the supply and demand for exports in israel abstract using annual data for israel over the period 1960 1989 we estimate an econometric model for the supply and demand for exports a novel feature is that domestic absorption crowds out export supply exports are imperfect substitutes in world markets for tradeables produced abroad the price elasticity of demand is about 1 3 while the price elasticity of supply is about 1 5 the model is simulated to calculate the effects of policy instruments and other exogenous variables on exports and export prices

volume flexibility and capacity investment under demand uncertainty the paper considers optimal capacity investment decisions under uncertainty taking a real options approach concerning the production decision we study a flexible and an inflexible scenario the flexible firm can costlessly adjust production over time with the capacity level as the upper bound while the inflexible firm fixes production at capacity level from the moment of investment onwards we find that the flexible firm invests in higher capacity than the inflexible firm where the capacity difference increases with uncertainty for the flexible firm the initial capacity utilization rate can be quite low especially when investment costs are concave and the economic environment is uncertain as to the timing of the investment there are two contrary effects first the flexible firm has an incentive to invest earlier because flexibility raises the project value second the flexible firm has an incentive to invest later because costs are larger due to the higher capacity level the latter effect dominates in highly uncertain economic environments our model being dynamic enables us to derive the at first sight counterintuitive result that an increase in capacity holding cost raises the capacity level the firm invests in

from malthusian stagnation to modern growth this paper investigates the historical evolution of the relationship among population growth technological change and standard of living the analysis focuses on two most important differences among the malthusian regime post malthusian regime and modern growth regime these were the behavior of income per capita and the relationship between the level of income per capita and the population growth rate the modern growth regime is characterized by steady growth in both income per capita and the level of technology in the malthusian regime technological progress and population growth was glacial by modern standards and income per capita was fairly constant in contrast to the modern growth regime the relationship between per capita income and population growth in the malthusian regime was positive post malthusian regime shared one characteristic with each of the two regimes in addition this paper developed and described an endogenous growth model consistent with the above mentioned transition process

are any growth theories robust this article investigates the strength of empirical evidence for various growth theories when there is model uncertainty with respect to the correct growth model using model averaging methods we find little evidence that so called fundamental growth theories play an important role in explaining aggregate growth in contrast we find strong evidence for macroeconomic policy effects and a role for unexplained regional heterogeneity as well as some evidence of parameter heterogeneity in the aggregate production function we conclude that the ability of cross country growth regressions to adjudicate the relative importance of alternative growth theories is limited despite the vast amount of empirical research generated by new growth theories there is remarkably little consensus on which mechanisms are most salient in explaining cross country differences this article is designed to provide some evidence on this question by examining the robustness of empirical support for different growth the ories as determinants of both aggregate growth and its underlying components total factor productivity tfp growth and physical and human capital accumulation one reason for the lack of empirical consensus on growth determinants is that the main statistical tool in empirical studies cross country growth regressions provides very different answers depending on how the regression is specified which for this context typically amounts to the choice of control variables individual papers typically employ regressions that include modest subsets of the body of regressors that have been pro posed in the literature as a whole others employ a kitchen sink approach to evaluate the relative evidentiary support of competing growth theories in such an exercise a large number of variables are included in a regression and those variables that prove to be significant are then declared to be the important determinants of growth while the others are dismissed as unimportant rodrik et al 2002 sachs 2003

evaluating natural resource investments notwithstanding impressive advances in the theory of finance over the past 2 decades practical procedures for capital budgeting have evolved only slowly the standard technique which has remained unchanged in essentials since it was originally proposed see dean 1951 bierman and smidt 1960 derives from a simple adaptation of the fisher 1907 model of valuation under certainty under this technique expected cash flows from an investment project are discounted at a rate deemed appropriate to their risk and the resulting present value is compared with the cost of the project this standard textbook technique reflects modern theoretical developments only insofar as estimates of the discount rate may be obtained from crude application of single period asset pricing theory but see brennan 1973 bogue and roll 1974 turnbull 1977 constantinides 1978 the inadequacy of this approach to capital budgeting is widely acknowledged although not widely discussed its obvious deficiency is its the evaluation of mining and other natural resource projects is made particularly difficult by the high degree of uncertainty attaching to output prices it is shown that the techniques of continuous time arbitrage and stochastic control theory may be used not only to value such projects but also to determine the optimal policies for developing managing and abandoning them the approach may be adapted to a wide variety of contexts outside the natural resource sector where uncertainty about future project revenues is a paramount concern

the economics of worldwide stagflation the last fifteen years have witnessed dramatic changes in economics not only in the manner in which the economics profession views economics but also in the manner in which the general public views economics and economists by the late 1960 s there had emerged more or less a consensus macroeconomic framework that is an agreed upon structure to be used to study economic problems at the aggregate level robert solow stated as quoted in leijonhufvud 1968

