Search

ABSTRACT: This paper explores whether conducting scientific and technical (S&T) research reduces the volatility of output growth. The paper finds robust evidence that output volatility is significantly lowered by a country's production of S&T publications. The results show that the effect of S&T publications on output volatility is particularly strong in middle‐income, OECD and other high‐income countries. However, for East‐Asian, low‐income and sub‐Saharan African countries the effect is either weak or absent. These results provide strong evidence that not only OECD and other high‐income countries are actively engaged in S&T research, emerging developing countries are also conducting S&T research, which is effective in reducing output volatility. The results are robust to adding a host of control variables, various subsamples and different estimation techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the relationship between research and development intensity and growth performance during economic downturns at the industry level. Industries that are more research and development-intensive tend to perform better during downturns than industries that are less research and development-intensive. The panel fixed-effects estimations show that this link is particularly strong among manufacturing industries and is robust to various sensitivity checks. These results are consistent with previous firm-level studies that find innovating firms are much less sensitive to a particular cyclical shock than are non-innovating firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the rule of law and democratic accountability have affected Hong Kong’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate in the past 20 yr. We find that democratic accountability has deteriorated substantially since the changeover of sovereignty in 1997, while the rule of law has remained strong and stable. Empirical results from autoregressive distributed lag bounds tests show a positive long-run relationship between growth and democratic accountability, and Granger causality tests reveal that democratic accountability causes the growth rate of GDP in the short run. These conclusions are robust to control for the effects of investment and the Asian financial crisis in 1997. ( JEL O18, O49, P17) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the role of financial development in economic growth. Empirical theory; Time-series and cross-country evidence; Correlation coefficients between private credit to gross domestic product (GDP) and GDP growth; Role played by the government and trade in financial development and economic growth.