wheat from chaff meta analysis as quantitative literature review abstract this paper presents and develops a quantitative method of literature reviewing and evaluating empirical research meta regression analysis or mra economics is theory driven yet we must learn empirically if economics is to advance mra offers a more objective statistical method to summarize our empirical knowledge and to explain the wide study to study variation in economic research mra is used to assess the evidence for ricardian equivalence and its findings are contrasted to those of conventional narrative review furthermore mra establishes a platform from which to distinguish genuine empirical effect from the exploitable specification error that infests applied econometrics

fdi and income inequality evidence from a panel of u s states this study employs state level panel data to explore the relationship between inward foreign direct investment fdi and income inequality in the united states using panel cointegration techniques that allow for cross sectional heterogeneity cross sectional dependence and endogenous regressors we find that the short run effects of fdi on income inequality are insignificant or weakly significant and negative in the long run however fdi exerts a significant and robust negative effect on income inequality in the united states this result for the united states as a whole does not imply that fdi narrows income gaps in the long run in each individual state there is considerable heterogeneity in the long run effects of fdi on income inequality across states with some states 21 out of 48 cases exhibiting a positive relationship between fdi in income inequality

income inequality capitalism and ethno linguistic fractionalization we examine the relationship between capitalism and income inequality for a large sample of countries using an adjusted economic freedom index as proxy for capitalism our results suggest that there is no robust relationship between economic freedom and gini coefficients based on gross income subsequently we analyze the relationship between income redistribution and ethno linguistic fractionalization we find that the impact of ethno linguistic fractionalization on income redistribution is conditional on the level of economic freedom countries that have a high degree of fractionalization redistribute income less while capitalist countries that have a low degree of fractionalization redistribute income more

sensitivity of optimal programs with respect to changes in target stocks the case of irreversible investment abstract consider an aggregative model of economic growth with changing technology and tastes in which investment is irreversible it is shown that initial decisions in finite horizon optimal programs are insensitive to changes in terminal stocks provided the horizon is long enough this generalizes brock s result which was proved assuming investment to be reversible the irreversibility constraint does not allow one to follow brock s method of proof using the dual shadow price properties of optimal programs an alternative method of proof is developed using a primal approach and exploiting dynamic programming arguments

democracy and economic growth a meta analysis despite a sizeable theoretical and empirical literature no firm conclusions have been drawn regarding the impact of political democracy on economic growth this article challenges the consensus of an inconclusive relationship through a quantitative assessment of the democracy growth literature it applies meta regression analysis to the population of 483 estimates derived from 84 studies on democracy and growth using traditional meta analysis estimators the bootstrap and fixed and random effects meta regression models it derives several robust conclusions taking all the available published evidence together it concludes that democracy does not have a direct impact on economic growth however democracy has robust significant and positive indirect effects through higher human capital lower inflation lower political instability and higher levels of economic freedom democracies may also be associated with larger governments and less free international trade there also appear to be country and region specific democracy growth effects overall democracy s net effect on the economy does not seem to be detrimental

interlinked contracts and moral hazard in investment abstract in agricultural tenancy arrangements the tenant is often required to undertake effort aimed at maintaining and improving the productive stocks this paper investigate the design of contracts which induce optimal investment of such effort it is found that a long term contract which interlinks tenancy with a credit agreement is optimal in equilibrium the tenant obtains credit from the landlord at a rate of interest below the market and is perpetually indebted to the landlord

the use and abuse of meta analysis in environmental and natural resource economics an assessment motivated by the 2006 report of a work group appointed by the environmental protection agency epa this paper examines the present state of meta analysis in environmental economics and offers recommendations for its future use to this end we summarize and assess 140 meta analyses from 125 published and unpublished studies covering 17 topical categories in environmental and resource economics first we provide several generic meta analysis models as reference points and discuss major estimation issues five econometric issues are identified as part of a complete analysis 1 sample selection criteria 2 basic data summary 3 primary data heterogeneity 4 heteroskedasticity and 5 non independence of multiple observations from primary studies second a tabular summary is presented for the 140 meta analyses with respect to estimation methods third a narrative summary is presented for 19 meta analyses including the three value of statistical life studies examined by the epa work group and one analysis from each of 16 other categories fourth we offer a set of best practice guidelines for future meta analyses in this and other areas of economics last the paper comments on the use of meta analytic methods for benefit transfers of environmental values

