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

rural poverty and agricultural performance in india in earlier articles in this journal ahluwalia and saith came to opposite conclusions about the effect of agricultural growth on rural poverty in india our general model shows that the main reason for the difference in the conclusions is the different specification used for the estimating equation using the general model and the same data as ahluwalia and saith we are able to verify ahluwalia s result that agricultural growth reduces rural poverty our analysis also supports saith s conclusion that inflationary pressures increase rural poverty

agrifood grades and standards in the extended mercosur their role in the changing agrifood system is among the most important in terms of trade volumes in the developing world it contains global powerhouses of agroindustry and agriculture such as brazil ranked fourth worldwide and argentina and chile among the global frontrunners in meat and cereals and fruit respectively income growth and rapid urbanization are changing diets increasing the importance of processed foods and nonstaples as bennett s law predicts the most important nonstaples dairy vegetablesfruit meat and coffee have stringent export requirements with respect to g s in organization for economic cooperation and development oecd countries and mercosur domestic markets are themselves becoming more demanding in this regard the paper proceeds as follows section 2 presents definitions and theoretical hypotheses section 3 discusses policy and market determinants of changes in g s and highlights the importance of the emergence of privatized g s section 4 hypothesizes that the changes in g s are adding fuel to the forces of agrifood system concentration in the area section 5 concludes

poverty and public policy the problem of poverty is particularly acute in india with 14 of the world s population we have the misfortune of having almost twice as large a share of the world s poor indeed as i shall presently underline the question of poverty and its amelioration has been at the center of our concerns from the beginning of our planning efforts almost four decades ago little therefore can be said on it that some distinguished indian economist has not already said in some ways therefore to talk on the design of public policy for poverty to an indian audience is to carry coal to newcastle or as the old saying goes to teach your grandmother how to suck eggs nonetheless i hope to provide a fresh perspective by putting the problem into an explicit analytical framework that permits alternative policy designs to be sharply defined and contrasted i also intend to draw on international experience to put our efforts and problems into both historical and comparative perspectives

a meta analysis of the export growth hypothesis abstract meta analysis is performed on a sample of seventy six studies that have empirically gauged the nexus between exports and economic growth the results show that studies that use aggregate exports report lower t ratios but studies that use oil and manufactured exports report higher t ratios the study also documents the existence of publication bias in the literature

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

the economics of development a survey i the subject our definition of the subject will be the use of economic analysis to understand the economies of poor or developing countries this includes in particular how standards of living in the population are determined and how they change over time and further how policy can or should be used in the influence of these processes the definition contains in principle much or most of analytical methods in economics insofar as they can be put to use in the examination of the issues of interest this is as it should be but it poses a problem for a survey in a journal a comprehensive treatment is infeasible so we shall follow a different route the survey will focus on what i take to be the major themes and approaches which characterise the productive aspects of the subject there is therefore no pretence at being exhaustive the purpose is rather to highlight some of the advances many of these have been of real substance there are a number of possible purposes for a survey and it is important to be clear at the outset for whom it is intended what it is and what it is not this survey is addressed to economists and students of economics who know the tools of their trade but not necessarily how they have been applied to and fashioned for the analysis of the economics of developing countries it is a description of the ways in which problems can be productively formulated and approached in terms of examples chosen for their intrinsic importance and interest the vastness of the subject means that we have to be highly selective it does not seek to provide a summary evaluation of the current view of the appropriate response to immediate policy questions it is not a history of thought nor a research manifesto nor an attempt to adjudicate or settle the major debates where they arise naturally from the major purpose some judgements on these subjects will be offered but they do not themselves constitute the primary intent of this survey there are three lines of enquiry or sets of questions which have i suggest been distinctive of the most fruitful work in development economics they will

tariffs and growth in late nineteenth century america were high import tariffs somehow related to the strong u s economic growth during the late nineteenth century this paper examines this frequently mentioned but controversial question and investigates the channels by which tariffs could have promoted growth during this period the paper shows that i late nineteenth century growth hinged more on population expansion and capital accumulation than on productivity growth ii tariffs may have discouraged capital accumulation by raising the price of imported capital goods iii productivity growth was most rapid in non traded sectors such as utilities and services whose performance was not directly related to the tariff

nutrition and labor producvivity in agriculture estimates for rural south india using panel data for rural south india a fixed effects individual wage equation and farm production function are estimated that have calorie intake and nutritional status weight for height of workers as their arguments neither market wages nor farm output are observed to be responsive to changes in the daily energy intake of workers however both are highly elastic with respect to weight for height these results suggest that while the human body can adapt to inadequate nutrition in the short run it cannot adapt as readily to chronic malnutrition that eventually results in loss of weight for height copyright 1988 by mit press

