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This paper analyzes a model in which long-term risky assets are illiquid due to adverse selection. The degree of adverse selection and hence the liquidity of these assets is determined endogenously by the amount of trade for reasons other than private information. I find that higher productivity leads to increased liquidity. Moreover, liquidity magnifies the effects of changes in productivity on investment and volume. High productivity implies that investors initiate larger scale risky projects which increases the riskiness of their incomes. Riskier incomes induce more sales of claims to high-quality projects, causing liquidity to increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Science Policy & Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

of the Grattan Institute released the report titled Investing in the Regions: Making Difference in May 2011. The report sought to question the rationale for differential funding of regional infrastructure projects and concluded that 'government spending cannot make economic water flow uphill' (). The report was used to argue that fast growing regional areas were being deprived of important government funding and that this approach 'has treated people unfairly' (). The authors also scrutinised the argument that regional universities can impact on the economic development of regions and found that 'the economies of university cities do not develop faster than regions without a university' and thus 'it may well be that the additional spending on universities and regional campuses in smaller cities should be redirected to assist students from regional areas to study at larger campuses in our capital cities and largest satellite and coastal cities' (). In this paper, we identify the limitations of this report. We also take the opportunity presented by the release of this report to consider other important policy areas requiring attention, especially in the field of higher education in regional settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper investigates a principal–agent model in which an owner (principal) optimizes a contract with a manager (agent) who has been delegated to undertake an investment project. In the model, we explore the effects of costly exploration by which the manager learns the real value of development cost. We show that high exploration cost can lead to a pooling policy not contingent on project type. Further, and more notably, we show that, in the presence of asymmetric information, higher exploration cost leads to wealth transfer from owner to manager and can ultimately improve social welfare. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Output growth, investment and the real interest rate in long-run evidence tend to be negatively affected by inflation. Theoretically, inflation acts as a human capital tax that decreases output growth and the real interest rate, but increases the investment rate, opposing evidence. This paper resolves this puzzle by requiring exchange for investment as well as consumption. Inflation then decreases the investment rate, and still decreases both output growth and real interest up to some moderately high rate of inflation, above which increasingly low investment finally causes capital to fall relative to labour, and the real interest rate to rise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether government investment spending exerts a positive or a negative effect on private investments. Time-series data for Greece as well as the methodology of cointegration suggest that, over the period 1948-80, public investment spending exerted a positive effect on private investments, while over the period 198 1-96, the relationship turned out to be negative. Empirical results indicate that the large increase of the public share in the total investment process tended to crowd out private investments and to jeopardize the growth process of the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to measure the impact of investment in education on U.S. economic growth. Education is treated as an investment in human capital, since benefits accrue to an educated individual over a lifetime of activities. One of the most important benefits is higher income from labor market participation. This is the key to understanding the link between investment in education and economic growth. Our most important finding is that investment in human and nonhuman capital accounts for an overwhelming proportion of the growth of the U.S. economy during the postwar period. Educational investment will continue to predominate in the investment requirements for more rapid growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between banking sector development, stock market development, economic growth, and four other macroeconomic variables in ASEAN countries for the period 1961–2012. Using principal component analysis for the construction of the development indices and a panel vector auto-regressive model for testing the Granger causalities, this study finds the presence of both unidirectional and bidirectional causality links between these variables. The study contributes to understanding the importance of the interrelationship between the variables and combines the different strands of the literature. It also contributes to the literature by focusing on a group of countries that have not been studied before. One particular policy recommendation is to make the banking sector more accessible for those country's inhabitants that do not have bank accounts. Another policy recommendation is to nurture stock market development, which will facilitate the increased raising of capital for investment purposes to enhance economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The debate surrounding the financial needs of investors and the impact on society of investment is considered to be an important research topic due to the growth of socially responsible financial markets. The main objective of this research is to study society's perception about socially responsible investing (SRI) and to identify investor's preferences regarding environmental, social and governance criteria, their real-life investment needs and the most relevant sustainable financial products. To examine society's perception of SRI, we conducted a field survey among Spanish investors. The results show that SRI is at an early stage and Spanish investors need more exact information regarding social, environmental, and governance criteria in order to invest in socially responsible companies and products. This paper offers some guidelines that could be used by Spanish institutions, managers and investors and by foreign managers when approaching the Spanish market, in order to promote the growth of socially responsible financial products. