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

nonfarm employment and poverty in rural el salvador abstract this paper analyzes two complementary data sets to study poverty and the nonfarm sector in rural el salvador we find that rural poverty in el salvador remains acute and significantly higher than in urban areas while the rural poor are mainly agricultural laborers and marginal farmers some nonfarm activities are also of importance to the poor in fact nonfarm activities in el salvador account for a significant share of rural employment and income for both the poor and the nonpoor the poor on the one hand are engaged in last resort nonfarm activities that are not associated with high levels of labor productivity the nonpoor on the other are engaged in productive nonfarm activities which are likely to present a potent force for upward mobility significant correlates of these high productivity occupations include education infrastructure location and gender while most of the analysis is at the household level the data also permit some focus on small scale rural enterprise activities it appears that in el salvador very few rural enterprises report utilizing formal credit in setting up their activities in addition a significant proportion of enterprises are engaged in subcontracting arrangements with some larger often urban based firm

testing weak exogeneity in cointegrated panels for reason of empirical tractability analysis of cointegrated economic time series is often developed in a partial setting in which a subset of variables is explicitly modeled conditional on the rest this approach yields valid inference only if the conditioning variables are weakly exogenous for the parameters of interest this paper proposes a new test of weak exogeneity in panel cointegration models the test has a limiting gumbel distribution that is obtained by first letting the time dimension of the panel go to infinity and then letting its cross sectional dimension go to infinity the paper evaluates the accuracy of the asymptotic approximation in finite samples via simulation experiments finally as an empirical illustration the paper reports tests of weak exogeneity of disposable income and wealth in an aggregate consumption equation

disaggregate energy consumption employment and income in turkey the purpose of this paper is to contribute to literature on energy consumption and economic growth relationship by examining how much of the variance in national income growth can be explained by the growth of different sources of energy consumption and employment in turkey we use the recently developed generalized forecast error variance decomposition technique of koop et al j econom 74 1996 119 and pesaran and shin econ lett 58 1998 17 to determine the information content of the growth rate of energy consumption waste seems to have the largest initial impact followed by oil however over a 3 year horizon lignite appears to explain the largest forecast error variance of gdp the total energy consumption explains 21 of forecast error variance of gdp energy consumption appears to be almost as important as employment in turkey therefore policy makers may be interested in identifying the energy dependencies of economic growth in allocating the energy investment budget

third world indebted industrialization international finance and state capitalism in mexico brazil algeria and south korea the past fifteen years have seen two important developments in the international economic system the rapid industrialization of many less developed countries ldcs and their increasing indebtedness to private financial institutions massive bank loans have been used to fund industrial growth in many ldcs international financial markets have replaced multinational corporations as the third world s most important source of private foreign capital in four major borrowing countries mexico brazil algeria and south korea the process of indebted industrialization has its roots in the internationalization of finance the increasing role of the state and the use of funds raised on the international capital markets to finance industrial development the results include rapid expansions of ldc industrial production and ldc exports of manufactured products as well as the formation of an implicit partnership between private financial institutions and state capitalist elites in the third world

investment penetration in manufacturing and extraction and external public debt in third world states abstract this research examines the contention that foreign investment is positively related to external public debt accumulation by third world states three hypotheses are examined 1 that flows of foreign investment are negatively related to increased debt over the short run 2 that stocks of foreign investments are positively related over the long run and 3 that the effects of foreign investment should differ according to their sectoral location with higher investments in manufacturing producing greater borrowing and investments in extraction being unrelated to debt accumulation the results show that stocks of investments in manufacturing are strongly related to borrowing only among american states with the effects being immediate and not long term only african states were affected by flows with these effects being long term and positive extraction investments were not related to debt accumulation these findings indicate that the mechanism by which foreign investments affect debt accumulation varies from region to region the repatriation of profits and local borrowing by foreigners appears to have the greatest impact among american states while attempts to maintain foreign induced growth is the key effect in africa

rejecting renewables the socio technical impediments to renewable electricity in the united states if renewable power systems deliver such impressive benefits why do they still provide only 3 percent of national electricity generation in the united states as an answer this article demonstrates that the impediments to renewable power are socio technical a term that encompasses the technological social political regulatory and cultural aspects of electricity supply and use extensive interviews of public utility commissioners utility managers system operators manufacturers researchers business owners and ordinary consumers reveal that it is these socio technical barriers that often explain why wind solar biomass geothermal and hydroelectric power sources are not embraced utility operators reject renewable resources because they are trained to think only in terms of big conventional power plants consumers practically ignore renewable power systems because they are not given accurate price signals about electricity consumption intentional market distortions such as subsidies and unintentional market distortions such as split incentives prevent consumers from becoming fully invested in their electricity choices as a result newer and cleaner technologies that may offer social and environmental benefits but are not consistent with the dominant paradigm of the electricity industry continue to face comparative rejection

the growth of income and energy consumption in six developing countries this paper reexamines the inter temporal link between energy consumption and income in six developing countries with diverse economic backgrounds and energy statistics in a production function framework we employ the generalized variance decompositions and generalized impulse response techniques to see if the growth of income and energy consumption contains considerable information to predict each other in all countries energy appears as an essential factor of production results indicate that energy may be a relatively more important input than labor and or capital in some countries hence neutrality of energy does not seem to hold

