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This study examines the association between air pollution and economic growth based on the idea of environment Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis which suggests an inverted U-shaped link between air pollution and economic growth in six different regions including Latin America and the Caribbean, East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa over the period 2000 to 2018. This regional classification is done to investigate the regional differences of the EKC relationship for carbon emissions. Models based on panel data econometric models are employed to obtain empirical results. Random effect and fixed effect models are used in the present study. A multivariate framework is used in which carbon dioxide emission, per capita gross domestic product, trade openness, foreign direct investment, primary school enrollment, financial development indicator, and institutional quality that is measured by six indicators are included. The result is that the EKC hypothesis is supported in all the abovementioned regions except in the Sub-Saharan Africa region. Thus, the hypothesis that different regions have dissimilar EKC relationships is supported through the results of this research study.

Since the 1980s, inequality has been rising in Europe, North America and parts of Asia. How does our understanding of global inequality dynamics change if coverage is extended to the rest of the developing world? To rebalance the perspective on global inequality trends, this paper surveys data and literature on recent inequality trends in Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. It finds that in these regions there are more countries with falling than rising inequality over the past 20 years, as measured by Ginis of income or consumption inequality. At the global level, therefore, there are signs of inequality convergence, as inequality has been falling in countries with high inequality in the 1990s (particularly Latin America), and rising in historically low-inequality countries. We discuss the political and economic drivers of inequality decline in countries with a steady fall in the Gini. This suggests some common trends across the globe, including the role of democratisation, the rise of new social movements, and the expansion of education and social safety nets and favourable commodity prices, in reducing income disparities. This paper calls for more country-level comparisons of inequality trends, to highlight the multiplicity of paths in this latest phase of globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A panel causality analysis is made in this paper, among the following variables - electricity consumption (proxy to energy consumption), per capita real GDP, trade openness and urbanization The analysis comprises the subsequent stages- at the initial step, test procedure is conducted to test if the respective variable encompasses a unit root, if the variables contain unit root then test for long run cointegration relationship is examined among the variables. If a long run relationship is established then the error correction model is framed and finally the causal relationship is inferred across the variables. The procedure is based on the methodology developed by Westerlund (2007). The countries utilized in the study are a group of Latin American countries and South East Asian countries. The reason for choosing these two sets of countries, namely Latin American countries and South East Asian countries are based on their symbiotic economic relations. For the full sample the results provides support to the growth hypothesis which confirms the importance of energy for sustaining the growth process. Moreover planned urbanisation process would enable to use judiciously the electricity for future growth in these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a descriptive analysis approach regarding the influence of some institutional variables on the economic growth in emerging countries. The sample consists of 20 countries covering different zones: European Emerging, Asia Pacific Emerging, Latin America, Middle-East and Africa. We analyze the evolution and the nature of the correlations of economic growth and some of its determinants such as corruption control, government stability and investment profile during 2000-2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural transformation is a key feature of economic development. Developed countries all followed the same process of structural transformation. This paper asks whether developing countries also follow a similar process. Three key findings emerge from the detailed analysis. First, developing countries are following different paths of structural transformation that deviate from those of developed countries in different ways. Second, the paths of the subcontinents of Africa, Asia, and Latin America are distinct, and there is great heterogeneity within each region. Third, many countries experience substantial structural transformation during periods of economic stagnation or even decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the insights of various people on the paper "Are Asian Business Cycles Different?". Iikka Korhonen mentions that the consumption on durables are likely to rise as income increases. Tan Eu Chye believed that the paper was a great contribution to developing literature. Shandre Thangavelu mentions the significance of producer networks and he also supposed that Latin America could render valuable insights to the situation in Asia.

