parastatal pay policy in africa abstract public enterprises have grown to represent a significant share of modern sector employment in many african economies with wage and employment issues near the top of the policy agenda in africa attention should be given to public enterprise compensation and employment policies after describing the institutions which govern public enterprise pay in a number of sub saharan countries the paper considers the policy dilemma in choosing between the two basic alternative pay setting regimes for public enterprise enterprise wage autonomy versus unified salary scales with the civil service

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

some comments on depletion and degradation costs in income measurement abstract this paper discusses the controversy regarding adjustments needed to be introduced in national accounts to determine sustainable income measures the issue is presented separately for depletion and degradation costs in order to take into account inter and intratemporal considerations it is argued that the approaches proposed in recent literature to measure natural resources depreciation can be considered as special cases of a distinct sustainability hypothesis apart from these theoretical issues sustainable income measurement also entails very difficult empirical questions

pollution abatement and balanced growth the analysis of endogenous growth models with pollution often concentrates on steady state trajectories under the assumption that the steady state is in some sense stable in the present note we provide examples showing that this issue should be dealt with carefully we use the rebelo ak model augmented with a stock of pollutants causing a negative externality it is found that optimal growth is not necessarily balanced contrary to the outcome of the standard rebelo model moreover the existence of the externality may affect long run optimal growth rates

social security in panama a multiperiod analysis of income distribution abstract a unique multiperiod data set is used to look at the income distribution effects of the retirement portion of the social security system of panama while it is clear that the system is an important source of income for workers it is argued that its true redistributive importance is greatly exaggerated using a multiperiod view it is found that previously high wage and urban workers are disproportionately represented among current recipients it is also argued that social security has substantially reduced the work effort of these workers hence the appropriateness of the present social security system is questioned on both equity and efficiency grounds

how investible is bitcoin analyzing the liquidity and transaction costs of bitcoin markets abstract we examine the investibility of bitcoin by exploring the trading dynamics and market microstructure of bitcoin on three us cryptocurrency exchanges using high frequency intraday data of individual trades and quotes although all exchanges offer continuous trading we find that the highest trading activity highest volatility and lowest spreads coincide with us market trading hours suggesting that most trades are non algorithmic and executed by retail investors we further find that average quoted and effective spreads for bitcoin are lower than spreads on major equity exchanges implying that bitcoin is highly investible for retail size transactions

tourism as a long run economic growth factor the spanish case this paper examines the role of tourism in the spanish long run economic development the tourism led growth hypothesis is confirmed through cointegration and causality testing the results indicate that at least during the last three decades economic growth in spain has been sensible to persistent expansion of international tourism the increase of this activity has produced multiplier effects over time external competitivity has also been proved in the model to be a fundamental variable for spanish economic growth from the empirical analysis it can be inferred the positive effects on income that government policy in the adequacy of supply as well as in the promotion of tourist activity may bring about

the empirical relationship between money prices and income revisited this article investigates the relationship between sum divisia and monetary velocity money prices and income using the notion of granger 1969 causality this is achieved by evaluating empirically using dickey fuller unit root tests whether the macroeconomic time series under consideration are trend stationary or difference stationary and by conducting tests using three different ad hoc lag lengths 8 6 and 4 quarters as well as a statistically determined using akaike s 1969a b final prediction error criterion lag structure

exports and economic growth evidence from 19th century europe abstract cointegration and granger causality tests on data for six european countries from around the middle of the 19th century to 1913 show that exports and gnp were cointegrated and granger causally related with export led growth in italy norway and sweden

vector autoregression cointegration and causality testing for causes of the british industrial revolution the existence timing and possible causes of the british industrial revolution are considered by investigating the time series properties of industrial production and various explanatory variables utilising two types of robust cointegration based causality tests we argue that domestic forces notably technological progress shaped the industrial revolution whereas overseas trade expansion was mainly a consequence of industrial growth results from granger type var tests are contrasted with those of toda and phillips working paper 91 07 university of western australia 1991b where the latter manifest some of the potential problems raised by the authors when applied to a data set of this type an understanding of the possible causes of the first industrial revolution may shed more general light on the forces promoting industrialization and growth to the extent that the first industrial revolution offers a template exports appear not to provide a simple pathway to industrialization

