natural resources national income and economic growth in africa abstract because standard measures of aggregate income such as gross domestic product gdp do not account for natural resource depletion their use as gauges of economic performance tends to exaggerate the benefits of resource extraction accounting for natural resource depletion in 18 african countries indicates different patterns of growth than those suggested by gdp figures use of the revised measures in analyses of the link between exports and growth suggests that export expansion may generate increases in measured gdp without stimulating increased production in contrast real exchange rate alignment is correlated with growth in both conventional gdp and the revised accounts

re testing prebisch singer hypothesis new evidence using fourier quantile unit root test the prebisch singer hypothesis in economics asserts that over time the relative price of primary goods relative to manufactured goods should experience a downward trend to test the hypothesis we

the geographical dimension of the development effects of natural resources we study the contribution of natural resource intensity to long term development along different dimensions per capita income institutional quality and education we allow natural resources to affect these dimensions differently in different regions of the world the evidence suggests that natural resources are generally a positive driver of development but in sub saharan africa ssa their contribution is almost negligible if not even negative we explain these cross regional differences with the fact that in ssa more than anywhere else large resource endowments are combined with a particularly bad disease environment some historical evidence and formal econometric results support this hypothesis

surge and decline negative voting and the midterm loss phenomenon a simultaneous choice analysis campbell s surge and decline and kernell s negative voting theories have been employed most frequently by researchers who seek to explain the invariable pattern of administration party vote loss in midterm house elections despite the original emphasis placed on voting as the act of selecting jointly from among the three options of abstention democratic choice or republican choice all efforts to corroborate the theories have inappropriately treated the decisions of whether and how to vote as independent questions for investigation applying the more suitable technique of nested multinomial logit analysis i find little support for negative voting s two key contentions that negative presidential evaluations hurt white house party candidates more than positive appraisals help or that the president s backers have disproportionately low turnout however a rational basis for abstention emerges that differs from the one postulated by negative voting in contrast on year defections to presidential party candidates by regular voters who normally favor the opposition do seem a cause of the biennial electoral cycle as surge and decline indeed would have us to believe

factor inputs and japanese manufacturing trade structure the japanese international trade structure in manufactured goods has been analyzed using cross section regression analysis in which labor capital human capital and energy are regressed on japanese net exports exports and imports with the world oecd and developing countries for 1967 and 1975 skill and wage differential measures have been utilized for the measuring of human capital contrary to the dualism found in earlier studies the estimated results show that in 1967 japan exported unskilled labor intensive goods with respect to the developing countries as well as the oecd countries in 1975 japan exported capital intensive goods to all regions and imported unskilled labor intensive goods from the world and the developing countries skilled labor intensive goods were imported from the oecd countries in both years drastic changes between 1967 and 1975 are noted japanese exports shifted from unskilled labor intensive goods to capital intensive goods while imports did the opposite this result conforms to the changes in unskilled labor and capital usage in japan and her major trading partners

the beveridge nelson decomposition of economic time series a quick computational method this note describes a much simpler computational method for carrying out the beveridge and nelson decomposition of economic time series into permanent and cyclical components

does the resource curse hold for growth in genuine income as well summary existing studies analyzing the so called resource curse hypothesis regress growth in gross domestic product gdp on some measure of resource intensity this is problematic as gdp counts natural and other capital depreciation as income deducting depreciation from gdp to arrive at genuine income we test whether the curse still holds true we find supporting evidence but the growth disadvantage of resource intensive economies is slightly weaker in terms of genuine income than gdp we suggest that this provides additional but somewhat weak and limited evidence in support of those who argue that the curse is partly due to unsustainable overconsumption

from the classical economists to empiricists a review of the terms of trade controversy contrary to the classical position the works of prebisch and singer in the middle of the last century launched the controversial hypothesis of a long term decline in the terms of trade of primary products vis a vis manufactured goods and a corresponding decline in the terms of trade of developing countries vis a vis advanced ones the present study traces the origin and evolution of the hypothesis and reviews the related statistical debate it also reviews the theoretical support for the prebisch singer hypothesis it is an exercise in the history of economic thought to trace how the controversies surrounding the terms of trade have evolved over time specifically noting that with the development of the field of econometrics the central thesis of the argument got lost somewhere in the realm of hi tech statistical debates

sources of stagnation in sub saharan africa abstract this paper investigates the sources of economic stagnation in sub saharan africa during the 1970s several policy variables are considered as well as a set of environmental variables which include climate violence export prices and other exogenous factors the paper uses statistical analysis in an attempt to identify the relative importance of the policy variables and the environmental variables taken as groups it also seeks to identify particular policy variables which seem to have been most significant in determining growth outcomes the technique employed for investigation is reduced form econometric estimation in a preliminary analysis the impact of the international trade environment on average economic performance in africa during the period since independence is investigated the results suggest an extremely close relationship between movements in export prices and average performance throughout the 20 year period a second econometric exercise investigates the joint impacts of environmental and policy variables on growth in a cross section of african states since 1970 the spirit of the approach is exploratory and a relatively large number of variables are constructed and tested through multivariate analysis a primary finding is that the environmental variables seem to have had more impact on growth as a group than the policy variables this finding must be qualified however by the continuing lack of some important policy variables agricultural price data have not yet become available in sufficient quantity for cross section analysis nor have several important human resource variables and indices of the use of resources in the public domain among the policy variables which have been used for the analysis those identified with retrenchment during periods of declining commodity prices seem most significant primary among these are the real effective exchange rate and some measures of effectiveness in foreign exchange reallocation during periods when imports must contract severely in the final section of the paper the cross section results are used for a counterfactual analysis of the growth experiences of individual african states measures of growth opportunity cost are constructed which suggest the degree to which errors in management and uncontrollable circumstances have held states below their potential growth paths the results suggest that some success stories may owe much to good luck while some failures may well be due less to bad management than to adverse circumstances

cursing the blessings natural resource abundance institutions and economic growth summary since sachs and warner s sachs j d warner a m 1995a natural resource abundance and economic growth nber working paper no 5398 contribution there has been a lively debate on the so called natural resource curse this paper re examines the effects of natural resource abundance on economic growth using new measures of resource endowment and considering the role of institutional quality we find a positive direct empirical relationship between natural resource abundance and economic growth in both ols and 2sls regressions the positive resource effects are particularly strong for subsoil wealth our results also show no evidence of negative indirect effects of natural resources through the institutional channel

