exchange rate volatility and irish uk trade 1979 1992 this study examines how exchange rate volatility affected ireland s exports to its most important trading partner the united kingdom from 1979 to 1992 to ensure reliable inferences regarding income and price elasticities and the impact of exchange rate volatility on exports the time series properties of the series used are investigated the analysis here is conducted at both aggregate and 2 digit sitc division levels since exchange rate volatility can reasonably be presumed to affect sectors differently since expectations matter for exchange rate determination real volatility was generated according to a first order garch process both real and nominal volatility were important determinants for over 35 of irish uk trade with positive effects predominating this may be due to the nature of irish firms operating in a small open economy where they have little option in dealing with increased exchange rate risk except to weather the storm for fear of losing market share or facing costs of either exit

performance assessment vulnerability human capital and the allocation of aid among developing countries developing country performance with respect to economic policies and institutional behavior is a common criterion for the allocation of aid among recipient countries this paper examines how performance is used arguing that performance is too narrowly defined a more appropriate definition is one that controls for the economic vulnerability and human capital of developing countries econometric analysis of cross section and panel data is presented that supports this contention the paper also contends that performance and exogenous economic shocks are likely to be pro cyclical this implies a double punishment when aid is allocated according to performance evidence of such punishment is also provided the paper concludes by arguing that economic vulnerability and human capital variables should augment performance measures in aid allocation decision making

the choice of exchange rate regime and the volatility of exchange rates after the asian crisis a counterfactual analysis the objective of this paper is to carry out a counterfactual analysis of the impact of alternative exchange rate regimes on the volatility of the nominal effective exchange rate neer and the bilateral rate against the us dollar for nine east asian countries after the asian financial crisis our hypothetical regimes include a unilateral basket peg ubp a common basket peg cbp and a hard peg against the dollar we find that a ubp would minimise effective exchange rate volatility for all countries and provides the highest regime gains compared to actual although the gains for a cbp are always less than those for a ubp the absolute differences between the two regimes appear to be small in terms of the bilateral relationship against the dollar the gains from a ubp or cbp could be quite significant for the non dollar peggers since a fall in effective instability would be accompanied by a fall in bilateral instability

on the causal links between fdi and growth in developing countries we analyse the granger causal relationships between foreign direct investment fdi and gdp in a sample of 31 developing countries covering 31 years using estimators for heterogeneous panel data we find bi directional causality between the fdi to gdp ratio and the level of gdp fdi has a lasting impact on gdp while gdp has no longrun impact on the fdi to gdp ratio in that sense fdi causes growth furthermore in a model for gdp and fdi as a fraction of gross capital formation gcf we also find long run effects from fdi to gdp this finding may be interpreted as evidence in favour of the hypotheses that fdi has an impact on gdp via knowledge transfers and adoption of new technology

exchange rate volatility and foreign trade evidence from thirteen ldc s this article investigates empirically the impact of real exchange rate volatility on the export flows of 13 less developed countries ldc s over the quarterly period 1973 1996 estimates of the cointegrating relations are obtained using johansen s multivariate procedure estimates of the short run dynamics are obtained for each country using the error correction technique the major results show that increases in the volatility of the real effective exchange rate approximating exchange rate uncertainty exert a significant negative effect on export demand in both the short run and the long run in each of the 13 ldc s these effects may result in significant reallocation of resources by market participants

looking ahead optimally in allocating aid summary the collier dollar approach to aid allocation among countries has been less than fully embraced by donors even those focused on poverty reduction partly because it conflicts with the approach to aid allocation implied by the millennium development goals these two approaches are shown to be special cases of a more general model of aid allocation in which donors care about future as well as current poverty this model is illustratively applied to data for developing regions adding a poverty decline adjustment to the allocation formulae used by donors could resolve the conflict between the two approaches

participating in african monetary unions an alternative evaluation abstract this paper complementary to that of devarajan and de melo deals with the development strategies and performances of 12 franc zone african countries 11 of them gathered in two monetary unions during 1960 1981 beside the actual rate of growth the relative growth performance is considered this performance measured as a residual of a regression on exogenous factors factors independent of economic policy appears to be close to the average performance of other developing countries and better than that of other african countries the results are explained by the direct influence of the foreign exchange regime of the zone and by its impact on economic policy economic policies of individual countries show however some substantial degree of autonomy

a panel data analysis of the fungibility of foreign aid the donor community has been increasingly concerned that development assistance intended for crucial social and economic sectors might be used directly or indirectly to fund unproductive military and other expenditures the link between foreign aid and public spending is not straightforward because some aid may be fungible this article empirically examines the impact of foreign aid on the recipient s public expenditures using cross country samples of annual observations for 1971 90 for the base sample of 14 developing countries it finds that aid is not fungible at the aggregate level and there is no associated tax relief increasing the number of countries however makes aid fungible moreover results based on the main sample indicate that aid is fungible in three out of five sectors examined developing country governments receiving earmarked concessionary loans for agriculture education and energy reduce their own resources going to these sectors and use them elsewhere only loans to the transport and communication sector are fully spent on the purposes intended by donors because most aid appears to be fungible the rate of return on a specific donor funded project tells little about the impact of that assistance a better approach may be to tie foreign aid to an overall public expenditure program that provides adequate resources to crucial sectors

whose greed whose grievance and whose opportunity effects of foreign direct investments fdi on internal conflict abstract this paper investigates the influence of foreign direct investments on the probability of civil conflict onset contributing to the debate on globalization and civil conflict i relax the common assumption that all forms of globalization are equivalent in their effects on civil conflict i also incorporate the cross sectoral heterogeneity of investments in existing arguments about the socioeconomic externalities of foreign direct investments as determinants of conflict with long time horizons and managerial control of their foreign affiliates foreign direct investors are strategic players aiming to maximize profits and uniquely able to alter their environment through socio political channels this distinguishes fdi from trade and foreign portfolio investments through a combination of political agency and socio economic influences on grievance and greed among domestic groups some types of fdi are likely to alleviate the risk of civil conflict service sector fdi while others exacerbate it primary sector fdi analyses using a new data set of sector specific fdi stock 1980 2013 lend empirical support to the argument showing that economic globalization can have simultaneous positive and negative externalities these findings are informative for the current dialogue on the role of global markets in sustainable development