national product related welfare measures in the presence of technological change externalities and uncertainty the purpose of this paper is to discuss under what conditions welfare can be measured by observables related to the national product or hamiltonian along the optimal trajectory under nonattributable technological or environmental change welfare will depend on time itself meaning that the hamiltonian along the optimal trajectory will be a biased measure of welfare this result will also hold if we make the time dependence of welfare endogenous by replacing technological change will externalities that are not internalized during optimization on the other hand if we take the externalities fully into account then the hamiltonian will represent the appropriate measure of welfare similar results also hold in the case of uncertainty where we show that a generalized hamiltonian provides a welfare measure and that the deterministic measures are special cases of their stochastic counterparts

social security and extreme poverty in latin america abstract this article argues that although social security has had a significant impact in preventing a considerable number of people from falling below the extreme poverty level in latin america it has not played an important role in reducing current extreme poverty in the region the analysis is done focusing on three social security objectives protection of the needy affected by social risks progressive income redistribution and promotion of savings investment to reduce inflation and enhance development the author discusses a series of recommendations for achievement of the three cited objectives in order to diminish critical poverty in the future

causality between export growth and industrial development empirical evidence from the nics a comment abstract in a recent article chow 1987 argued that his empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that export growth causes industrial development in this comment i point out several serious shortcomings of chow s analysis

consolidation fragmentation and market performance this paper studies the impact of market consolidation or fragmentation on its performance examining four alternative models of exchange a consolidated clearing house fragmented clearing houses a monopoly dealer market and an interdealer market the effects of the market mechanism on the expected quantity traded the price variance faced by individual traders the quality of market price signals the expected gains from trade and the exchange implementation costs are studied

tourism trade and growth the case of cyprus although the relationship between international trade and economic growth has found a wide application area in the literature over the years this can not be said about tourism and growth or trade and tourism this study employs the bounds test for cointegration and granger causality tests to investigate a long run equilibrium relationship between tourism trade and real income growth and the direction of causality among themselves for cyprus results reveal that tourism trade and real income growth are cointegrated thus a long run equilibrium relationship can be inferred between these three variables on the other hand granger causality test results suggest that real income growth stimulates growth in international trade both exports and imports and international tourist arrivals to the island furthermore growth in international trade both exports and imports also stimulates an increase in international tourist arrivals to cyprus and finally real import growth stimulate growth in real export

exports imports and economic growth in south korea and japan a tale of two economies this article investigates the relationship between exports imports and economic growth for south korea and japan by constructing a vector autoregression var model causality is examined between real gross domestic product gdp real exports and real imports several principal results emerge from the empirical work first the three variables are cointegrated for both countries implying that a long run steady state exists second there is evidence of bidirectional causality between imports and economic growth for both countries finally japan seems to experience export led growth while gdp growth in south korea has a negative effect on export growth these contrasting findings could result from export goods in japan exhibiting greater nonprice competitive aspects although their success fails to trigger a virtuous circle since growth fails to lead to increased exports while for south korea output growth leads to a decrease in export growth suggesting a strong domestic market

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

the role of exports fdi and imports in development evidence from sub saharan african countries the disappointing economic performance of sub saharan african ssa economies in the late 1980s prompted reforms in foreign trade and foreign direct investment fdi in the early 1990s using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl approach and pedroni panel estimation procedures that allow for heterogeneity this study found that exports and fdi have a significant impact on economic growth granger type causality tests show the interrelatedness of exports fdi imports and income variables the results also provide evidence of a two stage causal chain of exports imports and income this article calls for more market oriented policy reforms in ssa countries

can trade liberalization stimulate economic growth in africa abstract this paper examines changes in economic growth that are likely to result from changes in trade policies exports and investment in 12 sub saharan african ssa countries using a vector error correction model vecm our results indicate that trade policies exports and investment rate shocks have a significant impact on economic growth in 10 of the 12 ssa countries this suggests that it is possible to stimulate economic growth in some african countries through an outward looking strategy of export expansion more significantly the results further suggest the importance as well as the need for african countries to embark on trade liberalization policies in order to enhance economic growth in the current world economy

unit roots and cointegration in estimating causality between exports and economic growth empirical evidence from the asean countries abstract this paper utilizes cointegration and error correction representation methodology in estimating the long run behavioral relationship between exports and economic growth in the asean countries

growth and exchange rate volatility a panel data analysis the aim of this article is to assess the role of real exchange rate rer volatility on long run economic growth for a set of 82 advanced and emerging economies using a panel data set ranging from 1970 to 2009 with an accurate measure for exchange rate volatility the results for the two step system generalized method of moments gmm panel growth models show that a more less volatile rer has a significant negative positive impact on economic growth the results are also robust for different model specifications

