention was to deregulate interest rates and foreign capital inflows and thus to provide more credit to activities with the highest returns the motive here is to draw the lessons for other developing countries confronting liberalization and stabilization problems why did these unusual experiments fail to what extent did various parts of the packages succeed or fail was the failure due to external events or to bad policies were the institutional arrangements for deregulation appropriate the introduction to part i presents some analytical issues that arise from the experiences of the three countries it addresses the general issue of opening an economy to trade and to flows of foreign capital and the related issues of sequencing and policy coordination it also explores differences in the speed of adjustment in labor and commodity markets and the implications of these differences for the design of macroeconomic policy the other papers in part i explain and evaluate the macroeconomic performance of the liberalization and stabilization policies in each country first each paper describes the reforms and in an appendix provides a chronology of the many reforms perhaps the place to start for the uninitiated reader the descriptions are accompanied by summaries of the authorities intentions when the reforms were launched the approach to implementation is also addressed when it gave rise to policy reversals and conflicting signals second the papers construct stylized analytical frameworks to help interpret the macroeconomic outcome of the liberalization and stabilization policies in each country these frameworks help to draw the stylized outcomes of the reforms the papers in part ii rely on financial statements to analyze the adjustments by firms the data span the period covered by the reforms in each country and provide the basis for simple statistical models groups of firms exporters vs

financial crisis in southeast asia dispelling illusion the minskyan way this paper extends minsky s financial instability hypothesis to the case of the open liberalised economy making it possible to put forward a specifically minskyan account of the road to the financial crisis in southeast asia 1997 1998 the analysis suggests that the threats to growth and employment emanating from the financial sector which minsky identified in the closed economy setting are much intensified in open liberalised developing economies financial liberalisation is an important key factor in this process rival explanations of the crisis are examined and rejected in favour of the extended minskyan explanation the policy implications are derived and discussed copyright 2002 oxford university press

the forward pricing function of the london metal exchange future prices are rationally formed current prices relating to later delivery dates and they are not forecasts of subsequent spot prices yet if all available information including economic agents expectations is fully taken into account in the price formation process then both current spot and futures prices may be regarded as market anticipations of subsequent spot prices this paper explores the hypothesis that futures prices and spot are predictors of subsequent spot prices in this sense it assesses the predictive performance of futures prices for four non ferrous metals traded on the london metal exchange using a simple linear model estimated by both ordinary least squres and instrumental variable estimators significant differences are found as between copper zinc tin and lead the paper begins with a discussion of the feasibility conditions for futures trading and the functions of futures markets including a detailed review of the forward pricing function

rejection of unbiasedness is not rejection of market efficiency reply to gilbert 1986 rejection of unbiasedness is not rejection of market efficiency reply to gilbert applied economics vol 18 no 11 pp 1167 1178

south korea s 1980s financial reforms good bye financial repression maybe hello new institutional restraints abstract south korea s financial reforms in the 1980s have been consistent with high rates of savings and financial deepening but they have not followed liberal reform lines the korean financial system operates under the umbrella of an industrial policy and economic goals have been attained by means of investments in institutions rather than by exclusive reliance on the price mechanism

financial restraints and private investment evidence from a nonstationary panel we employ recently developed panel data methods to estimate a model of private investment under nancial restraints for 20 developing countries using annual data for 1972 2000 we show that the qualitative nature of the results varies depending on whether we take into account cross country eects when we allow for cross sectional dependence investment displays more sensitivity to world capital market conditions and exchange rate uncertainty a perhaps even more surprising result is the nding that countries that managed to suppress domestic real interest rates without generating high in ation enjoyed higher levels of private investment than those that would have been obtained under liberalised conditions

the advantage of tying one s hands ems discipline and central bank credibility abstract it is often argued that the ems is an effective disciplinary device for inflation prone countries in europe since it forces the respective policy makers to pursue more restrictive monetary policies than they would otherwise it is not clear however why these countries should submit themselves to such discipline this paper argues that to answer this question appropriately one must consider that ems membership brings potentially large credibility gains policy makers in inflation prone countries the reason is that not only it attaches an extra penalty to inflation in terms of real appreciation but makes the public aware that the policy maker is faced with such penalty and thus helps to overcome the inefficiency stemming from the public s mistrust of the authorities