migrants savings the probability of return migration and migrants performance this paper highlights a difference between migrants and the native born namely a positive probability of return migration the analysis demonstrates that this probability results in migrants saving more than comparable native born this differential may explain why even if all workers are perfectly homogeneous in skills migrants often outperform the native born in the receiving economy excerpt

return migration and occupational choice evidence from albania this paper explores the impact of return migration on the albanian economy by analyzing the occupational choice of return migrants while explicitly differentiating between self employment as either own account work or entrepreneurship we find that the own account workers have characteristics closer to non participants in the labor market i e lower education levels while entrepreneurship is positively related to schooling foreign language proficiency and savings accumulated abroad furthermore compared to having not migrated return migrants are significantly more likely to be entrepreneurs showing the positive impact of migration on job creating activities in albania

renewable energy consumption and income in emerging economies abstract increased economic growth and demand for energy in emerging economies is creating an opportunity for these countries to increase their usage of renewable energy this paper presents and estimates two empirical models of renewable energy consumption and income for a panel of emerging economies panel cointegration estimates show that increases in real per capita income have a positive and statistically significant impact on per capita renewable energy consumption in the long term a 1 increase in real income per capita increases the consumption of renewable energy per capita in emerging economies by approximately 3 5 long term renewable energy per capita consumption price elasticity estimates are approximately equal to 0 70

testing the monetary model of exchange rate determination a closer look at panels abstract in this paper we undertake an extensive evaluation of panel tests of the long run monetary model of exchange rate determination we first show how poorly the monetary model performs on a country by country basis for us dollar exchange rates over the post bretton woods period for a large number of industrialized countries in sharp contrast we find considerable support for the monetary model using panel procedures as in groen 2000 and mark and sul 2001 given the disparity in the country by country and panel approaches we carefully analyze the homogeneity restrictions inherent in the panel procedures the evidence on the appropriateness of the homogeneity restrictions is mixed in the end whether the monetary model conforms to post bretton woods data largely depends on one s prior beliefs

is infrastructure capital productive a dynamic heterogeneous approach this paper offers an empirical evaluation of the output contribution of infrastructure drawing from a large data set on infrastructure stocks covering 88 countries and spanning the years 1960 2000 and using a panel time series approach the paper estimates a long run aggregate production function relating gdp to human capital physical capital and a synthetic measure of infrastructure given by the first principal component of infrastructure endowments in transport power and telecommunications tests of the cointegration rank allowing it to vary across countries reveal a common rank with a single cointegrating vector which is taken to represent the long run production function estimation of its parameters is performed using the pooled mean group estimator which allows for unrestricted short run parameter heterogeneity across countries while imposing the testable restriction of long run parameter homogeneity the long run elasticity of output with respect to the synthetic infrastructure index ranges between 0 07 and 0 10 the estimates are highly significant both statistically and economically and robust to alternative dynamic specifications and infrastructure measures there is little evidence of long run parameter heterogeneity across countries whether heterogeneity is unconditional or conditional on their level of development population size or infrastructure endowments

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

the optimal migration duration and activity choice after re migration if migrants return to their origin countries two questions arise which are of immediate economic interest for both immigration and emigration country what determines their optimal migration duration and what are the activities migrants choose after a return little research has been devoted to these two issues this paper utilises a unique survey data set which records activities of returned migrants we first illustrate the activities of immigrants after returning we show that more than half of the returning migrants are economically active after return and most of them engage in entrepreneurial activities we then develop a model where migrants decide simultaneously about the optimal migration duration and their after return activities guided by this model we specify and estimate an empirical model where the after return activity and the optimal migration duration are simultaneously chosen

dynamic seemingly unrelated cointegrating regressions we propose the parametric dynamic seemingly unrelated regression dsur estimator for simultaneous estimation of multiple cointegrating regressions dsur is efficient when the equilibrium errors are correlated across equations and is applicable for panel cointegration estimation in environments where the cross section is small relative to the available time series we study the asymptotic and small sample properties of the dsur estimator for both heterogeneous and homogeneous cointegrating vectors we then apply the method to analyse two long standing problems in international economics our first application revisits the estimation of long run correlations between national investment and national saving our second application revisits the question of whether the forward exchange rate is an unbiased predictor of the future spot rate

renewable energy consumption co2 emissions and oil prices in the g7 countries abstract economic and societal issues related to energy security and global warming is placing greater emphasis on the consumption of renewable energy this paper presents and estimates an empirical model of renewable energy consumption for the g7 countries panel cointegration estimates show that in the long term increases in real gdp per capita and co2 per capita are found to be major drivers behind per capita renewable energy consumption these results are robust across two different panel cointegration estimators oil price increases have a smaller although negative impact on renewable energy consumption deviations from equilibrium are driven mostly by the error correction term as opposed to short term shocks short term deviations from the long term equilibrium take anywhere from between 1 3 years france and 7 3 years japan to correct