exchange rate volatility and exports new empirical evidence from the emerging east asian economies this paper examines the impact of bilateral real exchange rate volatility on real exports of five emerging east asian countries among themselves as well as to 13 industrialised countries we recognise the specificity of the exports between the emerging east asian and industrialised countries and employ a generalised gravity model in the empirical analysis we use a panel comprising 25 years of quarterly data and perform unit root and cointegration tests to verify the long run relationship among the variables the results provide strong evidence that exchange rate volatility has a negative impact on the exports of emerging east asian countries in addition the results suggest that the pattern of bilateral exports is influenced by third country variables an increase in the price competitiveness of other emerging east asian countries has a negative impact on a country s exports to a destination market but the magnitude of the impact is relatively small these results are robust across different estimation techniques and do not depend on the variable chosen to proxy exchange rate uncertainty the results of the gmm iv estimation also confirm the negative impact of exchange rate volatility on exports and suggest that this negative relationship is not driven by simultaneous causality bias

exchange rate uncertainty and agricultural trade using a sample of bilateral trade flows across ten developed countries between 1974 and 1995 this article explores the effect of exchange rate uncertainty on the growth of agricultural trade as compared to other sectors based on a gravity model that controls for other factors likely to determine bilateral trade the results show that real exchange rate uncertainty has had a significant negative effect on agricultural trade over this period moreover the negative impact of uncertainty on agricultural trade has been more significant compared to other sectors

exchange rate effects a case study of the export performance of the swiss agriculture and food sector the swiss franc appreciated strongly against the currencies of switzerland s most important trading partners after the global financial crisis in 2008 this has raised the question of how sensitive swiss exports are with respect to exchange rate movements we analyse this question for exports of the swiss agriculture and food sector using both time series and dynamic panel data models based on data from 1999 to 2012 we find that in the long run a one per cent appreciation of the swiss franc leads on average to a decrease in exports of agricultural and food products between 0 8 and 0 9 per cent our results suggest that on average producers in the swiss agriculture and food sector are able to successfully avoid price competition by differentiating their products producing high quality products for niche markets

exchange rate volatility exchange rate regime and trade volume evidence from the uk us export function 1889 1999 abstract this paper investigated the impact of exchange rate volatility and exchange rate regime on the british exports to the united states using data for the period 1889 1999 the empirical findings suggest that neither exchange rate volatility nor the different exchange rate regimes that spanned the last century had an effect on export volume

one money one market the effect of common currencies on trade currency unions their dramatic effect on international trade a gravity model is used to assess the separate effects of exchange rate volatility and currency unions on international trade the panel data bilateral observations for five years during 1970 90 covering 186 countries includes 300 observations in which both countries use the same currency i find a large positive effect of a currency union on international trade and a small negative effect of exchange rate volatility even after controlling for a host of features including the endogenous nature of the exchange rate regime these effects statistically significant imply that two countries sharing the same currency trade three times as much as they would with different currencies currency unions like the european emu may thus lead to a large increase in international trade with all that that entails andrew rose

economic reforms fdi and economic growth in india a sector level analysis summary booming foreign direct investment fdi in post reform india is widely believed to promote economic growth we assess this proposition by subjecting industry specific fdi and output data to granger causality tests within a panel cointegration framework it turns out that the growth effects of fdi vary widely across sectors fdi stocks and output are mutually reinforcing in the manufacturing sector whereas any causal relationship is absent in the primary sector most strikingly we find only transitory effects of fdi on output in the services sector however fdi in the services sector appears to have promoted growth in the manufacturing sector through cross sector spillovers

enforcement leverage when penalties are restricted in the united states empirical studies of the enforcement of continuous compliance with environmental regulations especially air and water pollution regulations have repeatedly demonstrated the following i for most sources the frequency of surveillance is quite low ii even when violations are discovered fines or other penalties are rarely assessed in most states iii sources are nonetheless thought to be in compliance a large part of the time the evidence for the apparently low level of enforcement activity is found in a number of case studies of state and local enforcement of air and water quality regulations conducted jointly by the environmental protection agency epa and council on environmental quality ceg together with periodic surveys of implementation of air and water quality legislation conducted by the general accounting office gao these surveys show

asean and china export rivals or partners in regional growth hina s initial opening to the world economy in the late 1980s followed by its relatively rapid trade liberalisation in the second half of the 1990s and its recent wto accession has prompted extensive debate amongst the policy community in many countries 1 governments of the asean group in particular have been extremely concerned at the prospect of fdi diversion and the loss of export market share in oecd economies to china this paper summarises detailed empirical research by the authors intended to strengthen the basis of evidence on the important issue of export rivalry in particular we seek to elucidate the underlying properties of comparative advantage and export competition in the countries concerned synthesising detailed trade flow and econometric analysis our econometric results indicate that in the short run at least asean and china are experiencing intensified export competition in prominent third markets such as japan and the us more extensive trade flow analysis reveals however that in the long run globalisation can accommodate export growth by all the economies of east asia if aggregate growth can be sustained to facilitate the structural adjustments necessary for an optimal regional division of labour more specifically the path forward is not without potential rivalry but wellinformed policy makers can anticipate emergent challenges and take the steps necessary to mitigate adjustment costs and promote longer term efficiency whatever the ultimate course of development in east asia it is clear that the forces at work are complex and in many cases unprecedented policy makers relying on