finance and inequality the case of india although theory emphasizes the role of financial market frictions in explaining income inequality there is little empirical research exploring how financial development and financial sector reforms influence the evolution of income inequality this article examines how finance impacts income inequality in india using annual time series data for over half a century the results indicate that while financial development helps reduce income inequality financial liberalization seems to exacerbate it the results are robust to the use of different measures for financial development and financial liberalization although the relationship between financial development and economic growth has been extensively studied in the literature see for example king and levine 1993 demetriades and hussein 1996 arestis and demetriades 1997 levine loayza and beck 2000 bell and rousseau 2001 ang and mckibbin 2007 little is known about how finance impacts income inequality the importance of the finance inequality relationship has recently been highlighted in an insightful survey article by claessens and perotti 2007 they indicate that while financial development can help reduce income inequality financial liberalization captured by established interests may do the opposite the theoretical predictions of the effects of finance on income inequality are controversial rajan and zingales 2003b argue that improvements in the formal financial sector primarily benefit the rich greenwood and jovanovic 1990 predict a nonlinear relationship between financial development and income inequality where it is hypothesized that income inequality first increases with the degree of sophistication in the financial systems then stabilizes and eventually declines others propose that the presence of financial market imperfections deters the poor from borrowing adequately to invest in human and physical capital implying that financial development helps alleviate income inequality banerjee and newman 1993 galor and zeira 1993 aghion and bolton 1997 mookherjee and ray 2003 2006 given that theories provide ambiguous predictions regarding the effects of finance on the distribution of income it is useful to approach the issue at the empirical level this could facilitate our understanding of the relationship between finance and inequality and help us to assess the validity of each theoretical model despite the important role of financial market frictions in the theories of poverty and income inequality researchers so far have not adequately addressed whether financial

china and india in the age of globalization sectoral variation in postliberalization reregulation in recent years china and india have extensively liberalized their economies they have departed from the east asian developmental states which have restricted foreign direct investment fdi to protect domestic industry and the liberal fdi strategy of latin america during a similar stage of development as they have eschewed dependent development instead they have taken a liberalization two step which follows liberalization with reregulation that varies across industrial sectors country and sectoral case studies demonstrate the perceived strategic value of a sector sectoral characteristics and the organization of state institutions shape the ways in which reregulation varies insulated from political pressures the chinese state shifts from universal controls on the aggregate level to selective controls at the sectoral level and adopts a bifurcated strategy in its reregulation in india the government liberalizes fdi according to state goals but reregulates as a function of sectoral interests

is the state led industrial restructuring effective in transition china evidence from the steel sector during the reform era the chinese government has been carrying out strategic industrial policies modelled on those in post war japan and south korea in the hope of transforming its highly fragmented manufacturing sector into one that comprises a small number of internationally competitive big businesses using the evolution of the chinese steel industry structure from the late 1980s to the early 2000s as a case in point this paper finds that the chinese government s consolidation attempts have by and large not been very successful the disappointing policy outcome is interpreted by a detailed examination of the industry policy mechanism in china it is concluded that the institutional framework of the chinese state differs from its counterparts in korea and japan in some fundamental aspects among these the fragmented and uncoordinated chinese bureaucracy contributes significantly to the inefficacy of policy implementation

an examination of the necessary and sufjicient conditions for market eflciency the case of hogs the pricing efficiency of the live hog futures market is examined utilizing both necessary and sufficient conditions out of sample forecasts from an econometric model an arima model and a composite forecasting model are compared with the forward prices of the futures market within a mean squared error framework at least one model and frequently all of them forecast more accurately than the futures market a necessary condition for market efficiency the sufficient condition is assessed using simulated market trading strategies based o n the most accurate model forecasts results suggest that informational inefficiencies exist in the live hog futures market