what makes growth sustained abstract we identify structural breaks in economic growth in 140 countries and use these to define growth spells periods of high growth preceded by an upbreak and ending either with a downbreak or with the end of the sample growth spells tend to be shorter in african and latin american countries than elsewhere we find evidence that growth duration is positively related to the degree of equality of the income distribution democratic institutions export orientation with higher propensities to export manufactures greater openness to fdi and avoidance of exchange rate overvaluation favorable for duration and macroeconomic stability

how international exchange technology and institutions affect workers an introduction in a world of deepening trade links rapid technological change and weakening institutions workers in rich and poor countries alike are concerned about their incomes and the security of their work in contrast to the substantial quantity of analysis on industrial countries relatively little careful work has been done on these issues in developing countries especially in the context of the recent globalization of economic relations empirical work suggests that disequalizing trends in some developing countries may have been caused by the entry of low income countries such as china into world production or by the greater quality and technological requirements of contemporary trade in goods whatever the source these results raise questions about the viability of institutional mechanisms for supporting the income security and working conditions of workers many labor market regulations are already ineffective owing to weak enforcement capabilities however in most developing countries there will be a rising fraction of workers in formal labor contracts rising demands for formal mechanisms for dealing with income insecurity and a potentially larger role for unions in an important segment of the workforce thus it is of increasing importance to set the policy and institutional framework in a fashion that is both consistent with competitive pressures and supportive of workers participation and security

foreign direct investment and income inequality further evidence abstract this paper examines the relationship between foreign direct investment fdi and income inequality special attention has been paid to data comparability and model specification by comparing models with and without geographical dummies this study shows that the statistically significant correlation between fdi and income inequality widely obtained in earlier studies might capture more of the geographical difference in inequality than the deleterious influence of fdi and to the extent that fdi does give rise to more unequal income distribution in the host less developed countries ldcs only east southeast asia ldcs appear to have been harmed by the inflow of fdi during the 1970s it should be noted however that the second result refers only to the marginal impact not the total impact apart from fdi our empirical evidence suggests that the level of economic development the direct role of government and to a smaller degree the significance of the agriculture sector in an ldc are crucial determinants of income inequality

a complete characterization of optimal growth paths in an aggregated model with a non concave production function the convexity of technology has played a crucial role in economic analyses of optimal one sector growth problems for example two of the key results on the traditional model of ramsey 1928 that have relied on the convexity of the technology are that optimal intertemporal growth involves moving monotonically towards a unique steady state as in cass 1965 koopmans 1965 and that the value function is a concave differentiable function of the initial capital stock as in benveniste and scheinkman 1979

rates of time preference for saving lives an important characteristic of many environmental programs is that their benefits extend far into the future the primary purpose of cleanups at hazardous waste disposal sites for example is often to prevent the contamination of groundwater that could pose risks to future residents at these sites such cleanups typically involve considerable capital and other costs which are incurred at the front end of the project and yield a stream of health benefits often in the form of cancer cases avoided that may not be recognized for many years this would not pose unusual problems for program evaluation if everyone were comfortable with the assignment of dollar values to these reductions in future risk see cropper and portney 1990 however regulatory agencies are sometimes reluctant to make such monetary valuations preferring instead to evaluate programs on a cost per life saved cpls basis office of management and budget 1991 this raises an interesting question should lives saved in the future be discounted for the purpose of calculating cpls or should they be counted the same as those saved tomorrow to shed light on this over the last year we have asked members of the public hypothetical questions that enable us to infer the rate at which they implicitly discount future lives saved john k horowitz and richard t carson 1990 asked similar questions of students in the remainder of this paper we summarize the results of this research details of which can be found elsewhere cropper et al 1991 1992

income distribution and macroeconomics this paper analyzes the role of wealth distribution in macroeconomics through investment in human capital it is shown that in the presence of credit markets imperfections and indivisibilities in investment in human capital the initial distribution of wealth affects aggregate output and investment both in the short and in the long run as there are multiple steady states this paper therefore provides an additional explanation for the persistent differences in per capita output across countries furthermore the paper shows that cross country differences in macroeconomic adjustment to aggregate shocks can be attributed among other factors to differences in wealth and income distribution across countries

beyond publication bias abstract this review considers several meta regression and graphical methods that can differentiate genuine empirical effect from publication bias publication selection exists when editors reviewers or researchers have a preference for statistically significant results because all areas of empirical research are susceptible to publication selection any average or tally of significant insignificant studies is likely to be biased and potentially misleading meta regression analysis can see through the murk of random sampling error and selected misspecification bias to identify the underlying statistical structures that characterize genuine empirical effect meta significance testing and precision effect testing pet are offered as a means to identify empirical effect beyond publication bias and are applied to four areas of empirical economics research minimum wage effects union productivity effects price elasticities and tests of the natural rate hypothesis

