Research Papers in Economics
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Emerging policies and partnerships under CAADP: Implications for long-term growth, food security, and poverty reduction
Full text linkThe Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) is one of the main components of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). CAADP is an initiative launched by the African Union Commission (AUC) in 2002 to serve as a continent-wide framework to facilitate faster agricultural growth and progress toward poverty reduction and food and nutrition security in Africa. CAADP seeks to promote policies and partnerships and raise investments in Africa's agricultural sector and achieve better development outcomes. It is an unprecedented, comprehensive effort to rally governments and other stakeholders around a set of key values and principles; create partnership mechanisms at continental, regional, and country levels; promote evidence-based and outcome-driven policy design and implementation; and establish inclusive dialogue and review processes to increase the effectiveness of the development process among African countries. This paper examines the new policy and investment planning and the review, dialogue, and partnership modalities and evaluates their likely impact on future growth and poverty-reduction outcomes.Agriculture, CAADP, Growth, NEPAD, Nutrition, partnership, Poverty,
Evaluating the Mexico city policy: How US foreign policy affects fertility outcomes and child health in Ghana
Full text linkUS development assistance represents a significant source of funding for many population programs in poor countries. The Mexico City policy, known derisively as the global gag rule, restricts activities of foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that receive such assistance. The intent of the policy is to reduce the use of abortion in developing countries—a policy that is born entirely of US domestic politics and that turns on and off depending on the political party in power. I examine here whether the policy achieves its aim, and how the policy affects reproductive outcomes for women in Ghana. Employing a woman-by-month panel of pregnancies and woman fixed effects, I estimate whether a given woman is less likely to abort a pregnancy during two policy periods versus two nonpolicy periods. I find no evidence that any demographic group reduces the use of abortion as a result of the policy. On the contrary, rural women significantly increase abortions. This effect seems to arise from their increased rate of conception during these times. The policy-induced budget shortfalls reportedly forced NGOs to cut rural outreach services, reducing the availability of contraceptives in rural areas. The lack of contraceptives likely caused the observed 12 percent increase in rural pregnancies, ultimately resulting in about 200,000 additional abortions and between 500,000 and 750,000 additional unintended births. I find that these additional unwanted children have significantly reduced height and weight for age, relative to their siblings. Rather than reducing abortion, this policy increased pregnancy, abortion, and unintended births, resulting in more than a half-million children of significantly reduced nutritional status.abortion, child health, fertility, Foreign aid,
Upgrading of Symbolic and Synthetic Knowledge Bases: Analysis of the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industry and the Automotive Industry in China
Full text linkThe degree and the way of upgrading differ widely per industry. This article tries to give some new insights in these differences by linking the concept of upgrading to that of the knowledge base. Moreover, we try to identify barriers to upgrading as well as the appropriate spatial scale on which upgrading takes place, again for different knowledge bases. We support our argument by analysing the process of upgrading in two industries in China: the AEC industry (in Beijing and Shanghai) and the automotive industry (in Shanghai). Within these industries we focus on upgrading on two levels: within firms and within projects. Our findings for both industries suggest that the principal ways of upgrading of the symbolic knowledge base are joint brainstorming in internal and external project teams and labour mobility. Major factors that hinder the upgrading of symbolic knowledge include the development stage of China, the Chinese educational system and tensions about duplication of western designs. Upgrading of the synthetic knowledge base takes mainly place via inter-company training programmes of foreign firms, technology transfer and labour mobility on the long run. A possible barrier for upgrading of synthetic knowledge, especially in the automotive industry, is that foreign firms tend to keep certain engineering activities in their home base because of the risk of knowledge leakage. However, this is changing quickly as many foreign carmakers and their suppliers invest in engineering centres in China due to an increasing demand for cars, to governmental regulations and to intensifying competition.Urban development, upgrading, automotive industry, AEC industry, knowledge economy, China.
