the rise and fall of the washington consensus as a paradigm for developing countries abstract the introduction of the washington consensus involved not simply a swing from state led to market oriented policies but also a shift in the ways in which development problems were framed and in the types of explanation through which policies were justified key changes were the partial globalization of development policy analysis and a shift from historicism to ahistorical performance assessment the main challenge to this approach is a latent southern consensus which is apparent in the convergence between east asian developmentalism and latin american neostructuralism the demise of the washington consensus is inevitable because its methodology and ideology are in contradiction

x efficiency in australian banking an empirical investigation this paper empirically investigates the x eaciency technical and allocative in australian banks a non parametric method of data envelopment analysis dea has been used to arrive at the eaciency scores banks in this sample were found to have low levels of overall eaciency compared with the banks in the european countries and in the us the results indicate that as a source of overall ineaciency the technical component was more important than the allocative component thus the ineaciency in australian banks can be attributed to wasting of inputs technical ineaciency rather than choosing the incorrect input combinations allocative ineaciency domestic banks were found to be more eacient than foreign owned banks the study has important implications such as guiding the government policy regarding deregulation and mergers since the study pinpoints the sources of ineaciency it would also help banks with strategic planning 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

efficiency analysis in banking firms an international comparison abstract the intensive process of financial european integration together with the profound transformation and deregulation that has taken place in the spanish banking system justifies the evaluation of its efficiency in comparison with that of other banking systems in this context the aim of this study is to analyze the productivity efficiency and differences in technology of several banking systems using a non parametric approach together with the malmquist index we compare the efficiency productivity and differences in technology of different european and us banking systems for the year 1992

the technical efficiency of large bank production abstract significant difficulties in commercial banking in the late 1980s raise questions about bank performance and efficiency with the use of data envelopment analysis dea we consider the relative technical efficiency of 201 large banks from 1984 to 1990 bank technical inefficiency averages just over 5 percent much lower than found in existing estimates larger and more profitable banks have higher levels of technical efficiency at the same time however larger banks are more likely to operate under decreasing returns to scale

an index number approach to measuring bank efficiency an application to mergers abstract the current wave of bank mergers has resulted in an interest in the measurement of consequent efficiencies previous studies have generally focused on the measurement of merger induced cost efficiencies in this paper we turn to the production side and examine the change in relative productivity arising from bank mergers after deriving our superlative multilateral productivity index we compute the indexes for our entire sample of banks approximately 2 000 banks in each of the years 1984 1988 and for a cohort of 160 banks that merged in 1986 we find that acquiring banks achieve no gains in efficiency and this finding supports those of other studies on the other hand we find that our acquiring banks are consistently more productive than the sample as a whole by implication if mergers can be generally characterized as the acquisition by a relatively more productive bank of a relatively less productive bank an empirically valid supposition then industry performance should improve as a result of these mergers

a comparative study of efficiency in european banking this paper investigates whether there has been an improvement in and convergence of productive efficiency across european banking markets since the creation of the single internal market using efficiency measures derived from dea estimation the determinants of european bank efficiency are evaluated using the tobit regression model approach the established literature on modelling the determinants of bank efficiency is then extended by recognizing the problem of the inherent dependency of dea efficiency scores when used in regression analysis to overcome the dependency problem a bootstrapping technique is applied overall the results suggest that since the eu s single market programme there has been a small improvement in bank efficiency levels although there is little evidence to suggest that these have converged the results also suggest that inference on the determinants of bank efficiency drawn from non bootstrapped regression analysis may be biased and misleading

development of financial markets and the size distribution of manufacturing establishments international comparisons abstract institutional determinants have largely been neglected in explaining international differences in the size distribution of manufacturing establishments this paper draws on recent developments in institutional analysis to derive certain hypotheses concerning the way in which the size distribution within manufacturing is affected by the degree of development of the markets for debt and equity these hypotheses are tested on the basis of an international cross section of 54 countries the results are generally supportive of the hypotheses especially in the case of developing countries

productivity and efficiency at large and community banks in the us a bayesian true random effects stochastic distance frontier analysis this paper compares the productivity and efficiency of large banks and community banks in the united states over the period 1997 2006 this comparison is performed by estimating a true random effects stochastic distance frontier model a model that is capable of disentangling unobserved heterogeneity from inefficiency within a bayesian framework we find that failure to consider unobserved heterogeneity results in a misleading ranking of banks and mismeasured technical efficiency productivity growth and returns to scale our results show that compared with community banks large banks have experienced much higher productivity growth and higher levels of returns to scale our estimates of total factor productivity growth show a clear downward trend for both large and community banks and our decomposition of the output distance function based divisia productivity index indicates that technical change is the driving force behind this trend

world financial crisis and efficiency of chinese commercial banks the us credit crunch generated substantial turmoil in the global financial markets and directly caused the collapse of several world banking giants nonetheless chinese commercial banks decoupled from the rest of the world achieved remarkable results because of their risk averse nature and banking reform during the past 10 years to improve corporate governance and efficiency the latest reform was focused on ownership transformation via foreign participation and stock listing employing data of 14 listed chinese banks during the period 1999 2008 this paper tests whether ipo was an effective way to enhance banks efficiency using two frontier approaches data envelopment analysis and sfa the results confirm our hypothesis and suggest that restructuring banks into shareholding companies improves both technical efficiency and scale economies this conclusion is further confirmed by the technical inefficiency effects model which found that efficiency rating of listed banks was about 5 per cent higher than their prior ipo level facing tougher economic condition and increased competition banks not only need to broaden income sources cut expenditures but more importantly to strengthen their risk management to become more resistant to a volatile business environment

using stochastic frontier analysis to measure the impact of weather on the efficiency of electricity distribution businesses in developing economies abstract this paper analyses the influence of weather variables on the efficiency of electricity distribution companies in argentina brazil chile and peru covering 82 firms which represent more than 90 percent of the distribution market of energy delivered for the period 1998 2008 stochastic frontier analysis sfa is applied using a translog input distance function two different approaches are evaluated weather in the production function and weather in the inefficiency term the efficacy of one over the other is determined using nested models weather data are collected from meteorological stations 429 and nasa 3423 coordinates a geographic information system gis is used for locating the firms service areas and their weather conditions a combination of cost only and cost quality models is proposed for cost only models the results suggest that on average there is a significant increase in measured efficiency when weather is incorporated in the production function under the cost quality models on average the effect of weather is much lower this suggests that firms have internalised the effects of weather and have adapted their networks to the environment in which they operate a company level analysis indicates that across models a significant number of companies are affected by weather regulators are advised to make proper adjustments of efficiency scores when specific firms face important efficiency changes due to weather

