wheat from chaff meta analysis as quantitative literature review abstract this paper presents and develops a quantitative method of literature reviewing and evaluating empirical research meta regression analysis or mra economics is theory driven yet we must learn empirically if economics is to advance mra offers a more objective statistical method to summarize our empirical knowledge and to explain the wide study to study variation in economic research mra is used to assess the evidence for ricardian equivalence and its findings are contrasted to those of conventional narrative review furthermore mra establishes a platform from which to distinguish genuine empirical effect from the exploitable specification error that infests applied econometrics

the infant export industry argument when actual consumption experiences are required to learn about a commodity s qualities subsidization of infant exporters can be justified as a first best policy measure this paper develops a dynamic model of optimal foreign market cultivation and examines the type and magnitude of trade intervention that is warranted and how this intervention adjusts over time it also focuses on changing production consumption and trade patterns as well as on welfare implications for individuals and society as the subsidization process unfolds international borrowing is allowed and is shown to cushion against severe welfare losses in the early phases of export subsidization l argument en faveur de la protection d une industrie d exportation dans la phase initiale de son developpement quand on ne peut apprecier les qualites d un bien qu en le consommant effectivement on peut defendre comme politique optimale les subventions aux exportateurs dans la phase initiale de production de leur bien ce memoire developpe un modele dynamique de mise en valeur optimale des marches etrangers et examine quel type d intervention est justifiee quelle intensite de support est necessaire et a quel moment cette aide doit etre modifiee a mesure que le temps passe l auteur examine aussi les implications pour la structure de la production de la consommation et du commerce de ce type d intervention ainsi que ses effets sur le niveau de bien etre des individus et de la collectivite l emprunt international permet d amortir le choc de pertes de bien etre importantes dans les phases initiales de la subvention des exportations

corporate pension policy an empirical investigation an empirical investigation of pension funding levels and plan asset allocations suggests that corporations manage their pension funds as if they are an integral part of overall corporate financial policy this corporate financial perspective contrasts with the traditional view of pension management whereby pension assets are seen as a separate pool to be managed in the best interests of beneficiaries the primary evidence concerns the links between corporate profitability and pension policies first reported pension fund liabilities are linked systematically to company profitability by management s choice of a discount rate more profitable firms tend to choose lower discount rates hence to overstate their pension liabilities relative to those of less profitable firms second profitability has a strong positive association with funding level the proportion of pension assets invested in fixed income securities also has a positive association with funding level corporations with taxable income can maximize tax savings by having fully funded plans invested in heavily taxed securities such as bonds evidence regarding specific motivations behind the corporate pension perspective emerges when the sample is investigated more closely for example the subsample of firms with the heaviest tax burdens exhibits a significant relation between level of funding and tax paying status similarly the subsample of riskiest firms tends to hold underfunded portfolios invested in riskier assets stocks rather than bonds this is consistent with the presence of a pbgc insurance effect the tendency of less financially sound firms to lay off their pension burden on the pension benefit guaranty corporation

political risk institutions and foreign direct investment how do they relate in various european countries this paper examines theoretically and empirically the extent to which the decision by foreign firms to invest in a group of countries is influenced by economic factors as opposed to political risk and institutional performance we consider the importance of these factors as drivers of foreign direct investment fdi for 32 european countries subsequently divided into three pooled clusters by means of panel regression techniques in two specifications over the 1995 2008 period our results suggest that risk and institutional factors considered in both static and dynamic perspectives significantly influence the behaviour of investors policies and institutions that vary widely between countries modify their decision making so that the purely economic factors have different statistical significance and impacts on the intensity of fdi as was revealed by clustering countries into three groups according to levels of economic maturity additionally not all factors of risk have an identical impact on fdi decisions in particular groups of countries however we find that as measures of political risk monetary discipline low regulation effective government and good education prove to be highly significant for most country groupings all of these measures reduce political risk and positively affect the level of fdi this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

china s technology spillover effects in the countries along the belt and road evidence from 49 bri countries china s aims for the belt and road initiative bri are to improve the trade and investment conditions along the bri routes and develop a value sharing platform with countries along the route to p