cross sectional estimation of fdi spillovers when fdi is endogenous ols and iv estimates for mexican manufacturing industries cross sectional estimates of foreign direct investment fdi spillovers are biased when the variable capturing the cross industry variation of foreign participation is endogenous to the estimated regression model in this article i introduce an original instrument for this problematic fdi variable capturing the general fdi intensity of manufacturing industries i use this instrument to estimate fdi externalities in a cross section of mexican manufacturing industries the main findings show that in contrast to the common criticism that ordinary least squares ols estimation produces an upward bias in the estimated fdi externality effect for the sample of mexican manufacturing industries ols estimation causes a downward bias controlling for the tendency among foreign manufacturing firms to gravitate towards low productivity industries the instrumental variable estimations provide robust evidence of significantly larger positive fdi spillover effects

domestic constraints on export led growth a case study of india abstract in light of the 1991 1993 indian policy reforms this paper assesses the feasibility of a strategy of manufacturing export led growth for india by means of simulation experiments using a nine sector seven income classes computable general equilibrium model developed for india s seventh plan period 1985 1990 the relative merits of this strategy are compared to those of an alternative open development strategy agricultural demand led industrialization under both a fixed and flexible exchange rate regime compared to earlier models the analysis adds disaggregated agricultural supply and income distribution and export demand response the results suggest that industrial growth can be self defeating by raising the relative price of domestic goods and thereby running into an export demand bottleneck hence if a step up in manufacturing exports is to contribute to a non inflationary acceleration of gdp growth it needs to be supplemented by adequate policies aimed at raising agricultural output and income

the political economy of industrial growth in india w shy has industrial growth decelerated in india since the midig60s is it the result of a resource constraint leading us to look at policies affecting savings and taxation the result of a demand constraint leading us to look at income distribution policies or the misallocation of resources leading us to look at the politics of allocation and regulation has india suffered from too much bureaucratic control rather than profiting from the allocative efficiencies of the market or has there been too little public investment for the past several years there has been a debate over these questions among indian economists the debate began during prime minister indira gandhi s last years in office as she quietly initiated a process of economic liberalization but with rajiv gandhi as prime minister the issue of industrial policy has moved to the center of the political stage through his speeches his appointment of liberal economic advisors and the announcement of a new budget by a liberal finance minister the prime minister in effect declared that his government is committed to making the economy more competitive both internally and internationally that many bureaucratic controls are to be replaced by market processes and that more productive and efficient economic behavior will be stimulated through tax policies are these the right policies for accelerating industrial growth and if so are they politically feasible if the previous policies were not working why were they retained for so long what were their political as well as economic consequences and what are the likely constraints and consequences for the alternative policies proposed by rajiv gandhi s government these are the issues raised in the books under review they lead us to consider some of the fundamental questions concerning the political economy of development in india

trade liberalisation and the poverty of nations a review article trade liberalisation and the poverty of nations a p thirlwall and penelope pacheco lopez cheltenham edward elgar 2009 pp 264 59 95 and 19 95 isbn 978 1 84720 822 4 and 978 1 84844 814 8 th

is corruption grease grit or a gamble corruption increases variance of productivity across countries the effect of corruption on economic growth has attracted interest in empirical development economics the conventional view of corruption as impediment for growth has been challenged by the grease on the wheels hypothesis we take a new perspective on the issue and suggest corruption as macro risk referred to as a gamble hypothesis using cross country data and two alternative indicators of corruption we find corruption to be a significant driver of heteroscedasticity in total productivity this supports the new gamble hypothesis we also note some misleading interpretations in the previously published frontier applications to avoid these shortcomings we apply a flexible semi nonparametric estimator

