767 research outputs found
The Natural Resource Curse and Fiscal Decentralization
Full text linkNatural resource abundance is a blessing for some countries, but a curse for others. We show that differences across countries in the degree of fiscal decentralization can contribute to this divergent outcome. Using a large panel of countries covering several decades and various fiscal decentralization and natural resource measures, we provide empirical support for the novel hypothesis. We also study a model that combines political and market mechanisms under a unified framework to illustrate how natural resource booms may create negative effects in fiscally decentralized nations.Fidel Perez-Sebastian thanks the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (ECO2012-36719), Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO/2013/037), and the Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas for financial support
The Public and Private Marginal Product of Capital
Full text linkWhy does capital not flow to developing countries as predicted by the neoclassical model? What are the direction and degree of capital misallocation across nations? We revisit these questions by removing public capital from total capital to achieve a more accurate estimate of the marginal productivity of private capital. We calculate marginal product of capital schedules in a large sample of advanced and developing countries. Our main result is that, in terms of the Lucas Paradox, private capital is allocated remarkably efficiently across nations. Tentative estimates of the marginal productivity of public capital suggest that the deadweight loss from public capital misallocation across countries can be much larger than that from private capital.Lowe gratefully acknowledges financial support from ESRC, award number ES/I02476X/1, and Perez-Sebastian from Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (ECO2015-70540-P MINECO/FEDER) and the Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO/2013/037). Papageorgiou acknowledges financial support from the UK Department for International Development
What drives vertical fiscal interactions? Evidence from the 1980 Crude Oil Windfall Act
Full text linkIn economies with multi-level governments, why would a change in the fiscal rule of a government in one level lead to a fiscal response by a government in a different level? The literature focused primarily on the standard common-pool problem, while giving little attention to the potential role of complementarity or substitutability (CS) between the public goods supplied by the two governments. This paper fills this gap by focusing on the latter channel. First, we illustrate its potential key role in determining the sign of the vertical reaction through a generic model of vertical fiscal interactions. Second, we propose a novel strategy for identifying it, by considering an empirical design that confines the common-pool channel to specific locations. We implement this design through a quasi-natural experiment: the 1980 U.S. Crude Oil Windfall Act, which increased federal tax collections from sale of crude oil, thereby affecting the tax base of oil rich states specifically. This latter feature enables attributing the vertical fiscal reactions of the remaining states to the CS channel. Following this strategy, via a difference-in-differences approach, we decompose the sources of the vertical fiscal reactions arising from this federal tax change and find that those attributed to the CS channel: (i) account for approximately 38% of the overall vertical fiscal response; (ii) point at complementarity between state and federal public goods, most notably in transportation and welfare expenditures; (iii) are manifested primarily via changes in states' sales and income taxation.Raveh gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Center for Agricultural Economic Research. Perez-Sebastian gratefully acknowledges financial support from Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (ECO2015-70540-P MINECO/FEDER)
The public and private faces of the friendship between Fidel Castro and Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Full text linkNobel Prize-winning Colombian author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is one of the most widely read Latin American authors in the world. His novels One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera are among many people’s favourite books. But, despite loving his books, many of his readers have found it difficult to understand his political views – especially his support and friendship for the recently deceased former president of Cuba, Fidel Castro
Detective fiction in Cuban society and culture.
No full textPhDThe object of this thesis is to reach towards an understanding of Cuban society through a
study of its detective fiction and more particularly contemporary Cuban society through
the novels of the author and critic, Leonardo Padura Fuentes.
The method has been to trace the development of Cuban detective writing and to
read Padura Fuentes in the light of the work of twentieth century Western European
literary critics and philosophers including Raymond Williams, Antonio Gramsci, Terry
Eagleton, Roland Barthes, Jean Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, Jean François Lyotard and
Jean Baudrillard in order to gain a better understanding of the social and historical
context from which this genre emerged.