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

on the rationale of bank lending in pre crisis thailand evidence from credit files is provided to examine bank lending determinants of thai commercial banks their lending practice follows reasonable patterns as a standard set of variables including indirect risk variables explains much of the variance in interest rate spread reflecting institutional differences with mature markets we find a higher importance of relationship banking and risk control via credit availability information about later default reveals prudent relationship lending however banks could have made better use of available information about borrowers riskiness these findings do not support a general verdict of bad banking but indicate room to improve lending decisions

the effects of financialization on investment evidence from firm level data for the uk this paper estimates the effects of financialization on physical investment in the uk using panel data based on balance sheets of publicly listed non financial companies supplied by worldscope for the period 1985 2013 we find robust evidence of an adverse effect of not only financial payments interests and dividends but also financial incomes on the rate of accumulation the negative impacts of financial incomes from interests and dividends are particularly strong for the pre crisis period our findings support the financialization thesis that the increasing orientation of the non financial sector towards financial activities is ultimately leading to lower physical investment hence to stagnant or fragile growth as well as long term concerns for productivity

post independence india a case of finance led industrialization abstract this paper examines whether financial intermediaries have played a leading role in influencing india s economic performance after describing the evolution and functions of the financial sector we construct a set of vector autoregressive var and vector error correction models vecm to evaluate the strength and direction of the links between measures of formal intermediation and various economic aggregates the results suggest that i the financial sector was instrumental in promoting aggregate investment and output but also in the steady shift toward industry that has characterized india s development ii the operative channel was one of debt accumulation rather than improvements in total factor productivity and iii its contributions went beyond the passive support of fiscal policy

stock markets corporate finance and economic growth an overview the research presented here focuses on four issues first it constructs more measures or criteria of stock market development than any previous study it compares liquidity concentration volatility institutional development and international integration across forty four industrial and developing countries from 1976 to 1993 besides identifying general characteristics of these measures and defining stock market development empirically these data facilitate further research into the relationship between stock market development and financial intermediaries corporate finance decisions and economic growth these measures ranked for each country can be used for inter country comparisons of the level of stock market development in addition the data provide a basis for gauging the success of capital market development projects using objective criteria second with these new data the research investigates the relationships between stock markets and financial intermediaries third the research analyzes the relationship between stock market development and long run economic growth fourth the research studies the ties between stock market development and financing choices of firms this overview puts this research in context and reviews the main results of the study section i provides a brief review of the role of stock markets in economic development and documents the evolution of debt and equity markets during the growth process section ii defines stock market development and presents summary data on the development of financial intermediaries and stock markets section iii presents evidence on the effect of stock market development on economic growth section iv summarizes the empirical results on how stock market development affects firm financing decisions section v concludes by discussing policy implications

the interactive and causal relationships involving precious metal price movements an analysis of the gold and silver markets to explain the interactive and causal relationships between gold and silver price movements time series procedures are used to identify reduced form parameters corresponding to a general arbitrage model enveloped in a framework of expectations about capital gains current price changes are conjectured to be functions of lagged and present values of the substitute precious metal prices and the interest rate plus lagged values of its own price to determine the appropriate number of lags to identify the appropriate interaction and to examine the exogeneity between the gold and silver prices and the rate of interest we use schwarz s bayesian information criterion and akaike s final prediction error criterion the resultant estimated model is simultaneous and provides information on participants average lead times in forming these expectations

on the role of domestic and international financial cyclical factors in driving economic growth abstractwe investigate the effects of domestic and international financial cyclical factors on the us business cycle over the period 1890 2013 using an augmented stochastic version of the neoclas

variation in price dependency measures on the london metal exchange eight tests of dependency are conducted on london metal exchange price date for separate years between 1972 and 1982 the results from the eight tests are combined to produce an overall ranking of the years by the extent of dependency exhibited similar patterns are exhibited across all the contracts tested this is attributed to a common factor affecting all markets the use of commodities as an inflation shelter by nontrade investors is suggested as a possible explanation

infrastructure finance and industrial takeoff in england that financial matters did not constrain industrial takeoff in the uk is generally accepted in the historical literature in contrast contemporary empirical analyses have found evidence that financial development can be a causal determinant of economic growth we look to reconcile these findings by concentrating on a particular aspect of industrializing uk where inefficiencies in finance could have had bite the finance of physical infrastructures we document the historical record and develop the importance of spatial disaggregation and spillovers in both technological and financial development we develop a simple model that captures the nature of infrastructure finance within a theory of endogenous growth where financial costs are endogenous we argue that the conception of the finance growth nexus as a largely static aggregative phenomenon misses out a good deal of complexity and we relate that complexity to a number of implications for regulation of both financial systems and the emergence of infrastructures

