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New Economics Books
Get PDFA wide ranged Editor Selection of economic books published within the last 3 months by the publishers (for now; Edward Elgar, Elsevier, Palgrave MacMillan, Springer, Wiley, and World Scientific) which are reached out “the consensus of no copyright infringement exists” could be found under this title. Afterwards, JEL will continue to publish the economic books published within the last 3 months as listing them in its quarter edition. This is expected to enable the journal readers to follow the related literature and be aware of the new books. The list will continue to expand as accepting the books of new co-operated publishers and personal applications. The list order is organized according to book titles’ alphabetic priority
Causal Link between Trade, Political Instability, FDI and Economic Growth – Nigeria Evidence
Get PDFAbstract. The current liberal policies adopted by the government in Nigeria since 1986 provided a stronger bilateral ties which continue to spring up between Nigeria and other participating trading partners, hence trade and foreign direct investment continue to increase noticeably on oil and gas sector. Nigeria continues to emerge as one of the biggest hubs for trade and investment in Africa while the free flow of FDI is expected to contribute and increase the exports rate. The last two decades witnessed numerous trade reforms, which has given more liberal export favorable surroundings. The pace of FDI is greater than the growth at international level, which would enhance grandness rational behind FDI inflow with the volume of trade and goods, as well as the possible effect of FDI inflow on the economic growth in Nigeria while not neglecting the likely effect of political instability that might pose to a major threat to foreign investors. An attempt is made to investigate the causal nexus between FDI inflow, volume of trade, political instability index, and Gross Domestic Product in Nigeria within the period of 1981 to 2012 using co-integration analysis and multivariate Granger causality. Multivariate Granger causality test is carried out using VECM approach to analyze the causal links among all the variables considered for estimation. A bi-directional causality was discovered between FDI inflow and economic growth (GDP); however there is one –way direction between political instability and FDI, between political instability and GDP. Moreover, there is also one –way relationship between FDI and volume of trade within the period of study.Keywords. FDI, Economic growth, Multivariate Granger causality test.JEL. F23, 016
Did Keynes Make His Case?
Get PDFAbstract. Paper considers Keynes’ case for fiscal stimulus under depression conditions – a case that remains prominent in both policy and academic literature. It highlights four specific real-history instances where, Keynes argued, monetary measures alone would not have restored prosperity and, hence, where fiscal activism would have been desirable. These were: 1) the depression of the 1890s; 2) the onset of the Great Depression in 1930; 3) the Roosevelt Recovery in 1933; and 4) the 1937-38 contraction in the US. But evidence from all four instances, gathered here, undermines Keynes’ claims... Paper then shifts to Keynes’ theoretical rationale, where it turns out that the frequently-cited “liquidity trap” argument was only one of several he advanced for monetary policy ineffectiveness. And it was not the one he most-often emphasized, while his own texts raise doubt about its coherence. Keynes view of Depression was intertwined with the stagnationist temper of economic theory during the middle 1930s, and with his cultural and aesthetic distaste for “capitalist individualism.” The weakness of Keynes’ real-history illustrations reflects in part Keynes’ flawed underlying critique of “classical” theory – a critique that, because it was so prominent, has often set back understanding. Keynes did not make his case.Keywords. International macroeconomics, Money demand, Keynesian macroeconomics, Macroeconomic history.JEL. B22, B31, E12, E41, E52, N10
What DCC-GARCH model tell us about the effect of the gold price’s volatility on south african exchange rate?
Get PDFAbstract:The aim of this paper is to study through a model rarely used and little known, the effect of the gold price’s volatility on the south african real exchange rate. More precisely, it is to show that, through the dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) GARCH model; we get results that are consistent with economic works (Frankel, 2007) on the relationship between gold price’s volatility and the real exchange rate. The period retained in this research paper going from May 1995 to April 2014 and the frequency of the data is monthly. After analysis, we find that in the short term, the real exchange rate is more sensitive to its own volatility, compared to the effect of the volatility of gold price. This last effect, although high, is less persistent on the real exchange rate.Keywords: Volatility, Exchange rate, Gold price, DCC-GARCH.JEL. C50, F30, F40
The Impact of Poverty on Corruption
Get PDFAbstract. This paper examines the effect of poverty on corruption using annual unbalanced panel data analysis on 154 countries from 2000 to 2013. In the models, we use corruption measures from three alternative sources as a dependent variable while independent variables are five different poverty measures. In addition, this study has some control variables, such as foreign direct investment (FDI), trade openness, inflation rate and democracy level. According to empirical results, all poverty variables and inflation rates have statistically significant and positive effects on corruption, while FDI, trade openness and democracy levels have statistically significant and negative effects.Keywords. Poverty, Corruption, Inflation, FDI, Democracy.JEL. O15, K42, E31, D72
The Effect of Oil Prices and Regime Switches On Real Effective Exchange Rate in Pakistan: A Markov Regime Switching Approach
Get PDFAbstract. This study takes into the account relationship between oil prices and real effective exchange rate by using different exchange rate regimes in Pakistan. In this study following (Meese & Rogoff, 1988) and (Throop,1993) Interest Rate Parity has been used to construct a model by using real effective exchange rate, Dubai crude oil price and interest rate differential from period of 1970m01 to 2014m03. Through examining the results all variables are found to be integrated of order one. The long run relationship has been examined between real effective exchange rate and Dubai crude oil price in case of all exchange rate regimes with the use of regime dummies and interaction terms except for no regime, two-tier exchange rate regime and unified exchange rate regime. Similarly between real effective exchange rate and interest rate differential long run relationship has been examined in all the exchange rate regimes. Long run and dynamic result has also been detected except for interest rate differential with the use of exogenous exchange rate regime dummies. Oil price impacting exchange rate positively in both long and short run, while interest rate differential negatively effects exchange rate in long run. Through examining the results for impact of exchange rate regime switching on exchange rate, during 1970-2000 structural shifts were causing the change in exchange rate regimes with depreciation being high during this period.Keywords. Interest rate parity, Exchange rate regime, Regime switching, Structural shift and Dubai crude oil price.JEL. E42, E43, F31