By concentrating on the literary texts, I have explored readings which lead out into
an analysis of the broader philosophical, political and historical issues raised by the
Cuban revolution. Since it deals primarily with modes of deviance and notions of legality
and justice within the context of the modern state, detective fiction is particularly well
suited to this type of investigation. The intention is to show how this is as valid in the
Cuban context as it is in advanced capitalist societies where such research has already
been carried out with some success.
The thesis comprises an introduction, ten chapters and a conclusion. The chapters
are divided into three sections. Chapters 1 to 3 attempt a broad theoretical, historical and
socio-political analysis of the cultural reality within which the Cuban revolutionary
detective genre emerged. Chapters 4 to 6 analyse the Cuban detective narrative from its
inception in the early part of the twentieth century until the emergence of Leonardo
Padura Fuentes as the foremost exponent of the genre in Cuba after 1991. Chapters 7-
10 concentrate upon the work of Leonardo Padura Fuentes, offering a reading of his
detective tetralogy informed by the preceding discussion.
The contribution made by the thesis to knowledge of the subject is to build upon the
work of Seymour Menton and Amelia S. Simpson on the development of the Cuban
detective novel and to provide analyses of the pre-Revolutionary Cuban detective
narrative and the work of Leonardo Padura Fuentes for the first time in the English
language. The thesis concludes that the study of this popular genre in Cuba is of crucial
importance to the scholar who wishes to reach as full an understanding of the social
dynamics within that society as possible. In particular, it proves that Cuban detective
fiction provides a useful barometer of social change which records the shifts in the Cuban
Zeitgeist that have taken place over the past century
The impact of conflict on the shadow economy and FDI : evidence from causal and spatial inference
Full text linkConflict affects governance policies, rendering them fewer effective tools, which motivates people to move into the informal sector. The shadow economy activities are labour intensive and suitable for adoption with low-return capital and small-scale production. They inefficiently use the factors of production, and distort the investment environment. Moreover, the shadow economy affects official macroeconomic measurements such as of gross domestic product, consumption expenditure, the unemployment rate, and the labour force. This motivates researchers and policymakers to pay more interest to study the phenomena of the shadow economy. Therefore, this study uses the event study approach to infer whether contemporaneous conflict affects the size of the shadow economy in subsequent years. Further investigations using the difference in differences approach are conducted to test the impact of Intifada, a political conflict event that has harmed the Palestinian and Israeli economies, on the size of the shadow economy in both countries.While conflict is one phase of political unrest, it harms economies, and diminishes capital stock when armed forces and rebels target infrastructure, which is either damaged or demolished. Moreover, armed conflict increases the depreciation rate, encourages capital flight, deters new investment opportunities, and accelerates loss for businesses. Motivated by these facts, this thesis also tests the hypothesis that conflict could have an impact on FDI in the mining sector. To do that, an event-study approach is implemented that focuses on the possible dynamic and spatial spillover effects of conflict on FDI.The study finds that conflict has had a dynamic impact on the shadow economy that remains statistically significant over a span of three years. Moreover, its impact becomes higher when conflict turns out to be more intensive, yet it loses dynamism. Additionally, Intifada is found to have affected the Palestinian economy, but not the Israeli one.The results show inconsistency across different groups of countries for the dynamic impact of conflict on FDI in the mining sector. Furthermore, the study does not find significant spillover effects across neighbouring countries
The impact of conflict on the shadow economy and FDI : evidence from causal and spatial inference
Full text linkConflict affects governance policies, rendering them fewer effective tools, which motivates people to move into the informal sector. The shadow economy activities are labour intensive and suitable for adoption with low-return capital and small-scale production. They inefficiently use the factors of production, and distort the investment environment. Moreover, the shadow economy affects official macroeconomic measurements such as of gross domestic product, consumption expenditure, the unemployment rate, and the labour force. This motivates researchers and policymakers to pay more interest to study the phenomena of the shadow economy. Therefore, this study uses the event study approach to infer whether contemporaneous conflict affects the size of the shadow economy in subsequent years. Further investigations using the difference in differences approach