financial markets and growth the last five years have witnessed a resurgence of interest in the relationship between financial intermediation and economic growth this issue had been extensively studied nearly two decades earlier by goldsmith 1969 mckinnon 1973 shaw 1973 and others who produced considerable evidence that financial development correlates with growth but their work though insightful lacked analytical foundations in traditional growth theory financial intermediation could be related to the level of the capital stock per worker or to the level of productivity but not to their respective growth rates the latter were ascribed to exogenous technical progress the recent revival of interest in the link between financial development and growth stems mainly from the insights and techniques of endogenous growth models which have shown that there can be self sustaining growth without exogenous technical progress and that the growth rate can be related to preferences technology income distribution and institutional arrangements this provides the theoretical underpinning that early contributors lacked tinancial intermediation can be shown to have not only level effects but also growth effects the resulting models have offered important insights into the effect of financial development on growth and vice versa they have also provided new impetus to empirical research on these issues this paper reviews the ground covered so far on the theoretical and empirical front and points to some still unresolved issues

estimating residential demand for electricity in greece abstract this paper examines the residential demand for electricity in greece the issues of structural stability price and income sensitivity of both long and short run residential demand for electricity in greece were examined employing monthly data over the period 1986 1999 the long run residential demand for electricity is estimated taking into account changes in weather conditions weighted by the size of the population employing multivariate framework analysis a long run residential demand function for electricity sensitive to real income price level and weather conditions is found to exist and the importance of short run deviations is presented using vector error correction model vecm estimation the empirical evidence suggests the presence of a stable residential demand for electricity in greece both in the long and short run periods and the policy implications of such a relationship are presented

is development path dependent or political a reinterpretation of mineral dependent development in botswana abstract poor management of earnings from valuable natural resources results in a syndrome known as dutch disease characterised by real exchange rate appreciation high labour costs and structural imbalances in economic development often a product of rentier politics dutch disease undermines long term economic performance in resource dependent economies resulting in a resource curse the conventional wisdom argues that institutions and state development at the time of a resource boom lock countries into divergent developmental trajectories i argue that political coalitions lay the foundation for development of state and other institutions and that changes in coalitions drive changes in policy responses to resource booms botswana s experience illustrates the argument botswana has not entirely avoided symptoms of dutch disease but has kept them largely in check despite the fragility of state institutions when diamonds were discovered a broad and stable political coalition during the first decade

forecasting residential electricity consumption in greece using monthly and quarterly data abstract this paper studies electricity consumption household use only in greece we explore the dynamic relationships among several potentially relevant time series variables and develop appropriate models for forecasting it is apparent that personal disposable income temperature and the price of electricity used by the households play an important role in the demand for electricity in this study we use both monthly and quarterly data and find that the performance of quarterly models may not be as good as that of the monthly ones for transfer function model identification we use the linear transfer function ltf method which is more efficient and easier to use than the traditional cross correlation ccf method

the resource curse revisited governance and natural resources the paper analyzes the impact of natural resource abundance on selected governance indicators we use a panel data set with observations on a large number of countries over an extended period of time and employ an instrumental variable technique to account for endogeneity the results show that exports of natural resources have above all led to an increase in corruption this result is robust to both different model specifications and an alternative indicator for natural resource abundance for other governance indicators such as law and order and bureaucratic quality we either find no results or results that lack robustness

opec and the international oil market can a cartel fuel the engine of economic development abstract the opec cartel was formed to promote two economic goals one microeconomic low oil market volatility the other macroeconomic promotes economic development of its members these goals create a tension since the cartel s single tool is output quotas using this dual micro macro perspective we analyze oil exporting countries behavior we find that the effects of the cartel s choices will be reflected in oil market stability long term macroeconomic development and international oil market structure if an oil producing country cares about both oil industry profits and macroeconomic stability the goal of output stability may be inconsistent with cartel membership

dutch disease effect of oil rents on agriculture value added in middle east and north african mena countries abstract this paper investigates the effect of oil rents on agriculture value added in oil producing middle east and north african mena countries annual data from 1970 to 2011 panel cointegration tests by pedroni 1999 long ran panel causality tests by canning and pedroni 2008 and two step system gmm by blundell and bond 1998 are used in this study we find a negative relationship between oil rents and agriculture value added in the long run with a rather slow rate of short run adjustment of agriculture value added back to equilibrium after a boom in oil rents these results indicate that an oil sector boom is associated with a contraction in the agriculture sectors of the countries in the panel in the long run this is probably attributable to a resource movement effect from other economic sectors to the booming oil sector in these countries this serves as evidence of a dutch disease effect of an oil sector boom on agriculture in the mena countries in this study