the resource curse and the decentralization of oil revenue the case of nigeria abstract nigeria is often portrayed as a poster child for countries experiencing the resource curse phenomenon the pertinent question that confronts policy makers in nigeria today is no longer whether or not nigeria is suffering from the resource curse rather it is what to do about it since the 1980s various policy initiatives have been adopted by the nigerian government to address different aspects of the resource curse but with limited success it is therefore not surprising that regional governments within the niger delta have in recent years turned to oil producing area development commissions as a means of reducing the poverty and conflict that is endemic in the region drawing on empirical data this paper argues that the oil producing area development commissions have been unable to improve the lives of the people in oil producing communities it is suggested that this is due largely to their inability to alter the opportunities and incentives for rent seekers and allow for active community and civil society participation the paper concludes by considering the implications for the resource curse and the way forward for these commissions

on the prevalence of trends in primary commodity prices abstract this paper applies new time series procedures to examine the prebisch singer hypothesis of a secular deterioration in relative primary commodity prices specifically we allow for up to two structural breaks in 24 price series covering the 1900 98 period for the majority of commodities it is shown that the trend is not well represented by a single downward slope but instead by a shifting trend that often changes sign over the sample period unlike some recent work that has also allowed for structural breaks these results provide much less support for the prebisch singer hypothesis

a nested logit model of travel mode to work and auto ownership estimating the demand for urban passenger travel is very useful in transport planning this study estimates a joint model of choice for both auto ownership and travel mode to work in karachi pakistan the model used for analysis is based on stochastic utility maximization and is estimated utilizing nested logit techniques the purpose of the study is to measure the impact of various policy changes on welfare the model reveals that the decision to own a car is made simultaneously with the decision regarding mode of travel to work however the study shows that had this simultaneity been ignored the loss in terms of bias in the estimated coefficients would not have been large the model has several advantages over conventional transport demand models it is estimated using a small household sample it is behavioral and responsive to more important policy instruments available to a planner it allows one to make welfare comparisons between various policy regimes and it enables one to calculate the effect of a policy change or change in the attributes of various modes on the demand for each mode and auto ownership

long run prices of primary commodities and oil prices acutely volatile movements in primary commodity prices have drawn considerable interest from empirical researchers exports of these commodities account for the bulk of export earnings of developing countries the traditional demand based framework was unable to explain the marked deterioration in these prices during the 1980s this paper tries to ascertain the role played by real oil prices in explaining the extremely volatile movements in real prices of primary commodities by taking into account oil price shocks over the period 1973 1996 using monthly data real primary commodity prices and real oil prices are cointegrated additionally the error in the cointegrating relation stimulates real commodity price adjustment not real oil price adjustment

trends cycles and asymmetries in the terms of trade of primary commodities from developed and less developed countries abstract the paper examines the prebisch hypothesis that primary product prices relative to the price of manufacturers fall during cyclical downturns by more than they rise during cyclical upturns and that this is an independent explanation of the secular tendency of the net barter terms of trade to move against primary commodities an important distinction is made between primary products exported by less developed countries and those exported by developed countries the greater cyclicality of primary product prices and the long run deterioration in their terms of trade since 1954 are confirmed but there is little support for the prebisch thesis that primary product prices relative to manufacturers are move sensitive on the downswing than the upswing

primary commodity prices co movements common factors and fundamentals the behavior of commodities is critical for developing and developed countries alike this paper contributes to the empirical evidence on the co movement and determinants of commodity prices using nonstationary panel methods we document a statistically significant degree of co movement due to a common factor within a factor augmented var approach real interest rate and uncertainty as postulated by a simple asset pricing model are both found to be negatively related to this common factor this evidence is robust to the inclusion of demand and supply shocks which both positively impact on the co movement of commodity prices

the commodity terms of trade unit roots and nonlinear alternatives a smooth transition approach market price dynamics for north american oriented strand board markets are examined specifically the role of transactions costs are examined vis a vis the law of one price weekly data for the january 3rd 1995 through april 14th 2006 period are used in the analysis nonlinearities induced by unobservable transactions costs are modeled by estimating smooth transition autoregressions stars results indicate that nonlinearity is an important feature of these markets and that the parity relationships implied by economic theory are generally supported by the star models implications for the efficiency of spatial market linkages are examined by estimating generalized impulse response functions

oil wealth and regime survival in the developing world 1960 1999 the global oil market and its associated booms and busts have generated a large literature in political science one contention in this literature is that political instability is a near certain long term outcome of oil wealth another line of argument maintains just the opposite that oil makes authoritarian regimes stronger by funding patronage and repressive apparatuses in this article i conduct the first cross national tests of these arguments and investigate the effects of oil wealth and the oil booms and busts on political stability drawing on data from 107 developing countries between 1960 and 1999 i estimate the effects of oil wealth on regime failure antistate social protest and domestic armed conflict thus as a first goal this article addresses an analytic shortcoming in previous studies by separating regime survival empirically from both economic policy and regime type democratic or authoritarian and by focusing on the direct effects of oil wealth on several measures of political stability i address the relationship between oil wealth and these outcomes both by comparing exporters to the rest of the developing world and by comparing oil rich states across pre boom boom and bust periods the results indicate that oil wealth is robustly associated with more durable regimes and significantly related to lower levels of protest and civil war moreover

technology imports and r d efforts of korean manufacturing firms abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between technology imports and r d efforts of korean manufacturing firms by a two stage method in the first stage using a sample representing the whole population of firms the paper shows that firms importing technology tend to commit themselves to r d efforts through having formal r d institutes in the second stage it shows that among firms with formal r d institutes technology imports have non complementary relationship with r d efforts moreover when technology imports are considered interactively with international inventive activity they turn out to have rather a substitutive relationship with r d efforts