pension deficits an unnecessary evil many companies believe that underfunding pension plans is an inexpensive way to borrow from employees and that mismatching equity investments to bondlike pension promises creates shareholder value to the contrary financial economics calls for fully funding and immunizing accrued pensions for nonguaranteed pensions inadequate funding magnifies employees exposure to their employers financial health exposure that they cannot diversify fully securing the pensions eliminates this inefficiency in employee compensation governmental guarantees eliminate the employees pension risk but invite weak sponsors to extract subsidies from strong ones through underfunding a statutory requirement of full funding and immunization would eliminate these subsidies

financial development and economic growth a meta analysis we analyze 1334 estimates from 67 studies that examine the effect of financial development on economic growth taken together the studies imply a positive and statistically significant effect but the individual estimates vary widely we find that both research design and heterogeneity in the underlying effect play a role in explaining the differences in results studies that do not address endogeneity tend to overstate the effect of finance on growth while the effect seems to be weaker in less developed countries the effect decreases worldwide after the 1980s our results also suggest that stock markets support faster economic growth than other financial intermediaries

the use and abuse of meta analysis in environmental and natural resource economics an assessment motivated by the 2006 report of a work group appointed by the environmental protection agency epa this paper examines the present state of meta analysis in environmental economics and offers recommendations for its future use to this end we summarize and assess 140 meta analyses from 125 published and unpublished studies covering 17 topical categories in environmental and resource economics first we provide several generic meta analysis models as reference points and discuss major estimation issues five econometric issues are identified as part of a complete analysis 1 sample selection criteria 2 basic data summary 3 primary data heterogeneity 4 heteroskedasticity and 5 non independence of multiple observations from primary studies second a tabular summary is presented for the 140 meta analyses with respect to estimation methods third a narrative summary is presented for 19 meta analyses including the three value of statistical life studies examined by the epa work group and one analysis from each of 16 other categories fourth we offer a set of best practice guidelines for future meta analyses in this and other areas of economics last the paper comments on the use of meta analytic methods for benefit transfers of environmental values

the role of export subsisies when product quality is unknown abstract we explore the role of export subsidies when foreign goods are initially of unknown quality to domestic consumers absent export subsidies entry of high quality firms may be blocked by their inability to sell at prices reflecting their true quality export subsidies can break this entry barrier and increase welfare moreover even when high quality firms find it possible to signal their quality to consumers through an introductory pricing strategy a rolefor government policy can arise the signal low introductory price transfers surplus from foreign producers to domestic consumers and can be avoided with an appropriate export tax subsidy policy

the effect of regulation on optimal corporate pension risk abstract we study firms pension prefunding and portfolio allocation choices in a model in which firms trade off the need to compensate workers for the financial risk in their pension benefit against the cost advantage that may be gained by exploiting underpriced pension insurance in the absence of pension insurance the firm minimizes costs by rendering promised benefits free of risk to workers who are assumed to be unable to hedge firm specific risk various forms of government intervention such as benefit guarantees can alter this outcome dramatically by providing the firm with an incentive to shift risk to other parties in this case we find that the firm s decisions depend on among other influences the degree of insurance mispricing the amount of guaranteed benefits the stringency of minimum funding requirements and the costs of financial distress

the effect of fdi on environmental emissions evidence from a meta analysis one important and frequently raised issue about foreign direct investment fdi is the potentially negative consequences for the environment the potential environmental cost due to increased emissions may undermine the economic gains associated with increases in fdi inflow although the literature is dominated with this adverse view of fdi on the environment there is also a possibility that fdi can contribute to a cleaner environment especially if fdi comes with green technologies and this creates spillovers for domestic industries theoretically the effect of fdi on the environment can be negative or positive to deal with the theoretical ambiguity about the fdi environment nexus many empirical studies have been conducted but their results only reinforce the controversy as they produce contrasting results we conduct a meta analysis of the effect of fdi on environmental emissions using 65 primary studies that produce 1006 elasticities our results show that the underlying effect of fdi on environmental emissions is close to zero however after accounting for heterogeneity in the studies we find that fdi significantly reduces environmental emissions results remain robust after disaggregating the effect for countries at different levels of development as well as for different pollutants