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By demonstrating the superiority of the present-value to the recoupment-period criterion, Peter Lindert [2] has made a major contribution to the analysis of foreign investment controls. In fact, after reading Lindert's analysis, one wonders how the recoupment-period criterion got a foothold in the first place' the assessment of the net impact of a control program is clearly dependent on a comparison of capital inflows and outflows occurring at different points in time; and the accepted and traditional way to make such intertemporal comparisons is by a present value calculation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we report the results of an experiment designed to study the behavior of a laboratory macroeconomy with two stable steady states. The economy has the structure of an optimal growth model in which resources are allocated between consumption and investment over a sequence of time periods. The economy is decentralized, with a market for capital in operation. We find that the economy often falls into the Pareto-inferior steady state, which can be viewed as a poverty trap. The initial endowment of capital stock is varied as a treatment variable in the experiment, and the economy is more likely to reach the optimal steady state when its initial endowment is high than when it is low. Organizing the economy with a central planner directing economic activity fails to induce it to reach the optimal steady state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

For nearly two years the Japanese economy has grown significantly faster than commentators expected, raising the question of whether the country has finally broken out of its long economic malaise. This article by Simon Knapp examines recent developments to see whether this recovery is sustainable. It argues that over the last year the recovery has broadened out beyond merely the export sector, although there are good reasons to believe that growth as measured by GOP has been overstated and that many serious structural problems remain. Business investment has surged on the back of rising profitability and an improved labour market has helped lift consumer confidence. At the same time the paper recognises the importance of China's boom in stimulating the Japanese economy over the last two years, and estimates that this factor may have boosted the level of GDP by between 1 to 2%. With Chinese growth now moderating to more sustainable levels, export growth will slow over the next year or so. However, domestic demand should now be strong enough, in the absence of major external shocks, to generate GDP growth of around 1.5 to 2% per annum in the medium term; a respectable figure given the country's falling population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a simple and straightforward method of finding a consistent and efficient set of sectoral capacity growth rates and output and investment levels in a dynamic input-output (10) model with given production capacities at a certain "base period" of time and given consumption targets for a later "terminal period." The basic problem is that terminal capacities have to be consistent with terminal production requirements as given by the consumption targets, intermediate input requirements, and investment, where both the tatter are treated endogenously. The basis for endogenous investment is (a) the assumption that the planning period as a whole is characterized by a set of constant sectoral growth rates and (b) the assumption that investment does not create any excess capacity. These two assumptions form the core of the notions of consistency and efficiency respectively. The method proposed is an integrated iterative procedure with endogenous revision of the division of sectors between those operating at full capacity (bottleneck) and the rest, output and investment levels, and rates of growth. The method is, in fact, a straightforward adaptation of the standard method of solving an 10 model by power series expansion. The paper also discusses the method of target revision taken in conjunction with prior bounds on growth rates and certain aspects of the relation between investment and technology in the frame of the model proposed. It ends with a brief review of the literature, criticizing, in particular, the methods and approaches followed in a large number of applied planning models to tackle the set of issues discussed. This paper proposes a simple and straightforward method of finding a consistent and efficient set of sectoral capacity growth rates and output and investment levels in a dynamic input-output (10) model with given production capacities at a certain "base period" of time and given consumption targets for a later "terminal period." The basic problem is that terminal capacities have to be consistent with terminal production requirements as given by the consumption targets, intermediate input requirements, and investment, where both the tatter are treated endogenously. The basis for endogenous investment is (a) the assumption that the planning period as a whole is