global linkages the chinese high tech community and industrial cluster development the semiconductor industry in wuxi jingsu the development of industrial clusters in china has become a subject of international interest but attention has primarily focused on government efforts to attract fdi to promote industrial clusters and regional development the local process which supports the rise and growth of clusters driven by the domestic firms has been relatively ignored in this debate thus this article considers the analytical framework of strategic coupling and uses a case study of the wuxi semiconductor industry to investigate the cluster formation dynamics and effects driven by domestic rather than fdi firms with the mediating role of the transnational chinese technical community the state and domestic firms it concludes that the rise and growth of the semiconductor domestic led cluster in wuxi is not dependent on fdi but instead results from the dynamic interplay of several elements effects of technology spillover from the government funded research institutions as well as mutual competition and co operation in tech

monetary and exchange rate policies during eastern europe s transition some lessons from further east over the past three years eastern europe has embarked upon a transition from state ownership and central planning to a market system with pri vate ownership and enterprise this transition is now taking place in the former soviet union monetary institutions and policies as well as trade and exchange regimes played a major role in the collapse of the old system through open and hidden inflationary pressures and inefficiency insulated from world trade competition not surprisingly they now constitute the centrepiece of this radical transformation

hungary s transition to the market the case against a big bang hungary paul hare and tamas revesz among eastern european countries hungary s great advantage is that it began economic reforms in 1968 and slowly introduced the institutions of a market economy during the 1980s these measures laid the foundation for a gradual transition to the market without the need for any sharp break with the past policy mistakes were of course made the most serious extending over several years was the 1970s investment boom funded by foreign capital which contributed to hungary s large debt burden despite this the government accounts are not now in substantial deficit and the balance of payments on current account is in modest surplus nevertheless managing the external debt is now the most difficult of hungary s problems it is important that hungarian joint ventures and privatization are now attracting significant quantities of foreign capital given the quite rapid pace of liberalization since the late 1980s the government s commitment to further changes and a reasonably satisfactory macroeconomic balance though inflation is worrying there is no case for a big bang approach in hungary such a shock could only disrupt established market relationships and expectations with little benefit the most valuable forms of aid for hungary would be debt relief and unrestricted access for hungary s products to ec markets

the assessment microeconomics of transition in eastern europe the dramatic political events of 1989 and 1990 when almost all the communist governments of eastern europe collapsed and new democratic governments were elected into office gave rise to a brief spell of euphoria the dead or dying hand of communism was lifted from the region and a future of capitalist abundance was supposedly as sured this naive but perfectly understandable euphoria was quickly dispelled by the grim economic reality facing the new governments al though nearly everywhere there was a commit ment more or less strong to bring about a transition to a market type economy a transition typically requiring stabilization extensive liberalization and privatization there was far less agreement on the speed sequencing and precise modalities of the process at the same time in certain countries much needed reform programmes could neither be agreed nor implemented effectively because of political disputes over the very nature and existence of the states concerned table 1 summarizes the economic and political situation in the whole re gion as of summer 1991

positive time preference the case for positive time preference is absolutely compelling unless there is an infinite time horizon with the expectation of unending technological advance combined with what we call drastically diminishing marginal utility this finding holds both in the positive and normative senses a corollary is that savings are interest elastic