reforming performance based aid allocation practice performance based aid allocation systems are used by a number of multilateral agencies to allocate aid among developing countries a number of bilateral agencies also allocate aid on the basis of the performance of recipients albeit in a less systematic way than these multilateral agencies this paper points to a number of fundamental problems associated with performance based aid allocation systems including a problematic balancing of need and performance criteria being reductionist with respect to the drivers of effective aid and not being sufficiently nuanced with respect to performance by ignoring a lack of human capital and economic vulnerability in recipient countries together with providing a theoretical framework that articulates these issues this paper introduces and outlines the papers that follow in this special section

exchange rate volatility and international trade the purpose of this note is to show that a positive effect of exchange rate volatility on export production has a theoretical basis the key to this claim is that as the exchange rate volatility increases so does the value of the real option to export to the world market higher volatility increases the potential gains from trade this may explain part of the mixed empirical findings regarding the effects of exchange rate risk on international trade

observability and choice of instrument mix in the control of externalities abstract in controlling environmental externalities pigouvian taxes are an appropriate instrument when individual emissions can be monitored while ambient taxes are deemed appropriate to control non point source pollution when the ambient pollution but not individual emissions can be monitored this paper shows that under uncertainty the efficient regulatory scheme for non point source pollution is a mix of pigouvian and ambient taxes the pigouvian fees are imposed on emissions revealed by the polluting firms in exchange for a lower ambient tax thus a non point source case can be gradually transformed into a point source case

pricing and regulating affect environmental ethics effluent charges and tradeable permits are economically efficient but rarely used a new explanation for this discrepancy is offered pricing may crowd out environmental ethics in the pricing and via spillovers also in non pricing sectors pricing may therefore increase pollution providing a reason why decision makers tend to reject environmental pricing five propositions showing the conditions for counterproductive effects are advanced they are consistent with available empirical evidence regulation by setting standards and subsidies damage environmental ethics less than pricing because pollution is condoned damaging environmental ethics may prevent political action in favor of the environment

emerging stock markets portfolio capital flows and long term economie growth micro and macroeconomic perspectives abstract the paper examines two major components of financial liberalization stock market development and portfolio capital flows in the context of less developed countries the paper considers microeconomic and macroeconomic perspectives on their implications for long term development and economic growth it concentrates on 1 a the role of stock markets in financing corporate growth 2 b the implications of stock market volatility for resource allocation and productive efficiency and 3 c the interactions between the foreign exchange and stock markets in the context of economic shocks its policy recommendations are that ldcs should promote bank based systems influence the scale and composition of capital inflows and prevent a market for corporate control from emerging

unintended consequence of trade on regional dietary patterns in rural india abstract this paper investigates how trade liberalisation has contributed to a dietary shift from one dominated by traditional staples to one high in animal products a trend that is associated with both improved intake in micronutrients and higher rates of obesity and other diet related diseases in developing countries in the context of india s trade liberalisation in 1991 we examine whether the difference in consumption of cereals and animal products across rural regions before and after the reforms can be attributed to their differential degree of exposure to tariff reductions the estimates reveal that trade reforms have a negative impact on cereal consumption through reducing edible oil prices and a positive effect on the consumption of animal products through enhancing consumer tastes towards these foods these findings provide evidence for the role of trade in supporting dietary diversity and highlight the need for complementary policies to enhance the coherence between trade policy and nutrition actions

growth and risk how exposure to risk affects economic growth is a key issue in development this article quantifies both the ex ante and ex post effects of risk using long running panel data for rural households in zimbabwe it proposes a simulation based econometric methodology to estimate the structural form of a micro model of household investment decisions under risk the key finding is that risk substantially reduces growth in this particular setting the mean capital stock in the sample is in expectation 46 percent lower than in the absence of risk about two thirds of the impact of risk is due to the ex ante effect that is the behavioral response to risk which is usually not taken into account in policy design these results suggest that policy interventions that reduce exposure to shocks or that help households manage risk could be much more effective than is commonly thought

on the trade impact of nominal exchange rate volatility what is the effect of nominal exchange rate variability on trade i argue that the methods conventionally used to answer this perennial question are plagued by a variety of sources of systematic bias i propose a novel approach that simultaneously addresses all of these biases and present new estimates from a broad sample of countries from 1970 to 1997 the estimates indicate that nominal exchange rate variability has no significant impact on trade flows

real output co movements in east asia any evidence for a monetary union of integration in the region would greatly shape the economic structure of each individual economy an d has direct implications for the effectiveness of domestic stabilisation policy and policy coordination this paper empiricall y examines the feasibility of forming a monetary union in east asia by assessing the real output co movements among these economies as suggested by the optimum curr ency area oca theory that losing monetary independence would be the major cost for adopting

real exchange rate volatility and international trade a reexamination of the theory one of the issues that have received considerable attention in the comparison of the properties of alternative exchange rate regimes is the effect of exchange rate risk on the volume of trade it has been argued that the higher volatility of exchange rates witnessed since the adoption of the floating regime in 1973 has led to a decrease in international trade transactions this is because most trade contracts are not for immediate delivery of goods and since they are denominated in terms of the currency of either the importer or the exporter unanticipated fluctuations in the exchange rate affect realized profits and hence the volume of trade it is implicitly assumed that forward exchange markets that can help traders eliminate this type of variations in profits either are not available as it is true for the majority of currencies because most are not fully convertible thereby impairing forward markets or for some reason they are not utilized to fully hedge exchange risk present in trade transactions the empirical evidence regarding the effect of exchange rate risk on trade has at best been inconclusive the large majority of the empirical studies are unable to establish a systematically significant link between exchange rate variability and the volume of international trade whether on an aggregate or on a bilateral basis abrams 1 akhtar and hilton 2 cushman 4 5 6 and kenan and rodrik 12 find some significant negative effects of exchange volatility on exports however bailey tavlas and uhlan 3 hooper and kohlhagen 10 and an international monetary fund study 11 do not find any supporting evidence for the depressing effect of exchange rate volatility on international trade it is also interesting to note that in many of these studies a significant positive effect of exchange rate volatility on the volume of trade is found for some cases however the positive effect believed to be at odds with the theory was either ignored or dismissed as a perverse result since as far as volumes are concerned theoretical considerations