consequences of deregulation for commercial banking in recent years many of the restrictions on banking activities adopted following the banking collapse of the 1930s have been eroded by improvements in technology and high interest rates which led to increasing direct competition from unregulated institutions beginning in the 1970s the regulatory agencies state legislatures and the congress have moved to liberalize these restrictions based on research on economies of scale and scope the experience of the conglomerate merger movement of the 1950s and 1960s the observed effects of changes in state laws governing branches and holding companies foreign experience and experience in other industries that underwent deregulation banking deregulation is likely to lead to reductions in the number of banks and increases in their efficiency geographic scope and product diversification such an outcome is consistent with the survival of a large number and variety of financial institutions and need not endanger the safety of the banking system over the past two decades the markets for financial services have provided a fascinating laboratory in which to observe the interplay of market forces political responses to crises and the maneuvering of interested parties in shaping public policy toward an entire industry in the process a regulatory framework put in place a half century ago has been partly dismantled and is likely to be modified further perhaps even more dramatically in the years to come this paper reviews the progress of deregulation to date attempts to discern its implications for the future shape of the financial system in particular commercial banking and poses several questions of public policy

subsistence response to market shocks microeconomic models posit that transaction costs isolate subsistence producers from output market shocks we integrate microeconomic models of many heterogeneous households into a general equilibrium model and show that supply on subsistence farms may respond in apparently perverse ways to changes in output market prices price shocks in markets for staple goods are transmitted to subsistence producers through interactions in factor markets in the case presented a decrease in the market price of maize reduces wages and land rents stimulating maize production by subsistence households however real incomes of subsistence households fall

determinants of inter firm technology licensing in the eu this article investigates the determinants of technology licensing focusing on how country specific characteristics affect technology holders incentives to sell their proprietary technologies through licensing alliances an empirical examination of licensing is done using a unique panel data set of licensing transactions involving companies in the eu the strength of intellectual property rights ipr protection the degree of economic freedom the level of country risk and the number of patent granted in the country are found to be important determinants of inter firm technology licensing in addition firms with prior independent experience as a licensor and public companies tend to license technology more

sensitivity analysis of efficiency and malmquist productivity indices an application to spanish savings banks abstract hypothesis testing and statistical precision in the context of non parametric efficiency and productivity measurement have been investigated since the early 1990s recent contributions focus on this matter through the use of resampling methods i e bootstrapping techniques however empirical evidence is still practically non existent this gap is more noticeable in the case of banking efficiency studies where the literature is immense in this work we explore productivity growth and productive efficiency for spanish savings banks over the initial post deregulation period 1992 1998 using data envelopment analysis dea and bootstrapping techniques results show that productivity growth has occurred mainly due to improvement in production possibilities and that mean efficiency has remained fairly constant over time the bootstrap analysis yields further evidence as for many firms productivity growth or decline is not statistically significant with regard to efficiency measurement the bootstrap reveals that the disparities in the original efficiency scores of some firms are lessened to a great extent

the impact of tax deductible saving on dynamic efficiency abstract the simulations reported in this paper suggest that permitting unlimited tax deductivility for saving under a progressive personal income tax could have a more favourable impact on total personal saving and capital accumulation than even a switch to a progressive consumption tax

a structuralist perspective on the role of technology in economic growth and development abstract this paper presents an integrated view of what is termed a structuralist perspective to economic growth and development that stands in contrast to the mainstream orthodox or neoclassical view in the structuralist view structural changes are causes of growth rather than outcomes of a process of capital accumulation and of rising per capita incomes moreover the growth process may be punctuated by periods of discrete shifts in resource allocation creative destruction and growth acceleration rather than being smooth throughout structural changes need not be automatic they require a skill specific infrastructure of new capabilities which when established generate new comparative advantages market failures may be pervasive due to problems of human capital accumulation critical mass and discrete choice among alternative growth paths thus in addition to creating a favorable environment for business and assuring through macroeconomic policy adequate investment successful growth may require an adequate industrial and technological policy particularly at nodes of structural change the paper surveys the structuralist insights appearing in the literature starting with the early postwar economic development literature and including recently developed formal models it also proposes a kinked or scalloped aggregate production function as a simple tool for structuralist analysis

the government financial system and large private enterprises in the economic development of south korea abstract the paper investigates the main characteristics of the government business relationship in south korea in the past three decades to find out how it may have contributed to south korea s economic development it proposes that the government and large private enterprises in south korea should be viewed as constituting an internal organization namely a quasi internal organization as such extensive intervention by the government with south korea s financial system can be viewed as an internal capital market and consequently it could have led to a more efficient allocation of credit than possible in a free market financial system it also argues that the quasi internal organization has made it possible for the government to efficiently implement its developmental policies it is however pointed out that for the quasi internal organization to be successful in accelerating the pace of economic development the country must have a political leadership committed to the goal of economic development and must adopt an outward oriented development policy

technological capabilities and industrialization abstract this paper reviews the implications for industrial strategy of recent research on technological capabilities at the firm and national levels after exploring the nature and determinants of microlevel technological development a simple framework for explaining the growth of national capabilities is set out based on the interplay of incentives capabilities and institutions each may suffer market failure and so require corrective intervention the experience of some industrializing countries is described to assess the validity of this framework it is concluded that interventions carefully and selectively applied are necessary for industrial success