natural disasters and human capital accumulation the empirical literature on the relationship between natural disaster risk and investment in education is inconclusive model averaging methods in a framework of cross country and panel regressions show an extremely robust negative partial correlation between secondary school enrollment and natural disaster risk this result is driven exclusively by geologic disasters exposure to natural disaster risk is a robust determinant of differences in secondary school enrollment between countries but not necessarily within countries natural disasters human capital education school enrollment bayesian model averaging

investment and capacity choice under uncertain demand this paper extends the real options literature by discussing an investment problem where a firm has to determine optimal investment timing and optimal capacity choice at the same time under conditions of irreversible investment expenditures and uncertainty in future demand after the project is installed with a certain maximum capacity this capacity is fixed as an upper boundary to the output and cannot be adjusted later on it turns out that in the framework of this once and for all decision uncertainty in future demand leads to an increase in optimal installed capacity but on the other hand it causes investment to be delayed to an extent that even small uncertainty makes waiting and accumulation of further information the optimal decision for large ranges of demand limiting the capacity which may be installed weakens this extreme effect of uncertainty

failure to launch the role of land inequality in transition delays recent work in the growth literature has provided various explanations for transition delays and the great divergence this paper provides empirical support for one theory of transition delays initial land inequality our analysis is designed to elucidate the channels via which land inequality can affect long run economic performance using a new historical data set for land inequality frankema 2009 we employ duration analysis to investigate whether higher levels of land inequality lead to longer delays in the extension of primary schooling we then investigate whether such delays affect long run economic performance via their effect on contemporaneous schooling our findings suggest that land inequality is a key determinant of delays in schooling and that such delays have a significant negative impact on long run output

how to use interaction terms in bma reply to crespo cuaresma s comment on masanjala and papageorgiou 2008 jesus crespo cuaresma how different is africa a comment on masanjala and papageorgiou journal of applied econometrics 2011 shows that the results in masanjala and papageorgiou rough and lonely road to prosperity a reexamination of the sources of growth in africa using bayesian model averaging journal of applied econometrics 2008 23 5 671 682 are sensitive to an alternative prior model structure in considering interaction terms as a side issue the algorithm for averaging over models is also challenged in this reply i show that the prior used in masanjala and papageorgiou is as sensible as the prior suggested by crespo cuaresma what we learn from crespo cuaresma s comment and this reply is that further effort should be dedicated to the study of parameter heterogeneity in the framework of bma methods copyright 2011 john wiley sons ltd

resource flexibility with responsive pricing this article studies two types of flexibility used by firms to better respond to uncertain market conditions resource flexibility and responsive pricing we consider a situation in which a single flexible resource can be used to satisfy two distinct demand classes while the resource capacity must be decided based on uncertain demand functions the resource allocation as well as the pricing decision are made based on the realized demand functions we characterize the effects of two key drivers of flexibility demand variability and demand correlation assuming normally distributed demand curve intercepts demand variability creates opportunity costs and with fixed prices decreases the firm s profit we show that with the additional flexibility gained from responsive pricing the firm can maximize the benefits of favorable demand conditions and mitigate the effects of poor demand conditions ultimately profiting from variability positive demand correlation on the other hand remains undesirable under responsive pricing the optimal capacity of the flexible resource is always increasing in both demand variability and demand correlation this contrasts with the scenarios based on fixed prices highlighting the crucial difference that responsive pricing makes in the management of flexible resources we further quantify the value of flexibility for the firm and its customers by considering as a benchmark a firm relying on two dedicated resources the value of flexibility is most significant if the demand levels are highly variable and negatively correlated in such cases the firm benefits from demand variability due to responsive pricing while facing limited demand risk due to resource flexibility finally we endogenize the input price of the flexible resource by considering the pricing decision of the resource supplier

rough and lonely road to prosperity a reexamination of the sources of growth in africa using bayesian model averaging this paper takes a fresh look at africa s growth experience by using the bayesian model averaging bma methodology bma enables us to consider a large number of potential explanatory variables and sort out which of these variable can effectively explain africa s growth experience posterior coefficient estimates reveal that key engines of growth in africa are substantially different from those in the rest of the world more precisely it is shown that mining primary exports and initial primary education exerted differential effect on african growth these results are examined in relation to the existing literature copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

