102,038 research outputs found
Political budget cycles and effects of the excessive deficit procedure: The case of Greece
No full textWe study the existence, magnitude, and determinants of political budget cycles in Greece over the past 40 years. We find that the Greek economy has been characterised by extensive electorally-motivated cycles, which are not typical of a developed country. However, we show that the corrective fiscal measures imposed by the European institutions in the face of the Greek debt crisis suppressed these pre-electoral fiscal policy manipulations. In particular, the imposition of the Excessive Deficit Procedure of the Stability and Growth Pact reduced the ability of domestic politicians to increase public deficits to the point where it eliminated, albeit only marginally, political budget cycles
The location of multinational enterprises in Central and Eastern European countries
No full textAfter the fall of the Berlin Wall and the start of the transition from a centrally planned to a market economy, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) increased substantially throughout the 1990s. Given the importance and the novelty of the phenomenon, a huge literature on FDI in Central and Eastern Europe has been developing since the beginning of the transition phase. It focuses mainly on the determinants and consequences of FDI at aggregate country or industry level,1 while little or no attention has been devoted to the spatial aspects of the activity of foreign firms. This chapter tries to fill this gap, by focusing on the location patterns of foreign firms in some Central and Eastern European regions. Several reasons explain the importance of this issue. In particular, FDI inflows into transition countries show a lot of variation not only across but also within countries, due to the diversity of economic development levels recorded in the
area. This implies that while FDI is able to exert a positive effect at national level, this effect may be different at regional level, thus triggering regional economic inequalities. Studying where multinational enterprises (MNEs) locate should then help understanding how the benefits generated by FDI spread across
regions in Central and Eastern Europe. Besides the obvious implications for regional policies, a regional approach to foreign firms’ location patterns allows to point out several interesting features concerning the determinants of FDI. A better comprehension of the mechanism behind the location decision of multinationals may thus help policy-makers improve the
attractiveness of laggard regions
Domestic vs. External Economic Sectors and the Political Process: Insights from Greece
No full textBuilding on the well-established relationship between economic dynamics and political processes, we focus on the most important element of the political process, namely, general (or national) elections, and look into their effects on public finance and total economic output. In this vein, the present study has three objectives: (i) to investigate political budget cycles in Greece during the period known as the ‘Third Hellenic Republic’ (in Greek, ‘Metapolitefsi’, hereafter THR) since 1974; (ii) to assess whether national elections affect total economic activity in a stabilizing or destabilizing way; and (iii) to examine the possible effects of the external sector of the economy on the budget balance. The empirical findings of our analysis document how the Greek economy was characterized by sharp political budget cycles in correspondence with the THR, exerting a destabilizing effect on the total output of the economy. Performances of the external sector of the economy have significantly affected budget balances in Greece
Toward a political budget cycle? Unveiling long-term latent paths in Greece
No full textEmpirical studies demonstrated the existence of political budget cycles in many countries, although mechanisms underlying such cycles remain substantially unclear. The present work investigates this mechanism using data from the Greek economy encompassing four decades (1980–2018). Results of regression models indicate that opportunistic political and economic behaviors arise on the part of elected politicians in power via manipulation of public expenditure rather than through the handling of public revenue. In years of general or parliamentary elections, public expenditure rose by about 2.2% of the country’s gross domestic product. This increase is atypical for advanced economies with well-established democratic systems. A specific analysis delineating what specific categories of public spending are associated with political budget cycles, also demonstrated that they were created through final consumption expenditure and especially through collective consumption expenditure. Our findings are robust to various specifications of the econometric model, both linear and non-linear. We conclude that, in the case of Greece, future fiscal rules aimed at suppressing political budget cycles should control pre-election collective consumption expenditures instead of regulating direct and indirect taxes
New ways of specifying data edits
No full textData editing is the process by which data that are collected in some way (a statistical survey for example) are examined for errors and corrected with the help of software. Edits, the logical conditions that should be satisfied by the data, are specified by subject-matter experts with a procedure which could be tedious and could lead to mistakes with practical implications. To render the process of edit specification more efficient we provide a new step-the definition of the so-called abstract data model of a survey-which describes the structure of the phenomenon that is studied in a survey. The existence of this model enables experts to identify all combinations of variables which should be checked by edits and to avoid the definition of conflicting edits. Furthermore, we introduce an automatic data validation strategy-TREEVAL-that consists of fast tree growing to derive automatically the functional form of edits and of a statistical criterion to clean the incoming data. The TREEVAL strategy is cast within a total quality management framework. The application of the methodologies proposed is demonstrated with the help of a real life application. Copyright 2004 Royal Statistical Society.