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

regional growth and finance in europe is there a quality effect of bank efficiency abstract in this study we test whether regional growth in 11 european countries depends on financial development and suggest the use of cost and profit efficiency estimates as quality measures of financial institutions contrary to the usual quantitative proxies of financial development the quality of financial institutions is measured in this study as the relative ability of banks to intermediate funds an improvement in bank efficiency spurs five times more regional growth then an identical increase in credit does more credit provided by efficient banks exerts an independent growth effect in addition to direct quantity and quality channel effects

banking reform and the financing of firm investment an empirical analysis of the chilean experience 1983 92 this article investigates whether the chilean banking reforms of the 1980s have contributed to reducing market imperfections in chilean financial markets in the late 1980 and early 1990s to analyse this issue patterns of investment and its finance for different types of firms are studied based on balance sheet information of a panel of 70 firms the most important conclusion is that those specific reforms aimed at reducing intra conglomerate lending seem to have been successful since access of non conglomerate firms has increased indicating a reduction of existing market imperfections for such firms

multi directional efficiency analysis of efficiency patterns in chinese banks 1997 2008 dea type efficiency studies are often used to investigate levels of efficiencies differences in those levels between subgroups within a data set and possible determinants of such differences in the current paper we show how differences in the efficiency patterns between different subgroups within a data set can be investigated using the more recent mea methodology we specifically look at the case of joint stock banks and state owned banks in china and are able to empirically test hypotheses of whether there are differences not only in the levels but also in the patterns of inefficiencies between the two types of banks that is which variables the inefficiencies are located on we argue that certain differences are expected based on differences in objectives and constraints in the two types of banks and find empirical support for most of those expected patterns

the dominance of inefficiencies over scale and product mix economies in banking abstract this study measures and analyzes inefficiencies for all u s banks in 1984 inefficiencies are measured relative to a thick frontier cost function and are found to dominate measured scale and product mix economies most inefficiencies are operational in nature involving the overuse of physical inputs rather than financial involving overpayment of interest also technical inefficiencies proportionate overuse of all inputs dominate allocative inefficiencies improper mix of inputs these results suggest that competitive pressures in banking from deregulation will be focused primarily on banks that do not control costs rather than on those of a particular size or product mix

the impact of macroeconomic and regulatory factors on bank efficiency a non parametric analysis of hong kong s banking system abstract this paper assesses the relative technical efficiency of institutions operating in a market that has been significantly affected by environmental and market factors in recent years the hong kong banking system these environmental factors are specifically incorporated into the efficiency analysis using the innovative slacks based second stage tobit regression approach advocated by fried et al fried h o schmidt s s yaisawarng s 1999 incorporating the operating environment into a nonparametric measure of technical efficiency journal of productivity analysis 12 249 267 a further innovation is that we also employ tone s tone k 2001 a slacks based measure of efficiency in data envelopment analysis european journal of operational research 130 498 509 slacks based model sbm to conduct the data envelopment analysis dea in addition to the more traditional approach attributable to banker charnes and cooper bcc banker r d charnes a cooper w w 1984 some models for estimating technical and scale efficiencies in data envelopment analysis management science 30 1078 1092 the results indicate high levels of technical inefficiency for many institutions considerable variations in efficiency levels and trends across size groups and banking sectors and also differential impacts of environmental factors on different size groups and financial sectors surprisingly the accession of hong kong to the people s republic of china episodes of financial deregulation and the 1997 1998 south east asian crisis do not seem to have had a significant independent impact on relative efficiency however the results suggest that the impact of the last mentioned may have come via the adverse developments in the macroeconomy and in the housing market

has mercantilism reduced urban poverty in ssa perception of boom bust and the china africa trade in lome and bamako this paper addresses the immediate impacts of the china africa trade on africa s informal traders and its longer term impact on urban poverty based on a comparison of the major cities of two west african countries and drawing on semi structured interviews with traders and on schedule based interviews with key informants in government business and the informal trade sector the findings are that the increase in imports from china initially broadened access to trading for the poor creating short term improvements in livelihoods but competition is driving down profit margins and restricting the trade to a survival mechanism for many today thus it has provided limited long term potential as an economic platform for national development and poverty reduction the findings are discussed in terms of structuration theory and in terms of alternative conceptualizations of informal trade in africa

are foreign institutional investors good for emerging markets in den 1990er jahren waren die portfolio flows institutioneller investoren die dynamischsten kapitalstrome in die emerging markets in dieser arbeit leiten wir in einem rahmen asymmetrischer information funf aussagen ab stellen diese in einen zusammenhang mit der existierenden empirischen literatur und entwickeln daraus entsprechende wirtschaftspolitische implikationen die undurchsichtige informationslage auf den emerging markets behindert vor allem auslandische marktteilnehmer daruber hinaus konnen institutionelle investoren in folge finanzwirtschaftlicher offnung die position lokaler investoren unabsichtlich durch unausgewogene diversifikation und undurchsichtige risiken verschlechtern schlieslich verstarken institutionelle investoren aus dem ausland oft investitionsbooms oder finanzielle ansteckung deshalb sollten kapitalverkehrs und finanzielle liberalisierung stets von sorgfaltiger regulierung begleitet werden

a revised tobit procedure for mitigating bias in the presence of non zero censoring with an application to milk market participation in the ethiopian highlands fixed transactions costs that prohibit exchange engender bias in supply analysis due to censoring of the sample observations the associated bias in conventional regression procedures applied to censored data and the construction of robust methods for mitigating bias have been preoccupations of applied economists since tobin econometrica 26 1958 24 this literature assumes that the true point of censoring in the data is zero and when this is not the case imparts a bias to parameter estimates of the censored regression model we conjecture that this bias can be significant affirm this from experiments and suggest techniques for mitigating this bias using bayesian procedures the bias mitigating procedures are based on modifications of the key step that facilitates bayesian estimation of the censored regression model are easy to implement work well in both small and large samples and lead to significantly improved inference in the censored regression model these findings are important in light of the widespread use of the zero censored tobit regression and we investigate their consequences using data on milk market participation in the ethiopian highlands

tax deferred savings plans and interest deductibility programs that defer taxes on savings e g rrsps or 401 k s are supposed to move income tax systems closer to the more efficient consumption tax whether or not rrsps move income tax systems away from or closer to a consumption tax depends on whether or not interest on debts incurred to make rrsp contributions is deductible for income tax purposes if people optimize as assumed in simple life cycle models then it may be that governments can convert a non linear income tax system to a proportional consumption tax system i argue this is plausible for some canadian households jel classification h21 h24 plans d epargne pour differer les impots et deductibilite des charges d interet les gouvernements ont mis en place des regimes d impots sur le revenu des personnes mais la plupart des gouvernements prennent des mesures pour attenuer les distorsions causees par la composante taxe sur l interet dans l impot sur le revenu un antidote populaire est le plan d epargne pour differer les impots pedi e g les reers ou 401 k s on pense que en reportant les impots sur les epargnes et les revenus d interet sur les epargnes de tels plans vont deplacer le regime fiscal d impot sur le revenu vers un regime plus efficient d impot sur la consommation l auteur suggere que l impact des pedi sur ce deplacement depend de la deductibilite de l interet sur la dette encourue pour faire les contributions aux fins de l impot sur le revenu si les gens optimisent comme on le pretend dans les modeles simples de cycles de vie alors il se peut que les gouvernements puissent convertir un systeme non lineaire d impot sur le revenu en un regime d impot proportionnel sur la consommation en permettant des pedi illimites et en prohibant la deductibilite des charges d interet