import compression and export performance in developing countries the debt crisis that began in 1982 forced a number of developing countries that had relied on external financing into rapid adjustment of their current account positions in many of these countries external adjustment mainly took the form of import reduction or what has been termed import compression to generate trade balance surpluses necessary to service the existing stock of foreign debt while the effects of import compression on consumption and growth have been discussed in the literature there has been little concern expressed with regard to the direct effects such a policy can have on export performance this paper develops a model that takes explicit account of the feedbacks between imports and exports that arise through the effects of imported inputs on exports and the availability of foreign exchange on imports empirical tests of this model for 34 developing countries tend to confirm both these hypotheses these results point clearly for additional foreign financing to reduce the need for import compression and its attendant negative effects on the supply of exports

modelling export prices and quantities in a small open economy volvement by u s manufacturing industry oxfjord economic papers 32 mar 1980 102 122 lindenberg eric b and stephen a ross tobin s q ratio and industrial organization journal of business 54 jan 1981 1 32 marvel howard p foreign trade and domestic competition economic inquiry 18 jan 1980 103 122 thomadakis stavros b a value based test of profitability and market structure this review 59 may 1977 179 185

trade creation and diversion revisited accounting for model uncertainty and natural trading partner effects summary the effect of preferential trade agreements ptas on trade flows is subject to model uncertainty stemming from the diverse and even contradictory effects suggested by the theoretical pta literature the existing empirical literature has produced remarkably disparate results and the wide variety of empirical approaches reflects the uncertainty about the correct set of explanatory variables that ought to be included in the analysis to account for the model uncertainty that surrounds the validity of the competing pta theories we introduce bayesian model averaging bma to the pta literature statistical theory shows that bma successfully incorporates model uncertainty in linear regression analysis by minimizing the mean squared error and by generating predictive distributions with optimal predictive performance once model uncertainty is addressed as part of the empirical strategy we find strong evidence of trade creation trade diversion and open bloc effects our results are robust to a range of alternative empirical specifications proposed by the recent pta literature copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

the economics of planning electricity transmission to accommodate renewables using two stage optimisation to evaluate flexibility and the cost of disregarding uncertainty abstract aggressive development of renewable electricity sources will require significant expansions in transmission infrastructure we present a stochastic two stage optimisation model that captures the multistage nature of transmission planning under uncertainty and use it to evaluate interregional grid reinforcements in great britain gb in our model a proactive transmission planner makes investment decisions in two time periods each time followed by a market response uncertainty is represented by economic technology and regulatory scenarios and first stage investments must be made before it is known which scenario will occur the model allows us to identify expected cost minimising first stage investments as well as estimate the value of information the cost of ignoring uncertainty and the value of flexibility our results show that ignoring risk in planning transmission for renewables has quantifiable economic consequences and that considering uncertainty can yield decisions that have lower expected costs than traditional deterministic planning methods in the gb case the value of information and cost of disregarding uncertainty in transmission planning were of the same order of magnitude approximately 100 m in present worth terms further the best plan under a risk neutral decision criterion can differ from the best under risk aversion finally a traditional sensitivity analysis based robustness analysis also yields different results than the stochastic model although the former s expected cost is not much higher

a structural model for developing countries manufactured exports a dynamic structural econometric model is developed to analyze movements in manufactured exports and to capture lags in the adjustment to equilibrium the model is estimated with pooled cross section time series data for a representative sample of fifteen developing countries grouped according to their export market power the results suggest that prices domestic productive capacity and external economic activity are critical determinants of manufactured exports from developing countries the structural parameter estimates are used to infer the effects of changes in destination country income distinguishing between the short run and long run export volume and export revenue effects the results indicate that domestic economic policies that promote investment and capacity in export oriented activities are likely to play a key role in increasing foreign exchange earnings in developing countries even if growth in external demand is slow

growth still is good for the poor incomes in the poorest two quintiles on average increase at the same rate as overall average incomes this is because in a global dataset spanning 118 countries over the past four decades changes in the share of income of the poorest quintiles are generally small and uncorrelated with changes in average income the variation in changes in quintile shares is also small relative to the variation in growth in average incomes implying that the latter accounts for most of the variation in income growth in the poorest quintiles these findings hold across most regions and time periods and when conditioning on a variety of country level factors that may matter for growth and inequality changes this evidence confirms the central importance of economic growth for poverty reduction and illustrates the difficulty of identifying specific macroeconomic policies that are significantly associated with the relative growth rates of those in the poorest quintiles

foreign capital and domestic productivity in the czech republic a meta regression analysis we provide a quantitative synthesis of the literature studying the effect of foreign direct investment fdi on the productivity of locally owned firms in the czech republic to this end we collec