estimating the permanent income elasticity of government expenditures evidence on wagner s law based on oil price shocks this paper provides instrumental variable estimates of the permanent income elasticity of government expenditures it uses annual variation in the international oil price weighted with countries average oil net export gdp shares as a plausibly exogenous source of within country variation in countries permanent income the short run estimates of the permanent income elasticity are robust across alternative specifications and are below one the estimated elasticity coefficients range between 0 3 and 0 6 and have standard errors of 0 1 and 0 4 respectively point estimates of long run elasticities are somewhat larger but still smaller than unity the investment component of government spending is found to be more elastic than the consumption component whereas elasticity differences between rich and poor countries are insignificant

explaining differences in public sector efficiency evidence from russia s regions summary using the case of russia s regions this paper extends the literature on public sector efficiency in three directions an attempt to better understand differences in public sector efficiency through the study of subnational governments in one country the first examination of public sector efficiency of subnational governments in emerging markets and the first study of public sector efficiency in russia three types of scores of public sector performance and efficiency indicate substantial differences across regions an econometric examination suggests that they are largely explained by per capita income the share of federal transfers in subnational government revenue quality of governance and democratic control and the level of spending

natural resources and internal conflict we present a model of conflict in which each group decides to claim the country s income and invest in arms or to accept a group neutral allocation of income and not invest in arms apart from the usual cooperative or conflictual societies their strategic choice can result in hierarchically stratified societies in which one group is dominant we show how the presence and exploitation of certain types of resources matters for the occurrence of conflict or social hierarchical stratification and for the possible effects of trust manipulation in particular we find that first robust encompassing point and lootable resource rich economies tend to be conflictual plantation economies hierarchically stratified and diversified economies cooperative second foreign intervention aimed at changing the balance of power in the case of conflict is most effective in robust and diffuse resource rich economies third trust manipulation as a means to counter conflict is most effective in subsistence and diffuse resource rich economies throughout the article we cite ample case study and econometric evidence to support our model

the political economy of resource driven growth abstract in recent decades resource poor countries have out performed resource abundant ones a stylised facts model of competitive industrialisation describes the long run development of a resource poor country with a political state that is developmental only minor change is required to adapt the model to trace the development trajectory of a resource abundant country with a similar political state however most resource abundant countries engender a political state that is factional or predatory and distorts the economy in the pursuit of rents a staple trap model describes the development trajectory under these conditions the model predicts a growth collapse from which recovery is protracted especially for small economies that lack a niche trade link with a large economy

the chinese box the opaque economic borders of the chinese state although the state in china is no longer all encompassing as it had been during the pre 1979 centrally planned period it still reaches into numerous areas of the economy notably through its continuing ownership of state owned enterprises as a result china poses a paradox in that it has incomplete property rights and rule of law which are thought to be essential for growth there are though numerous inefficiencies associated with such a gradual transition which may have maintained a stable growth rate in the past but could hamper future economic development as a key example state owned firms continue to benefit from financial repression in which they received preferable allocations of credit thus china s high savings rate fuels investment which has driven growth but is increasingly inefficient as credit is funnelled to the less productive soes this inefficiency points to the need for legal and institutional reforms which may conflict with the still broad but opaque borders of the chinese state copyright 2011 oxford university press

on the determinants of local government performance a two stage nonparametric approach abstract this article analyzes the efficiency of local governments in the comunitat valenciana spain and their main explanatory variables the analysis is performed in two stages firstly efficiency is measured via nonparametric activity analysis techniques specifically we consider both data envelopment analysis dea and free disposable hull fdh techniques the second stage identifies some critical determinants of efficiency focusing on both political and fiscal policy variables in contrast to previous two stage research studies our approach performs the latter attempt via nonparametric smoothing techniques rather than econometric methods such as ols or tobit related techniques results show that efficiency scores especially under the nonconvexity assumption fdh are higher for large municipalities thus there is empirical evidence to suggest that resources may be better allocated by large municipalities however the inefficiency found is not entirely attributable to poor management as second stage analysis reveals both fiscal and political variables to be explicably related to municipality performance moreover the explanatory variables impact on efficiency is robust to the chosen technique either convex dea or nonconvex fdh