the effects of business models on bank risk before during and after financial crisis evidence from china using chinese data from 2004 to 2016 we investigate the effects of business models on bank risk before during and after financial crisis three main results emerge first insolvency risk and roa

productivity growth in large us commercial banks the initial post deregulation experience abstract we explore productivity growth for a group of 201 large us commercial banks over the initial post deregulation period from 1984 to 1990 using data envelopment analysis dea we measure productivity growth using malmquist productivity indexes and isolate the contributions of technical change technical efficiency change and scale change to productivity growth we find overall productivity growth at the rate of about 4 5 per year on average but productivity declined by 7 61 between 1984 and 1985 and by 0 33 between 1988 and 1989 our second stage panel regressions reveal that larger asset size and specialization of product mix associate with higher productivity growth while higher equity to assets associates with lower productivity growth

distribution of cost and profit efficiency evidence from indian banking this paper uses the nonparametric dea methodology to estimate cost and profit efficiency of indian banks during the post reform period the results show considerable variation in average levels of profit efficiency across various ownership categories of banks in general state owned banks are found to be more efficient than their private counter parts further efficiency tends to be low among the small banks assets up to rs 50 billion indicating that at the existing scale of operations these banks are operating far below the efficient frontier we also examine the distribution of efficiency using nonparametric kernel density estimates the analysis reveals a rightward shift of the efficiency distribution over the years a major part of this shift comes from the state owned banks based on the conditional distribution the study finds strong evidence of ownership explaining the efficiency differential of banks additionally bank size and product mix are also found to be important although to a lesser extent

how do contribution limits affect contributions to tax preferred savings accounts abstract contributions to tax preferred savings accounts are typically constrained by a contribution limit these limits influence contributions not only for taxpayers currently constrained by the limit but also for those contributing less than the limit i develop a simple life cycle model in which taxpayers exhibit use it or lose it contribution behavior this connects current contributions to future contribution limits and implies that an increase in contribution limits can decrease contributions empirical evidence from microdata provides support for the model using variation from canadian limit reforms i find that larger future contribution room is associated with smaller contributions

some microeconometric evidence concerning the effect of the canada pension plan on personal saving growing criticism of canada s retirement income system during the past few years has resulted in renewed pressure on both federal and provincial governments to expand public pension programmes especially the canada pension plan cpp once again this prospect has aroused fears that an unfunded expansion of the public pension system could have a seriously adverse effect on personal saving the adverse effect on personal saving it is argued could in turn lower investment and thereby reduce even further what is already by postwar standards an extremely sluggish rate of productivity growth for the canadian economy however the basis for fearing that public pensions may reduce household saving is somewhat questionable since the wealth replacement effect of public pensions on saving may be offset by an induced retirement effect and perhaps by inter generational transfers in the form of bequests the theory at least is inconclusive in this regard 1 surprisingly enough unlike in the united states where the theoretical indeterminacy concerning the overall impact of public pensions on saving has spawned a multitude of empirical studies the subject has been largely ignored by econometricians in canada but sparse though the empirical evidence may be it does not support the seemingly popular contention that public pensions reduce personal saving in the only published empirical study to date boyle and murray 1979 conclude from their analysis of time series data that canada s public pension plans have had no visible effect on household savings behaviour this paper presents some cross sectional evidence on the response of personal saving to public pensions which appears to conflict with the boyle and murray findings it is organized as follows section i describes the methodology and the data base used the empirical results are analysed in section ii some conclusions follow in section iii

a dynamic stochastic frontier model to evaluate regional financial efficiency evidence from chinese county level panel data abstract studies have widely used stochastic frontier models to assess financial efficiency however traditional static approaches do not take dynamic characteristics of financial systems into account this article develops a dynamic stochastic frontier model to evaluate regional financial efficiency and provides an empirical test of the model by using panel data of 62 chinese counties during the 2001 2010 period the model measures the dynamic impact of the input output variables and environmental variables on financial efficiency and allows for the separation of technical change from the change in technical efficiency the results show that the dynamic model provides a better fit to the data than the static model in addition a gradient difference emerges in the regional financial efficiency among the six major regions of china the results offer practical implications for the development of regional financial services in china as well as other developing countries and emerging economies

the world bank and the street how do doing business reforms affect tanzania s micro traders the well documented weaknesses of structural adjustment policies have led to a reconceptualisation of the world bank s approach to neo liberal reforms the doing business reforms aim to foster a better climate for business in a number of ways the main policy documents reject interventions targeted at specific groups but although they identify informal small and medium enterprises smes as likely to benefit disproportionately they specifically exclude micro enterprises as a target group the general argument of this paper is that reforms may well impact non target groups through interactions with several areas of policy and law with public attitudes and with multiple economic sectors in particular it is argued that the exclusion of micro traders from the reforms contributes to their marginalisation in political and policy arenas increasing their vulnerability to state intervention the paper draws on a four month study conducted by the authors in tanzania in 2007

the technical efficiency of us banks abstract the paper uses a non parametric frontier approach to measure the technical efficiency of a sample of u s banks the results indicate that these banks could have produced the same level of output with only 70 of the inputs actually used in addition most of this inefficiency is due to pure technical inefficiency wasting inputs rather than scale inefficiency operating at non constant returns to scale finally regression analysis indicates that the technical efficiency of the banks is positively related to size negatively related to product diversity and not at all related to the extent to which branch banking is allowed

social networks and factor markets panel data evidence from ethiopia we investigate the role of an indigenous social network in ethiopia the iddir in facilitating factor market transactions among smallholder farmers we use detailed longitudinal household survey data and employ fixed effects estimation approaches to identify the effect of iddir membership on factor market transactions among farmers we find that joining an iddir network improves households access to land labour and credit transactions our findings also hint that iddir networks may crowd out borrowing from local moneylenders locally referred as arata abedari a relatively expensive credit source these results suggest that non market institutions can play crucial roles in facilitating market transactions

using data envelopment analysis for costing bank products an important problem that many banks face is to provide satisfactory cost estimates for the variety of products and services they offer accurate product cost estimates can be used to support better product mix and pricing decisions in this paper we present a method for providing efficient and reliable cost estimates of bank products at the branch level based on the non parametric benchmarking technique of data envelopment analysis dea results from an empirical study undertaken in a banking environment to demonstrate the applicability of the method are also presented