unit roots flexible trends and the prebisch singer hypothesis abstract this paper studies the dynamic properties of relative commodity prices especially the prebisch singer hypothesis on their secular decline using a new family of unit root tests based on the fourier approximation to the data s underlying trend the approximation controls for low frequency variations such as structural breaks or the long swings induced by hypothesized super cycles in the data regarding the extant literature we find considerably more evidence against nonstationarity in relative commodity prices and very limited support for the prebisch singer hypothesis

agglomeration advantages and capability building in industrial clusters the missing link accumulation of technological capability is crucial for industrial growth and competitiveness of firms particularly in the context of liberalisation and increasing international economic integration the article sheds new light on the forces driving capability building by complementing the micro economic perspective on learning with a meso economic perspective that takes account of interaction effects arising from firms embeddedness in regional networks the missing link at the interface between the two levels is explored by means of a taxonomy linking various agglomeration advantages to investments in technological effort the framework results in new policy relevant insights about the factors underpinning the acquisition of capabilities in comparison to conventional studies a case study about farm equipment manufacturing in pakistan s punjab province is used as an empirical illustration

technological effort and disembodied technology exports an econometric analysis of inter industry variations in india abstract this paper attempts a preliminary test of the determinants of indian technological capability as measured by disembodied technology exports by a sample of the largest private sector quoted companies in india after placing the study in the context of research on the nature of technological activity in developing countries the authors describe the variables which they have used to explain inter industry variation in technology exports the results of a preliminary statistical investigation are presented despite acknowledged limitations of data the authors are able to suggest some interesting tendencies which could be the subject of further investigation a formal rd b skill and scale requirements appear to promote technological development rather than retard it c the presence of foreign ownership does not seem to inhibit technological development or technology exports

a new approach to decomposition of economic time series into permanent and transitory components with particular attention to measurement of the business cycle abstract this paper introduces a general procedure for decomposition of non stationary time series into a permanent and transitory component allowing both components to be stochastic the permanent component is shown to be a random walk with drift and the transitory or cyclical component is a stationary process with mean zero the decomposition methodology which depends only on past data and therefore is computable in real time is applied to the problem of measuring and dating business cycles in the portwar u s economy we find that measured expansions and contractions are of roughly equivalent duration and that our dating of cyclical episodes tends to lead the traditional nber dating and to a lesser extent the growth cycle chronology of zarnowitz and boschan 1977

learning to love the dutch disease evidence from the mineral economies abstract recent literature proposes that a booming minerals sector may not only lead to dutch disease effects it may also be a development curse mineral economy case studies have tentatively confirmed this recourse curse thesis this paper examines the long run economic and development performance of a more general grouping of mineral based economies and finds little corroborating evidence

natural resources and the quality of economic development abstract are natural resources a blessing or a curse for human development this article attempts to answer the question by distinguishing between a dependence on natural resources and an abundance of the same dependence is measured in terms of exports of metals and fuel while resource abundance is calculated on the basis of the subsoil assets per square kilometre and per capita results show the existence of a negative correlation between metals and ore exports and human development while subsoil assets measures are rather positively related these effects are particularly significant in countries with a comparatively lower institutional quality the cases of botswana the democratic republic of congo and equatorial guinea briefly examined suggest however that the effects of natural resources on human and economic development can be very different and strictly related to specific national political and institutional characteristics

long run trends in 26 primary commodity prices abstract this paper uses time series techniques to re examine the prebisch singer hypothesis that there has been a secular deterioration in primary commodity prices in terms of manufactured goods instead of using price indices it considers 26 individual commodity prices over the period 1900 1983 this avoids possible aggregation and interpretation problems associated with the use of aggregate indices the study finds that 16 of the 26 prices are trendless five have statistically significant negative trends the remaining five have positive trends it concludes that the prebisch singer hypothesis should certainly not be considered a universal phenomenon or stylized fact

the paradox of plenty a meta analysis since sachs and warner s seminal article in 1995 numerous studies have addressed the link between natural resources and economic growth although the resource curse effect was commonly accepted at first many articles have challenged its existence and the results found in the literature are ambiguous in this paper we aim to quantitatively review this literature in order to i identify the sources of heterogeneity and ii assess the impact of natural resources on economic growth a meta analysis is performed on 69 empirical studies on the resource curse totaling 1 419 estimates our findings show that i only developing countries suffer from the resource curse although it is soft ii the way natural resources are taken into account is crucial to understand the heterogeneity found in the literature iii the negative impact of the volatility of the terms of trade on growth should be qualified an additional mra performed on indirect effects size also indicate that when institutions are at their best level the resource curse disappears and may be turned into a blessing

a reapraisal of the capital goods sector in hong kong the case for free trade abstract this paper was provoked by an earlier one by fransman 1982 in which he examined the functioning of the capital goods sector in hong kong and came to the conclusion that it needed special protection by the government to allow it to reap the benefits of externalities essential for increasing its design and production capabilities statistical evidence is provided indicating that the capital goods sector as conventionally defined is prospering even following fransman 1982 and equating the capital goods sector with the machine producing sector the latest survey of production indicates considerable dynamism his case for infant industry protection is further weakened by consideration of the nature of the particular industrial structure of hong kong and the quality of the social relations that prevail between entrepreneurs it is argued that the costs of singling out the capital goods sector for special treatment in terms of the impact of the highly competitive export oriented manufacturing sector are likely to be high while the theoretical benefits from externalities are liable to be illusory in a small economy

a reexamination of trends in primary commodity prices this paper conducts a reexamination of the prebisch singer hypothesis by employing the unit root test proposed by lee and strazicich 2003 and lee and strazicich 2004 that allow for up to two structural breaks given the higher power of these tests compared to the zivot and andrews 1992 and lumsdaine and papell 1997 tests rejection of the null can be considered as genuine evidence of stationarity the main findings of this paper are that eleven out of twenty four commodity prices are found to be difference stationary implying that shocks to these commodities tend to be permanent in nature the remaining thirteen prices are found to exhibit trend stationary behavior with either one or two structural breaks most of the commodities that do not exhibit difference stationary behavior seem to contain no significant trends there are fewer cases in relation to past studies of commodities that display negative trends thereby weakening the case for the prebisch singer hypothesis