characterized by a set of constant sectoral growth rates and (b) the assumption that investment does not create any excess capacity. These two assumptions form the core of the notions of consistency and efficiency respectively. The method proposed is an integrated iterative procedure with endogenous revision of the division of sectors between those operating at full capacity (bottleneck) and the rest, output and investment levels, and rates of growth. The method is, in fact, a straightforward adaptation of the standard method of solving an 10 model by power series expansion. The paper also discusses the method of target revision taken in conjunction with prior bounds on growth rates and certain aspects of the relation between investment and technology in the frame of the model proposed. It ends with a brief review of the literature, criticizing, in particular, the methods and approaches followed in a large number of applied planning models to tackle the set of issues discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many jurisdictions require periodic mass reassessment of real property to bring assessed values closer to market values and to reallocate tax burdens among property types. This paper examines the influence of general reassessment on the tax burden on land relative to that on improvements in Indiana, a state using elected local assessors, statewide mass reassessment on a regular cycle, and assessment of structures at hypothetical reproduction cost. Examination of data over the 1950-51 to 1974-75 period shows that economic growth and development reallocates property tax impact away from land: the share of land in the base declines and the effective rate paid on any given parcel of land declines. Reassessment adjusts these impacts. While reassessment increases the share of improvements in the total base, the readjustment for land is larger. From this analysis, the most recent mass assessment (1968) increased the land to improvement ratio by about 42 percent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a historically contingent understanding of patterns of uneven economic development in the U.S. South. We conceptualize spatial variation in economic development and its consequences for inequality to be embedded in both local and international dynamics. The character of local economic development, it is argued, reflects the organizational base and heterogeneity of local elites, the divisions and relative power of nonelites, and the embeddedness of the local political economy in national and world systems of politics and production. These ideas are developed and made historically and spatially specific through an analysis of uneven development in one Southern state, North Carolina. Our findings suggest that contemporary patterns of uneven development and the resulting income deprivations and inequality reflect conditional interactions between elite economic projects and racial divisions within the working class. We find that outside investment seems to reproduce rather than disrupt local patterns of inequality and poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes a dynamic general equilibrium monetary economy with technological primitives that are consistent with the possibility of asymptotic equilibrium growth. The paper focuses on the relationship between equilibrium financing constraints on investment goods, transaction costs and economic growth. A generalized growth condition is derived that involves both monetary growth rates and transaction costs. The condition is used to show that (i) although inflation taxes can potentially exert a negative influence on long-run economic growth, these growth effects cannot in general be arbitrarily large; and (ii) for some monetary growth rates, money is super neutral in contrast to the models of Stockman and Abel. Numerical work indicates that although the welfare and growth effects of decreasing nominal interest rates from a benchmark are large, the costs associated with raising nominal interest rates from benchmark are not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When considering how to allocate scarce resources for the development of public infrastructure, many countries have a tendency to neglect maintenance in favor of new infrastructure investment projects. We examine the role of maintenance expenditures on output and on the distribution of wealth in a heterogeneous agents model. In our model, maintenance affects the quality of existing infrastructure and thus the flow of services derived from it. Furthermore, maintenance expenditures also affect the depreciation rates of both public infrastructure and private capital. We calibrate our model to Mexico and consider several policies that increase the flow of resources to infrastructure and find that a policy that allocates all additional resources to new investment is dominated by policies that allocate at least some of the additional resources to maintenance. Specifically, focusing all additional resources on maintenance is shown to generate the largest reduction in inequality, while a more balanced policy that increases both investment and maintenance maximizes output growth. ( JEL E00, E62, H54) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the impact of investment in information technology (IT) on the recent resurgence of world economic growth. We describe the growth of the world economy, seven regions and 14 major economies during the period 1989–2003. We allocate the growth of world output between input growth and productivity and find, surprisingly, that input growth greatly predominates! The contributions of IT investment have increased in all regions, but especially in industrialized economies and Developing Asia. Differences in per capita output are explained by differences in per capita input, rather than by variations in productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the state of commercial development and resource management on Indigenous