different approaches of modelling reaction lags how do chilean manufacturing exports react to movements of the real exchange rate this study examines the relationship between export supply and the real exchange rate using annual chilean data for the period 1960 1996 the hypotheses to be tested are first that the real exchange rate does matter for the supply of exports contrary to studies relying on quarterly data and second that the impact of a real depreciation only ceases to be positive and significant after about two three years four different distributed lag models were considered as potentially adequate and useful to depict the impact of the real exchange rate over time even though all four models assumed different underlying lag structures they all point to the importance of maintaining a competitive real exchange rate over time the transfer function model is particularly well suited in shaping any lag structure in that it is not presumptive in form

robust monetary policy with competing reference models abstract the existing literature on robust monetary policy rules has largely focused on the case in which the policymaker has a single reference model while the true economy lies within a specified neighborhood of the reference model in this paper we show that such rules may perform very poorly in the more general case in which non nested models represent competing perspectives about controversial issues such as expectations formation and inflation persistence using bayesian and minimax strategies we then consider whether any simple rule can provide robust performance across such divergent representations of the economy we find that a robust outcome is attainable only in cases where the objective function places substantial weight on stabilizing both output and inflation in contrast we are unable to find a robust policy rule when the sole policy objective is to stabilize inflation we analyze these results using a new diagnostic approach namely by quantifying the fault tolerance of each model economy with respect to deviations from optimal policy

robust determinants of intergenerational mobility in the land of opportunity abstract this paper revisits the influential work by chetty et al 2014 who attempt to explain the variation in intergenerational mobility across commuter zones in the us i e spatial mobility using nine classes of variables we employ bayesian model averaging methods that allow for model uncertainty to identify robust predictors of spatial mobility in doing so we pay special attention to the specification of model and parameter priors we also investigate the heterogeneous effects of these predictors on spatial mobility across commuter zones in different average income quintiles our findings suggest a more nuance and complex characterization of the spatial mobility process than that proposed by chetty hendren kline and saez

growth econometrics for agnostics and true believers abstract the issue of model uncertainty is central to the empirical study of economic growth many recent papers use bayesian model averaging to address model uncertainty but ciccone and jarocinski 2010 have questioned the approach on theoretical and empirical grounds they argue that a standard agnostic approach is too sensitive to small changes in the dependent variable such as those associated with different vintages of the penn world table pwt this paper revisits their theoretical arguments and empirical illustration drawing on more recent vintages of the pwt and introducing an approach that limits the degree of agnosticism

the supply and demand for imports and exports in a simultaneous model previous studies on the behaviour of aggregate exports and imports have tended to ignore the simultaneous relationship between quantity and price this paper investigates the price responsiveness of export and import demand and supply in eight african countries the results indicate that export demand price elasticities are smaller when the sample is african the import supply and demand elasticities were found to be generally large the marshall lerner condition of balance of payment stability is found to be easily satisfied a positively sloped function of export supply is found to exist for a majority of countries in the sample the average time lag of export supply is found to be about a year the disequilibrium model is found to be more appropriate for import demand import supply and export supply

growth convergence and public investment a bayesian model averaging approach the aim of this study is twofold first the determinants of economic growth are studied among a wide set of potential variables for the spanish provinces nuts3 among others various types of private public and human capital in the group of growth factors are included also it is analysed whether spanish provinces have converged in economic terms in recent decades the second objective is to obtain cross section and panel data parameter estimates that are robust to model specification for this purpose a bayesian model averaging bma approach is used bayesian methodology constructs parameter estimates as a weighted average of linear regression estimates for every possible combination of included variables the weight of each regression estimate is given by the posterior probability of each model

the contribution of education to economic growth a review of the evidence with special attention and an application to sub saharan africa summary this paper examines recent studies that estimate the impact of education on economic growth it explains why cross country regressions face formidable econometric problems recent studies are reviewed some show strong impacts of education on economic growth others show little effect all have multiple estimation problems which may explain their divergent results evidence shows that education quality in sub saharan africa is much lower than in other developing countries estimates from three influential studies are extended the results suggest that the impact of education on economic growth in sub saharan africa is lower than in other countries likely due to lower school quality

the strategic perils of delayed differentiation the value of delayed differentiation also known as postponement for a monopolist has been extensively studied in the operations literature we analyze the case of imperfectly competitive markets with demand uncertainty wherein the choice of supply chain configuration i e early or delayed differentiation is endogenous to the competing firms we characterize firms choices in equilibrium and analyze the effects of these choices on quantities sold profits consumer surplus and welfare we demonstrate that purely strategic considerations not previously identified in the literature play a pivotal role in determining the value of delayed differentiation in the face of either entry threats or competition these strategic effects can significantly diminish the value of delayed differentiation in fact under plausible conditions these effects dominate the traditional risk pooling benefits associated with delayed differentiation in which case early differentiation is the dominant strategy for firms even under cost parity with delayed differentiation we extend the main model to study the effects of alternate market structures asymmetric markets and inventory holdback our results in particular that for a broad range of parameter values early differentiation is a dominant strategy even under cost parity with delayed differentiation are robust to these relaxations