analisis de la eficiencia del gasto municipal y de sus determinantes en este estudio se analizo la eficiencia del gasto local en 1686 municipalidades del pais para elano 2003 mediante la interpretacion de las actividades publicas locales como un proceso de produccion que transforma inputs en outputs bradford et al 1969 y fisher 1996 se establecieron para ello diversas fronteras de produccion construidas a partir de los mejores resultados dentro de grupos de municipalidades y luego se estimo la eficiencia relativa como la distancia a dichas fronteras se utilizaron cinco metodologias para la estimacion de las fronteras de produccion i 3 no parametricas free disposal hull fdh y data envelopment analysis dea crs ydea vrs y ii dos parametricas una deterministica y otra estocastica las cuales se estimaron a traves de las diez categorias de municipalidades cuatro provinciales y seis distritales definidas mediante una metodologia de conglomerados finalmente a partir del empleo de modelos de regresion de tipo tobit se analizaron los determinantes fiscales socioeconomicos y demograficos de los niveles de eficiencia encontrados los resultados obtenidos son diversos y varian segun la categoria del municipio analizado a pesar que fue posible identificar algunas buenas practicas municipales los resultados a nivel nacional son preocupantes puesto que indican que se podria alcanzar la misma provision de bienes y servicios municipales con 57 6 menos recursos entre los principales determinantes de este gasto ineficiente se encontraron las transferencias de los recursos del foncomun y del canon sobre todo a nivel distrital mientras que uno de los factores que permitio una provision mas eficiente de los servicios publicos locales fue la participacion ciudadana aproximada por la presencia de los consejos de coordinacion local en el marco de la promulgacion del decreto supremo 068 2006 pcm en octubre de 2006 por el cual se establece la culminacion de las transferencias de competencias y funciones inicialmente programadas para el periodo 2006 2010 hacia fines del ano 2007 los resultados obtenidos resaltan la necesidad de concentrar mayores esfuerzos para mejorar la eficiencia del gasto a nivel local in this study we analyzed the efficiency of the spending of 1686 peruvian municipalities for the year 2003 through the evaluation to the municipal public activities as a process of production which transforms inputs in outputs bradford et al 1969 and fisher 1996 in doing so we established several best practice production frontiers in order to estimate the extent of municipal spending that seems to be wasted relative to that frontier five methodologies for the production frontier estimations were used i three non parametric i free disposal hull fdh and data envelopment analysis dea crs and dea vrs and ii two parametric one deterministic and the other stochastic which were estimated through ten categories of municipalities four groups of provincial and six of district municipalities defined through a cluster methodology finally using tobit regression models we analyzed the fiscal socioeconomics and demographic determinants of the efficiency levels we found different levels of efficiency and although we identified some good practices the result at the national level is matter of concern because the same results could have been obtained with 57 6 less resources among the main determinants of this inefficiency spending the foncomun and canon transfers were found mainly at the district municipal level one of the factors that allowed for a more efficient provision of local services was the civil participation represented in the study by the local coordination council the results of the study show that there is a need to make more efforts to improve the local government spending even more so after the promulgation of the supreme decree 068 2006 pcm in october 2006 by virtue of which the culmination of the competences and function transfers process initially programmed for 2006 2010 brought forward to the end of 2007

bank size and small and medium sized enterprise sme lending evidence from china using panel data collected in 2005 we evaluate how bank size discretion over credit incentive schemes competition and the institutional environment affect lending to small and medium sized enterprises in china we deal with the endogeneity problem using instrumental variables and a reduced form approach is also applied to allow for weak instruments in estimation we find that total bank asset is an insignificant factor for banks decision on small and medium enterprise sme lending but more local lending authority more competition carefully designed incentive schemes and stronger law enforcement encourage commercial banks to lend to smes

long and short run elasticities of residential electricity consumption in china a partial adjustment model with panel data abstractwhile it has stabilized in developed world the per capita residential electricity consumption rec in developing countries such as china is growing very rapidly and this trend is very likely to continue built upon a provincial level panel data we employ a partial adjustment model to investigate the future trend of rec in china and factors that affect it we estimate the income and price short term and long term elasticities for urban and rural china respectively and compare the results with rec studies in other countries or regions the findings provide useful information to understand how the rec would grow in china as household income increases and how effective that price could be as an intervention tool

