balancing skilled with unskilled migration in an urbanizing agricultural economy summary in the early stages of economic development the migration of unskilled workers contributes to labor intensive manufacturing production in middle income countries however the migration of skilled workers becomes the more important factor in economic progress evaluating the skill content of migration patterns therefore is essential to understanding migration s economic implications for this purpose we investigate the determinants of skilled and unskilled migration decisions in vietnam rural higher education is shown to promote knowledge intensive production by encouraging skilled individuals to migrate to cities in complementary fashion commercial farm development helps alleviate urban overcrowding by encouraging unskilled individuals to remain at home

evaluating the economic impact of international remittances on developing countries using household surveys a literature review abstract this literature review covers 50 recent empirical studies of the economic impact of international remittances on the developing world that are based on household survey data it begins by reviewing the considerable methodological problems confronting economic work on international remittances and then examines the strengths and weaknesses of various economic studies of the impact of remittances in the developing world on such outcomes as poverty and inequality health and education investment and savings labour supply and participation and economic growth it finds that while international remittances generally have a positive impact on poverty and health in the developing world remittances can have negative effects on labour supply education and economic growth

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

north american migration returns to skill border effects and mobility costs utilizing a utility maximizing roy type discrete choice model of worker location in canadian provinces and u s states that incorporates returns to skill amenities fixed costs distance langua

the financial development and growth nexus a meta analysis this is the accepted manuscript the final version is available from wiley at http onlinelibrary wiley com doi 10 1111 joes 12086 abstract

seasonal migration and agricultural production in vietnam abstract when markets are incomplete migration can have multiple effects on agricultural production i use instrumental variables techniques to explore the effects of seasonal migration on agricultural production in rural vietnam during the 1990s using network variables specific to vietnam as instruments i find that migrant households in north vietnam appear to move out of rice production and into the production of other crops inputs used by migrant households decrease relative to similar non migrant households the evidence is consistent with a shift from labor intensive into land intensive crops rather than productivity changes or the use of additional capital in production

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

rural urban migration household vulnerability and welfare in vietnam summary this paper investigates the interaction of migration vulnerability to poverty and welfare of rural households in three provinces in central vietnam it addresses three questions 1 to what extent do shocks motivate rural household members to move to urban areas 2 are migrants in the new urban settings better off in terms of working conditions and quality of life and 3 what is the effect of migration on rural household s welfare and vulnerability to poverty the analysis uses panel data of 2200 households from rural vietnam covering the period 2007 2010 and a tracking survey of 299 migrants from 2010 the empirical evidence from a probit model shows that migration especially migration for employment is a livelihood support strategy for households exposed to agricultural and economic shocks migration for education is more likely observed among households with higher human capital and being financially better off nevertheless the probability of migration decreases with the employment opportunity in the village migrants perceive themselves to be better off at the place of destination but income losses from shocks of their rural households may reduce their employment quality the results from difference in difference specifications with propensity score matching techniques suggest that migration has positive income growth effects and that these effects are more pronounced in provinces with fewer job opportunities these effects help not only migrant households moving out of poverty but it also improves the poverty situation in rural areas

empirical exercises in estimating the effects of different types of financial institutions functioning on economic growth while recent studies of the finance growth nexus have focused on the use of proxies which more accurately capture the theorized functioning of the financial sector they have tended to focus either on the functioning of the financial sector as a whole or on the dominant institutions within the sector little attention has been paid to a comparison of the relative effects of different types of financial institutions on economic growth this article attempts to get a deeper understanding of the finance growth process by disaggregating the total financial sector impact and examining the individual and relative effects of each type of institution in the financial sector we explore the empirical properties of alternative specifications of models of the impact of financial institutions functioning on economic growth by conducting a number of exercises these exercises experiment with various model specifications to represent the long and short run impacts of the financial institutions functioning on econo

is the relationship between financial development and economic growth monotonic evidence from a sample of middle income countries summary we revisit the relationship between financial development and economic growth in a panel of 52 middle income countries over the 1980 2008 period using pooled mean group estimations in a dynamic heterogeneous panel setting we show that there is an inverted u shaped relationship between finance and growth in the long run in the short run the relationship is insignificant this suggests that too much finance can exert a negative influence on growth in middle income countries the finding of a non monotonic effect of financial development on growth is confirmed by estimating a threshold model