land in remote Australia. Indigenous landowners control significant assets--over one million square kilometres of land--often with substantial resource rights and income earning potential. The inactivity and missed opportunities on the Indigenous estate are of such magnitude as to represent a major risk both for Indigenous landowning communities, in terms of their future economic and social well-being, and for national and international interests in terms of ecological vulnerability. The article explores the role of government as risk manager in such circumstances and outlines the principles that might underpin any intervention program targeted to the commercial development of Indigenous land. Using the analytical framework for profit-related loans and elements of an existing venture capital support programme, the Innovation Investment Fund Program, we outline the hypothetical skeleton of a new investment scheme to assist development and natural resource management on the Indigenous estate. Our proposal can be conceptualised as a profit-related loan scheme or as a form of capped public investment. It seeks to address key elements of the market failure that exists in relation to financing development on remote Indigenous land, provides incentives for greater private sector investment, and ensures that commercial and social risks are shared equitably between government, private sector investors and Indigenous-owned corporations to avoid problems of adverse selection and moral hazard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the asymptotic behavior of the neoclassical two-sector growth model when the steady-state conditions are not fulfilled, and derives the asymptotic growth rates for cases in which Hicks neutral technical progress occurs in the investment sector, or Harrod neutral technical progress occurs at different rates in the two sectors. The last section compares the asymptotic properties of this model with the standard steady-state properties of the two-sector growth model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to marshal available, albeit imperfect, evidence on the relationship between water availability and economic growth in the United States over the 1950-1960 decade. Since water resource investments are currently being planned on a very large scale as tools for promoting regional economic development (e.g. Appalachia and the Southwest) and since past water resource developments have frequently been defended in terms of their favorable impact on regional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine a sample of 625 public–private partnership (PPP) firms from 1980 to 2015 that straddle nine countries with varying degrees of economic development and PPP markets. We find that the motivations of the firms that undertake PPP investments vary. While private sector firms in economies with low institutional quality choose to engage in PPPs to alleviate capital constraints attributed to underinvestment, those in economies with high institutional quality participate in PPPs to solve the problem of overinvestment due to an abundant cash flow. In the long run, the benefits of lower capital constraints through PPP investments are more pronounced in economies with high institutional quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reception accorded the S.E.C. Special Study ranged from the vituperative to the lyrical. Interestingly enough, some of the more deprecatory comments came from academicians while some of the more glowing came from the financial community. On a previous occasion, together with a colleague, I indicated in some detail that perhaps the best-known of these criticisms--that by Professor Stigler attacking the ineptitude of the Special Study and the ineffectiveness of the S.E.C.--was without much foundation. As pointed out at that time, I consider the Special Study a competent and useful document and the S.E.C. a valuable and effective agency. Since the justification for this view has already been set forth at some length, it will not be necessary to repeat it here. The Special Study has already had a major and I think generally beneficial impact on the securities markets through new legislation, new regulations, and the intensified attention given both by the securities industry and the S.E.C. to the solution of both old and new problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the method of control of capital issues adopted by Great Britain. The author states that an increasing number of economists have focused their interest on the problems associated with secular acceleration. These problems include a long-run tendency for planned investment to exceed planned savings, rather than on the main concern of the 1930's, which was secular stagnation. The article also discusses the scope of controls, the argument of the "bonus-issue," and problems with hiring and purchasing.

This article focuses on investment prospects in the U.S. The article is the result of early research conducted by the Committee for Economic Development, but not a product of that body. The author discusses the immediate prospect of high employment and successful investment, then addresses concerns that the form of financing of investment may lead to depression and unemployment, and finally, addresses possible forms of investment financing that will successfully avoid depression and stagnation. The author presents strategies that will facilitate the flow of cash into equity as opposed to debt, including fiscal policy recommendations relative to tax structure and state and local regulations.

The article discusses trends, updates, and outlook for the Australian economy. Topics explored include the gross domestic product (GDP), consumption, and unemployment rates recorded from 2017 to 2018, international economic developments in the U.S., Europe, and China which could impact Australia, and the contribution of non-mining business investments to Australian economic growth.