designing a non distortionary personal tax system for canada abstract this paper discusses the design of a graduated personal tax system that does not distort the path of an individual s lifetime consumption it is shown that such a tax system requires the existence of both tax deductible and non tax deductible saving it is also argued that the mechanisms are already in place that would permit the transformation of canada s existing personal tax system into one similar to those proposed by blueprints and the meade committee

fortune favors the prepared firm a critical factor in industrial competitiveness is the ability of firms to exploit new technological developments we term this ability a firm s absorptive capacity and argue that such a capability not only enables a firm to exploit new extramural knowledge but to predict more accurately the nature of future technological advances we develop a stylized model in which we focus exclusively on firms decisions to invest in their absorptive capacities we first examine a monopolist s investment decision analyzing the path dependence of its investment and the effect of uncertainty we then consider the effect of competition by modeling the impact of entry on an incumbent s investment behavior implications for management and public policy are then discussed

south korean and taiwanese development and the new institutional economics the publication of books by both alice amsden and robert wade provide an opportune moment to reflect on the study of east asian development after an initial surge of interest beginning in the 1970s the field has reached a plateau and scholars recently have cast a wide net in searching for ways to extend the field in assessing the state of the art regarding the economic development of the east asian newly industrialized countries nics this review will treat three themes first i will argue that the focus on states versus markets is becoming stale and that much of the scholarly interest lies in the politics behind the economics second i argue that political scientists have underexplored the historical origins of korean and taiwanese capitalism and that such attention promises to strengthen both theories and explanations of development third i argue that the international system has been more important in promoting development in east asia than accounts in the first wave have recognized the purpose of this review is to assess the field reveal

malmquist indices of productivity growth during the deregulation of norwegian banking 1980 89 productivity growth during the deregulation of the norwegian banking industry is studied within the framework of data envelopment analysis which explicitly allows for multiple outputs introducing malmquist indices for productivity growth total growth can be decomposed into frontier growth and change in each bank s distance to the frontier both the total growth index and its components can be consistently chained over time we find productivity regress at the average bank prior to the deregulation but rapid growth when deregulation took place deregulation also led to less dispersion of productivity levels within the industry

the role of registered retirement savings plans in a life cycle model in this paper a distinction is made between two types of personal saving one of which is tax deductible and another which is not and the role of each is examined within the framework of a life cycle model more precisely the model shows how tax deductible rrsp saving enables the individual to do his own lifetime income averaging for tax purposes in order to generate the lifetime profile of taxable income which minimizes the discounted value of tax payments the use of rrsps for this purpose however does not usually result in income averaging in the conventional sense since it is not necessarily optimal for a person to equalize taxable income over each period of his lifetime by contrast non tax deductible saving permits the individual to choose his optimal lifetime consumption path and bequests le ro le des regimes enregistres d epargne retraite dans un modele d optimisation sur tout le cycle de vie dans ce m6moire l auteur distingue deux types d 6pargne personnelle l une d6ductible aux fins de l impot sur le revenu et l autre non le role de chacune est analyse dans le contexte d un modele d optimisation sur tout le cycle de vie plus pr6cis6ment le modele montre comment l 6pargne via les r6gimes enregistr6s d 6pargne retraite permet a l individu d 6taler son revenu total dans le temps aux fins d imp6t afin de construire un profil de revenu imposable qui minimise la valeur pr6sente des impots pay6s l utilisation des r6gimes enregistr6s d 6pargne retraite h cette fin n engendre pas necessairement un 6talement conventionnel du revenu puisqu il se peut fort bien qu il ne soit pas optimal pour l individu d 6galiser son revenu imposable pour chaque p6riode de sa vie d autre part l 6pargne qui n est pas d6ductible aux fins d impot sur le revenu permet h l individu de choisir le sentier optimal de consommation et de legs sur tout le cycle de vie

do bank mergers have hidden or foregone value realized and unrealized operating synergies in one bank merger abstract recent mergers in the banking industry have often generated disappointing shareholder returns delays in implementing potential operating savings and realizing benefits of scale economies may be one reason these mergers have disappointing returns using data envelopment analysis dea we analyze a 200 branch network formed in a merger of four banks the operating efficiency of each branch is benchmarked against best practice branches in the combined merged bank as well as best practice branches within each pre merger bank this analysis identified opportunities to reduce branch operating costs by 22 percent for the entire merged bank in contrast the cost savings opportunity is under seven percent when analyzed within each pre merger bank these findings suggest benchmarking across the entire merged bank to identify the best practices bank wide can generate added savings however in this bank merger these merger benefits were not realized until four years after the merger interviews with key players in the merged bank indicate that the bank deferred realizing these benefits because of political pressures personnel integration issues system integration issues and financial components of the merger such as restructuring reserves and the purchase price these causes suggest areas where shareholders can and should demand more rapid improvement in performance of bank mergers and areas for future corporate merger research

quantile regression for robust bank efficiency score estimation abstract we discuss quantile regression techniques as a robust and easy to implement alternative for estimating farell technical efficiency scores the quantile regression approach estimates the production process for benchmark banks located at top conditional quantiles monte carlo simulations reveal that even when generating data according to the assumptions of the stochastic frontier model sfa efficiency estimates obtained from quantile regressions resemble sfa efficiency estimates we apply the sfa and the quantile regression approach to german bank data for three banking groups commercial banks savings banks and cooperative banks to estimate efficiency scores based on a simple value added function and a multiple input multiple output cost function the results reveal that the efficient benchmark banks have production and cost elasticities which differ considerably from elasticities obtained from conditional mean functions and stochastic frontier functions

financial liberalization and bank efficiency a comparative analysis of india and pakistan this paper provides a comparative analysis of the evolution of the technical efficiency of commercial banks in india and pakistan during 1988 1998 a period characterized by far reaching changes in the banking industry brought about by financial liberalization data envelopment analysis is applied to two alternative input output specifications to measure technical efficiency and to decompose technical efficiency into its two components pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency the consistency of the estimated efficiency scores are checked by examining their relationship with three traditional non frontier measures of bank performance in addition the relationship between bank size and technical efficiency is examined it is found that the overall technical efficiency of the banking industry of both countries improved gradually over the years especially after 1995 unlike public sector banks in india public sector banks in pakistan witnessed improvement in scale efficiency only it is also found that banks are relatively more efficient in generating earning assets than in generating income this is attributed to the presence of high non performing loans in addition it is found that the gap between the pure technical efficiency of different size groups has declined over the years

