how robust is the kearney foreign policy globalisation index we argue that the kearney foreign policy kfp index of globalisation is constructed by making some problematic assumptions about the measurement normalisation and weighting of the variables included in the index we propose alternative measurement normalisation and weighting rules and using these rules recalculate the ranking of the fifty countries using the original kfp data specifically we use in various combinations i variables adjusted for geographical characteristics of countries ii statistically optimal weights obtained by principal components analysis iii a normalisation rule that treats different years of observations separately we find that the country rankings change significantly when adjusted variables are used indicating that the original kfp index is partially measuring geographical differences between countries

quantile regression for modelling distributions of profit and loss quantile regression is applied in two retail credit risk assessment exercises exemplifying the power of the technique to account for the diverse distributions that arise in the financial service industry the first application is to predict loss given default for secured loans in particular retail mortgages this is an asymmetric process since where the security such as a property value exceeds the loan balance the banks cannot retain the profit whereas when the security does not cover the value of the defaulting loan then the bank realises a loss in the light of this asymmetry it becomes apparent that estimating the low tail of the house value is much more relevant for estimating likely losses than estimates of the average value where in most cases no loss is realised in our application quantile regression is used to estimate the distribution of property values realised on repossession that is then used to calculate loss given default estimates an illustration is given for a mortgage portfolio from a european mortgage lender a second application is to revenue modelling while credit issuing organisations have access to large databases they also build models to assess the likely effects of new strategies for which by definition there is no existing data certain strategies are aimed at increasing the revenue stream or decreasing the risk in specific market segments using a simple artificial revenue model quantile regression is applied to elucidate the details of subsets of accounts such as the least profitable as predicted from their covariates the application uses standard linear and kernel smoothed quantile regression

pollution and economic growth evidence from central and eastern european countries abstract we investigate the relationships between pollution and growth in eleven central and eastern european cee countries aggregate results robust to different estimators and control variables reveal an increasing nonlinear link between gdp and co2 for the group of cee countries however at a disaggregated country level the relationship between gdp and co2 is characterized by much diversity among cee countries namely n shaped inverted n u shaped inverted u monotonic or no statistical link thus despite an aggregated upward trend some cee countries managed to secure both higher gdp and lower co2 emissions from a policy perspective eu policymakers could pay more attention to these countries and amend the current unique environmental policy to account for country heterogeneities in order to support economic growth without damaging the environment

globesity the effects of globalization on obesity and caloric intake abstract we examine the effect of globalization in its economic and social dimensions on obesity and caloric intake namely the so called globesity hypothesis our results suggest a robust association between globalization and both obesity and caloric intake a one standard deviation increase in globalization is associated with a 23 8 percent increase in obese population and a 4 3 percent rise in calorie intake the effect remains statistically significant even after using an instrumental variable strategy to correct for some possible reverse causality and ommited variable bias a lagged structure and corrections for panel standard errors however we find that the primary driver of the globesity phenomenon is the social rather than the economic dimension of globalization and specifically the effect of changes in information flows and social proximity on obesity a one standard deviation increase in social globalization increased the percentage of obese population by 13 7 percent

is there a link between globalisation and civil conflict this research has benefited from the financial support of the spanish ministry of economy and competitiveness projects eco2011 29314 c02 01 and eco2015 64330 p

is trade good or bad for the environment sorting out the causality we seek to contribute to the debate over globalization and the environment by asking what is the effect of trade on a country s environment for a given level of gdp we take specific account of the endogeneity of trade using exogenous geographic determinants of trade as instrumental variables we find that trade tends to reduce three measures of air pollution statistical significance is high for concentrations of so2 moderate for no2 and lacking for particulate matter although results for other environmental measures are not as encouraging there is little evidence that trade has a detrimental effect on the environment

on fiscal policy and the stock market this paper provides some empirical evidence on the relationship between aggregate quarterly stock prices and other macro variables including measures of monetary and fiscal policy in canada the results indicate the presence of significant lags in the reaction of stock prices to fiscal policy moves to the extent that a proxy for the fiscal policy effect on required expected return to capital was included in the model such a finding conflicts with the stock market efficiency hypothesis further tests also suggest that anticipated and unanticipated fiscal policy changes have significant lagged relationships with current stock prices the canadian stock market therefore appears to have been inefficient with respect to available information on fiscal policy copyright 1988 by ohio state university press

credit scoring for profitability objectives in consumer credit markets lending decisions are usually represented as a set of classification problems the objective is to predict the likelihood of customers ending up in one of a finite number of states such as good bad payer responder non responder and transactor non transactor decision rules are then applied on the basis of the resulting model estimates however this represents a misspecification of the true objectives of commercial lenders which are better described in terms of continuous financial measures such as bad debt revenue and profit contribution in this paper an empirical study is undertaken to compare predictive models of continuous financial behaviour with binary models of customer default the results show models of continuous financial behaviour to outperform classification approaches they also demonstrate that scoring functions developed to specifically optimize profit contribution using genetic algorithms outperform scoring functions derived from optimizing more general functions such as sum of squared error