the generalized theory of transfers and welfare bilateral transfers in a multilateral world paul samuelson s 1952 1954 classic papers on the transfer problem addressed two separate analytical issues the positive effect of a transfer on the terms of trade and the welfare effect of the transfer on the donor and the recipient since then a considerable body of literature has grown up on the positive analysis while samuelson 1954 himself had extended the 2 x 2 x 2 free trade analysis to allow for tariffs and transport costs subsequent writers have analyzed other extensions of the model for example to allow for nontraded goods as with leisure in samuelson 1971 or general nontraded goods in john chipman 1974 and ronald jones 1970 1975 remarkably however the welfare analysis of transfers has not paralleled these developments since wassily leontief 1936 produced an example of immiserizing transfer from abroad and samuelson 1947 argued that the example required market instability the proposition that has monopolized attention has been that a transfer in the conventional 2 x 2 x 2 model in its free trade version cannot immiserize the recipient or enrich the donor as long as world markets are stable in the walras sense interestingly samuelson 1954 who did extend the positive analysis to include tariffs did not go on to ask whether immiserization of the transfer recipient and hence symmetrically enrichment of the donor in a two country model could now arise consistent with market stability recently the welfare analysis of transfers has been extended in two different directions both apparently unconnected and both yielding the conclusion that transfers from abroad can be immiserizing and that the donor may improve its welfare despite market stability one route to this conclusion has been the introduction of a third economic agent or country that is outside of the transfer process in the appendix of his 1960 paper analyzing the interaction between trade policy and income distribution harry johnson discussed the possibility of welfareparadoxical redistribution between two factor income classes capital and labor in an open economy thereby providing what can be interpreted as a treatment of the threeagent transfer problem for the case in which donor and recipient are both completely specialized in the ownership of a single different factor an independent analysis of the three agent transfer problem using a restrictive model with given endowments of goods and fixed coefficients in consumption was also undertaken in an important paper by david gale 1974 2 brecher and bhagwati bhagwati department of economics columbia university new york ny 10027 brecher department of economics carleton university ottawa on kis 5b6 hatta department of political economy the johns hopkins university baltimore md 21218 we thank the national science foundation grant no 524718 for partial financial support of the research underlying this paper the paper was written when brecher and hatta were visiting columbia university 1981 82 gratefully acknowledged are helpful comments and suggestions from john chipman avinash dixit jacques dreze robert feenstra jacob frenkel ronald jones murray kemp andreu mas colell michael mussa john riley lars svensson and robert willig from anonymous referees and from seminar participants at berkeley harvard minnesota rochester chicago and the university of california los angeles after the present paper was submitted for publication and following its presentation at rochester our attention was drawn to this appendix which was noticed by a student of ronald jones subsequently we learned from makoto yano that motoshige itoh had pointed out an important related paper by ryuotaro komiya and t shizuki 1967 whose condition 11 for the johnson case anticipated our equation 12 below we are grateful for having both of these references brought to our attention 2 gale constructs an example in which the donor is enriched along with the recipient furthermore this immediately implies that a reverse transfer will immis

poverty in south asia abstract south asia faces a difficult challenge in alleviating absolute poverty besides a sustained labour intensive employment oriented strategy of economic growth a direct assault on poverty is needed in addition to redistribution of land the political feasibility of which is very limited poverty alleviating measures in south asia are classified into three types a system of subsidized food distribution creation of assets mainly through credit targeted towards the poor for self employment and public employment schemes on public works projects among the conditions governing their success are widely based public support accurate identification of the poor and strong local government capable of implementing technically sound and economically efficient projects

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

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

the ownership advantage in latin american fdi a sectoral study of us direct investment in mexico this article develops a model which tests the hypothesis that sectoral fdi flows from the united states to mexico over a four year period can be explained by the ownership advantages of us multinationals theoretical developments in the concept of ownership advantage are used to guide the formulation of the research the findings suggest that direct investment into us mnes affiliates in mexico is driven by benefits derived from embedded human knowledge technology embodied advantages and possibly from scale advantages local r d is negatively associated with fdi

openness growth and poverty the case of taiwan summary using time series data for taiwan during 1964 2003 this paper examines how economic growth openness and the role of government contribute to poverty alleviation sustained economic growth is found to be the major driving force for poverty reduction in taiwan and openness to foreign trade helps the poor through a direct distribution effect as well as indirect growth effect in both the long term and short term while inward fdi has no significant impact on the mean income of the poor outward fdi from taiwan in the past two decades seems to have had an adverse effect on the poorest 20 of the population

wages and foreign ownership a comparative study of mexico venezuela and the united states abstract this paper explores the relationship between wages and foreign investment in mexico venezuela and the united states despite very different economic conditions and levels of development we find one fact that is robust across all three countries higher levels of foreign investment are associated with higher wages however in mexico and venezuela foreign investment is associated with higher wages only for foreign owned firms there is no evidence of wage spillovers leading to higher wages for domestic firms the lack of spillovers in mexico and venezuela is consistent with significant wage differentials between foreign and domestic enterprises in the united states where the evidence suggests some wage spillovers from foreign to domestic enterprises wage differentials are smaller

below the line poverty in latin america abstract despite gains in basic welfare indicators poverty remains prevalent in latin america this paper surveys existing data on poverty in the region and discusses the relationship between growth inequality and poverty given the inequality of income distribution in latin america and the slow growth of output policies to overcome poverty must involve more efficient allocation of government resources redistribution and foreign aid