taxing tourism and subsidizing non tourism a welfare enhancing solution to dutch disease abstract using a combined analysis of a general equilibrium and a partial equilibrium this study models the impacts of a combined policy tool based on taxing tourism and subsidizing non tourism in a tourism dependent destination the results suggest that such a policy tool while widely discussed in economics literature may not be suitable for a tourism destination as it might have adverse effects on local welfare

extending the concept of the resource curse natural resources and public spending on health this paper extends the concept of the resource curse by studying whether and through which transmission channels natural resource wealth affects social spending even though the availability of vast natural capital reserves has commonly been linked to the neglect of human development most of the literature has continued to focus on economic performance this paper is the first to empirically investigate the link between natural resource wealth and public health expenditures in light of the hypothesis that resource wealth as a source of unearned state income enhances state autonomy and increases volatility which leads to policies that fail to prioritize human development using a large panel dataset of world countries covering the period from 1995 to 2009 we find a robust significant inverse relationship between natural resource dependence and even abundance and public health spending over time the effect remains significant after controlling for state autonomy volatility and other factors these findings have implications for national authorities as well as the extractive industry governments should be made accountable for natural resource wealth and correct taxation could provide additional resources earmarked for health the extractive industry could increase their investments in sustainable corporate social responsibility operations specifically in the health sector

natural resource abundance and human capital accumulation summary this paper studies the link between resource abundance and human capital accumulation it reviews the commonly used indicators of resource abundance and human capital accumulation the case for a form of resource curse in human capital accumulation is not robust to reasonable changes in these indicators in fact subsoil wealth and resource rents per capita are shown to be significantly correlated with improved indicators of human capital accumulation if mineral wealth is what authors have in mind when they refer to natural resource abundance then they should choose indicators that measure this concept as accurately as possible

promoting technological capability in the capital goods sector the case of singapore abstract this paper contributes to the new interest in technological change in semi industrial countries by examining technological capability in the machine producing sector in singapore the difficulties involved in conceptualizing and measuring technological capability in less developed countries are discussed and the case study material is then presented particular attention is paid to the role of government promotion in the development of technological capability in this connection the present study provides a useful contrast with the position in hong kong studied in an earlier paper while both singapore and hong kong have instituted a near free trade regime there is a far greater degree of government intervention in the former than in the latter case by contrast the governments of both south korea and taiwan have granted selective protection in order to encourage some kinds of domestic machine production the paper ends with some critical comments regarding the singapore government s policy towards the machine producing sector

applied welfare economics with discrete choice models economists have been paying increasing attention to the study of situations in which consumers face a discrete rather than a continuous set of choices such models are potentially very important in evaluating the impact of government programs upon consumer welfare but very little has been said in general regarding the tools of applied welfare economics indiscrete choice situations this paper shows how the conventional methods of applied welfare economics can be modified to handle such cases it focuses on the computation of the excess burden of taxation and the evaluation of quality change the results are applied to stochastic utility models including the popular cases of probit and logit analysis throughout the emphasis is on providing rigorous guidelines for carrying out applied work this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

toward an understanding of economic growth in africa a reinterpretation of the lewis model summary we develop a model economy that has many of the features of lewis 1954 but that also includes an in between sector as described by lewis 1979 our model underscores the importance of the following determinants of structural change i productivity growth in the agricultural sector ii productivity growth in the nonagricultural sector and iii the terms of trade public investment enhances productivity growth in all sectors but when it is financed by foreign inflows it also causes a real exchange rate appreciation leading to a contraction in the open modern sector these results provide a partial explanation for recent patterns of growth in rwanda and elsewhere in africa where the nontradables or what we call the in between sector has expanded more rapidly than the tradable sector our results also highlight the dilemma faced by poor countries in dire need of public investment with a very limited tax base

the dutch disease in a developing country oil reserves in cameroon abstract noting that most of the literature on the dutch disease refers to developed countries this paper looks at the impact of an oil boom on a developing country when certain features of developing countries particularly the imperfect substitutability between domestic and imported goods are incorporated one of the standard dutch disease results can be reversed not all the traded goods sectors will contract a simulation with a computable general equilibrium model of cameroon reveals that the agricultural sector is most likely to be hurt whereas some of the manufacturing sectors will benefit this suggests possible areas for government intervention should it be warranted and may explain the differential performance between the agricultural and industrial sectors of oil exporting countries in the post 1973 period

trends and cycles in the net barter terms of trade a new approach this study has two objectives first it uses time series techniques including unit root tests to reexamine the classic prebisch singer hypothesis that the relative prices of primary commodities in terms of manufactured goods are characterized by secular deterioration second commodity price movements are decomposed into permanent and cyclical components using the beveridge and nelson 1981 technique the latter information is valuable when assessing the viability of commodity stabilization funds and formulating countercyclical macroeconomic policy responses to commodity booms and busts copyright 1989 by royal economic society

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

the dutch disease a disease after all many third world oil producers are encountering serious problems in building up a diversified export base while west european oil and gas producers netherlands united kingdom are suffering a decline in their traded goods manufacturing sector induced by real wage pressures it is becoming increasingly clear that high but temporary oil revenues may be somewhat ora mixed blessing the quip of the economist notwithstanding the mechanism behind this unbalance is clear enough part of the oil revenues is spent on non traded goods which leads to a real appreciation i e a rise in the relative price of non traded goods in terms of traded goods this in turn draws resources out of the non oil traded sector into the non traded goods producing sector corden and neary 1982 van wijnbergen 1980 one may say that this is an efficient response to the increase in income from oil production the united kingdom mexico egypt simply should move into oil derived industries and non traded goods and forget about their manufacturing sector until oil reserves are exhausted however many developing countries are hesitant to take this advice after all the post world war ii success stories in economic development involve without exception countries that promoted their traded goods sector aggressively moreover it is a well established stylised fact that technological progress is faster in the traded non sheltered sectors of an economy than in the non traded sector balassa 1964 is an early reference considering the hypothesis that technological progress rather than taking place exogenously with the passage of time is a function of accumulated experience the concern of countries like egypt mexico or indonesia is much easier to understand since solow 1957 and denison 1962 it is known that capital accumulation explain only a small part of economic growth if most of economic growth is caused by learning by doing induced technologica