As the mining investment boom turned down and became a drag on growth, the question has often been asked: “Where is the growth going to come from?” Commentators started speaking of a growth “handover”: if mining investment was not going to provide our growth, something else needed to. And for a while, particular non‐mining sectors did seem to pick up, to become in turn the new “engine of growth.” However, this article argues that the underlying drivers of growth over the longer term do not depend on external triggers. Instead, they can be found in the “three Ps” – population, participation and productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconsiders the relative growth performance of centrally planned economies in the broader context of postwar growth in Europe. It reports a new dataset of revised estimates for investment rates in eastern European countries between 1950 and 1989. Complemented with data on other growth determinants, this evidence is used to re-evaluate the socialist growth record in a conditional convergence framework with a panel of 24 European countries. After controlling for relative backwardness, investment rates, and improvements in human capital, the findings show that centrally planned economies underperformed due to their relative inefficiency only after the postwar golden age. In the 1950s and 1960s, eastern Europe was falling behind mainly due to relatively low levels of investment and weak reconstruction dynamics. Both are explained, in part, by the lack of labour-supply flexibility that, in turn, resulted from the comparatively much larger negative impact of the war on population growth in eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In 2010, the University of Winnipeg and the Government of Manitoba hosted the Arctic Gateway Summit to discuss the regular use of a commercial shipping line running from Winnipeg to Murmansk, Russia via the Port of Churchill and the waters of Nunavut. In this article, I put this initiative in the historical and spatial context of the town of Churchill to help us understand how the Arctic Gateway represents the town's past and current positioning in Northern transportation and economic development plans. The Arctic Gateway vision echoes various proposals developed since the 1910s for a port on Hudson Bay to become a key link between Western Canada and foreign markets. However, it raises concerns among Churchill's leaders that the town is shifting from being perceived as a Northern Canadian community to becoming an outpost not quite North enough anymore. Based on archival work and interviews, I utilize community reactions to the Arctic Gateway project to examine how Churchill is positioned in the Canadian geography of transport and Northern development, and to reveal the shift that the community has perceived in recent years in terms of investment and public attention being directed to other, more Northern communities. Churchill, Manitoba et la porte d'entrée de l'Arctique : une mise en contexte historique Résumé En 2010, l'Université de Winnipeg et le gouvernement du Manitoba organisaient conjointement le Sommet Arctic Gateway (la porte d'entrée de l'Arctique) afin de se pencher sur l'exploitation courante d'une ligne maritime commerciale reliant Winnipeg et Mourmansk, Russie en passant par le port de Churchill et les eaux du Nunavut. L'objet de cet article est de placer cette initiative dans le contexte historique et spatial de la ville de Churchill afin de mieux comprendre comment l'idée de porte d'entrée de l'Arctique est reprise par cette ville et intégrée dans les plans de transport et de développement économique du Nord, anciens et actuels. Cette idée de porte d'entrée de l'Arctique fait écho à divers projets élaborés depuis les années 1910 misant sur l'ouverture d'un port dans la baie d'Hudson constituant un lien essentiel entre l'Ouest canadien et les marchés étrangers. Elle soulève pourtant des inquiétudes chez les dirigeants de Churchill qui constatent que la perception actuelle qu'on se fait de la ville évolue, allant d'une communauté nordique canadienne à un avant-poste qui n'est plus situé suffisamment dans le Nord. Un travail d'archives et des entrevues ont été effectués afin de recueillir des réactions de la communauté face au projet de porte d'entrée de l'Arctique. Ils permettent d'explorer la place occupée par Churchill dans la géographie canadienne des transports et du développement du Nord, et de rendre compte du glissement dans la perception de la communauté au cours des dernières années par rapport aux investissements et à l'attention du public qui se dirigent vers des communautés plus nordiques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have struggled to understand the role of investment in the slow growth of post-Independence sub-Saharan Africa. Existing research has largely relied on national accounting data, which suggests low returns on investment in the region. This article uses data gathered during fieldwork to investigate the quality of the investment data in the national accounts of Nigeria, Africa's most populous economy. It proposes a new investment series which can be compared to those in Nigeria's national accounts for 1976-85. It provides an alternative view of investment and productivity during the country's crucial oil boom period, when Nigeria had significant funding available for investment but this investment did not result in long-term economic growth. Data are drawn from construction surveys, publicly listed and privately held construction company financial records, and industry publications. The new series suggests that for many years of the oil boom, approximately twothirds of what was recorded as having been investment in Nigeria's national accounts was not investment at all. Much of this was 'ghost construction', projects paid for but never completed. This indicates that actual investment was far more productive than has previously been appreciated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of a set of Transport Satellite Accounts is long overdue. The imperative need is to be able to assess the size and contribution of the transport sector and to track improvements in productivity arising from operational efficiency, optimal pricing and from investment in transport infrastructure. This