are conducted to test the impact of Intifada, a political conflict event that has harmed the Palestinian and Israeli economies, on the size of the shadow economy in both countries.While conflict is one phase of political unrest, it harms economies, and diminishes capital stock when armed forces and rebels target infrastructure, which is either damaged or demolished. Moreover, armed conflict increases the depreciation rate, encourages capital flight, deters new investment opportunities, and accelerates loss for businesses. Motivated by these facts, this thesis also tests the hypothesis that conflict could have an impact on FDI in the mining sector. To do that, an event-study approach is implemented that focuses on the possible dynamic and spatial spillover effects of conflict on FDI.The study finds that conflict has had a dynamic impact on the shadow economy that remains statistically significant over a span of three years. Moreover, its impact becomes higher when conflict turns out to be more intensive, yet it loses dynamism. Additionally, Intifada is found to have affected the Palestinian economy, but not the Israeli one.The results show inconsistency across different groups of countries for the dynamic impact of conflict on FDI in the mining sector. Furthermore, the study does not find significant spillover effects across neighbouring countries
Natural Resources, Decentralization, and Risk Sharing: Can Resource Booms Unify Nations?
Full text linkPrevious studies imply that a positive regional fiscal shock, such as a resource boom, strengthens the desire for separation. In this paper we present a new and opposite perspective. We construct a model of endogenous fiscal decentralization that builds on two key notions: a trade-off between risk sharing and heterogeneity, and a positive association between resource booms and risk. The model shows that a resource windfall causes the nation to centralize as a mechanism to either share risk and/or prevent local capture, depending on the relative bargaining power of the central and regional governments. We provide cross country empirical evidence for the main hypotheses, finding that resource booms: (i) decrease the level of fiscal decentralization with no U-shaped patterns, (ii) cause the former due to risk sharing incentives primarily when regional governments are relatively strong, and (iii) have no effect on political decentralization.Fidel Perez-Sebastian thanks the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (ECO2012-36719), Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO/2013/037), and the Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas for financial support
Foreign direct investments and natural resources : an empirical study on the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC)
Full text linkForeign direct investment (FDI) is a key source of technology transfer, economic growth and development, but many resource-rich economies attract less FDI compared to resource-poor countries. In light of this, it is surprising that there are very few studies available on the effects of natural resources on both the composition and volume of FDI. This thesis investigates the impacts and determinants of sectoral FDI in oil-exporting and producing economies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), using three empirical papers and considering several aspects.The thesis starts by investigating the impacts of natural resource abundance (oil) on the behaviour of FDI inflows to GCC countries, utilising two different data sets and different estimators to control for the issue of endogeneity. The empirical findings show that natural resources decrease aggregate inflows of FDI to GCC economies. More specifically, the resource sector (oil) attracts more FDI inflows but deters FDI to the nonresource sector. These results confirm the so-called FDI-Natural resource curse, through crowding out effect.This thesis also examines the relationship between aggregate FDI and sectoral FDI (resource and non-resource) inflows on economic growth, using a unique data set on sector-level FDI developed by the Financial Times: fDi market. The empirical results indicate a negative relationship between total FDI inflows and GDP per capita growth in the GCC economies. Moreover, two-sector analysis (resource and non-resource) shows that resource-based FDI hinders economic growth and non-resource FDI has insignificant effects on GDP per capita growth. This gives an indicator of the presence of the natural resource curse via the FDI channel.Finally, the third chapter of this thesis explores the effects of total FDI (inflows and outflows) and sectoral FDI inflows on public and private domestic investments in GCC countries. Aggregate estimations show that FDI inflows contribute significantly to public domestic investment but discourage private domestic investments. Also, FDI outflows promote private domestic economic activities, while in contrast, they negatively affect public domestic investment. Disaggregate data shows that greenfield FDI inflows to the oil sector yield a significant and positive effect on public domestic investment. Non-oil FDI has an ambiguous effect on domestic investment
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