testing alternative conceptions of the relationship between direct foreign investment and external debt in poor countries this article examines the relationship between direct foreign investment and external public debt accumulation in third world states four basic connections between foreign investment and debt are examined the first sees debt as resulting from the repatriation of profits by foreign investors the second sees debt as a product of the effects of foreign investment on growth in the host state the third posits that foreign investment leads to debt due to its impact on the host s terms of trade finally a large foreign presence is regarded as creating greater debt by producing the desire to counterbalance the role played by foreigners the results suggest that repatriation does lead to greater debt and that this effect is associated with investments in the manufacturing sector

income strategies among rural households in mexico the role of off farm activities abstract off farm activities generate on average more than half of farm households incomes in the mexican ejido sector participation in these activities helps reduce poverty and contributes to greater equality in the distribution of income this paper analyzes the determinants of access to off farm sources of income across households we find that education plays a major role in accessing better remunerated nonagricultural employment adults of indigenous ethnic origin suffer from an educational lag and have less access to off farm nonagricultural employment than non indigenous adults at identical educational levels the regional availability of off farm employment strongly affects participation in addition women are differentially limited by distance to urban centers in their ability to gain off farm employment

international capital mobility evidence from panel cointegration tests abstract panel cointegration techniques applied to pooled data for 50 developed and developing economies for the period 1970 2000 indicate that savings and investment are non stationary and cointegrated that there are marked differences in saving retention ratios between different country groups and that retention ratios have fallen

renewable energy consumption and economic growth evidence from a panel of oecd countries abstract this study examines the relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth for a panel of twenty oecd countries over the period 1985 2005 within a multivariate framework given the relatively short span of the time series data a panel cointegration and error correction model is employed to infer the causal relationship the heterogeneous panel cointegration test reveals a long run equilibrium relationship between real gdp renewable energy consumption real gross fixed capital formation and the labor force with the respective coefficients positive and statistically significant the granger causality results indicate bidirectional causality between renewable energy consumption and economic growth in both the short and long run

a simple sieve bootstrap range test for poolability in dependent cointegrated panels abstract we develop a sieve bootstrap range test for poolability of cointegrating regressions in dependent panels and evaluate by simulation its performances the test seems to have good size and power properties even with small cross sections moderate time samples and low heterogeneity

dependence on foreign investment and economic growth in the third world estimates of the extent to which third world countries have experienced slower rates of growth than those in the industrialized west since i960 indicate a weak relation between initial wealth and subsequent economic growth that follows an inverted u shape pattern while the lowest growth rates are found among the poorest countries of the third world the highest growth rates are found not in the industrialized west but in the wealthiest third world countries drawing on contending arguments associated with modernization and dependency perspectives the relationship between foreign investment and growth within the third world is examined results undermine the idea that foreign investment inhibits growth suggesting instead that flows of foreign investment may facilitate growth especially among the initially wealthier countries of the third world

credit availability and internal migration evidence from thailand this study investigates the relationship between borrowing and internal migration exploiting the micro finance scheme village fund in thailand it investigates the short and medium term effects o

banking and insurance abstract this paper studies the economic role of financial institutions in economies where agents incomes are subject to privately observable idiosyncratic random events the information structure precludes conventional insurance arrangements however a financial institution perhaps best viewed as a savings bank can provide partial insurance by generating a time pattern of deposit returns that redistributes wealth from agents with high incomes to those with low incomes resulting in a level of expected utility higher than that achievable in simple security markets insurance is incomplete because the bank faces a tradeoff between provision of insurance and maintenance of private incentives

a new poolability test for cointegrated panels this paper proposes a new test of the null hypothesis that the parameters in a cointegrated panel data regression are equal across the cross section the asymptotic distribution of the new test statistic is derived and simulation results are provided to suggest that it performs very well in small samples an empirical application to the monetary exchange rate model is also provided copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

energy consumption and economic growth in central america evidence from a panel cointegration and error correction model abstract this study examines the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for six central american countries over the period 1980 2004 within a multivariate framework given the relatively short span of the time series data a panel cointegration and error correction model is employed to infer the causal relationship based on the heterogeneous panel cointegration test by pedroni pedroni p 1999 critical values for cointegration tests in heterogeneous panels with multiple regressors oxford bulletin of economics and statistics 61 653 670 pedroni p 2004 panel cointegration asymptotic and finite sample properties of pooled time series tests with an application to the ppp hypothesis new results econometric theory 20 597 627 cointegration is present between real gdp energy consumption the labor force and real gross fixed capital formation with the respective coefficients positive and statistically significant the granger causality results indicate the presence of both short run and long run causality from energy consumption to economic growth which supports the growth hypothesis

assets activities and rural income generation evidence from a multicountry analysis summary this paper examines the links between the assets and the economic activities of rural households in developing countries to provide insight into how the promotion of certain key assets particularly education land and infrastructure influences the economic choices of these households nationally representative data from 15 countries which form part of the rural income generating activities riga database are used in the analysis the results indicate that improved land access is linked to agricultural production and thus will lead households to take on average this path for improving household welfare higher levels of education and greater access to infrastructure appear to be most closely linked to non agricultural wage employment