the transition to a market economy pitfalls of partial reform we present a theory of a partial economic reform of a planned economy similar to the one that took place in russia since 1988 and in china earlier in such a reform some markets are liberalized in the sense that producers can sell output to whomever they want including private firms at free prices but at the same time must sell to state firms at state prices we show that such a reform can result in a substantial diversion of subsidized inputs away from state firms and toward private firms even when state firms value these inputs more the result may be a reduction of total output the simple analysis sheds light on many consequences of the soviet reform such as breakdown of coordination of production increased state policing of delivery quotas prohibitions of trading cooperatives and opposition to privatization the model also explains why partial reform failed in russia but worked in china

reform without losers an interpretation of china s dual track approach to transition this paper develops a simple model to analyze the dual track approach to market liberalization as a mechanism for implementing efficient pareto improving economic reform that is reform achieving efficiency without creating losers the approach based on the continued enforcement of the existing plan while simultaneously liberalizing the market can be understood as a method for making implicit lump sum transfers to compensate potential losers of the reform the model highlights the critical roles of enforcement of the plan for achieving pareto improvement and full liberalization of the market track for achieving efficiency we examine how the dual track approach has worked in product and labor market liberalization in china

contesting resources rent seeking conflict and the natural resource curse a growing empirical literature links natural resource abundance and pointiness to impeded economic growth and civil strife we develop rent seeking and conflict models that capture the most salient features of contests for resource rents and show how both resource abundance and geographical clustering can be associated with intense contests and sub optimal economic performance however we also show that these relationships are not necessarily monotonous pointiness can trigger more intense contests but can also facilitate the coordination on peaceful outcomes finally we show that contesting resources through violent conflict may yield superior outcomes from an economy wide perspective than contests through rent seeking

short run electricity demand forecasts in maharashtra this paper has tried to forecast monthly maximum electricity demand for the state maharashtra india using multiplicative seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average msarima method for seasonally unadjusted monthly data spanning from april 1980 to june 1999 the forecasted period is 18 months ahead from june 1999 this study s basic findings are that the series does not reveal any drastic change for the forecasted period it continues to follow the same trend along with the seasonal variation

resource intensity institutions and development summary we examine the relationship between resource abundance and several indicators of human welfare consistent with the existing literature on the relationship between resource abundance and economic growth we find that given an initial income level resource intensive countries tend to suffer lower levels of human development while we find only weak support for a direct link between resources and welfare there is an indirect link that operates through institutional quality there are also significant differences in the effects that resources have on different measures of institutional quality these results imply that the resource curse is a more encompassing phenomenon than previously considered and that key differences exist between the effects of different resource types on various aspects of governance and human welfare 2005 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

measuring local government spending efficiency evidence for the lisbon region afonso a and fernandes s 2006 measuring local government spending efficiency evidence for the lisbon region regional studies 40 39 53 the expenditure efficiency of portuguese local governments in 2001 was assessed using data envelopment analysis for production frontier estimation a composite municipal output indicator was constructed and input and output efficiency scores were computed for 51 portuguese municipalities in the region of lisbon and vale do tejo this allows a determination of the extent of municipal spending that seems to be wasted relative to the theoretical best practice frontier the results suggest that vale do tejo municipalities could achieve on average the same level of output allegedly using around one third fewer resources improving performance without necessarily increasing municipal spending municipal expenditure technical efficiency data envelopment analysis dea lisbon afonso a and fernandes s 2006 l efficacite de la depense de l administration locale d

energy consumption and economic growth a causality analysis for greece abstract this paper investigates the causal relationship between aggregated and disaggregated levels of energy consumption and economic growth for greece for the period 1960 2006 through the application of a later development in the methodology of time series proposed by toda and yamamoto 1995 at aggregated levels of energy consumption empirical findings suggest the presence of a uni directional causal relationship running from total energy consumption to real gdp at disaggregated levels empirical evidence suggests that there is a bi directional causal relationship between industrial and residential energy consumption to real gdp but this is not the case for the transport energy consumption with causal relationship being identified in neither direction the importance of these findings lies on their policy implications and their adoption on structural policies affecting energy consumption in greece suggesting that in order to address energy import dependence and environmental concerns without hindering economic growth emphasis should be put on the demand side and energy efficiency improvements