This paper reflects on 'late development', or more precisely, 'late industrialization': the idea that the industrialization of one part of the world altered the possibilities for industrialization elsewhere, such that later industrializations would take different forms from the original industrial revolution. For half a century, following Alexander Gerschenkron's account of late Tsarist Russia, the leading role of the state has been seen in the literature as the major characteristic of late industrialization in Latin America, Asia and Africa. The paper endorses the emphasis on the importance of the role of the state, but argues that a gap has emerged between the economic historiography of late industrialization before the First World War, and the political economy literature on the more recent industrializations, written by Alice Amsden and others. A number of issues are identified for further research, in the direction of a unified analysis of the history of late industrialization. The paper goes on to argue that the study of 'late industrialization' needs to be given a thematically wider and chronologically deeper frame. This possibility arises from the approach to very long-term economic development developed over the last decade or so by Kaoru Sugihara. In his view, Asian development was distinguished from Western development not just by the greater role of the state but by greater labour (increasingly accompanied by skill) - intensity. The paper explores the significance and problems of Sugihara's distinction of plural 'paths' of very long-term economic development, defined by characteristic technical and institutional responses to relative factor endowments. Questions arise, for example, in the context of the different experiences of Latin America and Africa, as well as from variations across Asia. It is suggested that a research agenda emerges that may allow us to enrich the analysis of 'late industrialization', and set it firmly in the context of longer-term economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the implications of foreign bank penetration on economic growth from the perspective of resource allocation in host countries. We use aggregate banking data, constructed from bank-level balance sheet and income statement information covering more than 1200 banks in the 35 emerging economies of Asia, Latin America and Eastern and Central Europe for the period from 1996 to 2003. By applying pooled OLS and fixed effects estimators, we present consistent evidence that the effect of gross fixed capital formation on output growth is higher in an economy with a more pronounced level of foreign bank penetration relative to an economy with a lower level of foreign bank penetration. This finding suggests that foreign banks play an important role in allocating capital in a more productive way, thus leading to a higher economic growth rate. One of the main policy implications of our findings in this paper is that foreign banks may serve as a channel in enhancing the economic integration of emerging economies with the advanced economies that are home countries of foreign banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies of economic growth have moved from explaining average trends in long-term growth to study growth accelerations and decelerations. In this paper we argue that the standard shift-share analysis is inadequate to measure the contribution of sectors to accelerations in productivity. We present a modified shift-share method, which takes account of surplus labour in agriculture and accounts for the contribution to growth from expanding sectors. We apply this novel methodology to the GGDC 10-sector database , which is a new data set with annual time series of value added and persons employed for the ten main sectors of the economy. The data set covers 19 countries in Asia and Latin America spanning the period from 1950 to 2005. We find that growth accelerations are explained by productivity increases within sectors, not by reallocation of employment to more productive sectors. Challenging conventional wisdom, productivity improvement in market services is more important than productivity growth in manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poorer countries are generally believed to be more vulnerable to climate change than richer countries because poorer countries are more exposed and have less adaptive capacity. This suggests that, in principle, there are two ways of reducing vulnerability to climate change: economic growth and greenhouse gas emission reduction. Using a complex climate change impact model, in which development is an important determinant of vulnerability, the hypothesis is tested whether development aid is more effective in reducing impacts than is emission abatement. The hypothesis is barely rejected for Asia but strongly accepted for Latin America and, particularly, Africa. The explanation for the difference is that development (aid) reduces vulnerabilities in some sectors (infectious diseases, water resources, agriculture) but increases vulnerabilities in others (cardiovascular diseases, energy consumption). However, climate change impacts are much higher in Latin America and Africa than in Asia, so that money spent on emission reduction for the sake of avoiding impacts in developing countries is better spent on vulnerability reduction in those countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to the Asian financial crisis, it was accepted wisdom to compare the growth of Latin America unfavourably to that of a selection of East and Southeast Asian countries (the so-called high performing Asian economies). This paper presents statistics that indicate that the differences in performance may have been less than as commonly presented. A modified Harrod–Domar model is applied to the Latin American countries, and the results suggest that a major determinant of slower growth in Latin America was the debt service burden. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that trade and FDI are beneficial to countries' economic development. This paper builds on the literature, and analyzes the ef fects on total factor productivity (TFP) through three channels of openness-imports, inward FDI and international call traf fic (ICT) for a set of developing countries in Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Using data from the period of 1980 to 2000, I find that imports, FDI and international call traf fic all significantly promote TFP growth in developing countries, and that human capital enhances the ef fects of imports on TFP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The biggest developing countries in the world in terms of territory size, population and GDP are located in the continents of Asia and Latin America. In these regions, there are also the most emerging-market economies with great potential for sustaining high growth rates in the coming decades (so called the BRICs) like China, India and Brazil. Since the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the present, the major developing countries in Asia and in Latin America, such as China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Mexico, etc have gone through various stages of development. paper makes an analysis of globalization's influences, the strengths and weaknesses of the system of WTO, participation of Asian and Latin American developing countries in the negotiations of Doha Round, development strategies to be adopted by these economies and also some important implications for building new balance in international agenda of 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A regression analysis of 92 Asian, African, and Latin American countries during 1970-85 produced the following results: (1) The effect of external debt on industrial growth is positive and statistically significant at high levels of state coercive capacity. (2) This effect is negative and statistically significant at low levels of state coercive capacity. (3) At middle levels of state coercive capacity external debt registered no effect. Based on these findings this paper puts forward the following three arguments: First, the "modernization" hypothesis of a positive relationship between external debt and industrial growth is more likely if state institutions are strong and capable. Second, the "dependency" hypothesis of a negative relationship between external debt and industrial growth is more likely when state institutions are weak and relatively incapacitated. Finally therefore, these two perspectives may be studied as special cases of a grander theory of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study estimates the macroeconomic impact of remittances and some control variables such as openness of the economy, capital/labor ratio, and economic freedom on the economic growth of African, Asian, and Latin American-Caribbean countries using newly developed panel unit-root tests, cointegration tests, and Panel Fully Modified OLS (PFMOLS). We use annual panel data from 1985-2007for 64 countries consisting of 29 from Africa, 14 from Asia, and 21 from Latin America and the Caribbean region, respectively. We find that remittances, openness of the economy, and capital labor ratio have positive and significant effect on economic growth for all regions as a group and in each of the three in study. While the economic freedom index also has a positive and significant effect on growth in Africa and Latin America, however, its effect on the economic growth of Asia is mixed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A positive international environment favors growth of the several economies in a given region, but it does not assure that the differences in the economic potential of the several countries are reduced in this process. Alternatively, the presence of productive complementarities might foster competitiveness and contribute to increasing the degree of homogeneity, even in situations of adverse terms of trade. This article reviews the experience of six sub-regional groups in Asia and Latin America in the last two decades. Latin America has recently benefitted from significant improvement in terms of trade and yet the economies in that region remain as different in their relative economic potential as they were in the beginning of the 1990s. In Asia, however, the negative impact of terms of trade has not blocked a quite fast pace of GDP growth; furthermore, productive complementarity has led to an increasing convergence of the several economies, with a sharp increase in their share of the international market. There are clear lessons from the Asian experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the development of the financial system of the recipient country is an important precondition for FDI to have a positive impact on economic growth. A more developed financial system positively contributes to the process of technological diffusion associated with FDI. The article empirically investigates the role the development of the financial system plays in enhancing the positive relationship between FDI and economic growth. The empirical investigation presented in the article strongly suggests that this is the case. Of the 67 countries in data set, 37 have a sufficiently developed financial system in order to let FDI contribute positively to economic growth. Most of these countries are in Latin America and Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why is the world becoming increasingly urban? The primary reason is economic development, but economic development alone is inadequate for explaining urbanization in the Third World. Theoretical arguments and fragmentary empirical evidence suggest that, in the underdeveloped regions of Asia and Latin America, urbanization is caused by adverse rural conditions as well as by economic development. Data for 27 Asian and Latin American nations in 1960 and 1970 provide evidence that two rural conditions, high agricultural density and plantation agriculture, spur urbanization in underdeveloped regions, independent of the effects of economic development and prior urbanization in these regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]