aggregate estimate of environmental degradation for zimbabwe does sustainable national income ensure sustainability abstract standard measures of economic growth do not adequately reflect changes in aggregate welfare over time sustainable national income is therefore defined as net national product with adjustments for the degradation of renewable and non renewable capital productivity loss rather than replacement cost is the most theoretically correct way to value resource depletion modified net product is estimated for the agriculture and forestry sectors of zimbabwe by valuing the loss of forest stock and soil erosion the results show that traditional measures overstate the value of the agricultural sector s product by approximately 10 in 1989 it is argued that indicators of sustainable national income do not ensure sustainable development as with all macroeconomic indicators they do not account for distributional and equity issues which are at the crux of sustainable development nor do they point to mechanisms that would ensure sustainable resource management rising sustainable income over time is therefore a necessary but not sufficient condition for the achievement of sustainable development

the urban informal sector in uruguay its internal structure characteristics and effects abstract the literature on third world urbanization has focused increasingly on the informal sector as a mechanism to explain first the survival strategies of the poor excluded from regular employment and second the strategies of formal firms to bypass regulatory constraints and reduce costs this paper pursues these lines of research in a special context namely that of uruguay a small country which followed a protective labor policy for many years but reversed it during the 1970s and early 1980s data come from a sample of 700 households in montevideo which are representative of the low income neighborhoods that comprise approximately two thirds of the city s population interviews were held in 1983 1984 the analysis focuses on the following issues 1 the proportion of individuals and households who participate in the informal economy 2 the types of informality that exist in both principal and secondary occupations 3 the effects of informal employment on income 4 differences in age sex and education between different types of workers 5 changes in informal employment over time implications of findings for general definitions and hypotheses about the informal sector are examined the relationship of results to the neoliberal experiments attempted in uruguay between 1973 and 1984 is discussed

autoregressive modelling and money income causality detection abstract a step wise procedure based on granger s concept of causality and abaike s final prediction error criterion is suggested as a practical means to identify the order of lags of each variable in a multivariate autoregressive process the model seems useful because it can serve as a reduced form formulation to avoid imposing often spurious or false restrictions of the model it also provides a reasonably powerful test of causality the idea is applied to u s postwar money and income data it is found that between m1 and gnp a bivariate feedback model fits the data best between m2 and gnp a one way causal model from money to income performs better diagnostic checks applied to our model seem to indicate the adequacy of our approach

exogeneity and the export led growth hypothesis the case of china during the past two decades many empirical studies such as balassa 3 4 emery 7 fajana 11 feder 12 maizels 21 rams 22 23 tyler 26 voivodas 27 williamson 28 and others have found that exports promote economic growth in all of these studies a real output growth variable is regressed on either i export levels ii export shares or iii export growth by using a single equation model the statistical significance of the positive coefficient of the export variables has then been interpreted as evidence supporting the export led growth hypothesis chow 6 hsiao 16 and jung and marshall 17 have recently questioned the validity of the above findings this is because the single equation or so called impact studies using ols regression are from an econometric perspective mostly inadequate in addressing the issue of causality if a bidirectional causality between these two variables exports and output exists the estimation and tests used in the impact studies are inconsistent these concerns have subsequently generated a series of new empirical work aimed directly at resolving the issue of causality between exports and output growth 1 2 14 20 the granger 15 causality tests carried out in these studies have revealed that the causal direction in general depends on the country and commodity group under consideration notwithstanding the important contributions of the above mentioned causality studies there are shortcomings that must be dealt with to permit a better understanding of the subject matter first the impact studies presume that the export variable is exogenous this is a rather restrictive assumption as a feedback from output to exports is very likely 17 20 second the existing causality gtudies do not make a clear distinction between exogeneity and causality as suggested by engle hendry and richard 10 hereinafter ehr causality tests such as the granger 15 method are valid only for testing one component of strong exogeneity because they are concerned with sequential marginalizing feedback effects rather than contemporaneous conditioning

net national product as an indicator of sustainability net national product nnp can potentially serve several objectives among others to measure value added and to be an indicator of welfare in the aftermath of the world commission on environment and development however it also seems important to investigate whether the concept of nnp can serve as an indicator of sustainability my point of departure following hicks 1946 ch 14 is therefore to require that nnp should measure what can be consumed in the present period without reducing future consumption possibilities and in line with this to argue that the nnp should equal the maximum per capita consumption level that can be sustained if sufficiently many facilitating assumptions are made then a concept of nnp that serves as an exact indicator of sustainability can easily be constructed for instance for a closed economy with a constant population a stationary technology and with only one capital good it follows that the present does not reduce future consumption possibilities if and only if it does not decrease the stock of the single capital good hence under the assumption that the one capital good k is identical to the one consumption good x nnp defined as y x k measures the maximal sustainable consumption at time t because then x y is equivalent to k the purpose of this note is to establish that with multiple capital goods it is not in general possible to construct an exact indicator of sustainability on the