exports economic growth and the consolidation of peace in el salvador abstract the pillars of inclusive growth in el salvador have to be nontraditional export growth investment and government determination to reduce income inequality and poverty this article analyzes the key obstacles to the development of a competitive and dynamic export sector dutch disease driven by aid and remittances a significant decline in real wages and lack of productivity growth policies can and must focus on productivity growth rather than wage repression in the pursuit of peace consolidation and long term competitiveness

manufacturing growth and financial development evidence from oecd countries recent theoretical models conjecture that the development of the financial sector is essential for economic growth we investigate this hypothesis from a time series perspective and find that financial sector gdp is cointegrated for many oecd countries not so much with manufacturing gdp but mostly with manufacturing total factor productivity moreover this relation is in some instances characterized by long run causality in the sense of granger and lin however even within this homogeneous group of countries the variety of results suggests a more complex picture than is apparent from cross sectional evidence

an examination of cost structure and production performance of commercial banks in singapore abstract this paper uses a parametric approach in the framework of a translog cost function and a non parametric approach in the framework of linear programming to examine production performance and cost structure of a sample of singaporean commercial banks the results of the parametric methodology suggest that the average cost curve of these banks is u shaped and there are economies of scale for small and medium size banks further analysis provides evidence of economies of scope for all banks regardless of their size the non parametric results indicate that the singaporean banks could have reduced cost by 43 had they all been overall efficient the sources of this cost inefficiency seem to be caused equally by allocative and technical inefficiencies

the impact of liberalization on the productive efficiency of indian commercial banks abstract we examine the productive efficiency of 70 indian commercial banks during the early stages 1986 1991 of the ongoing period of liberalization we use data envelopment analysis to calculate radial technical efficiency scores we then use stochastic frontier analysis to attribute variation in the calculated efficiency scores to three sources a temporal component an ownership component and a random noise component we find publicly owned indian banks to have been the most efficient followed by foreign owned banks and privately owned indian banks we also find a temporal improvement in the performance of foreign owned banks virtually no trend in the performance of privately owned indian banks and a temporal decline in the performance of publicly owned indian banks we attempt to explain these patterns in terms of the government s evolving regulatory policies

determinants of bank efficiency the case of brazil abstract this paper analyzes the efficiency of the brazilian banking sector over the post privatization period of 2000 2007 we employ a bayesian stochastic frontier approach which provides exact efficiency estimates and confidence intervals and thus allows an accurate comparison across institutions and bank groups the results suggest that large banks are the most cost and profit efficient supporting the concentration process observed in recent years foreign banks have achieved a good performance through either the establishment of new affiliates and the acquisition of local banks the remaining public banks have had improvements in cost efficiency but are relatively profit inefficient finally we observe a positive impact of capitalization on efficiency

scale economies wage differentials and north south trade abstract this paper attempts to isolate the effect of external economies of scale in production on the pattern of north south trade the results show that when the relative wage is higher in the north and only the north innovates the south produces and exports those goods with the lowest economies of scale while the remaining set of goods is produced and exported by the north production subsidies offered by the south raise southern income and welfare but if the north introduces a new set of goods the benefits of the subsidies to the south dissolve

new growth accounting this article opens the black box of total factor productivity by decomposing this all in one index into various input embedded and input free productivities in a new growth accounting framework the new method identifies different channels through which growth drivers affect economic growth and finds the most effective way to boost the economy which is unidentified in standard method this new approach uses a varying coefficient stochastic frontier model which integrates the standpoints of the endogenous growth theory and the induced innovation theory into a reduced form productivity analysis the new growth accounting is then applied to study the impacts and contributions of r d investments international trade and structural transformation to world agricultural growth during the period of 1962 to 2014 the empirical results provide new evidence to support the endogenous growth theory and the induced innovation theory indicating the necessity of using the new growth accounting method

externalities in economies with imperfect information and incomplete markets this paper presents a simple general framework for analyzing externalities in economies with incomplete markets and imperfect infonnation by identifying the pecuniary effects of these externalities that net out the paper simplifies the problem of determining when tax interventions are pareto improving the approach indicates that such tax interventions almost always exist and that equilibria in situations of imperfect information are rarely constrained pareto optima it can also lead to simple tests based on readily observable indicators of the efficacy of particular tax policies in situations involving adverse selection signaling moral hazard incomplete contingent claims markets and queue rationing equilibria traditional discussions of externalities have emphasized the distinction between technological externalities in which the action of one individual or firm directly affects the utility or profit ofanother and pecuniary externalities in which one individual s or firm s actions affect another only through effects on prices while the presence of technological externalities imply in general that a competitive equilibrium may not be pareto efficient pecuniary externalities hy themselves are not a source of inefficiency the fact that prices change has of course important consequences there are both distributional and allocational effects but the distribution effects net out gains for example hy firms whose prices increase are precisely offset by losses e g to individuals who must pay higher prices and there are no welfare losses from the allocation effects as long as the price changes involved are small if firms are maximizing profits and individuals are maximizing utility both facing prices that correctly refiect opportunity costs then standard envelope theorem arguments imply that changes in profits or utility induced by changes in allocations resulting from any small change in prices are negligible

when are sanctions effective a bargaining and enforcement framework although a considerable literature identifies the conditions under which sanctions are more likely to be successful few studies examine the question of when sanctioning states or senders are willing to enforce their sanctions laws against their firms using a game theoretic model we argue that imposing sanctions creates a strategic dilemma for senders we demonstrate that senders often have disincentives to enforce their sanctions policies given that the restriction on economic transactions with targeted states may undermine their firms competitiveness the model indicates that sanctions are more likely to succeed when the sender s firm retains a moderate share of the target s market relative to its foreign competitors however the model also demonstrates that sanctions are likely to be imposed only when the conditions do not favor their success the empirical implications of the model are tested using the threat and imposition of economic sanctions ties data set

technical scale and allocative efficiencies in u s banking an empirical investigation a nonparametric frontier approach is used to calculate the overall technical pure technical allocative and scale efficiencies for a sample of 322 independent banks the sample was drawn from the federal deposit insurance corporation tapes on the reports of condition and reports of income call reports for the year 1986 the results indicated a low level of overall efficiency the main source of inefficiency was technical in nature rather than allocative separate efficiency frontiers were constructed to test the effect of branching however the distributions of efficiency measures for branching and non branching banks were not found to be different