is china different a meta analysis of export led growth we examine whether china has benefited more from exports than other countries the results show that exports have been more significant for growth in china than in other countries even when china is compared with other transition economies

trade liberalisation economic development and poverty alleviation in a distinguished career spanning more than four decades jagdish bhagwati has made numerous contributions to both trade theory and trade policy analysis the current paper focuses on bhagwati s major contribution to the ongoing debate surrounding the influence of trade liberalisation upon economic development and its potential to alleviate poverty in the world s poorest economies in order to highlight bhagwati s contributions in these fields we focus on the arguments developed in two of his numerous landmark publications first his seminal 1964 paper on the pure theory of international trade and second his 2004 book entitled in defense of globalization although separated in time by some four decades we argue that these two publications despite their very different characters each demonstrate beyond doubt the significance of bhagwati s work in improving our understanding of the true nature of international trade and its potential to address questions of global poverty

interpreting the tariff growth correlation of the late 19th century immediately following world war ii many economists believed that a trade policy based on import substitution would best promote economic development subsequent experience instead revealed the costs of protectionism anne 0 krueger 1997 in the late 19th century as well many political economists such as friedrich list advocated import tariffs to promote the growth of domestic manufacturing in countries that were behind the industrial leader then the united kingdom unlike the recent period however the late 19th century experience is often interpreted as confirming the wisdom of import substitution recent work by kevin h o rourke 2000 and michael a clemens and jeffrey g williamson 2001 has strengthened this impression by finding a positive correlation between import tariffs and economic growth across countries from 1875 to 1914 such a correlation does not establish a causal relationship between tariffs and growth but it is tempting to view the correlation as constituting evidence that protectionist or inward oriented trade strategies were successful during this period this paper argues that such a conclusion is unwarranted and that the tariff growth correlation should be interpreted with great care first several individual country experiences in the late 19th century are not consistent with the view that import substitution promoted growth for example the two most rapidly expanding high tariff countries of the period argentina and canada grew because capital imports helped stimulate export led growth in agriculturalstaples products not because of protectionist trade policies second most land abundant countries such as argentina and canada imposed high tariffs to raise government revenue and revenue tariffs have a different structure than protective tariffs the fact that labor scarce land abundant countries had a high potential for growth and also tended to impose high revenue generating tariffs confounds the inference that high tariffs were responsible for their strong economic performance during this period

forecasting federal budget deficits how reliable are us congressional budget office projections us congressional budget office cbo forecasts of nominal government expenditure revenue and deficits as well as nominal gross national product are examined for their reliablity critics contend

the impact of the tomato agroindustry on the rural poor in mexico this article addresses the issue of whether the tomato agroindustry tai has been an effective instrument in the reduction of rural poverty the tai is by far the most important agroindustry in mexico in terms of exports and employment creation most of the laborers employed by the tai in northwest mexico are temporary migrants coming from poverty stricken regions in southern mexico conditions of poverty induced migration are explained the characteristics and strategies of large modern tomato enterprises are analyzed the main conclusion is that migrant income earned in the tomato fields and packing plants is fundamental for the bare survival in villages in poverty stricken regions however this does not provide a solution to poverty alleviation because migrant income is not sufficient to contribute to capital formation in the migrating communities or the to create the conditions for endogenous local development

trade and poverty in the poor countries now widely regarded as economically benign in the sense that it increases the size of the pie the recent anti globalization critics have suggested that it is socially malign on several dimensions among them the question of poverty 2 their contention is that trade accentuates not ameliorates and that it deepens not diminishes poverty in both the rich and the poor countries the theoretical and empirical analysis of the impact of freer trade on poverty in the rich and in the poor countries is not symmetric of course we focus here only on the latter in doing so we distinguish between two different strands of argumentation static and dynamic

earnings and employment effects of continuous off the job training in east germany after unification the effects of continuous off the job training oft for east germans after unification are analyzed in terms of their earnings and employment probabilities using the potential outcome approach to causality as general framework different matching procedures are suggested for the estimation they allow for permanent and transitory shocks that influence oft participation and labor market outcomes the matching procedures also take account of individually different starting dates the data are taken from the german socio economic panel gsoep 1990 1994 this dataset is very informative with respect to factors influencing the participation in training the results show no positive effects of training

contract farming smallholders and rural development in latin america the organization of agroprocessing firms and the scale of outgrower production abstract this paper demonstrates how contract farming functions as an economic institution and explores the causes of the observed variation in the scale of outgrower production in latin america we outline how market imperfections and transaction costs influence the decision of agroprocessing firms to contract out vertically integrate or use spot markets to obtain raw product the paper demonstrates how market conditions are likely to be associated with particular outgrower characteristics under contract farming an analysis of the mexican frozen vegetable industry illustrates determinants of successful and unsuccessful small scale contracting and suggests alternative policies to promote contract farming with smallholders