interest rate reforms financial deepening and economic growth in cameroon an empirical investigation the impact of interest rate reforms on financial deepening and growth in cameroon is examined we employ five proxies of financial deepening against deposit rate a proxy for interest rate reforms the impact of interest rate reforms on financial deepening is sensitive to the proxy used for financial deepening the impact is almost negative and significant for all the indicators except for the ratio of broad money to gross domestic product where it is positive and significant in the first lag this means that financial repression helps improve broad money and hinders the development of the other indicators of financial development in cameroon

a theory of urban growth in an economy experiencing endogenous economic growth and exogenous population growth we explore two main themes how urbanization affects efficiency of the growth process and how growth affects patterns of urbanization localized information spillovers promote agglomeration and human capital accumulation fosters endogenous growth individual city sizes grow with local human capital accumulation and knowledge spillovers and city numbers generally increase which we demonstrate is consistent with empirical evidence we analyze whether local governments can successfully internalize local dynamic externalities in addition we explore how growth involves real income differences across city types and how urbanization can foster income inequality most nonagricultural production in developed countries occurs in metropolitan areas the underlying reasons why economic activity agglomerates into cities localized information and knowledge spillover also make cities the engines of economic growth in an we gratefully acknowledge support of the national science foundation grants sbr 9422440 and sbr9730142 for this research the work has benefited from conversations with harl ryder on the dynamics of the model and from comments by gilles duranton and participants in seminars at brown colorado and texas austin and a presentation at an isit seminar sponsored by the centre for economic policy research and the national bureau of economic research

financial development and economic growth international evidence the importance of the relationship between financial development and economic growth has been well recognized and emphasized in the field of economic development 1 although recent writings on this subject seem to accept the hypothesis that financial development is crucial for successful economic growth 2 patrick asked the critical question which sector financial or real leads in the dynamic process of economic development patrick identified two possible patterns in the causal relationship between financial development and economic growth in the first growth induces an expansion of the financial system 3 according to this view called demand following the lack of financial growth is a manifestation of the lack of demand for financial services as the real side of the economy develops its demands for various new financial services materialize and these are met rather passively from the financial side in the second pattern the expansion of the financial system precedes the demand for its services channeling scarce resources from small savers to large investors according to relative rates of return the financial sector precedes and induces real growth the deliberate establishment and promotion of financial institutions in many less developed countries ldcs might reflect this belief in the supply leading relationship between the two developments a natural question then concerns the direction of causality between financial development and economic growth patrick asserted that the direction of causality changes over the course of development in his view financial development is able to induce real innovation type investment before sustained modern economic growth gets under way and as the process of real growth occurs the supply leading impetus gradually becomes less important and the demand following financial response

military expenditures and economic growth in less developed countries an augmented model and further evidence a study of the impact of military expenditures on economic growth and development examines the differences in the results of previous studies which led to contradictory conclusions the authors find that these differences are due to sample variations specificational choices and the different time periods examined the data indicate that there is no consistent statistically significant connection between military spending and economic growth augmentation of the models suggests that military expenditures neither help nor hurt economic growth to any significant extent 2 tables

a survey of recent developments in the literature of finance and growth this paper provides a survey of the recent progress in the literature of financial development and economic growth the survey highlights that most empirical studies focus on either testing the role of financial development in stimulating economic growth or examining the direction of causality between these two variables although the positive role of finance on growth has become a stylized fact there are some methodological reservations about the results from these empirical studies several key issues unresolved in the literature are highlighted the paper also points to several directions for future research