demand uncertainty and price maintenance markdowns as destructive competition this paper offers a new theory of destructive competition the authors compare minimum resale price maintenance to retail market clearing in a model with a monopolistic manufacturer selling to competitive retailers in both the resale price maintenance and flexible price games retailers must order inventories before the realization of demand uncertainty the authors find that manufacturer profits and equilibrium inventories are higher under resale price maintenance than under market clearing surprisingly consumer surplus can also be higher in which case unfettered retail competition can legitimately be called destructive copyright 1997 by american economic association

a natural experiment for identifying the impact of natural trade barriers on exports abstract the paper investigates the relative importance of trade policy and natural sources of export taxation in malawi a landlocked african economy these sources of export taxation are in turn used to explore how export supply would respond to trade liberalisation as opposed to measures which lower other international trade costs the findings indicate that trade policy barriers are now only a limited source of true export taxation and that trade policy reform needs to be complemented with reforms to reduce international trade including transport costs

unveiling covariate inclusion structures in economic growth regressions using latent class analysis we propose the use of latent class analysis methods to analyze the covariate inclusion patterns across specifications resulting from bayesian model averaging exercises using dirichlet process clustering we are able to identify and describe dependency structures among variables in terms of inclusion in the specifications that compose the model space we apply the method to two datasets of potential determinants of economic growth clustering the posterior covariate inclusion structure of the model space formed by linear regression models reveals interesting patterns of complementarity and substitutability across economic growth determinants

the determinants of vulnerability to the global financial crisis 2008 to 2009 credit growth and other sources of risk abstract in this paper we identify initial macroeconomic and financial market conditions that help explain the distinct response of the real economy of a particular country to the recent global financial crisis using four measures of crisis severity we examine a data set with over 90 potential explanatory factors employing techniques that are robust to model uncertainty four findings are of particular note first we find empirical evidence for the pivotal role of pre crisis credit growth in shaping the real economy s response to the crisis specifically a 1 increase in pre crisis lending translates into a 0 2 increase in the cumulative loss in real output moreover the combination of pronounced growth in lending ahead of the crisis and the country s exposure to external funding from advanced economies is shown to intensify the real downturn economies with booming real activity before the crisis are found to be less resilient to the global shock buoyant growth in real gdp in parallel with strong growth of credit particularly exacerbated the effects of the recent crisis on the real economy finally we provide empirical evidence on the importance of holding international reserves in explaining the response of the real economy to the crisis the accumulation of international reserves mitigated the harmful effects of financial stress on the real economy in particular when domestic funding via credit is abundant the results are shown to be robust to several estimation techniques including those allowing for cross country spillovers

the international transmission of inflation to a small open economy under fixed exchange rates and highly interest sensitive capital flows an empirical analysis abstract this paper deals with the international transmission of inflation to a small open economy soe under fixed exchange rates and facing very interest sensitive capital flows it focuses particular attention on a channel of transmission which has been hitherto largely ignored namely portfolio capital flows arising from the monetary policy actions of the soe s reserve currency country rcc the bulk of the existing literature on this topic regards portfolio capital flows and money in general as having no causative role but simply passively mirroring transmission through commodity markets the model obtains strong support for ireland from 1972 to 1979 during which the ir was maintained in a strict one for one parity with the stg

optimal regime switching under risk aversion and uncertainty abstract technology adoption is key for corporate strategy often determining the success or failure of a company as a whole however risk aversion often raises the reluctance to make a timely technology switch particularly when this entails the abandonment of an existing market regime and entry in a new one consequently which strategy is most suitable and the optimal timing of regime switch depends not only on market factors such as the definition of the market regimes as well as economic and technological uncertainty but also on attitudes towards risk therefore we develop a utility based regime switching framework for evaluating different technology adoption strategies under price and technological uncertainty we assume that a decisionmaker may invest in each technology that becomes available compulsive or delay investment until a new technology arrives and then invest in either the older laggard or the newer technology leapfrog our results indicate that if market regimes are asymmetric then greater risk aversion and price uncertainty in a new regime may accelerate regime switching in addition the feasibility of a laggard strategy decreases increases as price uncertainty in an existing new regime increases finally although risk aversion typically favours a compulsive and a laggard strategy a leapfrog strategy may be feasible under risk aversion provided that the output price and the rate of innovation are sufficiently high