Economic Progress as Related Sets of Non-Repeating Eclipses
Get PDFAbstract. I use a seemingly simple analogy of lunar and solar eclipses and set theoretical language to characterize how objects (factors) and ideas (forces) have determined the course of economic progress. In the early Ages economic progress depended heavily on objects, i.e., objects eclipsed ideas. From the end of Classical Antiquity to the present, objects, ideas, and their interactions and intra-actions have driven economic progress. The future of economic progress would depend principally on ideas, not because objects would vanish, but because object productivity would increasingly depend on ideas. While the welfare implications of the full idea eclipse of objects are difficult to pin down, they are not inconceivable. One obvious outcome is that different regions and countries will continue to perform differently because ideas will remain unevenly distributed, and even when they are evenly distributed, they will not be equally productive in all places. Such a policy implication recommends more investment in ideas than in objects in order to close the gaps in economic progress across regions and countries.Keywords.Economic progress, Object-idea eclipse, Idea-object eclipse.JEL. O10, O33, O47, N10
Peter Murphy, Universities and Innovation Economies: The Creative Wasteland of Post-Industrial Society
Get PDFAbstract. This is a brilliant, indeed an indispensable book. It provides a compelling diagnosis of the decline and failure of the contemporary bureaucratic and managerially governed university, the post-industrial-bureaucratic driven economy, and the social-liberal-democratic-bureaucratic state. It deals with matters that those of us who work in universities, particularly in Australia and the United Kingdom (US universities are still far less centralized), and who know from the inside that so much of what has happened over the last thirty years or so has pretty well destroyed the university as a place for reading, reflection, discussion, dispute, deliberation, and inventive imaginative responses to what are thrown up by the spirits of the times. But what makes the book truly remarkable is the thoroughness of the diagnosis and the mountains of evidence that the book marshals to make its case. Moreover, both the diagnosis and the evidence that is summoned to confirm the diagnosis could only have been made by someone who effortlessly moves between the disciplinary compartmentalisations, which, when kept separate, only serve to dilute any diagnosis of the nature of the problems and the forces and interests that conspire not only to create the problems but, sadly, to make then insoluble. Murphy is, to use one of those buzz-words that usually smacks of ‘bureaucratise’, ‘multi-skilled’ - precisely because he exemplifies that combination that is, sadly, all too rarely to be found, let alone nurtured in universities today: he is a real scholar, a prodigious researcher, and an inventive thinker.Keywords. Universities, Creativity, Knowledge economy, Bureaucracy, Post-industrial society, Modern administrative state, Managerialism.JEL. L16, L50, N10, Q31, Q32, Q35, Q55
Puzzling Properties of the Historical Growth Rate of Income Per Capita Explained
Get PDFAbstract. Galor discovered many mysteries of the growth process. He lists them in his Unified Growth Theory and wonders how they can be explained. Close inspection of his mysteries reveals that they are of his own creation. They do not exist. One of his claimed mysteries is the mystery of the alleged sudden spurt in the growth rate of income per capita and in the growth of population. This sudden spurt never happened. Precisely the same data, which were used in support of the Unified Growth Theory are in fact in its direct contradiction. They show that the created mysteries of growth do not exist. The difference between the diametrically opposite conclusions is that in order to support the Unified Growth Theory and to create the mysteries of growth data were appropriately manipulated and distorted but the contradicting evidence is based on their rigorous analysis. The mechanism of the historical economic growth and of the growth of human population is yet to be explained but it would be unproductive to try to look for explanations in the Unified Growth Theory. However, the problem is much deeper than just the examination of this theory. Demographic Growth Theory is based on the incorrect but deeply entrenched postulates developed by accretion over many years and now generally accepted in the economic and demographic research, postulates revolving around the concept of Malthusian stagnation and around a transition from stagnation to growth. The study presented here and earlier similar publications show that these postulates need to be replaced by interpretations based on the mathematical analysis of data and on the correct understanding of hyperbolic distributions.Keywords. Economic growth, Population growth, Growth rates, Gross Domestic Product, Income per capita, Unified Growth Theory, Hyperbolic growthJEL.A10, A12, C02, C12, C50, F01, Y80
Marcel Boumans, Science Outside the Laboratory: Measurement in Field Science and Economics
Get PDFAbstract. Marcel Boumans’ Science outside the Laboratory revolves around the distinction between laboratory and field science, and the challenges that the latter faces in the measurement of scientific phenomena. Boumans raises a methodological puzzle, the possibility of reliable measurement in the field, and he gradually resolves it throughout an excursus in the history of science that brings to light episodes of methodological significance. The book starts with Oskar Morgenstern’s warning about the peril of scientific observation in economics; touches upon Gaussian’s theory of error and its uses in meteorology; discusses Haavelmo’s intuition about the problem of passive observation; and concludes with a survey of contemporary methods for aggregating experts’ judgments. Ultimately, Science outside the Laboratory is a call for expert knowledge as a complementary source of evidence that, if carefully integrated with the traditional tools of field sciences, can eventually lead us to more reliable, and in this sense more objective, measurement. In what follows, I will first outline what I take to be the main theses of the book and discuss some of its main tenets. I will then illustrate some of the crucial steps in Boumans’ argument in detail. I will finally conclude with some general comments about the book.Keywords. Economic Thought, Economic methodology.JEL. A10, B30, B40