METROPOLITAN DEVELOPMENT AND COOPERATION IN SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE
No full textThis paper explores the role and importance of the four, closelocated, metropolises of south-eastern Europe (Skopje, Sofia, Thessaloniki and Tirana) and proposes a strategy that promotes metropolitan growth and development, maximizes spread effects to national hinterlands, and advances cross-country cooperation between cities in the area. These metropolitan centres play a significant role within both their respective countries and the whole region, because of their function as political/administrative centres and economic/growth poles and their dominance over the other national urban centres. In addition, their relative proximity permits the development of networks of cooperation and the gradual formation of a polycentric regional structure in south-eastern Europe, which will progressively embrace all the important cities, to increasing regional integration and enhancing economic development.METROPOLITAN DEVELOPMENT, STRATEGY, URBAN CENTRES, SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE
A Generalized Model of Regional Economic Growth in the European Union
No full textUnderstanding the forces driving regional growth in the EU is a major challenge for theory and policy. The opening of national borders, together with the rapid technological and scientific progress, has exposed regional economies to an extremely competitive, free-market, integrated economic environment, affecting their patterns of development. EU regions should, thus, be understood not only as national, geographic and administrative sub-divisions, but also as integral parts of the EU economic space. The paper develops a generalized econometric model for the investigation of the determinants of regional economic growth in 249 EU NUTS II regions, for the period 1990-2003. The model provides critical insight with important implications for theory and policy.DYNREG, regional economic growth, EU regions
A historical investigation of regional patterns of specialization: the case of Italy
No full textIl capitolo analizza la specializzazione delle regioni italiane dal secondo dopoguerra. Dopo aver costruito un indicatore di specializzazione regionale, basato sui dati dei Censimenti Istat del 1951, 1961, 1971, 1991, si stima la stabilità della specializzazione regionale con una regressione Galtoniana. Si stimano le ipotesi di ‘effetto di mobilità’ positivo e di diversifying incremental change o reinforcing incremental change. Tutte le stime conducono alla conclusione che, dal 1951, le regioni italiane restano mediamente specializzate negli stessi settori industriali. Questi risultati conducono a preoccupazioni circa la possibilità del paese di competere sui mercati globali. Questa immutata specializzazione regionale, concentrata nei settori tradizionali e del made in Italy, fa sorgere dubbi circa la possibilità delle regioni di sviluppare settori alternativi e tecnologicamente più avanzati
The spatial aspects of development in south-eastern Europe
No full textThis paper analyses for the first time the spatial structure of south-eastern Europe in an effort to assess regional imbalances, border conditions, urban hierarchies and detect the adjustments of the region to the forces of integration and transition. The analysis is based on a unique data base compiled from national sources and is carried on with the use of statistical, diagrammatic and cartographic methods. The analysis shows that south-eastern Europe is characterized by increasing regional disparities, an increasingly superior performance of the metropolitan regions, serious discontinuities at the borders which have, in most cases, generated over-time border regions with below average performance and finally an urban system with serious deficiencies in medium sized cities. These findings suggest that regional policy should become a permanent ingredient of indigenous and international development initiatives, which need to pay a greater attention to the needs of border regions, encouraging and promoting programs and policies of cross-border cooperation.
Tracing the new economic geography of borders in Europe
No full textBorders and border regions receive a special attention in the new post-1989 European architecture characterized by the processes of integration, transition and enlargement. What is actually happening to borders and border regions within this new environment? Are borders being abolished, weakened or are they being reproduced under a different pattern? What are the determinant factors which define the level and type of cross border interaction? This paper attempts to shed some light into the dynamics, perceptions and the new challenges concerning the “border phenomenon”. An empirical evidence is based on a survey at the Greek-Albanian-FYROM-Bulgarian border zone by analysing survey data. The survey, aims to evaluate a) the level and the type of cross-border interaction b) the obstacles and the limit of greater cross border interaction c) the existing perceptions and images of the other side of the borders d) the effectiveness of policies to stimulate interaction, e) the effects (positive and negative) of greater interaction on the border regions, f) the effects of EU enlargement on the c-b regions.
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