risk based pricing of interest rates for consumer loans abstract by focusing on observable default risk s role in loan terms and the subsequent consequences for household behavior this paper shows that lenders increasingly used risk based pricing of interest rates in consumer loan markets during the mid 1990s it tests three resulting predictions first the premium paid per unit of risk should have increased over this period second debt levels should have reacted accordingly third fewer high risk households should have been denied credit further contributing to the interest rate spread between the highest and lowest risk borrowers for people obtaining loans the premium paid per unit of risk did indeed become significantly larger after the mid 1990s for example for a 0 01 increase in the probability of bankruptcy the corresponding interest rate increase tripled for first mortgages doubled for automobile loans and rose nearly six fold for second mortgages additionally changes in borrowing levels and debt access reflected these new pricing practices particularly for secured debt borrowing increased most for the low risk households who saw their relative borrowing costs fall furthermore while very high risk households gained expanded access to credit the increases in their risk premiums implied that their borrowing as a whole either rose less or sometimes fell

does globalization affect growth evidence from a new index of globalization the study develops an index of globalization covering its three main dimensions economic integration social integration and political integration using panel data for 123 countries in 1970 2000 it is analysed empirically whether the overall index of globalization as well as sub indexes constructed to measure the single dimensions affect economic growth as the results show globalization indeed promotes growth the dimensions most robustly related with growth refer to actual economic flows and restrictions in developed countries although less robustly information flows also promote growth whereas political integration has no effect

deepening or lessening the effects of tourism on regional inequality abstract in recent years the spatial dimension of inequality has attracted considerable policy interest since regional disparities in economic activity incomes and social indicators often an outcome of ethnic conflicts and a breeding ground for separatist tendencies taking the cross sectional dependence and heterogeneity into account this study examines the impact of tourism on regional inequality from 1995 to 2012 within 113 countries of the world using satellite night light based inequality proxies the results confirm a significant long run equilibrium relationship among the variables across the panels particularly the results from panel fully modified ordinary least squares fmols show that tourism has a negative long run effect on regional inequality suggesting that promoting the development of tourism is an effective tool to achieve more balanced regional development furthermore the results from dumitrescu hurlin granger causality test indicate a unidirectional causality from tourism development to regional inequality these findings complement existing researches and deliver helpful implications for policymakers

policy impacts under rational expectations abstract this paper re examines for the u s the validity of the macro rational expectations mre hypothesis in contrast to most previous studies in this area the paper a considers the potential real effects of both monetary and fiscal policies b allows for possible endogeneity of these policies and c uses a joint non linear estimation methodology to distangle the hypothesis of rationality from that of neutrality the empirical results reject the joint mre hypothesis for both policies the results also indicate that policy non neutrality is the culprit behind such rejection this evidence offers further empirical support for macro rational expectations models where monetary and fiscal policies can due to some rigidities play a key role in stabilizing the real economy

the role of globalization in energy consumption a quantile cointegrating regression approach abstract this paper examines the quantile behavior of the relationship between the nuances of globalization and energy consumption while incorporating capital and economic growth in case of top two most globalized countries netherlands and ireland by employing the recently developed quantile autoregressive distributed lag qardl model of cho et al 2015 the model is estimated using quarterly data over the period 1970q1 2015q4 the results indicate that the relationship is quantile dependent which may reveal misleading results in studies using traditional analyses that address the averages the wald test confirms our findings by rejecting the null hypothesis of parameter constancy for both the netherlands and ireland the changes in energy consumption are more responsive to past levels and past changes in globalization than the adjustment provided by the error correction method ecm interestingly the findings indicate that globalization is positively correlated with energy consumption in the long term for the two countries furthermore globalization shares a robust long term relationship with energy consumption energy consumption is strongly related to globalization in the long term however the short term effects of globalization on energy demand are limited for those countries important policy implications are then suggested based on the empirical results

long range growth economic development in the global network of air links we study the impact of international long distance flights on the global spatial allocation of economic activity to identify causal effects we exploit variation due to regulatory and technological constraints which give rise to a discontinuity in connectedness between cities at a distance of 6000 miles we show that these air links have a positive effect on local economic activity as captured by satellite measured night lights to shed light on how air links shape economic outcomes we first present evidence of positive externalities in the global network of air links connections induce further connections we then find that air links increase business links showing that the movement of people fosters the movement of capital in particular this is driven mostly by capital flowing from high income to middle income but not low income countries taken together our results suggest that increasing interconnectedness generates economic activity at the local level by inducing links between businesses but also gives rise to increased spatial inequality locally and potentially globally