relationships between economic growth foreign direct investment and trade evidence from china this study investigates the causal links between trade economic growth and inward foreign direct investment fdi in china at the aggregate level the integration and cointegration properties of quarterly data are analysed long run relationships between growth exports imports and fdi are identified in a cointegration framework in which this paper finds bi directional causality between economic growth fdi and exports economic development exports and fdi appear to be mutually reinforcing under the open door policy

looking beyond averages in the trade and poverty debate there has been much debate about how much poor people in developing countries gain from trade openness as one aspect of globalization the paper views the issue through both macro and micro empirical lenses the macro lens uses cross country comparisons and aggregate time series data the micro lens uses household level data combined with structural modeling of the impacts of specific trade reforms case studies are presented for china and morocco both the macro and micro approaches cast doubt on some widely heard generalizations from both sides of the globalization debate additionally the micro lens indicates considerable heterogeneity in the welfare impacts of trade openness with both gainers and losers among the poor a number of covariates of the individual gains are identified the results point to the importance of combining trade reforms with well designed social protection policies

a comment on growth and equity in developing countries a reinterpretation of the sri lankan experience by bhalla and glewwe the inaugural issue of this journal contained an article by bhalla and glewwe which addresses some problems that arise in attempting to assess the relative success or failure of policies in different countries or policy regimes bhalla and glewwe 1986 p 36 their conceptual framework contrasts two approaches to raising economic welfare the direct or basic needs approach and the indirect or economic growth approach p 61 from 1960 to 1977 sri lanka is seen as approximating the first regime while the subsequent period following the change of government in 1977 is cast as having a closer correspondence to the second the general conclusion invited by the paper is that the change in policy orientation has been for the better the evidence suggests that the post 1 977 policies have not been detrimental to equity objectives and may offer more promise than those which they replaced p 62 in what follows i will suggest that bhalla and glewwe have exceeded the interpretations which their data will support accordingly their case cannot be sustained much as one would like to have answers to the questions they raise for my own part i share the majority view that sri lanka s system of food subsidies was and to some extent remains inefficient but it is surprising to find that bhalla and glewwe also question performance in the social field between 1960 and 1977 and that they totally ignore sri lanka s current state of disruption in their optimistic prognosis

production prices and poverty in rural india this paper challenges the view that increases in agricultural production have reduced poverty in rural india rural poverty is related directly to the consumer price index number for agricultural labourers and inversely to agricultural production the underlying time trend term indicates a residual rising trend in rural poverty after accounting for the influence of these two factors there are plausible though conjectural reasons for believing that to a significant extent the price factor as well as the variables implicit in the time trend term both derive their strength if not their existence from the nature of the growth processes which have generated the observed growth in agricultural production these results contradict ahluwalia s earlier conclusions even though they are themselves based on essentially the same data set

is globalization reducing absolute poverty summary using data from 114 countries 1983 2007 we examine the relationship between globalization and world bank absolute poverty estimates we find a significant negative correlation between globalization and poverty robust to several econometric specifications including a fixed effect panel a long run first difference and a pooled ols regression introducing two instruments for globalization we also show that results are robust to correction for potential endogeneity we motivate and test the instruments in several ways in particular information flows and more liberal trade restrictions robustly correlate with lower absolute poverty

will developing country nutrition improve with income a case study for rural south india aggregate estimates of food expenditure are consistent with such a possibility implying income expenditure elasticities close to one however the high degree of aggregation at which such estimates are made means that the considerable increase in price per nutrient as income increases is ignored and the nutrient elasticities are therefore overstated estimates for a rural south indian sample indicate that this bias is considerable and that the true nutrient elasticities with respect to income may be close to zero

promise and pitfalls in the use of secondary data sets income inequality in oecd countries as a case study this paper examines the role of secondary data sets in empirical economic research taking the field of income distribution as a case study we illustrate problems faced by users of secondary statistics showing how both cross country comparisons and time series analysis can depend sensitively on the choice of data after describing the genealogy of secondary data sets on income inequality we consider the main methodological issues and discuss their implications for comparisons of income inequality across oecd countries and over time the lessons to be drawn for the construction and use of secondary data sets are summarized at the end of the paper

the world distribution of income falling poverty and convergence period we estimate the world distribution of income by integrating individual income distributions for 138 countries between 1970 and 2000 country distributions are constructed by combining national accounts gdp per capita to anchor the mean with survey data to pin down the dispersion poverty rates and head counts are reported for four specific poverty lines rates in 2000 were between one third and one half of what they were in 1970 for all four lines there were between 250 and 500 million fewer poor in 2000 than in 1970 we estimate eight indexes of income inequality implied by our world distribution of income all of them show reductions in global inequality during the 1980s and 1990s