the liberalization of retail services in india summary despite the recent controversy about opening up the distribution sector to foreign retailers there is political will that remains in favor of pushing through reforms in india in this paper we quantify the economic impact of the removal of barriers to foreign investment in multi brand retailing on different stakeholders using a newly developed general equilibrium model the model accounts explicitly for both foreign direct investment and the activities of foreign affiliates using heterogeneous production technologies we find that the unilateral reduction of barriers to fdi in distribution services in india benefits the economy as a whole consumers and foreign producers but hurts domestic distributors nevertheless when we consider the associated productivity improvements documented in the literature to downstream and upstream industries we find that domestic producers are expected to benefit from the liberalization of the distribution sector as well

why is it so difficult to find an effect of exchange rate risk on trade abstract it is commonly argued that exchange rate risk hampers international trade however the large literature on this subject has not yet provided conclusive evidence this paper analyzes why it is so difficult to obtain a clear answer from time series analyses we use data on bilateral aggregate u s exports to the other g7 countries the results show that as far as the exchange rate is concerned export decisions are mostly affected by the probability distribution of the about one year ahead rate the riskiness of the exchange rate at such a long horizon appears fairly constant over time with only short term fluctuations this makes it difficult to discover the true effect of exchange rate risk on trade from the time series data that are typically available

international trade with forward futures markets under exchange rate and price uncertainty abstract the paper examines a risk averse firm s decisions on the level of trade when the exchange rate and the commodity price are uncertain and the extent of forward exchange and commodity futures commitments first we verify the separation theorem and the full double hedging theorem second we investigate the implications of the existence of both forward foreign exchange and commodity futures markets in comparison to the case where only one or no market is available to the firm the second exercise enables us to focus on conditions under which establishing forward futures arrangements promotes international trade

honesty and evasion in the tax compliance game conventional models of tax compliance emphasize that taxpayers make strategic tax reports underreporting income to the extent that this behavior is functionally rewarded in contrast to this view considerable empirical evidence suggests that many taxpayers are inherently honest reporting truthfully regardless of the incentive to cheat in this article we build a game theoretic model of tax compliance that includes both honest and potentially dishonest taxpayers we show that including honest taxpayers significantly alters the model leading to much improved empirical predictions and somewhat different and novel policy implications

foreign direct investments environmental externalities and capital segmentation in a rural economy this paper examines the possible effects of external investment inflows on the development of local rural economies taking into account two recurrent features of many developing countries capital market segmentation and environmental externalities to investigate this issue we examine a model with two sectors the local sector and the external sector physical capital accumulation in the latter sector is driven by foreign direct investments while in the former sector it follows a solow type accumulation mechanism we assume that the production activity of the external sector damages the environment while the local sector relies on natural resources in this context we give the conditions under which capital inflows can promote diversification of host economy while improving welfare of local populations if these conditions are not satisfied external investments fuel a welfare reducing process for the local community and a self enforcing growth of the external sector at the expense of the local one

making things stick enforcement and compliance environmental rules and regulations are only useful insofar as firms can be persuaded to comply with them in full or in part we survey the rapidly growing literature on the enforcement aspects of environmental policy the difficulties facing any regulatory agency are likely to be exacerbated by information problems penalty constraints and the evasion efforts of firms and we emphasize the role that recent innovative approaches to implementation can play in bolstering more traditional enforcement instruments copyright 1998 by oxford university press

the parallel currency approach to asian monetary integration since the crisis of 1997 1998 there has been a proliferation of proposals for fostering asian monetary integration asian countries it is suggested should collectively peg their currencies to the dollar the yen or a dollar yen euro basket or establish a multilateral currency grid like the european monetary system ems the resulting exchange rate stability would promote intraregional trade simplify investment planning and encourage cross border participation in local bond markets experience with establishing and maintaining a system of stable exchange rates would help ready the region for the introduction of a single currency asia in this view should emulate europe s approach to regional monetary integration along with the attractions of the european example however there are also dangers defending a system of currency pegs in the presence of high capital mobility requires the close convergence of policies and the maintenance of confidence if either precondition is disturbed a country will require extensive financial support in order to defend its peg or to undertake an orderly realignment in practice asian countries possess neither the willingness to subordinate other policies to these imperatives nor the solidarity needed to offer extensive financial supports absent an appetite for political integration there is little readiness to create a regional central bank like the european central bank since there is no counterpart to the european parliament to hold it accountable for its actions hence there is little prospect of early monetary union to tie down expectations a system of asian currency pegs would consequently be fragile and crisis prone as a road to monetary unification it would be a dead end it would be better for governments to create an asian currency unit acu constituted as a weighted average of asian currencies and allow it to circulate alongside their national currencies this would have three advantages first it would not be necessary to stabilize exchange rates between the currencies comprising the basket hence fragility would be less second the parallel currency would be more stable than any one national currency in terms of aggregate asian production and exports it would thus be a vehicle for encouraging intraregional trade and investment third the decision to move to a single currency could be driven by economics rather than politics only when a critical mass of producers exporters and investors had adopted the parallel currency would it be clear that asian economies were ready for monetary unification

foreign direct investment and growth in india a cointegration approach the two way link between foreign direct investment and growth for india is explored using a structural cointegration model with vector error correction mechanism the existence of two cointegrating vectors between gdp fdi the unit labour cost and the share of import duty in tax revenue is found which captures the long run relationship between fdi and gdp a parsimonious vector error correction model vecm is then estimated to find the short run dynamics of fdi and growth our vecm model reveals three important features a gdp in india is not granger caused by fdi the causality runs more from gdp to fdi b trade liberalization policy of the indian government had some positive short run impact on the fdi flow and c fdi tends to lower the unit labour cost suggesting that fdi in india is labour displacing