looking for a needle in a haystack revisiting the cross country causes of the 2008 9 crisis by bayesian model averaging in this paper we explore the cross country variation in the output impact of the global financial crisis in 2008 9 we use the extensive dataset of rose and spiegel but control for the problems of model uncertainty and outliers by using a variety of bayesian model averaging techniques we find first that cross country differences in crisis intensity can be explained by macroeconomic vulnerabilities second ignoring model uncertainty can lead to incorrect inferences third international trade linkages do matter

the impact of data revisions on the robustness of growth determinants a note on determinants of economic growth will data tell summary ciccone and jarocinski american economic journal macroeconomics 2010 2 222 246 show that inference in bayesian model averaging bma can be highly sensitive to small data perturbations in particular they demonstrate that the importance attributed to potential growth determinants varies tremendously over different revisions of international income data they conclude that agnostic priors appear too sensitive for this strand of growth empirics in response we show that the found instability owes much to a specific bma set up first comparing the same countries over data revisions improves robustness second much of the remaining variation can be reduced by applying an evenly agnostic but flexible prior copyright 2012 john wiley sons ltd

dedicated vs product flexible production technology strategic capacity investment choice this paper studies the optimal investment strategies of an incumbent and a potential entrant that can both choose between a product flexible and dedicated technology in a two product market characterized by uncertain demand the product flexible production technology has certain advantages especially when the economic environment is uncertain on the other hand the dedicated production technology allows a firm to commit to production quantities this gives strategic advantages which can outweigh the value of flexibility it turns out that both firms prefer for some scenarios the dedicated production technology however we find that in a game with sequential technology choices both firms investing dedicated will not be an equilibrium especially when the economic environment is more uncertain the incumbent overinvests in product flexible capacity to force the entrant to choose the dedicated technology then the incumbent is the only firm with the product flexible production technology which results in a high payoff

explaining african economic performance africa has had slow growth and a massive exodus of capital in many respects it has been the most capital hostile region we review and interpret the aggregate level and microeconomic literatures to identify the key explanations for this performance there is a reasonable correspondence of the two sets of evidence pointing to four factors as being important these are a lack of openness to international trade a high risk environment a low level of social capital and poor infrastructure these problems are to a substantial extent attributable to government behaviour and the paper includes a review of the political economy literature which addresses that behaviour

model averaging in economics an overview standard practice in empirical research is based on two steps first researchers select a model from the space of all possible models second they proceed as if the selected model had generated the data therefore uncertainty in the model selection step is typically ignored alternatively model averaging accounts for this model uncertainty in this paper i review the literature on model averaging with special emphasis on its applications to economics finally as an empirical illustration i consider model averaging to examine the deterrent effect of capital punishment across states in the usa

the resource curse revisited a bayesian model averaging approach abstract the evidence for the effects of oil rents on growth is mixed a result which can be explained with model uncertainty we address the issue using bayesian model averaging techniques and an updated cross country data set for long term growth in the period 1970 2014 including 91 countries and 54 potential growth determinants we do not find empirical evidence for the existence of a natural resource curse in our sample on the contrary our results suggest a robust positive effect of oil rents on long term economic growth we then introduce interaction terms of oil rents with potential conditions under which oil dependency can lead to sub standard growth the results indicate that the positive effect of oil rents may be conditional on the quality of institutions we test the robustness of our results using a panel data set and find neither a curse nor a positive effect of oil rents on short to medium run growth

export subsidies and the balance of trade abstract we analyze the relationship between export subsidies and the balance of trade in a semi small ldc type economy facing fixed world prices for imports but negatively sloped demand curves for exports the paper examines the dual role of export subsidies as a mechanism to increase the competitiveness of exports and thus reduce the trade deficit and as a net injection of government spending which will enlarge the trade deficit the key finding are i export subsidies by themselves will reduce the trade deficit only if the export price elasticity is very high and domestic prices are constant ii for a lower price elasticity and or changing domestic prices because say a sector is at full capacity export subsidies will worsen the trade deficit iii when however export subsidies are accompanied by a reduction of government spending equal to the cost of the subsidies the trade deficit will decrease while at the same time real gnp will increase

why has africa grown slowly we distinguish between policy and destiny explanations of africa s slow growth during the past three decades policies were poor high export taxation and inefficient public service delivery and destiny was adverse landlocked tropical locations and terms of trade deterioration during the 1990s africa s economic policies improved although with considerable variation both between countries and between policies trade and exchange rate policies improved much more than service delivery thus the differing explanations of past slow growth imply different predictions for growth in the coming decade we argue that poor public economic services are likely to be the binding constraint