political cycles and cyclical policies we test how government revenue and expenditure depend on ideology elections and economic activity we show how fiscal forecasts can be used to identify the determinants of government revenue and expenditure the approach is illustrated using a unique unpublished swedish data set of fiscal forecasts and forecasts of economic activity we find partisan effects but no election effects revenue and expenditure but also the fiscal surplus are lower with right wing governments fiscal policy has been countercyclical revenue varies positively with nominal earnings expenditure varies negatively with real gdp

a note on pro poor growth this paper proposes a poverty growth curve that measures whether economic growth is pro poor or not propoor our methodology is developed based on atkinson s theorem linking the generalized lorenz curve and changes in poverty this methodology is applied to both thailand s unit record household surveys and international cross country data empirical study illustrates that our approach to measuring pro poor growth provides conclusive results in the majority of cases d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

on the role of agriculture in india s longer term development strategy two contrasting views on agriculture s role in india s longer term development strategy are identified and evaluated with the help of a dynamic multisector model capturing the structural features of india s mixed economy the simulation results show that policy recommendations favoring industrial growth in which the interdependence between agriculture and industry is not taken into account turn out to be self defeating while policies succeeding in raising agricultural production and income also lead to improved industrial performance because they augment the size of the domestic market hence the results suggest that indian industrialization can be only sustained by agriculture c 1995 academic press limited copyright 1995 by oxford university press

trade standards and poverty evidence from senegal summary in the debate on trade and poverty it is argued that standards act as trade barriers and cause marginalization of the poor this paper quantifies income and poverty effects of high standards trade and integrates labor market effects by using company and household survey data from the vegetable export chain in senegal we find that exports grew sharply despite increasing standards contributing importantly to rural incomes and poverty reduction tightening standards induced a shift from smallholder contract farming to integrated estate production altering the mechanism through which poor households benefit through labor markets instead of product markets

linking fdi motivation and host economy productivity effects conceptual and empirical analysis we develop a taxonomy that relates foreign direct investment fdi motivation technology and cost based to its anticipated effects on host countries domestic productivity we then empirically examine the effects of fdi into the united kingdom on domestic productivity and find that different types of fdi have markedly different productivity spillover effects which are consistent with the conceptual analysis the uk gains substantially only from inward fdi motivated by a strong technology based ownership advantage as theory predicts inward fdi motivated by technology sourcing considerations leads to no productivity spillovers

fdi trade and spillover efficiency evidence from china s manufacturing sector using firm data from the 1995 third industrial census of china this paper finds that the presence of foreign ownership has a positive and significant effect on domestic firms productivity moreover trading with more advanced countries helps china gain access to new technology and information which improves its productivity and enables it to compete in international markets it is found that china s imports from oecd and the four asian tigers and exports to oecd have positive effects on domestic firms productivity by dividing industries into high technology gap and low technology gap groups it is found that the spillover effects of fdi are larger for the low technology gap group than for the high technology gap group however the estimation results of the trade induced technology spillover effect support the technology gap learning theory and the significance of importing appropriate technology

the development of private fresh produce safety standards implications for developing mediterranean exporting countries integration into global markets offers the potential for more rapid growth and poverty reduction for poorer countries however market barriers within advanced economies to agricultural imports have made it harder for developing countries to take full advantage of this opportunity this article examines the impact of increasing demands for food safety and quality by european food retailers and how the fundamental structure and culture of supplier organisations required by european retail chains are a major entry barrier for developing mediterranean fresh produce exporting countries and for developing countries in general the long term solution for such countries to sustain an international demand for their products lies in structural strategic and procedural initiatives that build up the trust and confidence of importers retailers in the quality and safety assurance mechanisms for their produce

examining inequality who really benefits from global growth summary this paper analyzes global consumption distribution from 1993 to 2001 it demonstrates that half of the increase in global consumption in the 1990s benefited the developed world populations the other main beneficiary was china s population the number of chinese in extreme poverty fell and a new global middle class emerged elsewhere the per capita consumption of the poor rose at half the global average rate much less than one to one growth growth did help the poor but it was much better for the rich the analysis suggests that relying on growth to reduce poverty is rather inefficient more direct state interventions seem more effective these insights are poorly illustrated by global indices such as gini coefficients but are strikingly demonstrated by density curves the wider use of which could better inform debate in this area