china india and the commodity boom economic and environmental implications for low income countries the international role of china has risen steadily for two decades and has become even more important in the current global recession the growing supply of labour intensive manufactured exports from china has been accompanied by a huge expansion in its imports both of raw materials and of skill intensive manufactured parts and components this offshoring of intermediates production by a large labour abundant economy has economic and environmental implications for other developing economies more recently the rapid expansion of the indian economy and trade indicates that it too will soon exert similar effects on global markets we sketch a model showing how the growth of these developing country giants generates adjustment pressures on other developing economies we discuss in particular how differences in relative factor endowments of resource rich economies can produce quite different outcomes in the context of product fragmentation and expanding commodity trade we also explore the effects on production trade environment and prospects for future growth in resource rich economies particularly in the context of weak institutions and other market failures we illustrate these different impacts by considering the cases of indonesia malaysia and thailand and highlight implications for growth development and policy

the economics of schooling production and efficiency in public schools n recent years public and professional interest in schools has been heightened by a spate of reports many of them critical of current school policy these policy documents have added to persistent and long standing concerns about the cost effectiveness and fairness of the current school structure and have made schooling once again a serious public issue as in the past however any renewed interest in education is likely to be short lived doomed to dissipate as frustration over the inability of policy to improve school practice sets in this frustration about school policy relates directly to knowledge about the educational production process and in turn to underlying research on schools although the educational process has been extensively researched clear policy prescriptions flowing from this research have been difficult to derive 2 there exists however a consistency to the research findings that does have an immediate application to school policy schools differ dramatically in quality

electricity demand in tunisia this paper examines the global electricity demand in tunisia as a function of gross domestic product in constant price the degree of urbanization the average annual temperature and the real electricity price per kwh this demand will be examined employing annual data over a period spanning almost thirty one years from 1976 to 2006 a long run relationship between the variables under consideration is determined using the vector autoregressive regression the empirical results suggest that the electricity demand in tunisia is sensitive to its past value any changes in gross domestic product and electricity price the electricity price effects have a negative impact on long run electricity consumption however the gross domestic product and the past value of electricity consumption have a positive effect moreover the causality test reveals a unidirectional relationship between price and electricity consumption our empirical findings are effective to policy makers to maintain the electricity consumption in tunisia by using the appropriate strategy

natural resources education and economic development economic growth since 1965 has varied inversely with the share of natural capital in national wealth across countries four main channels of transmission from abundant natural resources to stunted economic development are discussed a the dutch disease b rent seeking c overconfidence and d neglect of education public expenditure on education relative to national income expected years of schooling for girls and gross secondary school enrolment are all shown to be inversely related to the share of natural capital in national wealth across countries natural capital appears to crowd out human capital thereby slowing down the pace of economic development

does the rights hypothesis apply to china abstractusing firm level data from a world bank survey this paper examines how legal development in china relates to various firm decisions i find that a more active court system is associated with more investment more adoption of technology more innovation and more complex transactions specifically when a higher percentage of business disputes are resolved through the court system firms tend to have higher investment rates higher propensities to adopt new automated technology and higher probabilities of developing new products in addition they tend to have more nonlocal sales these findings are consistent with a sophisticated version of the rights hypothesis in which the rule of law eventually replaces relation based governance as a superior governance mechanism i find two limitations of china s legal system the court system does a better job facilitating the growth of state owned enterprises than of private firms and it protects local firms better than nonlocal firms

forecasting monthly peak demand of electricity in india a critique the nature of electricity differs from that of other commodities since electricity is a non storable good and there have been significant seasonal and diurnal variations of demand under such condition precise forecasting of demand for electricity should be an integral part of the planning process as this enables the policy makers to provide directions on cost effective investment and on scheduling the operation of the existing and new power plants so that the supply of electricity can be made adequate enough to meet the future demand and its variations official load forecasting in india done by central electricity authority cea is often criticized for being overestimated due to inferior techniques used for forecasting this paper tries to evaluate monthly peak demand forecasting performance predicted by cea using trend method and compare it with those predicted by multiplicative seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average msarima model it has been found that msarima model outperforms cea forecasts both in sample static and out of sample dynamic forecast horizons in all five regional grids in india for better load management and grid discipline this study suggests employing sophisticated techniques like msarima for peak load forecasting in india

energy demand and environmental taxes the case of greece the purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects that energy taxes may have on reducing environmental pollution in greece we study the demand for residential energy for the period 1965 1998 and on the basis of these estimates we make forecasts for co2 emissions in the coming years furthermore we develop alternative scenarios for tax changes and study their effects on co2 emissions according to our findings the harmonization of the greek energy taxes to the average european union levels implies an increase of total co2 emissions by 6 annually if taxes are raised however to the highest european union levels the co2 emissions are restricted significantly these empirical findings may indicate that environmental taxation cannot be the unique instrument for combating pollution