sorting through global corruption determinants institutions and education matter not culture abstract identifying the robust determinants of corruption among cultural economic institutional and geographical factors has proven difficult from a policy perspective it is important to know whether inherent largely unchangeable attributes are responsible or if institutional and economic attributes are at work accounting for model uncertainty we use bayesian model averaging bma to analyze a comprehensive list of 36 potential corruption determinants across 123 countries covering 87 percent of the world population the bma methodology sorts through all 68 719 476 736 possible model combinations 2 36 in order to carve out the robust correlates we then take a step toward alleviating endogeneity concerns in an instrumental variable bma framework our results indicate that cultural factors are largely irrelevant whereas particular economic and institutional characteristics matter the rule of law emerges as the most persistent predictor with a posterior inclusion probability pip in the true model of 1 00 whereas we find strong evidence for government effectiveness pip of 0 88 urbanization 0 85 and the share of women in parliament 0 80 as meaningful determinants of lower corruption levels in developing countries the extent of primary schooling enters as a powerful factor with a pip of 1 00

does africa grow differently abstract this paper extends the analysis of african economic growth in two directions first by challenging the assumption that growth effects of particular explanatory variables are the same in africa as elsewhere and second by measuring indirect contributions to growth of initial conditions as they influence explanatory variables in a basic growth regression robust regression analysis shows that for africa being closed to trade is more costly to growth natural resource abundance is more detrimental to institutional development and several factors that reduce population growth and enhance institutional quality outside africa fail to show such beneficial effects within africa

measuring the income elasticity of water demand the importance of publication and endogeneity biases we present the first study that examines the effects of publication selection in the literature estimating the income elasticity of water demand paradoxically more affected by publication selection are the otherwise preferable estimates that control for endogeneity attempting to correct simultaneously for publication and endogeneity biases we find that the mean underlying elasticity is approximately 0 15 or less the result is robust to controlling for more than 30 characteristics of the estimates and accounting for model uncertainty the differences in the reported estimates are systematically driven by differences in the tariff structure regional coverage data granularity and control for temperature

is god in the details a reexamination of the role of religion in economic growth summary barro and mccleary 2003 religion and economic growth across countries american journal of sociology 68 760 781 is a key research contribution in the new literature exploring the macroeconomic effects of religious beliefs this paper represents an effort to evaluate the strength of their claims we evaluate their results in terms of replicability and robustness overall their analysis generally meets the standard of statistical replicability though not perfectly on the other hand we do not find that their results are robust to changes in their baseline statistical specification when model averaging methods are employed to integrate information across alternative statistical specifications little evidence survives that religious variables help to predict cross country income differences copyright 2011 john wiley sons ltd

population technology and growth from malthusian stagnation to the demographic transition and beyond this paper develops a unied growth model that captures the historical evolution of population technology and output it encompasses theendogenous transitionbetween three regimes that have characterized economic development the economy evolves from amalthusianregime wheretechnologicalprogressis slow andpopulationgrowthprevents anysustainedriseinincomepercapita intoapost malthusianregime wheretechnological progress rises and population growth absorbs only part of output growth ultimately a demographic transition reverses the positive relationship between income and population growth andtheeconomyentersamoderngrowthregimewithreducedpopulationgrowth

how different is africa a comment on masanjala and papageorgiou masanjala and papageorgiou rough and lonely road to prosperity a reexamination of the sources of growth in africa using bayesian model averaging journal of applied econometrics 2008 23 5 671 682 use bayesian model averaging to evaluate the existence of parameter heterogeneity between african and non african countries in the framework of cross country growth regressions we show that their results are not robust to the use of a prior over the model space that respects the strong heredity principle put forward by chipman for models including interaction terms

entry and exit decisions based on a discount factor approach abstract entry and exit decisions under price uncertainty are discussed by a discount factor approach to investment the approach makes it possible to express the value of the firm as a function of a set of trigger prices at which investment takes place and to determine the optimal policy by simple maximization starting with a standard entry exit model by dixit 1989 entry and exit decisions under uncertainty journal of political economy 97 3 620 638 the paper expands to construction and scrapping decisions investment lags diminishing production capacity and limits to the number of lay up periods economic implications are investigated using experimental data and empirical shipping data

jointness of growth determinants this paper introduces a new measure of dependence or jointness among explanatory variables jointness is based on the joint posterior distribution of variables over the model space thereby taking model uncertainty into account by looking beyond marginal measures of variable importance jointness reveals generally unknown forms of dependence positive jointness implies that regressors are complements representing distinct but mutually reinforcing effects negative jointness implies that explanatory variables are substitutes and capture similar underlying effects in a cross country dataset we show that jointness among 67 determinants of growth is important affecting inference and informing economic policy copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