the role of altruism in economic interaction abstract this paper considers environments in which the population consists of a mix of altruists and egoists and asks under what situations do altruists have a disproportionately large effect on equilibrium and under what situations is it the egoists we begin by presenting a general framework for answering this question we then apply the framework to the analysis of three economic environments 1 the classic problem referred to as the prisoner s dilemma 2 a world where agents decide whether or not to pollute the environment and 3 a world where agents decide whether or not to donate blood

liberalization fdi and growth in developing countries a panel cointegration approach using a panel cointegration framework the article explores the two way link between fdi and growth for a panel of 23 developing countries in addition it investigates the impact of liberalization on the dynamics of the fdi and gdp relationship a long run cointegrating relationship is found between fdi and gdp after allowing for heterogeneous country effects the cointegrating vectors reveal a bidirectional causality between gdp and fdi for more open economies for relatively closed economies long run causality appears unidirectional and runs from gdp to fdi implying that growth and fdi are not mutually reinforcing under restrictive trade and investment regimes

how do the renminbi and other east asian currencies co move abstract this paper investigates the degree and the nature of exchange rate co movements between the renminbi and a set of seven east asian currencies by estimating markov switching models with regime dependent correlations and time varying transition probabilities these models have several advantages first exchange rate co movements can vary across different depreciation and appreciation regimes second the renminbi can act as a transition variable that provides information regarding how the exchange rates evolve over time after controlling for global effects and exchange market pressures the results yield robust evidence of the renminbi s rising role in east asia as a significant factor in currency fluctuations a key result is that regional currencies tend to overreact when the renminbi depreciates and underreact when it appreciates suggesting that east asian economies are not willing to allow their currency to substantially appreciate against the chinese currency

private foreign investment in india pain or panacea private foreign capital whose presence in indian industry was long regarded with concern and suspicion is now presented as a panacea for india s poor industrial and export performance this paper examines available evidence to compare the behaviour and performance of domestic and foreign controlled firms in india over the last five decades it discusses the contribution of foreign capital to aggregate investment balance of payments and economic growth we assess the effects of government policy towards foreign investment review recent changes and outline implications for the future

aid and performance a reassessment two visions of aid effectiveness and allocation are compared the first corresponding to the new aid paradigm argues that aid is only effective if domestic policies are appropriate the second in contrast argues that aid effectiveness depends on the external and climatic environment the worse this environment or the more vulnerable the recipient countries the greater the effectiveness of aid cross sectional econometric tests related to gdp growth on two 12 year pooled periods clearly favour the second view the two views can be reconciled through the principle of performance based aid allocation where performance is defined as outcomes adjusted for the impact of environmental factors performance can then be measured in several manners which are subject to comparison one approach would lead one to allocate more aid the worse the external environment is for a given policy and the better the policy is for a given environment

monetary compensations in climate policy through the lens of a general equilibrium assessment the case of oil exporting countries this paper investigates the compensations that major oil producers have claimed for since the kyoto protocol in order to alleviate the adverse impacts of climate policy on their economies the amount of these adverse impacts is assessed through a general equilibrium model which endogenizes both the reduction of oil exportation revenues under international climate policy and the macroeconomic effect of carbon pricing on middle east s economy we show that compensating the drop of exportation revenues does not offset gdp and welfare losses because of the time profile of the general equilibrium effects when considering instead compensation based on gdp losses the effectiveness of monetary transfers proves to be drastically limited by general equilibrium effects in opened economies the main channels of this efficiency gap are investigated and its magnitude proves to be conditional upon strategic and policy choices of the middle east this leads us to suggest that other means than direct monetary compensating transfers should be discussed to engage the middle east in climate policies

exchange rate volatility and international trading strategy abstract it is usually argued that an increase in exchange rate volatility reduces the volume of international trade as trading firms are risk averse this paper shows that exporting firms benefit under fairly general conditions from an increase in exchange rate volatility firms optimally adjust their export volumes to the level of the exchange rate exporting is an option which is exercised if profitable in addition the paper presents conditions under which the volume of international trade grows with exchange rate volatility

the macroeconomic impact of development aid a critical survey the early literature explained aid s macroeconomic impact in the context of the dual gap model showing a clear link between aid and growth many now believe that the empirical evidence shows there to be no such relationship this paper critically reviews the different theoretical perspectives the dual gap model the savings debate recipient fiscal response and aid as dutch disease and the empirical debates on aid savings and growth the basis for denying a relationship between aid and growth is shown to be weak though more recent areas of research offer promising directions for future work

assessing the economic vulnerability of small island developing states and the least developed countries macro vulnerability of the small island developing states sids as well as of least developed countries ldcs has been an increasing concern for the international community this has led to the design of an economic vulnerability index evi to assess the structural economic vulnerability resulting from natural or external shocks we first explain how vulnerability affects growth development and poverty reduction particularly in small developing countries we then examine how the evi has been designed and how it can be used to compare sids and ldcs we argue that evi is a relevant tool not only for identification of ldcs but also for geographical aid allocation to favour vulnerable countries including ldcs and sids even though not all sids qualify as ldcs

a new look at the effects of export instability on investment and growth abstract this paper is concerned with the effects of export instability on investment and growth it is shown that past cross sectional empirical studies on the effects of export instability either in prices or in value terms used an incorrect measure of instability that does not properly take account of the share of exports in gdp using a new instability index and a broad set of conditioning variables it is shown that export instability was positively associated with investment but negatively associated with growth in a large sample of countries during the period from the early 1970s to the mid 1980s

roads out of poverty assessing the links between aid public investment growth and poverty reduction the authors develop a macroeconomic framework that captures links between aid public investment growth and poverty public investment is disaggregated into education infrastructure and health and affects both aggregate supply and demand dutch disease effects are captured by accounting for changes in the relative price of domestic goods the authors assess the impact of policy shocks on poverty by linking the model to a household survey they calibrate the model for ethiopia and simulate the changes in the allocation of aid and public investment the authors also calculate the amount by which foreign aid should increase to reach the poverty targets of the millennium development goals