housing and the business cycle
No full textRecent events have led to a renewed effort to understand the nature of cyclical fluctuations in the price and quantity of new investment in housing. This paper provides a brief summary of the existing literature modelling housing and the business cycle.Cobb-Douglas preferences, expenditure shares, housing expenditures, multi-city models
Solow residual, the
No full textSolow's method of decomposing the growth in aggregate output into that part due to growth in inputs and that part due to technological progress has become the standard method for measuring technological progress, or growth in total factor productivity. This contribution outlines the method and later refinements.growth accounting, output growth: Solow, R., technological progress, total factor productivity
Threshold effects In multivariate error correction models
Full text linkIn this paper we propose a testing procedure for assessing the presence of threshold effects in nonstationary Vector autoregressive models with or without cointegration. Our approach involves first testing whether the long run impact matrix characterising the VECM type representation of the VAR switches according to the magnitude of some threshold variable and is valid regardless of whether the system is purely I(1), I(1) with cointegration or stationary. Once the potential presence of threshold effects is established we subsequently evaluate the cointegrating properties of the system in each regime through a model selection based approach whose asymptotic and finite sample properties are also established. This subsequently allows us to introduce a novel non-linear permanent and transitory decomposition of the vector process of interest.
Environment, trade, political economy and imperfect information: a survey
Full text linkThe last ten years have seen an upsurge in interest in the nexus of trade and environmental policies. In part this reflects the need to deal with major global pollution problems, and in part a concern that globalisation may have adverse impacts on the environment. Environmentalists worry that globalisation may trigger a race-to-the bottom in environmental standards. While they would like to see upward harmonisation in environmental standards, they are sceptical about the ability of supra-national agencies to achieve this. Industrialists also raise concerns about the need for a 'level playing field' in environmental regulations because of fears about the impact of environmental regulations on competitiveness. On the other hand, developing countries question whether disputes over differences in environmental regulations simply reflect a covert form of 'green protectionism'. In this paper we review what light recent developments in economic analysis (conceptual and empirical) can shed on these concerns. We begin with conventional trade models in which government bodies have perfect information and are welfare maximisers, and show that this analysis does not provide much support for the concerns or proposed policy recommendations. We then turn to models of political economy and imperfect information to see whether they provide a better explanation for the concerns and policy recommendations. <br><br> Keywords; trade and environment, environmental dumping, green protectionism,harmonisation, asymmetric information, political economy, lobbying, environmental policy coordination
The great divide: regional differences in education and training
Full text linkWhile regional disparities in the overall rate of participation in further education and training among young people are relatively small, marked differences persist in the pattern of investment across the regions. The proportion of young people continuing in full-time further education in the northern regions continues to lag far behind that in the south. This paper analyses the sources of this 'north-south' divide and the role played by differences in the educational and socio-economic composition of the regions. The results indicate that differences in schooling and levels of educational attainment play a modest role in determining such regional disparities. Further, eliminating all compositional differences across the regions - not only in terms of educational attainment, but also social and ethnic background and local labour market factors - would leave a significant north-south gap in participation in further education. These results point to continuing differences in underlying attitudes to further education and training, and these appear to be particularly marked among young women.
A computationally practical simulation estimation algorithm for dynamic panel data models with unobserved endogenous state variables
Full text linkThis paper develops a new simulation estimation algorithm that is particularly useful for estimating dynamic panel data models with unobserved endogenous state variables. The new approach can deal with the commonly encountered and widely discussed ``initial conditions problem,'' as well as the more general problem of missing state variables at any point during the sample period. Repeated sampling experiments on a dynamic panel data probit model with serially correlated errors indicate that the estimator has good small sample properties and is computationally practical for use with panels of the size that are likely to be encountered in practice. <br><br> Keywords; initial conditions, missing data, discrete choice, simulation estimation
Remitters in Dubai
No full textThis article provides a short description of remitters in Dubai. The data comes from a remittance survey on foreign workers in the Emirate conducted in 2008. Among other findings, our results suggest that there are key differences between those remitters who live in labour camps and those living in "regular" accommodations. For example, those living in labour camps have a tendency to remit more often, but tend to remit smaller amounts. One possibility is that the lack of security in labour camps has pushed these workers to remit the money they earn as soon as possible. The article points out several other differences between the two groups of workers.migration; remittances; Dubai