how economic growth renewable electricity and natural resources contribute to co2 emissions abstract this study explores the relationship between economic growth and co2 emissions in the so called european union 5 eu 5 countries germany france italy spain and the united kingdom for the 1985 2016 period in doing so we employ a carbon emission function to investigate the environmental kuznets curve phenomenon which describes a relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation the empirical results confirm the existence of an n shaped relationship between economic growth and co2 emissions in the eu 5 countries we incorporate additional variables such as renewable electricity consumption trade openness natural resource abundance and energy innovation to augment the carbon emission function renewable electricity consumption natural resources and energy innovation improve environmental quality while trade openness and the interaction between economic growth and renewable electricity consumption exert a positive impact on co2 emissions this study is novel in that it presents an interaction between economic growth and renewable electricity consumption we also confirm the need for renewable energy regulations related to increasing renewable sources and promoting energy innovation to reduce the negative effects of energy and fossil energy resources on environmental degradation

global oil prices macroeconomic fundamentals and china s commodity sector comovements abstract this paper investigates the common movements of commodity sectors in china as well as the economic underpinnings of the comovements we employ a bayesian dynamic latent factor model to disentangle the common and idiosyncratic sector specific factors of the prices of a group of china s commodity sectors petrochemicals grains energy non ferrous metals oils fats and softs the results indicate that the common factor accounts for a significant portion of the fluctuations of china s commodity sectors providing evidence of the strong commodity sector comovements in china we further use a var model to link the common movements across china s commodity sectors to the underlying determinants including global oil price shocks and domestic macroeconomic fluctuations we find that the global oil price shocks have strong effects on the common movements across commodity sectors in china in addition to its domestic macroeconomic fluctuations at long horizons however at short horizons the common movements across commodity sectors in china respond more strongly to the global oil shocks than to its domestic macroeconomic fluctuations

the environmental kuznets curve and sustainability a panel data analysis abstract in recent years sustainability has represented one of the most important policy goals explored in the environmental kuznets curve ekc literature but related hypotheses performance measures and results continue to present a challenge the present paper contributes to this ongoing literature by studying two different ekc specifications for 10 middle east and north african mena countries over the period 1990 2010 using panel data methods for the first specification namely ekc we show that there is an inverted u shape relationship between environmental degradation and income while for the second specification namely modified ekc mekc we show that there is an inverted u shape relationship between sustainability and human development hd the relationships are shaped by other factors such as energy trade manufacture added value and the role of law more interestingly findings from the estimation show that ekc hypothesis hd and sustainability are crucial to build effective environmental policies

relative commodity prices and cointegration the prebisch singer hypothesis of a secular decline in the relative price of primary commodities is reassessed on the basis of recently available time series data for 1900 1986 special attention is given to adequate dynamic modeling of price fluctuations primary and manufactured goods prices are found to be cointegrated the hypothesis of stationarity for the long run relative price movements cannot be rejected the empirical evidence does not support the prebisch singer hypothesis

unpacking preference how previous experience affects auto ownership as environmental concerns mount alongside increasing auto dependence research has been devoted to understanding the number of automobiles households own the 2000 us census public use micro sample is used to demonstrate the importance of preference formation in auto ownership by studying auto ownership among recent movers using a multinomial probit model the paper demonstrates that residents in the us transit cities who moved from major metropolitan areas are more likely to own fewer vehicles than counterparts who moved from smaller metropolitan areas and non metropolitan areas it is concluded that these results are due to learned preferences for levels of car ownership once the self reinforcing cultural knowledge of living without cars is lost it could be difficult to regain a focus on children and young adults familiarising them with alternatives to the car may be an important approach to developing collective preferences for fewer cars so wrote kain and fauth over 30 years ago since then energy prices have risen fallen and risen again in 2007 fuel prices in the us were about 30 per cent higher than what they were in 1978 energy information administration 2007 table 5 24 increasing awareness of introduction increasing energy prices rapid growth in petroleum imports and the importance of transport in total petroleum consumption have heightened the interest of analysts and policy makers in measures that would decrease auto ownership and use kain and fauth 1978 p 305 2 rachel weinberger and frank goetzke environmental effects and a relatively new awareness of the importance in curbing greenhouse gas emissions associated with burning fossil fuels are additional impetuses policy makers have for continuing to examine the question of auto ownership and use in 2005 americans registered 232 million passenger cars vans light duty trucks and sport utility vehicles the number represents 1 07 registered vehicles per person over 18 usdot bts 2007 that is to say the us has more motor vehicles in the private passenger class than it has adults and it has 1 2 motor vehicles for each licensed driver vehicle miles travelled per year have increased by 40 per cent over the past 20 years this increase is due only in part to population growth per vehicle or roughly per driver annual mileage has increased by 30 per cent fuel economy has remained relatively constant since 1990 resulting in an increase in fossil fuel consumption and related emissions as policy makers seek to understand the seemingly unabated and insatiable appetite for driving it is incument upon us to revisit the issue seeking increasingly nuanced understandings of the motivators for this behaviour in the current paper we examine past research on auto ownership and use in the us measured typically as vehicle miles travelled vmt we add to the literature by measuring the impact of a person s previous observations and experiences on automobile ownership these observations and experiences constitute what we consider learning opportunities which form the basis of preference arentze and timmermans 2003 and 2005 the previous experience of interest is exposure to different levels of automobile ownership which we proxy by metro area versus non metro area living we estimate a model of vehicle ownership that highlights the importance of preserving and promoting environments where auto ownership is optional so that such learning opportunities continue to exist specifically our finding is that people who are likely to have been exposed to relatively lower levels of auto ownership are more likely to own fewer autos other things being equal this becomes critically important when we analyse the literature which consistently holds that reduced vmt in dense urban areas is unlikely to be related to density alone but that it is also at least partly due to reduced levels of auto ownership that is auto owners in dense areas may use their vehicles as frequently and intensively as auto owners in low density areas boarnet and crane 2000 however the option of choosing to live without an automobile or with fewer autos per licensed driver contributes to a lower vmt per capita in dense areas the paper is divided into five sections following this introduction the second section describes previous research on auto ownership and use as well as describing the theoretical work that leads to our approach the third section describes the data and the model this is followed by an exposition and analysis of the model results the final section describes conclusions following immediately from this research