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

nutrition non convexities and redistributive policies of the varying motivations underlying research in economics forecasting has proved to be the most discomfiting it is not so much that economists are not good at it it is more that we do not have any firm idea if we are bad at it we do not yet have a consensus on how to judge the matter what i shall therefore do in this note is avoid even trying to make a prediction of which way we will be moving in economics research instead i will outline the kind of work i would like to see come to fruition in the field in which my current research interest lies namely the economics of destitution we need a redirection in how we go about our research in this area my motivation here springs from an unease i have over methodological matters in current studies of poverty in poor countries in what follows i will first present in abstract terms how i think we are going wrong i will then exemplify this with a key example

financial liberalization and economic growth a meta analysis this study provides a systematic analysis of the empirical literature on the relationship between financial liberalization and economic growth by conducting a meta analysis based on 441 t statistics reported in 60 empirical studies we focus on explaining the heterogeneity of results in our sample in terms of study data and method specific characteristics although our findings indicate that on average there is a positive effect of financial liberalization on growth the significance of this effect is only weak moreover we find that most of the variables that may help explain the heterogeneity of results are insignificant there are two exceptions first studies carried out based on data from the 1970s on average find a statistically less significant relationship between financial liberalization policies and growth i e they report lower t statistics as compared to studies using data from the 1980s second studies controlling for the level of development of the financial system report lower t statistics for the relationship between liberalization and growth

growth by destination the role of trade in africa s recent growth episode summary over the period 1990 2009 africa has experienced a distinct and favorable reversal in its growth fortunes in stark contrast to its performance in the preceding decades leading to a variety of hypotheses seeking to explain the phenomenon this paper presents both cross country and panel data evidence on the causal factors driving the recent turnaround in africa s growth and takes the unique approach of disaggregating the separate growth impacts of africa s bilateral trade with china europe and america the empirical analysis presented in this paper suggests that the primary and most robust causal factors driving africa s recent growth turnaround are private sector and foreign direct investment although empirical evidence of the role of bilateral trade openness in africa s recent growth emerges within a fixed effect estimation setting these results are not as robust when endogeneity and other issues are fully accounted for among the three major bilateral partners africa s bilateral trade with china has been a relatively important factor spurring growth on the continent and especially so in resource rich oil producing and non landlocked countries the econometric results are not as supportive of growth inducing effects of foreign aid these findings emerge after applying a variety of panel data specifications to the data including the recent fixed effects filtered fef estimator introduced by pesaran and zhou 2014 and the dynamic panel generalized method of moments gmm estimator which allows for endogeneity between trade and growth

tests of the rational expectations hypothesis this paper reviews evidence on the structure of anticipation from a number of empirical studies jack muth s rational expectations hypothesis is compared with a variety of alternative models including ferber s law the implicit expectations model of edwin mills and muth s new errors in the variables model the cumulative evidence is of such strength as to compel the suspension of belief in the concept of rational expectations this implies that it is a mistake to proceed under the maintained hypothesis that expectations are rational instead it is necessary to test the sensitivity of empirical and theoretical results to alternative assumptions about the structure by which anticipations are generated copyright 1986 by american economic association

causality between foreign investment and spillover efficiency while there is considerable evidence on the observed linkage between foreign investment and technical efficiency of the developing countries the question of causality between them has not been investigated this paper re examines the relationship between foreign direct investment and technical efficiency in mexico brazil chile singapore and zambia using granger causality tests the results suggest that foreign direct investment and labour productivity are causally independent variables however capital formation of the host country is found to exert causal influence on foreign investment

politics of economic liberalization in india abstract attempts at liberalizing india s import substitution model of development have had a mixed record some success in changing the policy regime highlights the role of a new technocratic leadership that has received support from both indian business groups and from external aid agencies conversely popular sectors within india including the rank and file of the ruling party the organized workers in the public sector and the numerically significant middle and lower peasantry have registered their opposition while the government remains committed to liberalizing the economy the momentum has slowed down and given the pressures of electoral politics a populist economic program has been simultaneously readopted it appears that the marriage of political and economic liberalism may not be an easy one in countries like india

securing a bioenergy future without imports the uk has legally binding renewable energy and greenhouse gas targets energy from biomass is anticipated to make major contributions to these however there are concerns about the availability and sustainability of biomass for the bioenergy sector a biomass resource model has been developed that reflects the key biomass supply chain dynamics and interactions determining resource availability taking into account climate food land and other constraints the model has been applied to the uk developing four biomass resource scenarios to analyse resource availability and energy generation potential within different contexts the model shows that indigenous biomass resources and energy crops could service up to 44 of uk energy demand by 2050 without impacting food systems the scenarios show residues from agriculture forestry and industry provide the most robust resource potentially providing up to 6 5 of primary energy demand by 2050 waste resources are found to potentially provide up to 15 4 and specifically grown biomass and energy crops up to 22 of demand the uk is therefore projected to have significant indigenous biomass resources to meet its targets however the dominant biomass resource opportunities identified in the paper are not consistent with current uk bioenergy strategies risking biomass deficit despite resource abundance