pensions and wages an hedonic price theory approach this paper examines whether a trade off exists between the level of pension benefits and wages the 1983 survey of consumer finance is used to match detailed information on pension plans to worker characteristics for a random sample of the population the pension wage tradeoff is estimated using both a contractual model of the labor market and the spot market model used in previous studies the results indicate a large negative tradeoff in the contractual model but only a negligible tradeoff in the spot market model results from estimating the underlying structural equations for pensions are also presented copyright 1992 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

a meta analysis of fdi and productivity spillovers in developing countries markdownabstractthis meta analysis reviews the intrasector heterogeneity of productivity spillovers from foreign direct investment fdi in 31 developing countries through a larger more comprehensive data set we investigate how the inconsistencies in the reported spillover findings are affected by publication bias characteristics of the data estimation techniques and empirical specification analyzing 1450 spillover estimates from 69 empirical studies published in 1986 2013 our findings suggest that reported fdi spillover estimates are affected by publication bias in combination with model misspecification of the primary studies the bias overstates the genuine underlying meta effect but the meta effect remains economically and statistically significant our results emphasize that spillovers and their sign largely depend systematically on specification characteristics of the primary studies and publication bias publication bias is not caused by best practice choices future research needs to cover more developing countries and to investigate not only whether spillovers occur but also to explore inside the black box of how spillovers actually emerge

picture this a simple graph that reveals much ado about research funnel graphs provide a simple yet highly effective means to identify key features of an empirical literature this paper illustrates the use of funnel graphs to detect publication selection bias identify the existence of genuine empirical effects and discover potential moderator variables that can help to explain the wide variation routinely found among reported research findings applications include union productivity effects water price elasticities common currency trade effects minimum wage employment effects efficiency wages and the price elasticity of prescription drugs

does economic globalisation affect income inequality a meta analysis a large volume of econometric literature has studied the impact of economic globalisation on income inequality around the world however reported econometric estimates vary substantially which makes it difficult to draw valid conclusions this paper presents a quantitative summary and analysis of existing estimates regarding the globalisation inequality relationship we use a new data set consisting of 1 254 observations from 123 primary studies by applying meta analysis and meta regression methods we obtain several main findings first globalisation has a small to moderate inequality increasing effect second while the effect of trade globalisation is small financial globalisation shows a more sizeable and significantly stronger inequality increasing impact third we find an average inequality increasing impact of globalisation in both advanced and developing countries fourth education and technology moderate the impact of globalisation on income inequality

beyond publication bias abstract this review considers several meta regression and graphical methods that can differentiate genuine empirical effect from publication bias publication selection exists when editors reviewers or researchers have a preference for statistically significant results because all areas of empirical research are susceptible to publication selection any average or tally of significant insignificant studies is likely to be biased and potentially misleading meta regression analysis can see through the murk of random sampling error and selected misspecification bias to identify the underlying statistical structures that characterize genuine empirical effect meta significance testing and precision effect testing pet are offered as a means to identify empirical effect beyond publication bias and are applied to four areas of empirical economics research minimum wage effects union productivity effects price elasticities and tests of the natural rate hypothesis

protection and the product line monopoly and product quality the product line decision of a monopolist is analyzed and used to study the effect of specific and ad valorem taxes on the entire product line while specific taxes or quotas raise average quality ad valorem taxes may not the welfare consequences of such policies when the monopolist is a home one and when he she is a foreign one are discussed with a home monopolist both specific and ad valorem subsidies are welfare improving while with a foreign monopolist their welfare properties depend on the distribution of consumers copyright 1990 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

foreign capital and domestic productivity in the czech republic a meta regression analysis we provide a quantitative synthesis of the literature studying the effect of foreign direct investment fdi on the productivity of locally owned firms in the czech republic to this end we collec

incentive compatibility in signaling games with a continuum of types on donne deux resultats utiles pour demontrer l existence et pour caracteriser des equilibres de separation dans des jeux de signalement