the impact of migration on rural poverty and inequality a case study in china large numbers of agricultural labor moved from the countryside to cities after the economic reforms in china migration and remittances play an important role in transforming the structure of rural household income this article examines the impact of rural to urban migration on rural poverty and inequality in a mountainous area of hubei province using the data of a 2002 household survey since migration income is a potential substitute for farm income we present counterfactual scenarios of what rural income poverty and inequality would have been in the absence of migration our results show that by providing alternatives to households with lower marginal labor productivity in agriculture migration leads to an increase in rural income in contrast to many studies that suggest that the increasing share of nonfarm income in total income widens inequality this article offers support for the hypothesis that migration tends to have egalitarian effects on rural income for three reasons 1 migration is rational self selection farmers with higher expected return in agricultural activities and or in local nonfarm activities choose to remain in the countryside while those with higher expected return in urban nonfarm sectors migrate 2 households facing binding constraints of land supply are more likely to migrate 3 poorer households benefit disproportionately from migration

network effects and the dynamics of migration and inequality theory and evidence from mexico international migration is costly and initially only the middle class of the wealth distribution may have both the means and incentives to migrate which can increase inequality in the sending community however the migration networks formed lower the costs for future migrants which can in turn lower inequality this paper shows both theoretically and empirically that wealth has a nonlinear effect on migration and then examines the empirical evidence for an inverse u shaped relationship between emigration and inequality in rural sending communities in mexico after instrumenting we find that the overall impact of migration is to reduce inequality across communities with relatively high levels of past migration we also find some suggestive evidence for an inverse u shaped relationship among communities with a wider range of migration experiences

determinants and consequences of internal return migration in thailand and vietnam summary this paper draws a distinction between local return migrants who move back to their home village and regional return migrants who return to other places within their home provinces in thailand and vietnam using multinomial regressions we firstly analyze determinants of internal return migration and find that while local return migrants are lower educated than continuing migrants this negative human capital selection cannot be found for regional return migrants secondly after returning local return migrants often engage in agriculture while regional return migrants continue in nonfarm employment thereby diversifying the household income and consequently bringing potential for future economic development

the link between life insurance activities and economic growth some new evidence abstract this paper applies the panel seemingly unrelated regressions augmented dickey fuller suradf test to re investigate the stationarity properties of real life insurance premiums per capita and real gross domestic product gdp per capita for 41 countries within three levels of income covering 1979 2007 our empirical results first reveal that the variables in these countries are a mixture of i 0 and i 1 processes and that the traditional panel unit root tests could lead to misleading inferences second for the estimated half lives the degrees of mean reversion are greater in high income countries third there is concrete evidence favoring the hypothesis of a long run equilibrium relationship between real gdp and real life insurance premiums after allowing for the heterogeneous country effect the long run estimated panel parameter results indicate that a 1 increase in the real life premium raises real gdp by 0 06 finally we determine that the development of life insurance markets and economic growth exhibit long run and short run bidirectional causalities these findings offer several useful insights for policy makers and researchers

alternative econometric approaches for analysing the role of the financial sector in economic growth time series evidence from ldcs abstract the study determines and analyses the effects of financial intermediation on the growth of real gdp in ldcs by employing annual data for 71 countries over varying periods that generally span the 1960s and 1980s based on the modified version of the orthodox model framework and an entirely new model framework that recognizes the external effects of the financial sector on the real sector as well as effects of the financial sector on the productivities of factor inputs engaged therein we estimate regression equations for each country our findings are as follows a financial intermediation promotes economic growth in about 85 of the countries b as compared with factors that have often been emphasized in the literature viz export expansion capital formation ratio and labour force growth as important growth promoters financial intermediation is practically at par with export expansion and capital formation ratio and superior to labour force growth as partners in promoting economic growth c the growth promoting effects of financial intermediation are more predominant in low income than in high income ldcs and d the growth promoting effects of financial intermediation are practically invariant across the various regions of the globe

productivity measurement in industrial operations abstract conceptual foundations of productivity measures encompassing technical change technical efficiency scale efficiency and allocative efficiency are discussed three principal approaches to productivity measurement index measurement programming methods and econometric estimation are reviewed the merits uses information requirements and limitations of methods for the estimation of production and cost frontiers and their derivative productivity measures are assessed