information institutions and banking sector development in west africa i introduction banks and other financial intermediaries can perform an important developmental function especially in africa where alternative sources of finance are limited or nonexistent by providing firms with essential finance they help them to take advantage of productive investment opportunities which may not otherwise materialize by screening loan applicants they can help to address adverse selection in the credit market and channel funds toward productive uses by monitoring borrowers they can contain moral hazard behavior for example excessively risky investment activity that could undermine a borrower s ability to repay a loan through long term bank borrower relationships well established banks can address both adverse selection and moral hazard this not only helps banks to remain solvent but also ensures that bank finance is channeled toward productive and sound investments there is a large body of empirical evidence which suggests that the development of banking systems goes hand in hand with economic development see e g levine 2004 although the evidence on causality is mixed see e g demetriades and hussein 1996 there is broad consensus that well functioning banking systems promote economic growth demetriades and andrianova 2005 it is therefore a puzzle that so many countries remain financially underdeveloped this is particularly true of sub saharan africa which remains one of the most financially under developed regions in the world a recent study by the world bank has shown that african banking systems lack depth compared to other regions in the world but are also excessively liquid honohan and beck 2007 according to the world bank banks themselves complain that there is a lack of creditworthy borrowers while at the same time households and firms find finance to be a major constraint the evidence presented by the world bank also suggests that the least developed banking systems are also the most liquid suggesting that excess liquidity is a common feature of financial under development this article aims to shed light on these features of financial under development in africa utilizing a panel data set comprising the banks operating in the west african economic and monetary union uemoa during 2000 2005 the uemoa provides a uniform financial system across eight countries the structure of this system has changed little in the last 15 years therefore we can be sure that the variations in bank behavior we observe within the uemoa are not because of variations in the nature of public financial institutions which the banks face this makes feasible the identification of the institutional sources of the variations in bank behavior which are not correlated with variations in the quality of public financial institutions our data set includes balance sheet information on each bank in the uemoa including bank characteristics such as age and ownership type profitability and the number of urban and rural branches we also utilize country level data on loan defaults which provides information on the average quality of borrowers we use this as a proxy for the severity of information problems faced by banks in the credit market we combine this information with macroeconomic data including institutional quality indices constructed by the world bank our data set enables us to examine the extent to which informational and institutional factors and interactions between different factors can explain a bank s loans to assets ratio which is an inverse measure of bank liquidity our data set is also used to examine the microeconomic and macroeconomic determinants of the total volume of assets of an individual bank which is a good micro level indicator of overall banking sector development our results suggest that to a large extent financial under development including excess liquidity and low banking sector development can be attributed to severe informational problems

capital account liberalisation and poverty how close is the link the literature on the theoretical and empirical aspects of the relationship between finance and economic growth is both substantial and extensive the same cannot be said on the relationship between financial development and poverty reduction an equally important aspect in this study we visit the theoretical arguments and conduct an empirical analysis of the relationship between the capital account dimension of financial liberalisation and poverty for developing countries for the period 1985 2005 in particular we employ the system gmm technique to test whether capital account liberalisation has helped alleviate poverty and also whether the extent to which capital account liberalisation affects poverty depends on the quality of institutions we also use ols and iv techniques to verify our findings our findings indicate that there is no statistically significant relationship between the degree of capital account liberalisation during the period and the poverty rate developing countries with higher institutional quality have lower poverty rates but the effect has low statistical significance a higher degree of capital account liberalisation is associated with a lower income share for the poor

corporate entrepreneurs and privatized firms in russia ukraine and belarus abstract this paper provides a preliminary examination of the development of corporate entrepreneurship in privatized firms in russia belarus and ukraine three countries with a common background as part of the soviet union but with different incentives and constraints on entrepreneurship since the beginning of transition using large scale surveys of newly privatized companies the paper shows that there are differences in the nature and extent of entrepreneurship in established businesses in the three countries the paper utilizes representative samples of general directors in 105 privatized russian enterprises 100 privatized ukranian enterprises and 68 privatized enterprises in belarus evidence is presented that suggests that russian privatized firms have lower insider stakes greater outside ownership less employee voice and greater managerial power within the firm than is the case in belarus and ukraine the active monitoring of managers by outsiders may be an important aspect of the transformation of russian firms to efficient commercially viable entities in ukraine and belarus a lack of outside involvement in corporate governance may lead to managerial opportunism and low incentives to attract outside strategic investors including foreign partners russia appears to be building a stronger platform for the future development and effectiveness of entrepreneurship than is the case in ukraine and belarus the findings provide evidence of the importance of direct involvement and the development of relationships to counteract the shortcomings of the legal infrastructure and financial reporting mechanisms in general the findings of the study for russia show that in the current hostile and rapidly changing environment entrepreneurial priorities and actions so far have primarily focused on controlling cash flow seeking new markets and redefining businesses through retrenchment and restructuring although it is as yet too early to examine the longer term effects of the changes in entrepreneurial conditions the paper presents the first large scale comparative evidence of the indications of a divergence in entrepreneurial development between the three countries there was a greater incidence of turnover among the senior management team in russia managers in ukraine and belarus had more diverse strategic objectives in contrast to those in russia where managers have behaved in a more realistic fashion by focusing on retrenchment for academics the study s findings suggest further research is needed to examine the longer term nature and effects of corporate entrepreneurship compare entrepreneurship in new start ups in the three countries and compare with corporate entrepreneurship elsewhere in emerging markets and the barriers to the development of corporate entrepreneurship for practitioners and policy makers the study highlights the need to develop and enforce an appropriate regulatory framework which strengthens the rules of the game under which corporate entrepreneurship operates