the quality of export products and optimal trade policy this paper demonstrates that voluntary export restraints may be socially desirable to upgrade the quality of export products when informational externalities in the recognition of quality result in suboptimal production of quality by competitive firms and the enforcement of socially desirable quality is very costly optimal trade policy calls for export restrictions these restrictions apply to both size and number of firms in the export industry export licenses combined with a specific production tax cum subsidy represent a suitable pair of instruments copyright 1987 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

commercial policy and imperfect discrimination by a foreign monopolist this paper examines the effects of commercial policy and the qualit y of imports that are supplied by a multiproduct foreign monopolist th e author finds that a specific quota on some imported products leads to upgrading of the quality of imports and enhances national welfare a specific tariff which does not lead to a decrease in the varieties of imported products does not affect the quality of imports and result s in enhanced national welfare in contrast an ad valorem tariff leads to lower qualities of imported goods and lowers consumer surplus a general quota is undesirable since it results in a lower quality of imports and lower national warfare copyright 1988 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

what are corporate pension liabilities analyses of corporate pension plans often make unstated assumptions about an implicit labor contract an example of the effect of such an assumption is that many mistakenly believe that if a worker s benefits are tied to final salary he is protected against inflation until retirement also the value of a worker s claims is often considered to be independent of the status of the firm s pension fund these implicit contract assumptions are examined and questioned the implications of analyzed pension liabilities in a manner consistent with the analysis of other corporate liabilities are explored

when and where does foreign direct investment generate positive spillovers a meta analysis local firms may attract productivity spillovers from foreign investors yet these vary with local firms awareness capability and motivation to react to foreign entry in consequence spillovers vary across countries at different levels of economic development we apply competitive dynamics theory to analyze these contextual moderators of spillovers and test hypotheses thus derived in a meta analysis of the empirical literature on spillovers our analysis suggests a curvilinear relationship between spillovers and the host country s level of development in terms of income institutional framework and human capital

education and economic growth a meta regression analysis summary this paper surveys the literature which examines the effect of education on economic growth specifically we apply meta regression analysis to 57 studies with 989 estimates and show that there is substantial publication selection bias toward a positive impact of education on growth once we account for this the genuine growth effect of education is not homogeneous across studies but varies according to several factors specifically it is attributed to differences in education measurement and study characteristics mainly model specification as well as type of data used and the quality of research outlets where studies are published e g academic journals vs working papers

meta regression analysis a quantitative method of literature surveys abstract pedagogically literature reviews are instrumental they summarize the large literature written on a particular topic give coherence to the complex often disparate views expressed about an issue and serve as a springboard for new ideas however literature surveys rarely establish anything approximating unanimous consensus ironically this is just as true for the empirical economic literature to harmonize this dissonance we offer a quantitative methodology for reviewing the empirical economic literature meta regression analysis mra is the regression analysis of regression analyses mra tends to objectify the review process it studies the processes that produce empirical economic results as though they were any other social scientific phenomenon mra provides a framework for replication and offers a sensitivity analysis for model specification in this brief essay we propose a new method of reviewing economic literature mra and discuss its potential

are all economic facts greatly exaggerated theory competition and selectivity there is growing concern and mounting evidence of selectivity in empirical economics most empirical economic literatures have a truncated distribution of results the aim of this paper is to explore the link between publication selectivity and theory contests this link is confirmed through the analysis of 87 distinct empirical economics literatures involving more than three and a half thousand separate empirical studies using objective measures of both selectivity and contests our meta meta analysis shows that publication selection is widespread but not universal it distorts scientific inference with potentially adverse effects on policy making but competition and debate between rival theories reduces this selectivity and thereby improves economic inference

symmetric equilibrium existence and optimality in differentiated product markets abstract equilibrium existence and optimality are analysed in a market for products differentiated by their variety a game of three stages is analysed firms enter in the first stage choose varieties in the second stage and choose prices in the third stage the existence of subgame perfect equilibria is established at equilibrium products are symmetrically located in the space of characteristics and are offered at equal prices the surplus maximizing solution is characterized and it is shown that surplus maximizing product diversity is lower than the equilibrium one