discount rates natural resources and the measurement of aggregate economic growth in africa abstract over the last decade there has been a growing interest in depreciation of natural capital in national income accounts within this literature there has been limited discussion of the sensitivity of measurement to the choice of discount rate and the effect of using depreciated measures of growth in empirical analyses without attempting to estimate or justify a specific discount rate this paper presents alternative sets of growth data for 18 african countries based on different assumptions of the appropriate discount rate to apply to natural capital the data sets are then used in a statistical test of the causes of economic growth results of the statistical analysis indicate sensitivity to the choice of discount rate

national accounts and environmental resources in the paper optimal growth theory is used to derive the appropriate definition of the net national product concept when there are environmental resources and environmental damage to take into account the basic conclusions are that conventional defined np should be corrected by deducting environmental damage and adding the value of the net change of all resources

centralised order books versus hybrid order books a paired comparison of trading costs on nsc euronext paris and sets london stock exchange this article compares the cost of trading large capitalisation equities on the hybrid order driven segment of the london stock exchange and the centralised electronic order book of euronext using samples of stocks matched according to economic sector free float capitalisation and trading volume our study shows that transaction costs are lower on the centralised order book than on the hybrid order book the presence of dealers outside the electronic order book favours the frequency of large trades but is associated with higher execution costs for all other trades and higher adverse selection and inventory costs inside the order book

cointegration causality and export led growth in mexico 1895 1992 abstract cointegration and granger causality tests show that real exports and real gdp in mexico over 1895 1992 were cointegrated and there was a significant and positive granger causal relationship running from exports to economic growth

causality between exports and economic growth abstract this paper utilizes granger causality tests in investigating the relationship between exports and national income from a consistent data set for 47 developing countries in africa new empirical results as well as suggestions for future research are presented

global trade integration and economic convergence of developing countries gerschenkron hypothesized that lower income countries would tend to grow more rapidly than higher income countries and therefore that their average incomes would converge since that time the record indicates that the industrialized nations have had relatively slow growth rates while many less developed countries ldcs have had relatively rapid rates of growth although many others have had slower rates of growth and some have been negative furthermore the rates of growth have varied considerably during the four and one half decades since 1952 both among countries and within a country from one year to the next thus convergence remains an issue among development economists and others interested in the topic with frequent concern being expressed about a growing gap between average incomes in the moreand less developed economies of the world in this article we examine convergence and divergence due to differential rates of growth factors that affect growth the role of international trade in the process the policy frameworks that enhance or detract from growth and the research needs and opportunities for agricultural and resource economists a controversial aspect is the influence of trade on the process since most development economists tend to believe that more

re examining export led growth hypothesis a multivariate cointegration analysis for india this paper re examines the export led growth elg hypothesis using a vector autoregressive var model by considering the relationship between real gdp real exports and terms of trade for india during the period 1961 93 in re examining the elg hypothesis this study perhaps for the first time employs a multivariate framework using johansen s model selection and maximum likelihood cointegration procedure the results sugest that there is one long run equilibrium relationship among the three variables and the causal relationship flows from the growth in gdp and terms of trade to the growth in exports the causality from exports to gdp appears to be a short run phenomenon suggesting that the recent export promotion strategies adopted in india have the potential of bearing growth in the future

causality between export growth and industrial development empirial evidence from the nics abstract this paper investigates the causal relationship between export growth and industrial development in eight newly industrializing countries nics results of sims causality test show that for most of the nics there is a strong bidirectional causality between the growth of exports and industrial development these findings support the export led growth strategy in that expansion in exports not only promote the growth of national income but also lead to structural transformation of the developing countries

exports growth and causality in developing countries abstract previous empirical studies have interpreted results in regressions of output variables on export variables as providing support for an export promotion development strategy such an interpretation is questionable since these regressions provide no means of determining the direction of causality this paper performs causality tests between exports and growth for 37 developing countries the results cast considerable doubt on the validity of the export promotion hypothesis