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

learning and the capital goods sector under free trade the case of hongkong abstract attention is focused on technological change and attendant learning processes in the more industrialized third world countries the importance of relatively simple learning processes is stressed and the conditions necessary for facilitating more complex forms of learning particularly protection and promotion are examined here it is shown that the capital goods sector is of central importance the case study material deals with the machine producing sector in hong kong chosen as the representative case of free trade and minimal government intervention and comparison is made with learning processes in a number of other more industrialized third world countries including india argentina and taiwan in the final section the implications of the discussion of learning for theories and techniques of investment allocation including social cost benefit analysis the effective rate of protection and the related domestic cost of foreign exchange are examined

agriculture s terms of trade issues and implications the article addresses 1 the issue of what agricultural commodity prices should be compared to if we are concerned with the welfare of agriculturalists 2 the general absence of product quality adjustment when analysis is undertaken comparing agricultural to manufactured goods prices 3 the extent to which energy prices are or will be the driver of both manufactured and agricultural prices and 4 the importance of considering agriculture s terms of trade tot against the service sector since the service sector is typically the largest in the economy it reflects on the basic question of whether the widespread perception that agriculture s tot secularly decline is correct

fostering the capital goods sector in ldcs abstract the conventional arguments in favour of the production of capital goods by ldcs are based on comparative advantage the possibility of designs appropriate to indigenous factor proportions and the externalities conferred on other sectors these and other arguments are inducing the governments of many middle income countries to more intensively foster the development of the machinery sector this paper examines the analytic and empirical bases of the conventional arguments and finds a considerably more complex picture than that contained in earlier studies

rule of law and the resource curse abundance versus intensity we examine the resource curse using new data on historic resource stocks and an improved econometric methodology the paper distinguishes between resource abundance stocks and extractive intensity flows focusing on relationships between resources and rule of law previously unavailable information on past resource stocks is estimated we find that economically large initial natural resource stocks are associated with subsequent lower levels of rule of law and do not directly affect growth while raw resource exports do not have a significant effect on rule of law when stocks are included in the analysis but do affect average growth rates sample size is maximized through the use of an emis expectation maximization with importance sampling algorithm to replace missing data minimizing the bias and inefficiency associated with listwise deletion which commonly eliminates half or more of the available data in this setting

recent trends in the terms of trade of jamaica 1955 86 the prebisch singer hypothesis of a long term deterioration in the commodity terms of trade of developing countries has evoked tremendous controversy in the literature most of the empirical work on the terms of trade is devoted to all developing countries this paper is country specific modern time series techniques have been used to test the perbisch singer hypothesis the empirical results for jamaica support the declining terms of trade hypothesis unit root tests indicate that jamaica s terms of trade is trend stationary finally the empirical evidence suggests that the decline in the terms of trade accounted for an annual loss of approximately 1 5 percent in jamaica s gdp

human development means and ends from growth to basic needs sometimes the change in the fashions of thinking about development appears like a comedy of errors a lurching from one fad to another economic growth employment creation jobs and justice redistribution with growth basic needs bottom up development participatory development sustainable development market friendly development liberation liberalisation human development thus goes the carousel of the slogans but this would not be a correct record there has been an evolution in our thinking about development both internal logic and new evidence have led to the revision of our views previous and partly discarded approaches have taught us much that is still valuable and our current approach will surely be subject to criticisms a brief survey of the evolution of our thinking may be helpful the discussion started in the 1950s influenced by arthur lewis 1955 and others who emphasised economic growth as the key to poverty eradication even at this early stage sensible economists and development planners were quite clear in spite of what is now often said in caricature of past thought that economic growth is not an end in itself but a performance test of development arthur lewis defined the purpose of development as widening our range of choice exactly as the human development reports of the united nations development programme do today three justifications were given for the emphasis on growth as the principal performance test one justification assumed that through market forces such as the rising demand for labour rising productivity rising wages lower prices of the goods bought by the people economic growth would spread its benefits widely and speedily and that these benefits are best achieved through growth even in the early days some sceptics said that growth is not necessarily so benign they maintained that in certain conditions such as increasing returns restrictions to entry monopoly power unequal distribution of income and assets growth gives to those who already have it tends to concentrate income and wealth in the hands of the few this is where the second assumption came in it was that governments especially democratic ones are concerned with the fate of the poor therefore progressive taxation social services and other government interventions would

colombian international trade from a physical perspective towards an ecological prebisch thesis abstract prebisch s approach to economic development was based on the notion that there is an international historical division of labour peripheral countries are specialised in exporting primary goods while centre countries export industrial goods the terms of trade for peripheral countries tend to deteriorate this approach can be extended to ecological issues the international centre periphery division does not only involve the monetary exchange of goods and capital but also the physical exchange in which southern countries provide materials and energy so that northern countries can develop their socioeconomic metabolism this metabolic process is guaranteed through cheap prices for primary goods this paper aims to apply and extend prebisch s thought on unequal exchange both monetary and ecological in relation to colombian trade in the period 1970 2002 using material flow analysis

can globalisation stop the decline in commodities terms of trade in this paper we address the following question would a fully integrated world economy eliminate the widely reported decline in the terms of trade of primary commodities we address the question by looking at the terms of trade within the us a highly integrated economy our findings show two results first us internal real commodities terms of trade over the 1947 1998 period experienced slowly declining but significant trends second once we control for the effect of us prices on international terms of trade we find a long run relationship between the us and international relative prices these findings support the view that the decline of commodities terms of trade bears no relationship with the process of globalisation this seems to indicate that if world terms of trade behaved as the us terms of trade neither increased integration nor protectionist measures would eliminate this trend

savings growth and the resource curse hypothesis an important connection between recent attempts to understand the determinants of economic growth and the measurement of sustainability is the finding of a negative and significant relationship between natural resource abundance and economic growth this is the so called resource curse hypothesis using cross country regressions we offer evidence that the curse may itself be a manifestation of the inability of governments to manage large resource revenues sustainably in particular these results offer another perspective on the resource curse hypothesis the countries where growth has lagged are those where the combination of natural resource macroeconomic and public expenditure policies have led to a low rate of genuine saving net saving adjusted for resource depletion