would allow international comparisons against best practice to follow. The quality of public and private decisions would improve. Their availability would enable professional economists to add significantly more value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article establishes a unified political economy model to analyze the democratization process from monarchy to oligarchy and to democracy in the context of dynamic economic development. As the predominant source of wealth evolves from land to physical capital and finally to human capital, the relative economic and hence coercive power of land owners, capitalists, and workers shifts accordingly, inducing the transition of the political system where political power is expanded from landlords to capitalists and finally to workers. A smooth transition through political compromise facilitates efficient allocation of savings in physical capital followed by efficient investment in human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reforms to Australia's 45,000 MW electricity market were met with remarkable success, but wholesale market gains have been largely exhausted. Above-trend growth in investment in energy infrastructure is driving retail prices to levels that triggered the sectoral assault in the first place. This pressure should initiate the last piece of the reform puzzle-removing price regulation, installing smart meters and implementing dynamic pricing to halt the primary cause of the problem, rapidly rising peak demand. We find that such a change can lead to non-trivial reductions in household peak demand, with our sample load factor improving by 9 percentage points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an endogenous growth model in which both the investment to develop a new technology -- that upgrades the quality of machines -- and entry of imitators are determined endogenously. According to the model, how soon the new-technology machine is launched after the patent is granted is influenced by two factors: returns to scale in technology development and "strategic delays." Strategic delays in technology development are most likely to occur when earlier dates of success enable imitators to enter an industry, that is, when imitation is swift and relatively cheap and/or patent protection is relatively lengthy. We then explore the link between the optimal patent length and economic growth and find that the equilibrium investment in technology development and thus the expected rate of technological progress exhibit an inverted U-shape relationship with respect to the legal patent length. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given costly and limited annuity products, we investigate how annuity market innovation could improve participation and increase individual welfare. We find that participation gains are most likely with new annuity products that concentrate on late-life payouts. Our welfare analysis suggests that annuity innovation should focus on adding survival contingencies to assets commonly held by individuals. Finally, in a complete market setting, we find demand only for those annuity contracts with a significant time gap between purchase and payout (a rarity in current contracts). Overall, our analysis indicates ample opportunity for innovation to spur annuity demand and improve individual welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores why authoritarian regimes create legislatures and then assesses their effect on economic growth and investment. In authoritarian regimes more dependent on domestic investment than natural resource revenue, the dictator creates a binding legislature as a credible constraint on the regime's confiscatory behavior. In regimes dependent on natural resource revenue, the nonbinding legislature serves as a mechanism for the dictator to bribe and split the opposition when he faces credible challenges to the regime. Using data from 121 authoritarian regimes from 1950 to 2002, the results indicate that binding legislatures have a positive impact on economic growth and domestic investment, while nonbinding legislatures have a negative impact on economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does openness affect economic development? This question is answered in the context of a dynamic general equilibrium model of the world economy, where countries have technological differences that are both sector neutral and specific to the investment goods sector. Relative to a benchmark case of trade in credit markets only, consider (i) a complete restriction of trade and (ii) a full liberalization of trade. The first change decreases the cross-sectional dispersion of incomes only slightly, and produces a relatively small welfare loss. The second change, instead, decreases dispersion by a significant amount, and produces a very large welfare gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The siting of a large, new firm is often presumed to give rise to significant economic and tax benefits to the community of location. This presumption serves as the basis for the granting of lucrative economic development incentives to footloose businesses. This article examines whether large, mobile firms generate significant net benefits for the region of location. Panel data and nonrandom estimation techniques are applied to a primary database of large firms that made location decisions in the 1980s to explore the impact of location on regional economic performance. The empirical analysis explores different treatment regions (both effects within the county and the metropolitan statistical area [MSA] of location) and different control regions. The results show that large firms fail to produce significant net benefits for their host communities, calling into question the high-stakes bidding war over jobs and investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the analysis of the interplay between the radical economic and social transformations taking place in the former Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and involvement of adult population in learning activities. Patterns of participation in adult learning and the disparities among regions, sectors and groups; Returns on investment in education and training; Developments in the field of adult training.