exchange rate volatility international trade and the value of exporting firms abstract increased exchange rate volatility positively affects the value of exporting firms via the price and volume impacts of exchange rates and also makes an exporting strategy more attractive relative to the direct investment investment in export production capacity could therefore be a positive function of exchange rate volatility firms would also be more willing to sustain losses i e to engage in dumping before they abandon their export markets the effect on the volume and value of trade is ambiguous

cutting environmental penalties to protect the environment abstract when pollutants are persistent and the polluter has private information regarding the occurrence of accidental releases and the cost of clean up we show that the penalty regime which most effectively protects the environment will involve penalties which are less than maximal the extent to which these penalties will be less than maximal is interestingly a non monotonic function of the persistence of the hazardous substance being handled with the highest penalties being appropriate in the case of pollutants of medium persistence our analysis complement consisting work which predicts that setting the penalties faced by some classes of violator below their maximal level may be compliance enhancing see for example harrington journal of public economics 1988 37 29 53 greenberg journal of economic theory 1984 32 1 13 kambhu journal of regulatory economics 1989 1 103 114

honesty in a regulatory context good thing or bad abstract it is often taken for granted that if more firms were innately honest or ethical this would be a good thing we use the example of pollution policy to dispute such a claim if regulation is by pollution tax social welfare is non monotonic in population honesty the choice of policy instrument may itself be characterised by reversals with command and control methods being preferred for intermediate values of population honesty a tax system being preferred at the extremes this means that if because of the spread of ethical shareholding or for whatever reason the honesty of the corporate population increases through time we should not be surprised to see at first a switch away from market based instruments and then a switch back though environmental regulation is chosen as a context the implications are more general

exchange rate volatility and pakistan s exports to the developed world 1974 85 abstract the paper attempts to estimate the impact of exchange rate uncertainty on pakistan s exports to the developed world for 1974 85 discovering strong evidence to suggest that exports were adversely affected by the increased variability of its bilateral exchange rates unlike much of the recent evidence on developed countries however it is the variability in nominal rather than real exchange rates that is significant the computations also suggest the presence of strong third country effects

bilateral investment treaties and fdi does the sector matter summary developing and transition countries have increasingly engaged in the signing of bilateral investment treaties bits in order to attract fdi based on the widely shared view that fdi can contribute significantly to economic development and poverty reduction however the degree to which foreign investments can be expected to generate employment offer access to international technology and know how and ultimately create growth varies considerably depending on the type of investment it is therefore important to determine what type of fdi is attracted by bits by providing a legal commitment to the fair and equitable treatment of foreign investors bits aim to decrease investment risk and to attract foreign investors we argue that bits can be expected to be most effective in those sectors of the economy with a larger risk of expropriation i e sectors characterized by large sunk costs relatively low levels of firm specific know how and in sectors that are politically sensitive to foreign ownership this paper represents the first attempt to empirically study the heterogeneous effect that bits may have across different sectors of investments we analyze investments made in 13 countries in the former soviet union and central and eastern europe disaggregated over seven sectors we indeed find the effect of bits to differ considerably across sectors of investment using capital intensity as a proxy we confirm that fdi in those sectors with higher sunk costs responds more strongly to the signing of bits given the considerable differences in the development impact that can be expected from fdi in different sectors it remains to be shown whether bits are an effective tool to attract those types of investments that are most beneficial for the development of the host economy

aid policies and growth comment in an extraordinarily influential paper craig burnside and david dollar 2000 p 847 find that aid has a positive impact on growth in developing countries with good fiscal monetary and trade policies but has little effect in the presence of poor policies this finding has enormous policy implications the burnside and dollar 2000 henceforth bd result provides a role and strategy for foreign aid if aid stimulates growth only in countries with good policies this suggests that 1 aid can promote economic growth and 2 it is crucial that foreign aid be distributed selectively to countries that have adopted sound policies international aid agencies public policy makers and the press quickly recognized the importance of the bd findings this paper reassesses the links between aid policy and growth using more data the bd data end in 1993 we reconstruct the bd database from original sources and thus 1 add additional countries and observations to the bd data set because new information has become available since they conducted their analyses and 2 extend the data through 1997 thus using the bd methodology we reexamine whether aid influences growth in the presence of good policies given our focus on retesting bd we do not summarize the vast pre bd literature on aid and growth we just note that there was a long and inconclusive literature that was hampered by limited data availability debates about the mechanisms through which aid would affect growth and disagreements over econometric specification see gustav f papanek 1972 robert cassen 1986 paul mosley et al 1987 peter boone 1994 1996 and henrik hansen and finn tarp s 2000 review since bd found that aid boosts growth in good policy environments there have been a number of other papers reacting to their results including paul collier and jan dehn 2001 carljohan dalgaard and hansen 2001 patrick guillaumont and lisa chauvet 2001 hansen and tarp 2001 robert lensink and howard white 2001 and collier and dollar 2002 these papers conduct useful variations and extensions some of which had already figured in the pre bd literature such as introducing additional control variables using nonlinear specifications etc some of these papers confirm the message that aid only works in a good policy environment while others drive out the aid policy interaction term with other variables this literature has the usual limitations of choosing a specification without clear guidance from theory which often means there are more plausible specifications than there are data points in the sample we differentiate our paper from these others by not deviating from the bd specification thus we do not test the robustness of the results to an unlimited number of variations but instead maintain the bd methodology this paper conducts a very simple robustness check by adding new data that were unavailable to bd thus we expand the sample used over their time period and extend the data from 1993 to 1997 easterly department of economics new york university 269 mercer street new york ny 10003 center for global development and national bureau of economic research e mail william easterly nyu edu levine department of finance carlson school of management university of minnesota 321 19th avenue south minneapolis mn 55455 and national bureau of economic research e mail rlevine csom umn edu roodman center for global development 1776 massachusetts avenue nw washington dc 20036 e mail droodman cgdev org we are grateful to craig burnside for supplying data and assisting in the reconstruction of previous results without holding him responsible in any way for the work in this paper thanks also to francis ng and prarthna dayal for generous assistance with updating the sachs warner openness variable and to three anonymous referees craig burnside and henrik hansen for helpful comments 1 see for instance the world bank 1994 2001 2002 the u k department for international development 2000 president george w bush s speech march 16 2002 the announcement by the white house on creating the millennium challenge corporation white house 2002 as well as a washington post editorial february 9 2002 a financial times column by alan beattie march 11 2002 and the economist march 16 2002