quality choice trade policy and firm incentives quality choice is examined in a duopoly with one foreign and one domestic firm where consumers have similar preferences for quality but different preferences for brands firms make quality commitments prior to choosing price and policy intervention assumes several forms the policy conclusions depend on whether firms face set up costs in raising product quality in the absence of set up costs both domestic and foreign firms make socially optimal quality choices in the presence of set up costs the foreign firm and often the domestic firm sets quality below the socially optimal level incomplete information alters these conclusions however copyright 1992 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

natural resources and economic growth a meta analysis summary an important question in development studies is how natural resources richness affects long term economic growth no consensus answer however has yet emerged with approximately 40 of empirical papers finding a negative effect 40 finding no effect and 20 finding a positive effect does the literature taken together imply the existence of the so called natural resource curse in a quantitative survey of 605 estimates reported in 43 studies we find that overall support for the resource curse hypothesis is weak when potential publication bias and method heterogeneity are taken into account our results also suggest that four aspects of study design are especially effective in explaining the differences in results across studies 1 controlling for institutional quality 2 controlling for the level of investment activity 3 distinguishing between different types of natural resources and 4 differentiating between resource dependence and abundance

development a study of the indian manufacturing industry if infrastructure tends to generate spillover externalities as has been the assumption in much of the development literature one may reasonably look for evidence of such indirect effects in the accounts of manufacturing industries empirical support for this assumption has so far been ambiguous this analysis of indian data however reveals substantial externality effects from the states infrastructure to manufacturing productivity the analysis separates the direct effects of roads and electricity as mediated by the infrastructure services purchased by manufacturing industries along with other intermediate inputs from the indirect effects as measured by the impact of infrastructure capacity on the solow productivity residual in the 20 years from 1972 to 1992 growth of road and electricity generating capacity seems to have accounted for nearly half the growth of the productivity residual of india s registered manufacturing

guaranteed trouble the economic effects of the pension benefit guaranty corporation how did the pension benefit guaranty corporation a government corporation created to insure the pensions of workers and retirees in bankrupt firms end up facing financial distress of its own how did an organization designed to strengthen retirement security come to be seen as contributing to retirement insecurity the superficial answer is that the pbgc s current funding problem arises from the decline in stock market prices in 2000 which reduced pension assets and the fall in interest rates at about the same time which boosted the present value of pension liabilities but more fundamentally much of the blame for the poor financial state of the pbgc as well as the defined benefit system more generally lies in some major design flaws of the pbgc pension insurance program specifically the pbgc has 1 failed to properly price insurance and thus encouraged excessive risk taking by plan sponsors 2 failed to promote adequate funding of pension obligations and 3 failed to promote sufficient information disclosure to market participants together these three flaws produced a system in which many firms fail to adequately fund their pension obligations knowing that in financial distress they can dump their pension liabilities onto the pbgc though the pension protection act of 2006 made some progress in improving the pbgc program it failed to correct these three major problems fully absent further reform substantial problems will continue to plague the private defined benefit pension system in decades to come to prevent this deterioration this paper concludes that congress should transfer much of the responsibility for defined benefit pension insurance to compulsory private markets

oligopolistic competition and international trade quantity and quality restrictions abstract we examine trade restrictions such as quantity and quality limitations on imports in an oligopolistic industry consisting of foreign and domestic firms we find that the effects of trade policy hinge on the location of the quality produced by the firms in the quality spectrum a quota leads to positive protection while minimum quality standards leads to negative protection furthermore minimum standards lower national welfare and a quota has an ambiguous effect on welfare

valuation optimal asset allocation and retirement incentives of pension plans we provide a framework in which we link the valuation and asset allocation policies of defined benefits plans with the lifetime marginal productivity schedule of the worker and the pension plan formula in turn we examine the retirement policies that are implied by the primitives of the model and the value of pension obligations our model provides an explicit valuation formula for a stylized defined benefits plan the optimal asset allocation policies consist of the replicating portfolio of the pension liabilities and the growth optimum portfolio independent of the pension liabilities we show that the worker will retire when the ratio of pension benefits to current wages reaches a critical value which depends on the parameters of the pension plan and the discount rate using numerical techniques we analyze the feedback effect of retirement policies on the valuation of plans and on the asset allocation decisions article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