civil wars and international trade this article analyzes empirically the relationship between civil wars and international trade we first show that trade destruction due to civil wars is very large and persistent and increases with the severity of the conflict we then identify two effects that trade can have on the risk of civil conflicts it may act as a deterrent if trade gains are put at risk during civil wars but it may also act as an insurance if international trade provides a substitute to internal trade during civil wars we find support for the presence of these two mechanisms and conclude that trade openness may deter the most severe civil wars those that destroy the largest amount of trade but may increase the risk of lower scale conflicts jel f10 f51 f52 f59

de globalization theories predictions and opportunities for international business research de globalization now a distinct possibility would induce a significant qualitative shift in strategies structures and behaviors observable in international business ib coming to terms with this qualitative shift would require ib research to develop a much deeper integration of politics the key driver of de globalization to support such integration this paper introduces two relevant theories of de globalization from political science liberalism and realism both predict de globalization under current conditions but lead to different expectations about the future world economy liberalism suggests a patchwork of economic linkages while realism predicts the emergence of economic blocs around major countries this paper discusses the resulting opportunities in three areas of ib research political strategies and roles of multinational enterprises mnes global value chains and the role of the national context for political strategies and roles there is a need to explore how regular business activities and deliberate political agency of mnes affect the political sustainability of globalization for value chains questions include their future reach and specialization changes in organizational forms and the impact of political considerations on location decisions research opportunities on national contexts relate to their ability to sustain globalization and their connection with economic and military power

ethnicity and conflict an empirical study this paper examines the impact of ethnic divisions on conict the empirical specication is informed by a theoretical model of conict esteban and ray 2011 in which equilibrium conict is related to just three distributional indices of diversity ethnic polarization ethnic fractionalization and a greenberg gini index constructed across ethnic groups our empirical ndings verify that these distributional measures are signicant correlates of conict the underlying theory permits us to use these results to make inferences about the relative importance of public goods in conict as well as the extent of within group cohesion in conictual activity these eects are further strengthened as we introduce country specic measures of group cohesion and the relative importance of public goods and combine them with the distributional measures exactly as specied by the theory

granting and managing loans for micro entrepreneurs new developments and practical experiences abstract we present a methodology to grant and follow up credits for micro entrepreneurs this segment of grantees is very relevant for many economies especially in developing countries but shows a behavior different to that of classical consumers where established credit scoring systems exist parts of our methodology follow a proven procedure we have applied successfully in several credit scoring projects other parts such as cut off point construction and model follow up however had to be developed and constitute original contributions of the present paper the results from two credit scoring projects we developed in chile one for a private bank and one for a governmental credit granting institution provide interesting insights into micro entrepreneurs repayment behavior which could also be interesting for the respective segment in countries with similar characteristics

revisiting the role of tourism and globalization in environmental degradation in china fresh insights from the quantile ardl approach abstract ascertaining sustainable development is a major issue across the globe and the economic growth pattern achieved is a predominant reason behind this the globalization led economic growth achieved by the emerging economies might not be ecologically sustainable as globalization might not have been utilized as a policy tool moreover a sound policy calls for considering the entire data spectrum for the analysis which is largely ignored in the literature this research contributes to the literature by proffering a policy framework for the emerging economies by analyzing the impact of globalization and tourism on environmental degradation by considering the chinese context as a sample following the quantile autoregressive distributed lag model the impact of economic growth globalization and tourism on greenhouse gas emissions carbon dioxide emissions and the ecological footprint in china over 1978q1 2017q4 are analyzed the results demonstrate that economic growth stimulates environmental degradation while the presence of environmental kuznets curve is also validated moreover tourism has been found to exert positive environmental externalities while globalization exerts negative environmental externalities based on the outcomes of the research a comprehensive policy framework has been suggested following which the chinese economy might be able to attain the objectives of sustainable development goals 7 8 and 13

is german domestic social policy politically controversial this paper investigates empirically the influence of government ideology on social policy using german data examining the funding and the benefits of social security and public healthcare policy my results suggest that policies implemented by governments dominated by left and rightwing parties were similar over the 1951 2007 period leftwing governments however spent more in the 1970s and rightwing governments did so after german reunification in 1990 since policy convergence encourages new parties to enter the political arena and party platforms on social policy matters are likely to undergo further changes in light of demographic change the observed pattern may thus be a transitory phenomenon

international financial integration and economic growth abstract this paper uses new data and new econometric techniques to investigate the impact of international financial integration on economic growth and also to assess whether this relationship depends on the level of economic development financial development legal system development government corruption and macroeconomic policies using a wide array of measures of international financial integration for 57 countries and an assortment of statistical methodologies we are unable to reject the null hypothesis that international financial integration does not accelerate economic growth even when controlling for particular economic financial institutional and policy characteristics

