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This study uses the club convergence methodology of Phillips and Sul (2007) for emerging economies spanning the period 1960-2013 to explore whether such convergence exists and whether the increase of international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) flows has been a global or club phenomenon. We find the absence of a homogeneous convergence club. The results for FDI outflows also reach similar conclusions, suggesting the formation of convergence clubs by stage of development. These results suggest that policies that promote convergence in trade openness and FDI flows would permit countries to benefit from mutual interactions and by greater consistency and efficiency in trade regimes, thus permitting these countries to benefit from openness leading to a race to the top rather than bottom. (JEL F41, C33), I. INTRODUCTION The rapid growth experienced by the emerging economies in the recent past and their resilience to economic shocks, have led economists to question the reasons for this. These [...]

How has public healthcare spending prepared countries for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic? Arguably, spending is the primary policy tool of governments for providing effective health. We argue that the effectiveness of spending for reducing COVID deaths is conditional on the existence of healthcare equity and lower political corruption because the health sector is particularly susceptible to political spending. Our results, obtained using ordinary least squares and two-stage least squares estimations, suggest that higher spending targeted at reducing inequitable access to health has reduced COVID deaths. Consistent with the findings of others, our results indirectly suggest that health spending is necessary, but not sufficient unless accompanied by good governance and equitable access. Equitable health systems ease the effects of COVID presumably because they allow states to reach and treat people more effectively. Spending aimed at increasing health system capacity by increasing access thus seems a sound strategy for fighting the spread of disease, ultimately benefiting us all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the role of the government in economic growth by extending the neoclassical production function to incorporate two dimensions of the government--the size and the quality dimensions. The government size- and quality-augmented model, where size is measured by government expenditure and quality by governance, is tested on a cross section of 71 economies. Estimation is also carried out on the sample by income distribution. The empirical results indicate that both the size and quality of the government are important for economic growth. It is argued that investing in the capacity for enhanced governance is a priority for the improved growth performance of the countries examined. doi:10.1057/ces.2009.7, published online 4 ,June 2009 Keywords: economic growth, government size, government expenditure, government quality, governance JEL Classifications: 043, H11, INTRODUCTION There is no government in the standard neoclassical production function. A government, however, plays an important role in the distribution and allocation of resources. Moreover, the government is crucial [...]

Aims: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a spate of studies showing a close connection between inequitable access to health care, welfare services and adverse outcomes from the pandemic. Others have argued that democratic governments have generally failed relative to more autocratic ones, simply because autocrats can make the hard choices required for stemming the spread of viruses. We address this question by asking whether more 'egalitarian' forms of democracy matter, given that they contain more equitable health-care access and societal infrastructure, such as social capital and trust. Methods: We use standard regression techniques, including instrumental variables analysis addressing endogeneity on COVID-19 testing and deaths data as of the end of May and beginning of September. We use novel data from the Varieties of Democracy Project on health-system equity and egalitarian democracy. Results: Our results suggest that more equitable access to health care increases testing rates and lowers the death rate from COVID-19. Broader egalitarian governance, measured as egalitarian democracy, however, shows the opposite effect. Thus, factors associated with health-care capacity to reach and treat matter more than broader societal factors associated with social capital and trust. The results are robust to alternative testing procedures, including instrumental variable technique for addressing potential endogeneity. Conclusions: Despite a great deal of public health focus on how equitable governance helps fight the adverse effects of so-called neoliberal pandemics, we find that broadly egalitarian factors have had the opposite effect on fighting COVID-19, especially when an equitable health system has been taken into account. Fighting disease, thus, might be more about the capacity of health systems rather than societal factors, such as trust in government and social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using annual data over 1966–2014 from the Citizenship and Immigration statistics archives of Canada and constructing a time series for the funds brought into Canada by immigrants, we investigate whether these funds affect the exchange rate of Canada. We employ the ARDL bound testing (Pesaran and Shin, Econometrics and economic theory in the 20th century: The Ragnar Frisch centennial symposium. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1999), dynamic OLS (Stock and Watson, Econometrica, 1993, 61, 783) approaches to cointegration. 2SLS and GMM methods are also applied to estimate the portfolio balance models of the exchange rate. Estimated results indicate a long‐run relation between immigrants' funds and the exchange rate with immigrants' funds leading to a significant appreciation of the exchange rate in Canada. These results are robust to different estimation methods and an alternative proxy measure for the funds brought into Canada by immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between money growth and inflation is a topic of debate among macroeconomists. This paper contributes to the empirical literature on the money‐inflation pass‐through using a Nonlinear Auto‐Regressive Distributed Lag model (NARDL) for three countries (the U.S., U.K. and Japan) over an estimation period spanning 1950Q1 to 2014Q4. This methodology allows for empirical tests of short‐ and long‐run asymmetric responses of inflation to both positive and negative shocks affecting money growth of three monetary aggregates (M1, M2, M0). The results reveal that inflation responds asymmetrically to monetary shocks in the long‐run for all three countries. Robustness tests are also undertaken by carrying out the Hatemi‐J (Empirical Economics, Vol. 43 (2012), pp. 447–456) causality test and splitting the sample period into two, before and after the financial crisis. The findings indicate the existence of a relation between money growth and inflation in the post‐crisis period only in the case of the U.K. When we use different break points, we find that the symmetric relationship more likely occurs in the post‐crisis period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]