how to solve the price puzzle a meta analysis the short run increase in prices following an unexpected tightening of monetary policy constitutes a frequently reported puzzle yet the puzzle is surprisingly easy to explain away when all published models are quantitatively reviewed we collect about 1 000 point estimates of impulse responses from 70 articles using vector autoregressive models and present a simple method of research synthesis for graphical results our ndings indicate publication selection in favor of the intuitive response of prices to a tightening the estimates depend systematically on study design when misspecications are

measuring intertemporal substitution the importance of method choices and selective reporting i examine 2 735 estimates of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption eis reported in 169 published studies the literature shows strong selective reporting researchers discard negative and insignicant estimates too often which pulls the mean estimate up by about 0 5 the reporting bias dwarfs the effects of methods with the exception of the choice between micro and macro data when i correct the mean for the bias for macro estimates i get zero even though the reported t statistics are on average two the corrected mean of micro estimates of the eis for asset holders is around 0 3 0 4 calibrations greater than 0 8 are inconsistent with the bulk of the empirical evidence jel e21 c83

trade policy and its impact on quality of imports this paper examines the role of trade policies in influencing a foreign monopolist s decision on price quantity and in particular the quality of its product we show that a specific tariff leads to higher quality whereas an ad valorem tariff usually does the opposite quotas and specific tariffs are shown to be equivalent and both dominate an ad valorem tariff in terms of welfare we also show that subjecting imports to minimum quality requirements hampers national welfare finally we present a comprehensive ranking of all the policy instruments considered in this paper

survey article publication bias in the literature on foreign direct investment spillovers abstract in this article we conduct a large quantitative survey of the literature on horizontal and vertical spillovers from foreign direct investment fdi we create a unique database of spillover estimates for each country examined in the literature next we estimate the average effect corrected for publication selection bias the preferential selection of positive and significant estimates for publication our results suggest that an average reported estimate of backward spillovers is statistically significant publication selection is evident only among studies published in peer reviewed journals and only among the estimates that authors consider most important authors with small data sets engage in more publication selection the intensity of selection in the literature decreases over time which supports the economics research cycle hypothesis

determinants of horizontal spillovers from fdi evidence from a large meta analysis summary the voluminous empirical research on horizontal productivity spillovers from foreign investors to domestic firms has yielded mixed results in this paper we collect 1 205 estimates of spillovers and examine which factors influence spillover magnitude our results suggest that horizontal spillovers are on average zero but that their sign and magnitude depend systematically on the characteristics of the domestic economy and foreign investors foreign investors who form joint ventures with domestic firms and who come from countries with a modest technology edge create the largest benefits for the domestic economy

does government spending affect income inequality a meta regression analysis in this paper findings of a meta regression analysis are presented exploring the effects of government spending on income inequality with a particular focus on low and middle income countries we identify a total of 84 separate studies containing over 900 estimates of the effect of one or more measures of spending on one or more measures of income inequality the results show some evidence of a moderate negative relationship between government spending and income inequality which is strongest for social welfare and other social spending and when using the gini coefficient or the top income share as the measure of inequality however both the size and direction of the estimated relationship between government spending and income inequality is affected by a range of other factors including the control variables and estimation method used we also find evidence of publication bias in that negative estimates of the relationship appear to be under reported in the literature

active labor market policy evaluations a meta analysis this article presents a meta analysis of recent microeconometric evaluations of active labour market policies we categorise 199 programme impacts from 97 studies conducted between 1995 and 2007 job search assistance programmes yield relatively favourable programme impacts whereas public sector employment programmes are less effective training programmes are associated with positive medium term impacts although in the short term they often appear ineffective we also find that the outcome variable used to measure programme impact matters but neither the publication status of a study nor the use of a randomised design is related to the sign or significance of the programme estimate