risk attitudes and economic well being in latin america abstract a common conjecture in both the theoretical and policy literatures on development is that people remain poor because they are too impatient and risk averse to accumulate the resources needed to improve their well being the empirical literature however suggests that this conjecture is far from proven we sample more than 3000 participants drawn representatively from six latin american cities and find little correlation between baseline risk aversion and well being measured as an index of eight outcomes we do however find that measures of ambiguity aversion loss aversion and the willingness to take advantage of a risk pooling scheme all correlate with well being participants who are ambiguity averse loss averse and who react conservatively in the risk pooling condition all have significantly lower scores on our well being index these results are robust to the inclusion of a variety of important controls like human capital accumulation and access to credit

microequity and microfinance abstract this paper examines the work of the village enterprise fund an us nongovernmental organization in east africa as a case study in equity based microfinance in low income countries many small businesses established in high income countries rely on some form of equity capital to fund the startup phase and much of the growth of the business the success of startup grants and equity financing in high income countries suggests that this method might also be applicable in low income countries using the work of the village enterprise fund as an example the paper argues that startup grants and equity finance are useful and appropriate in addition to the more common loan based approaches

markets market failures and development a central question in development economics is how can we account for differences in the levels of income and the rates of growth between the developed and less developed economies in the 1950s and 1960s there was a standard answer to this question the poor are just like the rich except they are poorer they have less human and nonhuman capital there was an immediate prescription for this diagnosis increase the resources of ldcs either by transferring capital to them either direct aid or education or by encouraging them to save more today these answers seem less convincing that they did two decades ago if the problem were primarily a shortage of physical capital the return to capital should be much higher in ldcs than in developed countries and the natural avarice of capitalists would lead to a flow of capital from the more developed to the less developed economies see howard pack 1984 and my 1988 paper if the problem were primarily a shortage of human capital then the educated in ldcs should receive a higher absolute as well as relative income than the educated in more developed economies how then can we account for high levels of unemployment among the educated and the migration of the educated from ldcs to more developed economies moreover the predictions of the standard neoclassical growth model of a convergence of growth rates in per capita income with permanent differences in per capita consumption being explained by differences in savings rates and reproduction rates do not seem to have been borne out these observations suggest that the ldcs differ from the developed countries in at least some other important respects and this view is corroborated by those studies which have looked at the productivity of similar plants operating in developed and less developed economies see pack 1984 1987 the difference can be attributed perhaps tautologically to differences in economic organization to how individuals factors of production interact and to the institutions which mediate those interactions among the most important of these institutions are markets it is by now well recognized that there are many instances of market failures in more developed economies see bruce greenwald and myself 1986 in some cases market failures may be ameliorated by nonmarket institutions if for instance capital markets do not function well perfectly if only because of costly and imperfect information nonmarket institutions internal capital markets within large conglomerates may develop market failure is more prevalent in ldcs and the nonmarket institutions that ameliorate its consequences are at least in many instances less successful in doing so the objective of this paper is to explore the causes and consequences of these market failures and the failure of private nonmarket solutions and to suggest possible roles for government intervention tdiscussants anne 0 krueger duke university stanley fischer world bank

do micro enterprises benefit from the doing business reforms the case of street vending in tanzania the world bank s doing business reforms were originally expected to help the growth and formalisation of smes and micro enterprises the expectations that reforms would support the growth and development of smes were challenged by scholars but the reforms impact on the micro enterprises of the poor has received little scholarly attention drawing on a desk study and on field studies of street vendors carried out in tanzania in 2007 and 2011 this paper argues that the growth and formalisation of micro businesses are badly served by the doing business reforms

banking efficiency in the nordic countries abstract evidence of the relative competitiveness of the banking industries in three nordic countries is provided by applying data envelopment analysis of productivity on the national and the pooled data sets the analysis produces a detailed account of how well banks from different countries and different sizes may be prepared to meet the more intense competition of a common european banking market

dea ar profit ratios and sensitivity of 100 large u s banks abstract several important dea ar concepts were applied here to banking for the first time this application includes classification sensitivity uniqueness linked cones lcs and profit ratios notably large bank behavior seems to be explained better by profit ratios than by relative efficiency measures of dea efficiency ar efficiency and lc profit ratios were made for a bank panel of the u s s 100 largest banks in asset size from 1986 to 1991 high levels of inefficiency were found as in previous studies classification of the dea efficiency measures identified the inefficient dmus with some positive primal slacks sensitivity analysis of the dea efficiency measures showed that the extreme efficient classification was generally relatively insensitive to errors in the data the ars eliminated i 44 to 60 of the dea extreme efficient dmus and ii all of the banks with unprofitable actual profit ratios some statistical analyses highlight the superiority of the lc profit ratios relative to the ar efficiency measures

the treatment of registered retirement savings plans at maturity abstract in recent years we have witnessed a dramatic rise in the popularity of tax deductible registered retirement savings plans as an increasing number of canadians have taken advantage of the tax saving associated with these do it yourself pension schemes as a quid pro quo the income tax act restricts the manner in which the proceeds of an rrsp can be used to generate a retirement income this note examines the annuity aspect of rrsps and how the imposition of such a constraint on withdrawals affects the optimal control solution to the individual planholder s utility maximization problem

the globalization of product markets and immiserizing growth lessons from the south african furniture industry the central issue addressed in this paper is whether some developing countries will find it difficult to compete effectively in global product markets and will therefore be locked into processes of immiserizing growth it focuses on the role of south african producers in the global furniture value chain analyzing the factors affecting firm upgrading particularly the role of global buyers the paper observes a global industry characterized by increased competition and falling unit prices with local firms dependent on a falling exchange rate it concludes with implications for policy and future research including generalizing the findings to other sectors and countries

wto challenges and efficiency of chinese banks after joining the world trade organisation wto in december 2001 china was given 5 years to completely open up its banking market for international competition chinese banks have been renowned for their mounting nonperforming loans and low efficiency despite gradual reforms the banking system is still dominated by state ownership and encapsulated monopolistic control how to raise efficiency is a key to the survival and success of domestic banks especially the state owned commercial banks two important factors may be responsible for raising efficiency ownership reform and hard budget constraints this article uses a panel data of 22 banks over the period 1995 to 2001 and employs a stochastic frontier production function to investigate the effects of ownership structure and hard budget constraint on efficiency empirical results suggest that nonstate banks were 8 18 more efficient than state banks and that banks facing a harder budget tend to perform better than those heavily capitalized by the