is the spot market for oil products efficient some rotterdam evidence abstract this paper presents evidence relating to the efficiency of the rotterdam market for oil products analysis of daily weekly and monthly price changes for gas oil during the period 1978 1983 results in the rejection of the efficiency hypothesis ie relative price changes have been serially dependent on the basis of this observation a very simple trading rule is developed this rule is tested out simulating market transactions during the first two quarters of 1984 the financial outcome of this game turns out to be rather rewarding

what is new keynesian economics this research was supported by the national science foundation i am grateful to george williams for help with the data and to steven allen laurence ball olivier j blanchard timothy bresnahan charles calomiris dennis carlton robert chirinko russell cooper stanley fischer herschel grossman r glenn hubbard david laidler john leahy assar lindbeck n gregory mankiw david romer julio rotemberg dennis snower john taylor andrew weiss and two anonymous referees for comments on one or more earlier drafts i am also indebted to michael parkin and edmund s phelps for helping to establish the etymology of the phrase new keynesian

finance and development the korean approach during the last three decades the korean economy has recorded a remarkable growth the rapid growth of the korean economy started with the government s aggressive development strategy in the early 1960s the government set up a sequence of comprehensive five year economic development plans starting in 1962 and has implemented them through various fiscal and financial incentives it was directly involved in arranging finance for de velopment projects in the process the government strongly controlled the financial system it owned all major commercial banks as well as specialized banks it administered interest rates and it directed a large proportion of intermediaries credit alloca tion

explaining ethiopia s growth acceleration the role of infrastructure and macroeconomic policy summary ethiopia has experienced an impressive growth acceleration over the past decade this was achieved on the back of an economic strategy emphasizing public infrastructure investment supported by heterodox macro financial policies this paper identifies the drivers of ethiopia s recent growth episode and examines the extent to which they were typical or unique it combines country specific information with the results of a cross country panel regression model we find that ethiopia s growth is explained well by factors correlating with growth in a broad range of countries in recent decades including public infrastructure investment restrained government consumption and a conducive external environment on the other hand we argue that the policy mix that supported very high levels of public investment in ethiopia was to some extent unique interestingly macroeconomic imbalances due to this heterodox policy mix only moderately held back growth which helps explain why ethiopia was able to grow so fast in spite of their presence their negative effects were quantitatively much less important than the positive growth drivers they helped to achieve the results suggest that getting infrastructure right may outweigh moderate shortcoming in the macro framework at early stages of development we further relate this country specific finding to the recent growth literature

how to reform a planned economy lessons from china the countries of eastern europe and the former soviet union have been flooded with advice from the west on how to liberalize their planned econo mies this advice is unfortunately offered in an empirical vacuum no one knows how these econo mies will react to the proposed liberalization meas ures there exists however a neglected source of information china offers a long time series of data over a decade s worth on the effects of reforms on a planned economy china s reforms were gradual but their cumulative effect has been large and they have been remarkably successful china s experiments provide some practical les sons on what kinds of reforms can work elsewhere the dominant school of thought among economists favours the big bang policy of reforming quickly and according to a comprehensive plan partial reforms in this view are useless they will be negated by the remnants of the planning system the proponents of big bang reform have been influential with poland czechoslovakia and rus sia announcing plans for a rapid transition to capi talism

international capital flows identifying the gender dimension abstract this paper explores the main issues involved in examining the gender impact of international capital flows to developing countries it argues that at the macroeconomic level women lose more than men from slow and or unstable economic growth financial crises and meltdowns and even more so the longer and deeper the economic downturn because without a social security system the family and women have many additional burdens women should formulate an agenda of their own with respect to international monetary reform and some proposals are outlined in this respect including those involving capital controls

financial sector reforms in developing countries the indian experience this study is based on the premise that the success failure of financial sector reforms depends heavily on country specific factors and makes an attempt to examine these factors in the indian context the financial sector reforms analysed in this paper include the deregulation of interest rates increasing competition and foreign ownership and the introduction of financial supervision we argue that an economic rationale for a gradualist approach to financial reform is that it is stability enhancing furthermore we suggest that india s complex political economy has resulted in a gradual approach to reform and this approach has been successful along the dimension of banking stability