resource accounting in measures of unsustainability challenging the world bank s conclusions the world bank has recently published acomprehensive study of environmental and resourceaccounting covering 103 countries world bank1997a the study concludes that many sub saharan northern african and middle east countries have hadnegative genuine saving rates over the last 20years and therefore fail to pass the test of weaksustainability this paper argues that the bank sconclusions depend on a method for computing usercosts from resource exploitation that is challengedby two competing ones the el serafy method andthe method of repetto et al and is inferior to oneof its rivals resource rents are re computed usingthe el serafy method for 14 countries and thesub saharan and northern african and middle eastregions the results are that both regions andalmost all countries either stop exhibiting signs ofunsustainability or their unsustainability can beexplained without having recourse to resourceaccounting however for congo ecuador gabon nigeria mauritania and trinidad and tobago there isa lesson these countries did not adequately use theopportunities they were given through their naturalresource endowments and should learn from theirmistake for the future depletion of their remainingreserves of natural resources

dutch disease economics and oil syndrome an empirical study abstract this paper integrates the existing dutch disease models of an oil boom into a reduced form three sector model and estimates it for five developing oil exporting countries having significant agricultural and manufacturing sectors time series annual data for the period 1966 1986 are used for algeria ecuador indonesia nigeria and venezuela their output composition is altered by an increase in their oil revenues the spending effect and in the world price of manufactured goods relative to agricultural products the world price effect both effects expand the manufacturing sectors of these countries and contract their agricultural sectors the spending effect expands their nontraded sectors whereas the world price effect may expand or contract them the opposite results are implied for the oil collapse of the 1980s

the narrow moving band the dutch disease and the competitive consequences of mrs thatcher notes on trade in the presence of dynamic scale economies abstract this paper presents a model of trade in which comparative advantage instead of being determined by underlying attributes of countries evolves over time through learning by doing in this model arbitrary patterns of specialization once established tend to become entrenched over time the model sheds light on three widely held views that do not make sense in more conventional models first is the view that temporary protection of selected sectors can permanently alter the pattern of comparative advantage in the protecting country s favor second is the view that seemingly favorable developments such as the discovery of exportable natural resources may lead to a permanent loss of other sectors and reduce welfare in the long run third is the possibility that a temporary overvaluation of a currency due to tight money can lead to a permanent loss of competitiveness in some sectors

distortions in world food markets in the wake of gatt evidence and policy implications abstract although the principle of trade liberalization has gained wide acceptance in recent years many policy makers in developing countries especially in latin america are exploring temporary import restrictions in the form of additional tariff protection to insulate domestic farmers from the impact of depressed prices until the uruguay round accord leads to higher world market prices for agricultural products the paper argues that there is little reason to believe that current world market prices will rise substantially in real terms even with the uruguay round accord fully implemented this finding suggests that additional tariff protection would not make economic sense

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

resource drag in an endogenous growth context a panel data based estimation with cross sectional dependences and structural breaks the article develops a resource drag model based on the endogenous growth theory and provides fresh empirical evidence to estimate the drags for china by using the recently developed panel model with both cross sectional dependences and structural breaks the results indicate that there exists a long run equilibrium relationship between gdp and its inputs and both the land and water resources have significantly positive impacts on gdp except from some provinces after allowing for cross sectional heterogeneities and structure breaks in addition the study employs the common correlated effects estimators to investigate the resource drags at both the pooled and individual levels the result shows that the aggregate drag reduces annual growth rate by about 0 016 percentage points in china as a whole while there exist significant differences in both these disaggregate and aggregate drags for the province groups suggesting there is a fair amount of geographic clustering for them

booming sector and de industrialisation in a small open economy this paper presents a theoretical analysis of the dutch disease the phenomenon whereby a boom in one traded goods sector squeezes porfitability in other traded goods sectors both by directly bi

acquisition of technological capability in development a quantitative case study of pakistan s capital goods sector there is by now a substantial body of literature that points to the importance of technological capability acquisition for industrial development this literature however is almost exclusively based on qualitative case studies this paper addresses the lack of objective quantitative measurement and testing using data from a survey among capital goods manufacturers in pakistan it develops quantitative proxies for technological capability and various learning mechanisms that are believed to contribute to its emergence these are used in a regression analysis aimed at finding statistical support for the contention in the literature that capability results from an effortful learning process and at analyzing the main dimensions of that process

co movements in commodity prices a note based on network analysis this article analyses co movements in a wide group of commodity prices during the time period 1992 2010 our methodological approach is based on the correlation matrix and the networks inside through this approach we are able to summarize global interaction and interdependence capturing the existing heterogeneity in the degrees of synchronization between commodity prices our results produce two main findings a we do not observe a persistent increase in the degree of co movement of the commodity prices in our time sample however from mid 2008 to the end of 2009 co movements almost doubled when compared with the average correlation b we observe three groups of commodities which have exhibited similar price dynamics metals oil and grains and oilseeds and which have increased their degree of co movement during the sampled period

refining the oil curse country level evidence from exogenous variations in resource income is there a resource curse some scholars argue that resource income is associated with slower transitions to democracy others contend that the negative effects of resources are conditional on factors such as institutional quality to test these competing hypotheses this article exploits the price spike caused by the 1973 oil embargo which transformed several countries with latent oil industries into resource reliant states our quasi experimental research design allows for better identification of causation than the associational approaches common in the literature we use the method of synthetic controls to compare the political development of states that received resource derived revenue with how these states would have behaved in a counterfactual world without such revenue we find that there is little evidence that a resource curse systematically prevents democratization or that institutional quality alone determines outcomes nevertheless resource income meaningfully affects outcomes and even con