In this article, I use a multivariate vector-autoregressive (VAR) approach to examine the effects of permanent financial development on domestic investment and output in 41 countries between 1960 and 1993. The VAR approach permits the identification of the long-term cumulative effects of financial development on the domestic variables by allowing for dynamic interactions among these variables. The results reject the hypothesis that financial development simply follows economic growth and has very little effect on it. Instead, there is strong evidence that financial development is important to growth and that investment is an important channel through which financial development affects growth. (JEL E22, E44, E47, O16, 057) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides information on the views of economist Moses Finley on the Greek and Roman economic stagnation and technological blockage. Finley's views on investment and capital required his readers to accept his proposition that new machinery was neither invented nor implemented. He then argued that failure was not attributable to lack of capital, for the Ptolemies had demonstrated the availability of sufficient capital to transform Egyptian agriculture to increase royal revenues from the third century BC. Finley then asked why no investment was directed towards increasing royal revenues, while capital was being made available on roads, public buildings, water supply, drainage, and so on, but not for production. This statement not only ignores the economic impact of spending on construction projects, provision of roads, and water supplies and drains for cities, but again flies in the face of his earlier warning about applying modern values of economic rationalism. Finley moved on next to the division of labor, largely because historical hindsight suggested that it should be important. From labor Finley turned to the rentier mentality of wealthy landowners, who were supposedly inimical to innovation.

Comments on an article titled "Investment in Education and U.S. Economic Growth," by D.W. Jorgenson and B.M. Fraumeni. Measurement of investment in human capital; Relationship between measures of schooling quality and subsequent attainment; Output of the educational sector.

The article presents a theoretical association between financial innovation and economic development. The contribution of financial markets to economic development is a topic that has recently attracted a lot of attention. The general argument is that financial intermediaries promote economic growth by providing services that are essential for the efficient allocation of resources. More specifically, the financial system allows more resources to be allocated in high-expected-return but illiquid investment projects by pooling an idiosyncratic liquidity risk. Economists focus on the monitoring role of financial intermediaries. When borrowers have better information than lenders about project returns, financial intermediaries provide the means to avoid a duplication of the monitoring effort. Because of these savings in monitoring costs there are more resources available for productive activities. Firms use this information and direct resources to more profitable projects. The technologies with the higher expected return are too risky for consideration in economies without a financial system.

This article examines the results of development planning in developing countries. For all the differences in underlying conditions, in national goals and ideologies and in degrees of technical sophistication, development planning everywhere follows much the same pattern. A typical development plan consists of articulation of over-all growth targets in terms of plan-end output levels or plan-period productive capacities by sector or by product group. The development plan is a technocratic conception of a feasible program for the fulfillment of policy-makers' goals. The critique of the efficiency of private enterprise centers on the inability or the unwillingness of private business to seize potentially profitable business opportunities. One of the reasons for the alleged failure is the inadequacy of market signals, which reflect current scarcities but fail to indicate future opportunities in the rapidly evolving environment of the developing world. The experience of several countries, including Iran and Pakistan, shows how powerfully policy can affect the direction of investment.

The article focuses on the process of economic growth and distribution in the Middle East. Most likely there is not a precise relationship between the distributive pattern and the rate at which an economy is progressing. Yet there is a strong presumption that some degree of inequality in the distribution of wealth and income is necessary if there is to be an adequate flow of net investment. Traditional discussion concerning the need for the receipt, or at least the promise, of large returns as a pre-condition to the initiation of investment projects, invariably has concentrated attention on the connection between expected profits and capital formation. The post-war writings on underdeveloped countries attributed the existence of poverty and low productivity to a scarcity of capital, to the lack of an entrepreneurial class, and to institutional obstacles. It is extremely difficult to say with certainty why the landed class in underdeveloped areas seldom invest their savings in domestic enterprises. It is easier to point out the manner in which they do spend their "surplus" income.

While it is frequently asserted that British industry has earned an inadequate return on investment, there has been little agreement among economists as to what exactly this rate has been in recent years. This note provides striking new evidence that the profitability of British industry is currently much lower than anyone had previously supposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]