corruption and reduced oil production an additional resource curse factor prominent contributions to the resource curse literature suggest weak governance and corruption are important factors behind the wide welfare variations observed among oil producing countries how weak governance and corruption influence revenue management and expenditure decisions as well as the possible welfare benefits derived from oil are broadly discussed how they impact upon volumes of oil produced has however attracted little attention this paper combines a review of the resource curse and oil production literatures with findings from qualitative interviews with oil sector experts to appreciate the feasibility of connections between corruption and oil production below its potential we make particular reference to environments where regulatory institutions or political accountability are weak and focus primarily on producer government and oil firm relations drawing on insights from geology political science and economics we suggest suboptimal production solutions can impact volumes of oil actually produced and create constraints on long term revenues for oil producing countries we argue greater disclosure of information on oil production efficiency on a field by field and country by country basis will assist further investigation of the relationships between corruption and volumes of oil produced

estimating deficit probabilities with price responsive demand in contract based electricity markets studies that estimate deficit probabilities in hydrothermal systems have generally ignored the response of demand to changing prices in the belief that such response is largely irrelevant we show that ignoring the response of demand to prices can lead to substantial over or under estimation of the probability of an energy deficit to make our point we present an estimation of deficit probabilities in chile s central interconnected system between 2006 and 2010 this period is characterized by tight supply fast consumption growth and rising electricity prices when the response of demand to rising prices is acknowledged forecasted deficit probabilities and marginal costs are shown to be substantially lower

do revenues or expenditures respond to budgetary disequilibria the post world war ii increase in the size of the federal government has led to a number of theoretical and empirical investigations of the sources of this growth in particular economists have questioned whether increases in the size of the federal budget tend to be initiated by changes in expenditures followed by revenue adjustments by the reverse sequence or both friedman for example argues that governments adjust expenditures to the level of revenues so that control of taxation is essential to limit growth in government 13 alternatively the spend and tax model posits that revenues will be adjusted to finance any politically chosen level of expenditures a third perspective reflecting the institutional separation of allocation and taxation functions of the federal government hypothesizes the independent determination of revenues and expenditures the goal of this investigation is to test these three alternative theories of the budgetary process for the united states

oil revenue shocks and government spending behavior in iran abstract oil revenues play an important role in the political economy of iran on average 60 of the iranian government revenues and 90 of export revenues originate from oil and gas resources current international sanctions on iran have mainly targeted the oil production capacity of iran and its exports to the global markets in this study we analyze the dynamic effects of oil shocks on different categories of the iranian government expenditures from 1959 to 2007 using impulse response functions irf and variance decomposition analysis vdc techniques the main results show that iran s military and security expenditures significantly respond to a shock in oil revenues or oil prices while social spending components do not show significant reactions to such shocks

residential demand for electricity the case of greece this paper examines the determinants of residential electricity consumption in greece over the period 1961 86 the paper presents first a brief description of the evolution of residential electricity consumption then it proceeds in the estimation of elasticities of residential demand for electricity using a single equation model with the ridge regression method the paper concludes that i the residential demand for electricity is price inelastic and income elastic ii there is high substitutability between electricity and lpg iii during the examined period the number of consumers played a very important role in the expansion of electricity consumption in greece and iv there is no regional variation in residential electricity demand

natural resources institutional quality and economic growth in china the resource curse has been mainly studied using cross country samples in this paper we analyze a cross province sample from one country china we focus on the interplay between resource abundance institutional quality and economic growth using two different measures of resource abundance a stock resource reserves and a flow resource revenues and employing various econometric approaches including varying coefficient models we find that resource abundance has a positive effect on economic growth at the provincial level in china between 1990 and 2008 an effect that depends nonlinearly on institutional quality 1995 confidence in courts the west china development drive policy initiated in 2000 caused substantial changes which we investigate through a comparative panel data analysis