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

the new economics of labor migration this paper reviews selected theoretical and empirical developments in the field of labor migration economics the migration behavior of individuals differs in accordance with their perceived relative deprivation those who are relatively more deprived tend to have stronger incentive to migrate than those who are relatively less deprived moreover a reference group characterized by more income inequality is likely to generate more relative deprivation highly skilled workers are also more likely to migrate migration decisions are often made jointly by the migrant and nonmigrant with a contractual arrangement regarding the sharing of costs and returns the exchange of commitments to share income provides coinsurance of particular interest are the determinants of the speed of adoption of migration as an innovation and the characteristics associated with the delay in the adoption of innovation new econometric techniques including techniques for the analysis of qualitative dependent variables techniques that correct for sample selection bias and those for the analysis of longitudinal data have substantially benefited empirical research in this area new methods that can correct for the biased estimate of the wages particular individuals would receive at 2 or more locations at the same point in time allow researchers to test locational decsion making models estimates of these structural models of labor migration support the hypothesis that individuals respond to income incentives in making the decsion to migrate further research is needed on the pazzling observation that migrant workers earn less than native born workers with similar characteristics during the 1st few years after migration but more thereafter other topics that need further research include the macroeconomic effects of migration the microeconomic and macroeconomic relationships between aging and labor migration and the migration behavior of dual earner families

financial innovations in banking impact on regional growth carbo valverde s lopez del paso r and rodriguez fernandez f 2007 financial innovations in banking impact on regional growth regional studies 41 311 326 this paper contributes to the literature on the relationship between finance and growth by analysing the relationships between financial intermediation and economic growth within the regions of one country rather than with different countries the focus on regions is relevant since regional information is more homogeneous the legal and institutional factors are similar and the relevant financial market is more accurately defined the study also incorporates the effects of a set of banking innovations the analysis is undertaken for the spanish regions the results show that product and service delivery innovations contribute positively to regional gross domestic product investment and gross savings growth carbo valverde s lopez del paso r et rodriguez fernandez f 2007 les innovations financieres dans le secteur bancaire l impact sur l

non linear growth effects of financial development does financial integration matter using both macro and industry level data this paper analyses the non linear effects of financial development and international financial integration on economic growth in europe special attention is devoted to modeling threshold effects with respect to the depth of financial markets as a measure of economies absorption capacity results reveal evidence of significant non linear effects with less developed european countries gaining more from financial development in contrast benefits of international financial integration become significant at higher levels of financial development the data show that monetary integration in europe significantly contributed to a higher degree of financial integration entry of new eu members to the european monetary union may thus be the mechanism ensuring a virtuous development circle as the adoption of the euro may allow the development of domestic financial markets and financial integration to go hand in hand

inter provincial migration and inequality during vietnam s transition abstract vietnam s economic boom during the transition to a market economy has centered on very rapid growth in some sectors and provinces yet poverty has diminished across the entire country with capital investments highly concentrated by province and sector geographic labor mobility may be critical in spreading the gains from growth conversely rising income inequality may be attributable in part to impediments to migration we first use census data to investigate migration patterns and determinants we then examine the role of migration as an influence on income ratios between pairs of provinces the former analysis robustly confirms economic motives for migration but also suggests the existence of poverty related labor immobility at the provincial level examination of income ratios between pairs of provinces reveals that the impact of migration on inequality can be either negative or positive a robust inequality reducing impact of migration is found for migration flows into provinces where most of vietnam s trade oriented industrial investments are located

self selection and internal migration in the united states abstract within the conceptual framework of the roy model this paper provides an empirical analysis of internal migration flows using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth the theoretical approach highlights regional differences in the returns to skills regions that pay higher returns to skills attract more skilled workers than regions that pay lower returns our empirical results suggest that interstate differences in the returns to skills are a major determinant of both the size and skill composition of internal migration flows persons whose skills are most mismatched with the reward structure offered by their current state of residence are the persons most likely to leave that state and these persons tend to relocate in states which offer higher rewards for their particular skills

financial determinants of domestic investment in sub saharan africa evidence from panel data abstract this study investigates the effects of financial development on domestic investment in a sample of 30 sub saharan african countries it is based on a dynamic serial correlation investment model including various indicators of financial development controlling for country specific fixed effects and nonfinancial factors of investment the results indicate a positive relationship between domestic investment total investment and private investment and various indicators of financial development higher financial development leads to higher future levels of investment implying a potent long run effect of financial development on domestic investment the findings imply that financial development can stimulate economic growth through capital accumulation