how to take into account vulnerability in aid allocation criteria and lack of human capital as well improving the performance based allocation summary this paper considers why and how the performance based allocation pba used in multilateral development banks and in particular at ida could be improved by taking the structural handicaps of eligible countries into account the pba relies on a debatable definition of performance it does not meet the equity concern raised by the existence of structural handicaps to growth it neglects the lessons of the aid effectiveness literature finally it suffers from some opacity we show how it is possible to increase the share of specific groups of countries such as sub saharan africa or post conflict states in a transparent manner

aid growth and devolution summary this paper examines whether the degree of fiscal decentralization in aid receiving countries matters in explaining aid effectiveness the decentralization theorem predicts that the devolution of powers should increase aid effectiveness since local decision makers are better informed about local needs thereby decentralization may also have reverse effects e g through coordination problems excessive regulation administrative costs and local capture we use panel data for up to 60 countries and find that aid contributes to economic growth in centralized developing economies whereas it is less effective or even harmful in decentralized countries the cases of indonesia the philippines and uganda support our findings our results imply that donor countries should carefully consider how the two development instruments foreign aid and decentralization interact

exchange rate volatility and intra asia trade evidence by type of goods this paper examines the impact of intra asia exchange rate volatility on intra asia trade in primary goods intermediate goods equipment goods and consumption goods from 1980 to 2009 for asia the evidence shows that as intraregional exchange rate volatility increases intraregional exports in these goods fall this adverse impact is even more pronounced in the subregion of association of southeast asian nations asean 5 comprising asean member countries plus the people s republic of china hong kong china japan the republic of korea and taipei china and especially among intermediate and equipment exports again the impact magnifies in an even smaller subgroup excluding the smaller asean economies these results underline the significant impact of exchange rate volatility on the region s production networks for south asia however exchange rate volatility appears to have a positive impact on exports still caution is warranted given that south asian economies trade relatively little with each other

reforming aid toward more predictable performance based financing for development summary we explore ways of mitigating the costs of aid volatility in particular we show that these can be dramatically reduced by a flexible pre commitment rule which adjusts flows in the case of drastic improvements or deteriorations in country performance ratings such a system can further reduce variability with only minor efficiency costs our simulations suggest that a buffer stock of the order of 50 100 of annual aid financed spending might enable a corrective feedback loop with the necessary buffer depending on the size and variability of aid flows our proposed mechanism is similar in principle to natural resource funds which have worked well in some countries but not in others we briefly discuss some issues in design and implementation

the impact of exchange rate volatility on international trade flows despite the best efforts of economists a basic paradox as to the impact of exchange rate volatility on trade flows remains unresolved at both the theoretical and empirical level this paper surveys the vast literature in the area in an attempt to identify major issues which have contributed to the development of the debate and examine whether any general direction for consensus may be found

the location choices of foreign investors a district level analysis in india this paper analyzes the determinants of the location choices made by foreign investors at the district level in india to gauge the relative importance of economic geography factors local business conditions and the presence of previous foreign investors we employ a discretechoice model and poisson regressions to control for the potential violation of the assumption of independence of irrelevant alternatives our sample includes about 19 500 foreign investment projects approved in 447 districts from 1991 2005 we find that foreign investors strongly prefer locations where other foreign investors are they are also attracted to industrially diverse locations and those with better infrastructure we conclude that the concentration of fdi in a few locations could fuel regional divergence in post reform india

why is china so competitive measuring and explaining china s competitiveness this paper evaluates factors responsible for the competitiveness of china in the world economy and relative to its east asian rivals china has been highly successful in capturing world export markets chinese competitiveness is not just a matter of an undervalued exchange and extremely low labor costs it reflects primarily the coincidence of favorable cost conditions with improvements in china s ability to produce products that meet world market specifications these improvements are closely related to foreign participation in china s economy through foreign direct investment and joint venture enterprises

exchange rate policy options for post crisis southeast asia is there a case for currency baskets following the recent financial crises in southeast asia and elsewhere the perennial issue of the exchange rate policy options for small and open developing countries has resurfaced there seems to be an emerging consensus that the frequency with which soft pegs have been susceptible to speculative attacks in this era of escalating global capital flows has increased pressure for developing countries to adopt corner exchange rate regimes this paper takes issue with this popular one size fits all prescription of exchange rate arrangements for developing countries and explores exchange rate policy options for post crisis southeast asia the principal purpose of this paper is to discuss the case for currency baskets as a general regime in its own right for southeast asia as opposed to being a compromise between the two corner solutions

responders versus non responders a new perspective on heterogeneity this paper considers the implications of a particular type of heterogeneity one which characterizes a large number of economic environments but that has not received any systematic treatment in the literature the authors refer to this heterogeneity as responders versus nonresponders the paper begins by providing a general framework for the analysis of environments characterized by this heterogeneity and then shows how this framework can be used to help understand a wide variety of economic environments particular applications considered are near rationality network externalities and models of reputation copyright 1991 by royal economic society

capital inflows and the real exchange rate a comparative study of asia and latin america the nexus of real exchange rate rer and capital inflows is examined through a comparative analysis of the experiences of emerging market economies in asian and latin america during the period 1985 2000 it is found that the degree of appreciation in rer associated with capital inflow is uniformly much higher in latin american countries compared to their asian counterparts despite the fact that the latter experienced far greater foreign capital inflows relative to the size of the economy the econometric evidence suggests that both the composition of capital flows and differences in the degree of response of rer to capital flows matter in explaining these contrasting experiences while rer appreciation is a phenomenon predominantly associated with other non fdi forms of capital inflows ocfw a given level of ocfw brings about a far greater degree of appreciation of the real exchange rate in latin america where the importance of these flows in total capital inflow is also far greater on the policy front asian countries seem to have used fiscal contraction and nominal exchange rate adjustment more effectively to cushion the rer against the appreciation pressure of capital inflows there is however no evidence to suggest that sterilized intervention can generate a lasting impact on the real exchange rate