seeing the forest through the trees a meta analysis of political budget cycles despite a vast number of articles the political budget cycle literature contains many conflicting theories and empirical results i conduct the first ever meta analysis of this literature in order to establish whether a link between elections and government budgets exists using data on 1198 estimates across 88 studies published between 2000 and 2015 i find evidence of a statistically significant yet substantively small increase in government expenditures and public debt around elections and reductions in revenues and fiscal balance using meta regression analysis combined with bayesian model averaging i find support for some of the context conditional theories in the literature although the findings of political budget cycles are robust to publication bias as well as some of the methodological and study specific choices authors are forced to make they also shed light on how certain decisions may affect a study s findings this has implications for current and future research on political budget cycles

does government spending affect income poverty a meta regression analysis summary this paper presents the results of a meta regression analysis of the relationship between government spending and income poverty with a focus on low and middle income countries through a comprehensive search and screening process we identify a total of 19 cross country econometric studies containing 169 estimates of this relationship we find that the size and direction of the estimated relationship are affected by a range of factors most notably the composition of the sample used for estimation the control variables included in the regression model and the type of government spending overall we find no clear evidence that higher government spending has played a significant role in reducing income poverty in low and middle income countries this is consistent with the view that fiscal policy plays a much more limited redistributive role in developing countries in comparison with oecd countries in addition we find that the relationship between government spending and poverty is on average less negative for countries in sub saharan africa and more negative for countries in eastern europe and central asia compared to other regions we also find that the relationship is less negative for government consumption spending in comparison with other sectors finally we find some evidence indicating the possibility of publication bias

income elasticity of gasoline demand a meta analysis abstract in this paper we quantitatively synthesize empirical estimates of the income elasticity of gasoline demand reported in previous studies the studies cover many countries and report a mean elasticity of 0 28 for the short run and 0 66 for the long run we show however that these mean estimates are biased upwards because of publication bias the tendency to suppress negative and insignificant estimates of the elasticity we employ mixed effects multilevel meta regression to filter out publication bias from the literature our results suggest that the income elasticity of gasoline demand is on average much smaller than reported in previous surveys the mean corrected for publication bias is 0 1 for the short run and 0 23 for the long run

time series minimum wage studies a meta analysis time series minimum wage studies a meta analysis author s david card and alan b krueger reviewed work s source the american economic review vol 85 no 2 papers and proceedings of the hundredth and seventh annual meeting of the american economic association washington dc january 6 8 1995 may 1995 pp 238 243 published by american economic association stable url http www jstor org stable 2117925 accessed 04 11 2011 15 46

trade policy and quality leadership in transition economies trade policy and quality leadership in transition economies are analyzed in a duopoly model of trade and vertical product differentiation we first show that the incidence of trade liberalization is sensitive to whether firms in transition economies are producers of low or high quality second we find that neither free trade nor the absence of a domestic subsidy are optimal both a tariff and a subsidy increase price competition and while the former extracts foreign rents the latter results in quality upgrading third there exists a rationale for a government to commit to a socially optimal policy to induce quality leadership by the domestic firm when cost asymmetries are low finally we establish an equivalence result between the effects of long run exchange rate changes and those of trade policy on price competition but not on social welfare

import competition product quality reversal and welfare abstract we investigate product quality in an import competing country using the framework of vertical product differentiation comparison of three polices suggests that the quality based r d subsidy brings quality reversal leading to a win win win equilibrium in consumer surplus domestic profit and social welfare

eco labels trade and protectionism eco labels are suspected to serve protectionist purposes we analyze the choice between an environmental standard and a voluntary eco label scheme in a partial trade model with one domestic firm and one foreign firm the environmental standard will only apply to the domestic firm while both firms can adopt the eco label pollution is production related and domestic consumers demand products that are produced in an environmentally friendly way our results show that it may be optimal for the domestic government to introduce an eco label and get both firms to adopt the label instead of setting an environmental standard however to what extent this policy serves protectionist purposes is ambiguous in particular if the willingness to pay for green products is sufficient to cover the pollution abatement costs of the foreign firm foreign firm profit will increase while domestic firm profit will decrease compared to the outcome with a domestic environmental standard on the other hand if the willingness to pay for green products is insufficient the foreign firm would be better off with a domestic environmental standard