primary commodity prices manufactured goods prices and the terms of trade of developing countries what the long run shows the authors revisit in this article the empirical foundation of the alleged secular decline in the prices of primary commodities relative to those of manufactures they use a newly constructed index of commodity prices and two modified indexes of manufactured good prices and find that from 1900 to 1986 the relative prices of all primary commodities fell on trend by 0 5 percent a year and those of nonfuel primary commodities by 0 6 percent a year they thus confirm the sign but not the magnitude of the trend implicit in the work of prebisch but even the more limited secular decline shown by their relative price indexes may be magnified by an incomplete account of quality improvements in manufactures they then show that the evolution of terms of trade of nonfuel primary commodities is not the same as that of the net barter terms of trade of non oil exporting developing countries finally they find that despite the decline that has probably occurred during the current century in the terms of trade of nonfuel primary commodities the purchasing power of total exports of these products has increased considerably similarly the fall that may have occurred after world war ii in the net barter terms of trade of developing countries seems to have been more than compensated for by the steady improvement in their income terms of trade

the long run behavior of the relative price of primary commodities statistical evidence and policy implications abstract this paper is concerned with both the statistical and policy issues surrounding the long run behavior of the ratio of primary commodities prices to those of manufactured goods seen as a measure of the barter terms of trade between primary producers and the producers of manufacturers the statistical evidence reported is found to offer support for the secular deterioration hypothesis the policy implications of this finding for less developed countries are explored

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

market reforms and commodity price volatility the case of east african coffee market the goal of this paper is to examine the impact of commodity market reforms on producer price volatility using evidence from the east african coffee market the results based on time varying volatility models and key summary statistics show that coffee market reforms in the east african community eac are associated with changes in producer price volatility and volatility persistence at both country and regional levels however reforms were not the only cause of changes in price volatility the study further shows that reforms had different effects on prices volatilities of arabica and robusta varieties of coffee grown in individual eac countries these findings have wider implication for commodity market reforms and producer price stabilisation policies in the eac and coffee producing countries in sub sahara africa

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

commodity prices and growth in africa a frican economies export primary commodities and most export little else policymakers as well as economists and historians of african economic development have seen these exports as both a hope and a curse the following parable tells the story once upon a time a servant of the ruler discovered a miraculous plant which grew readily in that country and whose seeds could be woven into fine cloth so desirable was this fabric that it became prized all over the world and fetched a high price after two score years the plant accounted for most of the country s trade with the world the ruler ordered the peasants to grow the plant paid them only a fraction of its price and he and his nobles became fabulously wealthy because the ruler wished to be remembered as a great ruler and as the father of his country he used his wealth to build a great army and brought machines from foreign countries to make the fine goods that previously could only be obtained from foreign merchants but the machines often broke down and the goods that they made were of poor quality and after the ruler died they were left to rust under the ruler s successor there was a war in a foreign land where the plant also grew so that there was a great shortage and its price increased threefold in only three seasons the new ruler spent his newfound riches on fantastic extravagance while immense sums were expended on public works after the manner of the east and on productive works carried out in the wrong way or too soon not even the threefold increase in prices could support these expenditures and the country soon found itself deeply in debt when the war ended and the price fell the country could no longer pay the interest on its debt or borrow more money even after it had sold its only useful public work to a foreign power so that power sent a mission to the country the publication of whose report from which the above

the statistical debate on the net barter terms of trade between primary commodities and manufactures a comment and some additional evidence i950 p s hypothesis according to this hypothesis the net barter terms of trade nbtt between primary products and manufactures have over the longrun exhibited a downward trend spraos presented a detailed and thorough analysis of both the adequacy of the various statistical series available to proxy the nbtt s behaviour over the long run and the wide range of conceptual including quality problems involved in such an exercise on the basis of his analysis spraos concluded that the balance of the evidence for the seventy year period ending with the outbreak of world war ii supported the p s hypothesis of a secular deterioration in the nbtt it should however be noted that the evidence also suggested that the particular series cho sen for analysis by prebisch i950 himself did appear to exaggerate possibly to a large extent the rate of deterioration however when the analysis was extended to include the post world war ii period spraos found that while the deteriorating tendency cannot be decisively refuted it is open to doubt when the record up to the i970s is taken into account i980 p i26 as we shall see in this paper closer scrutiny reveals a statistical problem with spraos s analysis and the purpose of this paper is to show that once appropriate action is taken to overcome this problem some quite strong evidence in support of the p s hypothesis emerges the paper is organised as follows section i briefly discusses spraos s methodology and section ii discusses an econometric issue arising from this analysis section iii presents our empirical evidence while section iv summarises the main findings of the paper

a short note on updating the grilli and yang commodity price index the grilli and yang commodity price index is one of the most widely used commodity price series in the applied economics literature this note provides some practical advice on updating this data series by listing the base period index values identifying relevant data sources and describing a method for computing subindex weights in 1988 enzo grilli and maw cheng yang published their seminal article on the long run development of an index of 24 primary commodity prices gycpi deflated by an index of manufactured goods unit values the sample of average annual primary commodity prices covers about 54 percent of the primary commodity trade in the index reference period 1977 79 the deflators considered for manufacturing prices were the u s manufacturing price index usmpi and the manufacturing unit value index muv 1widely used and discussed the grilli and yang data set has been extended by a number of researchers the data have been employed in a variety of contexts in later studies thus the gycpi data continue to enjoy wide popularity in their own right and as a benchmark for new approaches to empirical studies

natural resources and economic growth the role of investment is it possible that excessive reliance on natural resources affects saving and investment in a way that retards economic growth and thus in the long run the level of output per capita this paper reviews the literature explores the data and compares and contrasts the explanatory power and interplay of natural resources and civil liberties our proxy for institutional variables currently under scrutiny in the literature we propose that natural resource dependence may be viewed as an exogenous factor that impedes economic growth and investment as well as institutions even if we stress that natural resource abundance may be good for growth

piecewise linear trends and cycles in primary commodity prices we extend the methodology put forward in yamada and yoon 2014 journal of international money and finance 42 c 193 207 to analyze the trend and cyclical behavior of relative primary commodity prices these authors propose the use of the so called l1 filter that renders piecewise linear trends of the underlying data our focus on the calibration of such filter and its implications for the empirical analysis of primary commodity prices especially the interpretation given to the resulting trend we also illustrate how suitably calibrated filters may be used to compute piecewise linear super cycles whose turning points are easy to identify