meta analysis of economics research reporting guidelines meta regression analysis mra can provide objective and comprehensive summaries of economics research their use has grown rapidly over the last few decades to improve transparency and to raise the quality of mra the meta analysis of economics research network maer net has created the below reporting guidelines future meta analyses in economics will be expected to follow these guidelines or give valid reasons why a meta analysis must deviate from them

does foreign direct investment affect wage inequality an empirical investigation we use a panel of more than 100 countries for the period 1980 2002 to analyse the relationship between inward foreign direct investment fdi and wage inequality we particularly check whether this relationship is nonlinear in line with a theoretical discussion we find that the effect of fdi differs according to the level of development we depict two different patterns one for oecd developed and one for non oecd developing countries results suggest the presence of a nonlinear effect in developing countries wage inequality increases with fdi inward stock with such effect diminishing with further increases in fdi for developed countries wage inequality decreases with fdi inward stock and there is no robust evidence to show that this effect is nonlinear

does fdi actually affect income inequality insights from 25 years of research while there are 25 years of empirical research on how fdi may affect income inequality there is surprisingly no consensus on this issue in this paper we conduct a meta analysis on the effect of fdi on inequality using 543 empirical studies from 1995 to 2019 among various factors we find that the development level of the study country has the strongest influence on the direction in which fdi affects income inequality when the primary studies are sorted into three groups based on the gdp per capita of their sample areas the within group estimates on the effect of fdi on income inequality become strongly consistent with each other particularly we find that fdi is associated with higher inequality for the low income group has no statistically significant effect for the middle income group and is associated with lower inequality for the high income group this observation suggests that fdi may increase income inequality as a country initially develops but reduce inequality as development deepens

meta regression analysis a quantitative method of literature surveys abstract pedagogically literature reviews are instrumental they summarize the large literature written on a particular topic give coherence to the complex often disparate views expressed about an issue and serve as a springboard for new ideas however literature surveys rarely establish anything approximating unanimous consensus ironically this is just as true for the empirical economic literature to harmonize this dissonance we offer a quantitative methodology for reviewing the empirical economic literature meta regression analysis mra is the regression analysis of regression analyses mra tends to objectify the review process it studies the processes that produce empirical economic results as though they were any other social scientific phenomenon mra provides a framework for replication and offers a sensitivity analysis for model specification in this brief essay we propose a new method of reviewing economic literature mra and discuss its potential

stochastic growth with irreversible investment abstract this paper provides a unified treatment of the theory of optimal growth when investment is irreversible and output from production is uncertain under a convex technology and fairly general assumptions on the random environment it is shown that optimal policies are monotonic and converge to a unique limiting distribution which is independent of the initial stock the paper concludes with a comparison of optimal policies in the presence and absence of irreversibility

capital market liberalization economic growth and instability summary this paper reviews briefly the arguments for capital market liberalization and identifies their theoretical and empirical weaknesses this provides the foundations for the argument for intervention in short term capital flows the paper concludes with a brief discussion of the various ways in which such interventions may be implemented 2000 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

time series minimum wage studies a meta analysis time series minimum wage studies a meta analysis author s david card and alan b krueger reviewed work s source the american economic review vol 85 no 2 papers and proceedings of the hundredth and seventh annual meeting of the american economic association washington dc january 6 8 1995 may 1995 pp 238 243 published by american economic association stable url http www jstor org stable 2117925 accessed 04 11 2011 15 46

does ict generate economic growth a meta regression analysis despite phenomenal technological progress and exponential growth in computing power economic growth remains comparative sluggish in this paper we investigate two core issues 1 is there really no connection between ict and national economic growth and 2 what factors moderate the ict growth relationship we apply meta regression analysis to 466 estimates drawn from 59 econometric studies that explore the solow or productivity paradox that there is little impact of ict on economic growth and productivity we explore the differential impact of ict on developed and developing countries and the differential impact of different types of ict landlines cell phones computer technology and internet access after accommodating potential econometric misspecification bias and publication selection bias we detect evidence that ict has indeed contributed positively to economic growth at least on average both developed and developing countries benefit from landline and cell technologies with cell technologies growth effect approximately twice as strong as landlines however developed countries gain significantly more from computing than do developing countries in contrast we find little evidence that the internet has had a positive impact on growth