is full banking integration desirable abstract we analyze the links between banking integration and economic development for a sample of oecd countries we measure banking integration considering indicators that merge not only openness but also connectedness with other banking systems we plug these indicators into income regressions also controlling for other relevant variables considered by the literature in contrast to previous initiatives this second stage explicitly takes into account the differing levels of economic development of the countries in our sample since the benefits of enhanced banking integration might not be generalizable to this end we implement quantile regression also considering the presence of endogenous regressors results show that bank connectedness is more important for economic development than bank openness but the combined effect i e banking integration overall is positive and significant the quantile regression models used in the second stage show that the effects are stronger for the poorest economies

does anticipated monetary policy matter an econometric investigation a heated debate has arisen over the policy ineffectiveness proposition associate with the work of lucas sargent and wallace it postulates that anticipated aggregate demand policy will have no effect on business cycle fluctuations so that one deterministic feedback policy rule is as good as any other from the point of view of stabilizing the economy this paper develops a methodology for empirically analyzing rational expectations models displaying this neutrality result and then applies it to the important question of whether anticipated monetary policy matters to the business cycle

us food aid and civil conflict we study the effect of us food aid on conflict in recipient countries our analysis exploits time variation in food aid shipments due to changes in us wheat production and cross sectional variation in a country s tendency to receive any us food aid according to our estimates an increase in us food aid increases the incidence and duration of civil conflicts but has no robust effect on interstate conflicts or the onset of civil conflicts we also provide suggestive evidence that the effects are most pronounced in countries with a recent history of civil conflict jel d74 f35 o17 o19 q11 q18 we are unable to determine whether our aid helps or hinders one or more parties to the conflict it is clear that the losses particularly looted assets constitutes a serious barrier to the efficient and effective provision of assistance and can contribute to the war economy this raises a serious challenge for the humanitarian community can humanitarians be accused of fueling or prolonging the conflict in these two countries medecins sans frontieres amsterdam 1

the structure of inequality and the politics of redistribution against the current consensus among comparative political economists we argue that inequality matters for redistributive politics in advanced capitalist societies but it is the structure of inequality not the level of inequality that matters our theory posits that middle income voters will be inclined to ally with low income voters and support redistributive policies when the distance between the middle and the poor is small relative to the distance between the middle and the rich we test this proposition with data from 15 to 18 advanced democracies and find that both redistribution and nonelderly social spending increase as the dispersion of earnings in the upper half of the distribution increases relative to the dispersion of earnings in the lower half of the distribution in addition we present survey evidence on preferences for redistribution among middle income voters that is consistent with our theory and regression results indicating that the left parties are more likely to participate in government when the structure of inequality is characterized by skew

development and application of consumer credit scoring models using profit based classification measures abstract this paper presents a new approach for consumer credit scoring by tailoring a profit based classification performance measure to credit risk modeling this performance measure takes into account the expected profits and losses of credit granting and thereby better aligns the model developers objectives with those of the lending company it is based on the expected maximum profit emp measure and is used to find a trade off between the expected losses driven by the exposure of the loan and the loss given default and the operational income given by the loan additionally one of the major advantages of using the proposed measure is that it permits to calculate the optimal cutoff value which is necessary for model implementation to test the proposed approach we use a dataset of loans granted by a government institution and benchmarked the accuracy and monetary gain of using emp accuracy and the area under the roc curve as measures for selecting model parameters and for determining the respective cutoff values the results show that our proposed profit based classification measure outperforms the alternative approaches in terms of both accuracy and monetary value in the test set and that it facilitates model deployment

co2 emissions in australia economic and non economic drivers in the long run abstractaustralia has sustained a relatively high economic growth rate since the 1980s compared to other developed countries per capita co2 emissions tend to be highest amongst oecd countries creating new challenges to cut back emissions towards international standards this research explores the long run dynamics of co2 emissions economic and population growth along with the effects of globalization tested as contributing factors we find economic growth is not emission intensive in australia while energy consumption is emissions intensive second in an environment of increasing population our findings suggest australia needs to be energy efficient at the household level creating appropriate infrastructure for sustainable population growth high population growth and open migration policy can be detrimental in reducing co2 emissions finally we establish globalized environment has been conducive in combating emissions in this respect we establish the beneficial effect of economic globalization

fiscal policy monetary policy and the efficiency of the stock market abstract this paper tests the semi strong form of the efficient market hypothesis emh with respect to anticipated and unanticipated monetary and fiscal variables using lagged values of these estimates it was found that the hypothesis holds for both types of policy actions