trade protectionism in australia its growth and dismantling protection from import competition was a defining feature of the birth of the australian federation in 1901 for the next 70 years the extent of protection grew and broadened from mainly tariffs to also involving import licencing after world war ii there was a one off 25 across the board cut in tariffs in 1973 and some dismantling of agricultural subsidies but that was followed by the re imposition of import quotas for the most protected manufactured goods then in the mid 1980s a new reformist government began a long process of dismantling all protection as part of an overall economic reform program that also involved de regulation privatization and moving to a flexible exchange rate the rewards included three decades of faster economic growth and an unprecedented rise in australians living standards this paper provides a history of economic thought on the pros and cons of protectionism for the small distant natural resource rich australian economy and a survey of the literature on the extent effects and political economy reasons behind the growth of australian protection and its eventual dismantling

minerals institutions openness and growth an empirical analysis competing explanations of the resource curse are tested using panel data the data support the existence of a mineral resource curse for developing countries with weak institutions consistent with the hypothesis that owners of mineral resources use weak institutions and openness to trade to stifle the development of human capital to the detriment of growth in other sectors of the economy manufacturing imports substitute for the development of domestic production so openness to trade correlates with lower growth in mineral dependent economies the dutch disease and debt overhang explanations of the resource curse are not supported

industrial policy reform in six large newly industrializing countries the resource curse thesis abstract all six large newly industrializing countries nics in this study favored an autarkic industrial policy aip in the 1950s aip required however the rapid build up of heavy and chemical industry hci which caused foreign exchange shortages if the hci matured slowly this is because the import and subsidy demands of the growing protected hci sector became too burdensome for the competitive primary sector whose rents shrank in relative importance as the economic structure evolved the two least well endowed nics abandoned aip early in favor of a competitive industrial policy cip which relied on labor intensive exports to earn foreign exchange and resulted in rapid economic growth in contrast the resource bonus of the four best endowed nics sustained aip longer but the longer aip lasted the harder it became to reform and the slow maturing hci sector adversely affected economic growth in this way the resource bonus became a curse rather than a blessing

funds from non renewable energy resources policy lessons from alaska and alberta abstract we document the use of energy natural resource funds in alaska and alberta and analyze theirs characteristics for further implementation in resource rich countries such funds allow dealing theoretically with intergenerational equity issues corruption and more general institutional problems the performance of both funds is very different depending on the management and composition choices but some policy lessons can be drawn from these two examples importantly the role of a public dividend policy is highlighted as a way to bypass corrupted institutions and to enhance quality of life for poorest people we also emphasize the need to deal with inflation to make the fund sustainable

measuring the importance of oil related revenues in total fiscal income for mexico revenues from oil exports are an important part of government budgets in mexico a time series analysis is conducted using monthly data from 1990 to 2005 examining three different specifications to determine how international oil price fluctuations and government income generated from oil exports influence fiscal policy in mexico the behavior of government spending and taxation is consistent with the spend tax hypothesis the results show that there is an inverse relationship between oil related revenues and tax revenue from non oil sources fiscal policy reform is urgently needed in order to improve tax collection as oil reserves in mexico become more and more depleted

managerial efficiency in local government implications on jurisdictional consolidation using data from maine estimates of size economies in the production of public education services are provided under the alternative assumptions of managerial efficiency and inefficiency while size economies were identified under the traditional assumption of managerial efficiency limited or no size economies were identified under the more general assumption of managerial inefficiency these results question the validity of the traditional economies of size literature and the jurisdictional consolidation policy which follows from the traditional literature

corruption and the political economy of resource based development a comparison of asia and sub saharan africa we model how the supply and demand for bribes affects resource use by an economy and the reinvestment of resource rents in other assets this requires adjusting the world bank s measure adjusted net savings for any rent dissipation due to corruption the impacts of corruption on long run changes and periodic growth in the adjusted net savings rate are estimated across african and asian economies from 1970 to 2003 corruption rather than resource dependency per se affects negatively the ability of african countries to reinvest resource rents in the short term but for asian countries corruption is less important than point resources corruption influences long run growth in adjusted net savings rates in all countries and is also the pathway through which this growth is affected by patterns of resource use trade and abundance

a reexamination of the conglomerate merger wave in the 1960s an internal capital markets view one possible explanation for bidding firms earning positive abnormal returns in diversifying acquisitions in the 1960s is that internal capital markets were expected to overcome the information deficiencies of the less developed capital markets examining 392 bidder firms during the 1960s we find the highest bidder returns when financially unconstrained buyers acquire constrained targets this result holds while controlling for merger terms and for different proxies used to classify firms facing costly external financing we also find that bidders generally retain target management suggesting that management may have provided companyspecific operational information while the bidder provided capital budgeting expertise