has exchange risk depressed international trade the impact of third country exchange risk abstract this paper argues that the effect of exchange risk on bilateral and aggregate trade flows should be analyzed by including the impact of third country exchange risk factors in addition to direct bilateral or multilateral risk after a theoretical examination of these effects us bilateral export flow to its six largest trading partners are analyzed empirically i find individuality and jointly significant third country risk effects in most cases in contrast to some recent bilateral efforts i find a steadily growing negative impact on trade flows from exchange risk during floating and in contrast to recent aggregate trade flow studies i conclude that there was no temporary decline in exchange risk during the late 1970s

how concessional is aid lending abstract the method used by development assistance committee countries for measuring the concessionality of aid loans has remained unchanged for nearly 20 years it was designed to measure the net cost of aid to donors not the net benefit to recipients the discount rate used takes no account of changes in the value of the currency of the loan or of changes in prices for goods traded by recipient countries furthermore it does not consider the implications of tying of aid or of policy conditionality this paper suggests an alternative measure that shows the real net benefit of aid finance to recipients it argues that the discount rate used by the development assistance committee is too high and that changes in the value of the currency in which a loan is taken out can be important nevertheless real rates of interest for developing countries remain surprisingly high despite low nominal rates due to falling prices of traded goods this finding has implications for the future real cost of debt service to

aid and growth what does the cross country evidence really show abstract we examine the effects of aid on growth in cross sectional and panel data after correcting for the possible bias that poorer or stronger growth may draw aid contributions to recipient co

does foreign direct investment lead to productivity spillovers firm level evidence from indonesia this paper examines whether spillovers from foreign direct investment fdi make any contribution to productivity growth in the indonesian chemical and pharmaceutical firms using plant level panel data the spillover effects from fdi are analyzed using a stochastic frontier approach and productivity growth is decomposed using a generalized malmquist output oriented index the results show positive productivity spillovers from fdi higher competition is associated with larger spillovers and domestic firms with r d gain more spillover benefits compared to those without r d fdi spillovers are found to be positive and significant for technological progress and positive but not significant for technical and scale efficiency change

foreign aid and the question of fungibility this paper analyzes whether the foreign assistance provided for specific categories of expenditure is shifted among them contrary to the wishes of donors it also considers whether aid reduces the tax effort of recipient governments econometric results are presented for the dominican republic that show that the fungibility of aid has resulted in a thwarting of the intentions of donors an attempt is made to account for the observed differences in behavior of individual countries in altering expenditures copyright 1993 by mit press

impact of foreign direct investment volatility on economic development in the indian subcontinent using annual data over forty years from 1975 to 2014 this study investigates the gross domestic product gdp growth and the conditional volatility of foreign direct investment fdi in the indian subcontinent the study reports the rising trends of both fdi and gdp and documents that the greater than expected fdi due to innovative shocks or policy innovations positively influences conditional volatility of fdi which in turn positively contributes to the economic growth development the conditional volatility used in the study is the variance derived from the diagnostically selected exponential garch egarch model the study also reports the causality of both the fdi and its volatility across borders more specifically it reports bidirectional causality of fdi between india and pakistan but unidirectional causality from bangladesh to both india and pakistan it further documents that this volatility is persistent in all the economies and that it spillovers from both india and pakistan to bangladesh the evidence attributes the economic development in the indian subcontinent to the economic or policy innovations in attracting fdi the findings of this study thus contribute to the literature by documenting the contrasting evidence that the volatility along with the trend of fdi contributes to the economic development and by reconciling the contrasting evidence

dangerous interactions problems in interpreting tests of conditional aid effectiveness there is now a substantial empirical literature examining the determinants of aid effectiveness a large part of this makes inferences based on a regression incorporating aid as a share of recipient gdp interacted with some institutional or policy variable recently some authors have questioned the statistical robustness of such regressions pointing out that results vary according to the way aid is measured and the estimator applied to the data moreover the regression equations used to test hypotheses about the determinants of aid effectiveness are often introduced without any corresponding formal theory we explore aid policy interaction terms in the context of a simple theoretical model showing how different nonlinearities may be conflated the resulting difficulties in the interpretation of aid growth regressions are illustrated in the context of a seminal paper in the conditional aid effectiveness literature one simple change in the way that aid is measured in per capita terms rather than as a fraction of gdp completely changes the regression results this indicates that adding interaction terms to otherwise linear regression equations is an inadequate way of capturing the nonlinearities in the growth process our aim is to re emphasise the importance of grounding

exchange rate variability and trade why is it so difficult to find any empirical relationship this paper discusses why previous literature has found little evidence of any effect of exchange rate variability on international trade methodological and statistical issues are discussed in particular comparisons are made of estimations based on different specifications or using different data sets and changes in the results depending on the method used are shown

cross country evidence on the link between volatility and growth this paper presents empirical evidence against the standard dichotomy in macroeconomics that separates growth from the volatility of economic fluctuations in a sample of ninety two countries as well as a sample of oecd countries the authors find that countries with higher volatility have lower growth the addition of standard control variables strengthens the negative relationship the authors also find that government spending induced volatility is negatively associated with growth even after controlling for both time and country fixed effects copyright 1995 by american economic association

game theoretic models of wage bargaining this paper aims at being a tool to help apply game theoretic bargaining models to wage negotiations in this perspective we review a number of articles which explicitly deal with wage determination as well as purely game theoretical models which we believe can be fruitfully extended to account for specific features of labour markets we discuss some common shortcomings in the wage negotiation literature and suggest possible lines of research worth pursuing to deal with such weaknesses