market opportunities genetic endowments and intrafamily resource distribution child survival in rural india the authors examine how intrafamily resource allocations respond to changes in economic conditions and to genetic differences in children by estimating the determinants of variations in the sex specific survival differentials of rural indian children based on standard census and household survey data they explore in particular the hypothesis that such differences are related to the relative returns to survival with households selectively allocating resources to children in response to variation in sex differences in their expected earnings opportunities as adults data are from the 1961 census and a 1971 household survey excerpt

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

determinants of technological diffusion in mexican manufacturing a plant level analysis abstract production function estimates serve to measure and compare the productive efficiency of a large panel of mexican manufacturing firms during a period of trade liberalization 1984 90 foreign capital is found to have a positive influence on productive efficiency at the plant level but contrarily to crossindustry studies it does not lead to significant spillovers at the sector level enlarging the analysis it is found that technological diffusion is favored by the size of the plant and by agglomeration economies while its correlation with international trade exposure does not appear to be robust

electoral uncertainty income inequality and the middle class we investigate how electoral competition affects the income distribution in society we utilise a standard probabilistic voting setup where parties compete at two stages our model delivers that greater electoral competition in a district results in equalisation of incomes therein we check for these relationships using data from indian national elections which are combined with consumption expenditure data rounds from the national sample survey organization 1987 8 and 2004 5 to yield a district level panel our ols 2 sls and iiv analyses consistently inform that close elections lead to lower inequality and polarisation indicating a larger middle class

analysing the determinants of us direct investment in mexico in this paper a simple model of foreign direct investment is developed and tested on investment flows from the usa to mexico between 1967 and 1994 using cointegration analysis domestic demand and relative factor costs are found to influence direct investment flows suggesting support for both the cheap labour and market size hypotheses the short run dynamics of the model indicate that exchange rate movements have an effect on the timing of the investment decision

growth and equity in developing countries a reinterpretation of the sri lankan experience in the important debate between the proponents of direct basic needs and indirect economic growth measures of promoting welfare sri lanka has frequently been cited as one country which has successfully pursued the direct approach it has raised living standards without much cost in terms of reduced growth this conclusion however is based on analyses which do not account for the initial conditions of the countries being compared after methodologically incorporating these concerns neither the improvement in living standards nor the 2 0 percent per capita growth rate during the period of direct policy measures 1960 78 was exceptional in contrast during the period of more indirect growth promoting policies 1977 84 i economic growth more than doubled to an average rate of 4 3 percent per capita per annum ii expenditure inequality did not significantly change iii consumption expenditures of the population and the poor generally increased and iv several living standard indicators continued to improve

deficit announcements and interest rates despite the fact that the most theoretical analyses with the notable exception of the ricardian equivalence approach indicate that increased deficits cause interest rates to rise the empirical evidence is at best inconclusive 1 in this note the relationship between interest rates and deficits is examined with the announcement effect methodology which has not previously been used in this context we find evidence of a positive relationship between unanticipated announcements of the projected federal government deficit and interest rates in an efficient market information about any determinant of interest rates should be quickly incorporated into observed rates thus when information about the size of the deficits is released a relatively quick impact on interest rates can be anticipated more specifically if an increase in the deficit is in fact associated with higher interest rates then an unanticipated announcement of a larger deficit should lead to a response in financial markets which increases interest rates this paper provides evidence on the announcement effects of information on the deficit the advantage of the announcement effect approach is that it precludes the necessity of specifying a structural model for interest rates 2 projections of current and future federal government deficits are made on a regular basis by both the office of managementand budget omb and the congressional budget office cbo and receive wide attention in the financial press these projections provide data that are related to the change in interest rate on government securities from the day before the announcement to the end of the announcement day the macroeconomic hypothesis underlying this investigation is simply that an increase in the current or future deficit leads to an increase in yields on government securities in anticipation of higher levels of debt financing in a rational expectations framework an announcement of higher future deficits will lead to a current increase in interest rates in anticipation of future financing thus the examination of announcement effects enables us to substantiate a relationship between interest rates and deficits without encountering the econometric problems of reduced form modeling section i begins with a description of the data this is followed by a discussion of the methodology in section ii section iii presents the empirical results this is followed by our conclusions in section iv