does risk sharing motivate interdealer trading we use unique data from the london stock exchange to test whether interdealer trade facilitates inventory risk sharing among dealers we develop a methodology that focuses on periods of extreme inventories inventory cycles we further distinguish between inventory cycles that are unanticipated and those that are anticipated because of worked orders the pattern of interdealer trade during inventory cycles matches theoretical predictions for the direction of trade and the inventories of trade counterparts we also show that london dealers receive higher trading revenues for taking larger positions

exports export composition and growth cointegration and causality evidence for malaysia this paper comprehensively tests the export led growth elg hypothesis for malaysia for the period 1955 90 using cointegration and causality testing based on hsiao s synthesis of the granger test and akaike s minimum final prediction error criterion the results provide support for the elg hypothesis aggregate exports granger cause real gdp and non export gdp this relationship is found to be driven by manufactured exports rather than by traditional exports

cointegration causality and export led growth in portugal 1865 1985 abstract this paper considers the relationship between cointegration and causality and uses tests of cointegration as pre tests for granger tests of causality such methods are utilized on portuguese data 1865 1985 where the export led growth hypothesis is rejected in favour of reverse causality

accounting for the wealth of nations the net versus gross output controversy and its ramifications there has been a longstanding controversy over the use of net versus gross measures of national product in accounting for economic growth most recently reflected in several papers which have examined the role of environmental variables it is argued in this paper that the two measures are not substitutes but complements which reveal different aspects of the growth process gross product is the correct output concept for estimating the structure of production while net product is the correct concept for measuring the welfare consequences of economic growth an alternative to the conventional solow growth accounting framework is then presented in which the change in national wealth is decomposed into its component elements copyright 1992 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

natural resources national accounting and economic depreciation abstract the current value hamiltonian in an aggregate optimal growth problem with heterogeneous capital stocks including exhaustible renewable and environmental stocks is the nnp function routine substitutions reveal that the using up of natural resource stocks is representable as easy to interpret economic depreciation magnitudes we obtain true nnp inclusive of natural resource stock diminution implications for actual national accounting practices are also discussed

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

the total cost of trading belgian shares brussels versus london abstract since 1990 london s seaq international seaq i has attracted considerable trading volume in belgian equities this paper investigates competition between the brussels cats market and london s seaq i toward this end we gathered extensive limit order book data as well as transactions and quotation information with regard to liquidity indirect costs measured by the quoted and effective bid ask spread the paper concludes that cats outperforms seaq international for both measures the effective spread is of course substantially smaller than the quoted spread with the cats effective spread showing a u shaped form this paper unique in employing an extensive data set that includes all hidden orders and the whole limit order book produces results in line with the different market microstructure models total trading costs on cats are lower higher for small large trade sizes

the cost of institutional equity trades presented are an overview of the findings from the recent literature on the cost of u s equity trades for institutional investors and new evidence on trading costs from a large sample of institutional trades the findings discussed have important implications for policymakers and investors implicit trading costs are economically significant equity trading costs vary considerably and vary systematically with trade difficulty and order placement strategy and whether a trade price represents best execution depends on detailed data for the trade s entire order submission process especially information on pretrade decision variables such as the trading horizon

multimarket trading and market liquidity when a security trades at multiple locations simultaneously an informed trader has several avenues in which to exploit his private information the greater the proportion of liquidity trading by large traders who can split their trades across markets the larger is the correlation between volume in different markets and the smaller is the informativeness of prices we show that one of the markets emerges as the dominant location for trading in that security when informed traders can use their information for more than one trading period the timely release of price information by market makers at one location adversely affects the profits informed traders expect to make subsequently at other locations market makers competing to offer the lowest cost of trading at their location consequently deter informed trading be voluntarily making the price information public and by cracking down on insider trading article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

the use of the discount rate in a cost benefit analysis for different uses of a humid tropical forest area abstract the linkage between ecology and economics can be made by describing our physical surroundings as a collection of possible uses these are called environmental functions as soon as the use of functions compete with each other the environment has an economic aspect the main conflict boils down to using environmental functions such as the functions of a tropical rain forest in an unsustainable way by maximizing production in the short run on the one hand and using functions sustainably in order to benefit from them in the long run on the other the intensity of preferences for the future availability of functions cannot be established from this it follows that the level of the discount rate when calculating long term environmental effects can also not be set using the market interest as the discount rate for calculating the present value of long term environmental costs and benefits means that the preferences for sustainable use of the environment amount to zero for in that case the present value of a dollar earned 100 years from now is practically nil this is a strong supposition the correctness of which cannot be proven unfortunately most cost benefit analyses such as those of the world bank and a recent study of the world resources institute repetto et al 1989 are based on this supposition