price versus production postponement capacity and competition this article presents a comparative analysis of possible postponement strategies in a two stage decision model where firms make three decisions capacity investment production inventory quantity and price typically investments are made while the demand curve is uncertain the strategies differ in the timing of the operational decisions relative to the realization of uncertainty we show how competition uncertainty and the timing of operational decisions influence the strategic investment decision of the firm and its value in contrast to production postponement price postponement makes the investment and production inventory decisions relatively insensitive to uncertainty this suggests that managers can make optimal capacity decisions by deterministic reasoning if they have some price flexibility under price postponement additional postponement of production has relatively small incremental value therefore it may be worthwhile to consider flexible ex post pricing before production postponement reengineering while more postponement increases firm value it is counterintuitive that this also makes the optimal capacity decision more sensitive to uncertainty we highlight the different impact of more timely information which leads to higher investment and inventories and of reduced demand uncertainty which decreases investment and inventories our analysis suggests appropriateness conditions for simple make to stock and make to order strategies we also present technical sufficiency and uniqueness conditions under price postponement these results extend to oligopolistic and perfect competition for which pure equilibria are derived interestingly the relative value of operational postponement techniques seems to increase as the industry becomes more competitive

habit formation in consumption a meta analysis abstract we examine 597 estimates of habit formation reported in 81 published studies the mean reported strength of habit formation equals 0 4 but the estimates vary widely both within and across studies we use bayesian and frequentist model averaging to assign a pattern to this variance while taking into account model uncertainty studies employing macro data report consistently larger estimates than micro studies 0 6 vs 0 1 on average the difference remains 0 5 when we control for 30 factors that reflect the context in which researchers obtain their estimates such as data frequency geographical coverage variable definition estimation approach and publication characteristics we also find that evidence for habits strengthens when researchers use lower data frequencies employ log linear approximation of the euler equation and utilize open economy dsge models moreover estimates of habits differ systematically across countries

a long run structural macroeconometric model of the uk a new modelling strategy that provides a practical approach to incorporating long run structural relationships suggested by economic theory in an otherwise unrestricted var model is applied to construct a small quarterly macroeconometric model of the uk estimated over 1965q1 1999q4 in nine variables domestic and foreign outputs prices and interest rates oil prices the nominal effective exchange rate and real money balances the aim is to develop a model with a transparent and theoretically coherent foundation tests of restrictions on the long run relations of the model are presented the dynamic properties of the model are discussed and monetary policy shocks identified

capacity optimization under uncertainty the impact of operational time lags time lags in switching operational modes are typical in the manufacturing and power sectors but are not treated in most real options models in this paper we consider a firm that has the opportunity to suspend and to resume production infinitely many times subject to a time lag after each startup decision we contribute to the literature by allowing the firm to determine its level of installed capacity in conjunction with its optimal investment timing we find that an increase in the length of the time lag results in an increase in the optimal capacity level capacity optimization also interacts with the length of the time lag to affect investment timing and the triggers to suspend and resume production thereby weakening the result about hysteresis from a standard real options model under the assumption of a fixed level of capacity a longer lag speeds up the decision to resume operations due to a positive upside to the revenue but delays the suspension of operations by contrast with capacity optimization a longer time lag results in a larger capacity choice which can indirectly delay the investment decision and the timing to resume operations this indirect effect dominates when the level of market uncertainty is low and the time lag is initially small

modelling nie exports aggregation quantitative restrictions and choice of econometric methodology the current debate regarding the robustness of estimates of export demand and supply elasticities for nies is examined by modelling manufactured exports from korea the results suggest that normalisation of the export demand function for price rather than quantity is an important issue in estimating export demand functions of small countries and that estimates of export demand elasticities at high levels of aggregation are subject to potentially powerful biases when the aggregate consists of categories which are subject to quantitative restrictions if proper modelling procedures are followed it is likely that the small country assumption will find far more empirical support than it has hitherto

explaining ethiopia s growth acceleration the role of infrastructure and macroeconomic policy summary ethiopia has experienced an impressive growth acceleration over the past decade this was achieved on the back of an economic strategy emphasizing public infrastructure investment supported by heterodox macro financial policies this paper identifies the drivers of ethiopia s recent growth episode and examines the extent to which they were typical or unique it combines country specific information with the results of a cross country panel regression model we find that ethiopia s growth is explained well by factors correlating with growth in a broad range of countries in recent decades including public infrastructure investment restrained government consumption and a conducive external environment on the other hand we argue that the policy mix that supported very high levels of public investment in ethiopia was to some extent unique interestingly macroeconomic imbalances due to this heterodox policy mix only moderately held back growth which helps explain why ethiopia was able to grow so fast in spite of their presence their negative effects were quantitatively much less important than the positive growth drivers they helped to achieve the results suggest that getting infrastructure right may outweigh moderate shortcoming in the macro framework at early stages of development we further relate this country specific finding to the recent growth literature