estimation of growth convergence using a stochastic production frontier approach abstract in this paper we estimate stochastic world production frontiers econometrically taking country heterogeneity into account from the estimated frontier we obtain estimates of technical change technological catch up efficiency improvement convergence and scale related components of total factor productivity tfp growth

efficiency effects of horizontal in market bank mergers abstract this study conducts tests to determine whether banks involved in horizontal mergers achieve efficiency improvements relative to other firms the analysis covers 898 bank mergers from 1981 to 1986 efficiency is measured by various expense ratios the results based on ols and logit analysis are robust they indicate that during 1981 1986 horizontal bank mergers did not yield efficiency gains notably the findings are based on the mergers believed to be most likely to result in efficiency gains i e they are horizontal mergers the firms exhibit considerable deposit overlap and the acquiring firms are on average more efficient than the acquired

progressive income taxes and the substitution effect of rrsps within a progressive income tax system registered retirement saving plans rrsps generate a substitution effect that decreases saving the key point made here is that when an rrsp is introduced to a system that taxes capital income the rate of return on marginal saving within the rrsp is driven to equality with the rate of return on non rrsp saving since rrsp contributions redistribute taxable income across periods they also have the effect of increasing future marginal income tax rates which lowers the after tax return to saving this result stands in contrast to the conventional view from the public finance literature

economics imperialism and the new development economics as kuhnian paradigm shift abstract this paper addresses the evolving relationship between economics and other social sciences it sets the present intellectual scene as one in which economics imperialism is rampaging across other disciplines the designs of economics upon development studies are examined in terms of the kuhnian notion of paradigm shift thereby the conclusion is drawn of the potential prospect of open debate around the economy and development not least outside economics itself but there is danger of economics imperialism in the form of the post washington consensus foreclosing the analytical agenda at the expense of approaches based on the political economy of capitalism

characterizing social networks and their effects on income diversification in rural kerala india summary income diversification continues to be a key strategy for poor rural households including those that are progressively developing and those operating under increasing distress the ability of a household to diversify has been shown to depend upon its demographic and economic characteristics and its physical and social context this paper considers the effects of intra village social networks on household income diversification in one of the poorest and most ethnically diverse areas of the indian state of kerala using techniques adapted from spatial econometrics we find that social connections within a village magnify the impacts of household characteristics such as education and number of adults by a factor of 3 6 times models with alternative measures of network centrality degree and eigenvector indicate that the number of network connections that a household has is more important than the centrality of those connections finally we use social contact information to calculate assortative mixing based on caste the results suggest social stratification in these villages with higher levels of stratification associated with lower levels of income diversification

informal credit markets and economic development in taiwan abstract taiwan is a case which shows how informal credit markets help to compensate for the limitations of the formal financial system especially in satisfying the needs of medium and small enterprises government regulations and policies affect the way participants in informal credit markets solve selection enforcement and incentive problems recent changes demonstrate the continued resilience and relevance of informal credit markets during a process of financial liberalization

efficiency in the commercial banking industry a production frontier approach 1990 efficiency in the commercial banking industry a production frontier approach applied economics vol 22 no 4 pp 539 551

efficiency measurement in the stochastic frontier model abstract deterministic models of technical efficiency assume that all deviations from the production frontier are due to inefficiency critics argue that no allowance is made for measurement error and other statistical noise so that the resulting efficiency measure will be contaminated the stochastic frontier model is an alternative that allows both inefficiency and measurement error advocates argue that the stochastic frontier models should be used despite other potential limitations because of the superior conceptual treatment of noise as will be demonstrated in this paper however the assumed shape of the error distributions is used to identify a key production function parameter therefore the stochastic frontier models like the deterministic models cannot produce absolute measures of efficiency moreover we show that rankings for firm specific inefficiency estimates produced by traditional stochastic frontier models do not change from the rankings of the composed errors as a result the performance of the deterministic models is qualitatively similar to that of the stochastic frontier models

the impact of public pensions on personal retirement saving in canada some evidence from cross section data during recent years much attention has been focused on the question of whether or not public retirement income systems have an adverse effect on personal saving the concern has been expressed in a number of countries that if there is any reduction in saving it could result in a lower rate of capital accumulation and as a consequence slower productivity growth unfortunately the theoretical literature on the subject is inconclusive within the framework of a life cycle model where saving and retirement decisions are made jointly the overall effect of public pensions is ambiguous depending on the relative strengths of the wealth replacement effect and the induced retirement effect 9 10 the former effect reduces saving while the latter tends to increase it the issue is further complicated by the possibility that individuals might attempt to vitiate what the public pension system does through offsetting changes in private intergenerational transfers in the form of bequests 1 14 it would appear therefore that only empirical evidence can determine the extent to which public pensions affect personal saving whereas in the united states a great deal of research much of it with conflicting results has been devoted to shedding further light on this very important issue in canada the subject has been somewhat neglected what little evidence there is however lends little support to the popular view that public pension programs such as old age security oas and the canada pension plan cpp have had a negative effect on saving boyle and murray in their recent study conclude from time series regressions that canada s public pension plans have had no visible effect on household savings behaviour 2 467

privatization and economic growth an empirical investigation from a sample of developing market economies this paper explores the economic determinants of privatization programmes and the macroeconomic impact of this institutional reform on the growth rate of the gdp a sample of thirty five developing market economies is considered over the 1988 92 period probit and tobit models are used to identify the determinants of successful privatization programmes then regressions are run where probabilities probit and expected values tobit are successively included as additional regressors beside the potential influence of other economic policy variables a significant positive effect is highlighted giving evidence of the importance of divestiture the economic effect is found to be stronger when this institutional reform took place in industry or infrastructure

testing for expense preference behavior mutual versus stock savings and loans this article investigates expense preference behavior in the savings and loan industry previous studies used an intercept test and in general concluded that managers of mutual s ls exhibit expense preference behavior i derive the necessary and sufficient conditions on cost functions for the intercept test to be valid these restrictions are rejected for the savings and loan industry stock and mutual s ls have different cost structures and both have non cobb douglas production technologies i derive a new more general test for expense preference behavior that does not require the restrictive assumptions of the intercept test the results of this test do not support earlier conclusions of managerial expense preferences