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In the paper we aim to introduce a statistical dating and detection of turning points giving them a first economic interpretation. The main advantage of the proposed approach is represented by the fact that classical and growth cycles are jointly considered both in the dating and in the detecting stage. A key result of this choice is a better description of different economic phases as well as a more accurate investigation of the economic cyclical behaviour. The proposed approach considerably improves the relevance of information delivered to users in comparison with a standard analysis based only on classical or growth cycle components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, considering the economic effects of liberalisation in the telecommunications sector on the Turkish economy, makes use of the empirical studies on the linkages between regulatory regimes and telecommunications prices. Since Turkey is trying to liberalise the telecommunications sector by following the EU approach to liberalisation, the paper considers briefly the regulatory regimes in the telecommunications sectors of the EU and Turkey, determines the ad valorem equivalent of barriers to the telecommunications services sector in Turkey, and derives estimates of the welfare effects of adopting the EU rules and regulations in the Turkish telecommunications sector. It shows that there is tremendous scope for Turkey to benefit from adopting and implementing the legislative, regulatory and institutional framework of the EU telecommunications sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas initially physical capital and later, knowledge capital were viewed as crucial for growth, more recently a very different factor, entrepreneurship capital, has emerged as a driving force of economic growth. In this paper, we define a region's capacity to create new firms start-ups as the region's entrepreneurship capital. We then investigate the local embeddedness of this variable and which variables have an impact on this variable. Using data for Germany, we find that knowledge-based entrepreneurship capital is driven by local levels of knowledge creation and the acceptance of new ideas, indicating that local knowledge flows play an important role. Low-tech entrepreneurship capital is rather increased by regional unemployment and driven by direct incentives such as subsidies. All three measures are locally clustered, indicating that indeed, entrepreneurship capital is a phenomenon that is driven by local culture, and is therefore locally bounded. Mientras que inicialmente el capital físico, y posteriormente el capital conocimiento, fue considerado crucial para el crecimiento, más recientemente un factor muy diferente, el capital empresarial de espíritu emprendedor ( entrepreneurship capital), ha surgido como una fuerza impulsora de crecimiento económico. En este artículo, definimos como capital empresarial emprendedor la capacidad de una región para originar la puesta en marcha de nuevas empresas. A continuación investigamos el arraigo local de esta variable y las variables que tienen un impacto sobre esta variable. Usando datos de Alemania, hallamos que el capital empresarial emprendedor basado en el conocimiento está motivado por niveles locales de creación de conocimiento y la aceptación de nuevas ideas, indicando que los flujos de conocimiento local juegan un papel importante. El capital empresarial emprendedor basado en bajas tecnologías aumenta con el desempleo regional y está motivado por incentivos directos como subsidios. Las tres variables están agrupadas localmente ( locally clustered), indicando que sin duda el capital empresarial emprendedor es un fenómeno motivado por la cultura local, y por tanto atribuible a una localidad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the impact of source country characteristics on the inflow of FDI into Saudi Arabia using a gravity-type model including economic, distance and socio-political variables. A unique database listing all new investments involving foreign ownership is used to construct a panel of 33 countries in the period 1980–2005. To account for many country–year observations with zero FDI, the negative binomial regression, the Tobit regression and the Heckman selection procedure are used. The conclusions drawn from the analysis employing panel-based techniques differ from the results obtained from pooled regression models. Also, the determinants of FDI differ depending on whether foreign investment is measured in terms of investment expenditure or the number of individual foreign projects. The Heckman selection results reveal that there are a large number of factors affecting the decision to invest in Saudi Arabia, compared with relatively few determinants of the actual size of investment. Traditional size and distance characteristics hold to a great extent but the relationship between FDI and bilateral trade is unclear and there is some evidence that the countries that export to Saudi Arabia do not invest there. In terms of scope for possible spillovers, there is mixed evidence on whether the investment comes from more technologically advanced economies but volume-wise important investments originate from countries characterised by high income per capita. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While economic policy liberalization is a key to higher overall growth, reforms are often not implemented due to a fierce opposition from politically powerful prospective losers from reforms. In this respect, it is frequently claimed that economic crises can help overcome resistance to policy liberalization. Furthermore, political authorities not constrained by democratic checks and balances are supposed to be more decisive and are thus expected to carry out market-friendly policy change in times of crises more easily. Rules of democratic participation and checks and balances may however also be good for policy reform, as they can serve as an institutional mechanism for peaceful conflict resolution. The paper investigates empirically the interaction between economic growth performance and political institutions in producing free-market reform. We explore whether political regime types shape systematically government policy responses to good or bad growth performance, employing panel econometric techniques and using recently updated data for economic reform and political institutions. Contrary to conventional wisdom we find that a bad growth performance is conducive to reforms in democracies, but not in autocracies. Democracies not only carry out more liberal economic policies in general, but they are also more responsive to economic growth crises. Democratic rule seems to be favorable for policy liberalization, but a very good growth performance weakens liberalization incentives considerably. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A dominant objective within the public policies of all SE Asian countries has been the achievement of economic growth. The issue of sustainability has serious implications for this policy objective. Pursuit of economic growth is concerned solely with the present, whilst sustainability is concerned with ensuring the current generation meets its present needs without threatening future generations' ability to do likewise. National accounts, such as gross domestic product, can measure healthy economies, but they can not measure sustainability. This paper, however, sets out a conceptual approach that describes the misalignment of national accounting measures with sustainability objectives and provides empirical evidence of how this misalignment can be partially overcome. An empirical approach is developed whereby certain adjustments to national accounts, based on normative social choice theory, are introduced to indicate how a partial measure of sustainability can be determined using national accounting aggregates as a base. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the past two decades, the fast-developing Asia has emerged as one of the most important economic regions. However, its economic growth is accompanied with severe software piracy. This paper analyzes productivity changes of 11 Asian economies and 4 non-Asian industrialized economies by taking into account software piracy using the Malmquist productivity index and its two components, efficiency change and technical change over the period 1994–2002. The results indicate that when software piracy is included, productivity growth in Asian developing economies regresses, while productivity growth in the four non-Asian industrialized economies improves. Interpretation and implications are provided. ( JEL L86, O34) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any rule-based system has to include a mechanism for the enforcement of its rules and a means for settlement of disputes about alleged violation of rules. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), concluded in 1947, and its successor the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that subsumed it in 1995, embody rules governing the global trading system as specified in various agreements that their members have entered into over time. Naturally, both had a dispute settlement mechanism (DSM). It was a primarily political one in the GATT and was transformed into a largely legalistic one in the multilateral agreement that established the WTO. This paper reviews the history and evaluation of the two DSMs and examines their efficiency based on appropriate criteria. It views them from three alternative and overlapping perspectives: political-diplomatic, legal-economic and social. It concludes with a discussion of the unresolved problems in the operation of the WTO's DSM and the prospects of resolving them in the ongoing Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the period of 1990s alone, four waves of financial crises occurred around the world. The repeated occurrence of financial crises stimulated a large number of theoretical and empirical studies on the phenomena, in particular studies on the determinants of or early warning signals of financial crises. Nonetheless, the different studies of early warning systems have achieved mixed results and there remains much room for further investigation. Since, so far, the empirical studies have focused on conventional economic modelling methods such as simplified probabilistic models and regression models, in this study we examine whether new insights can be gained from the application of the fuzzy clustering method. The theories of fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic offer us the means to deal with uncertainties inherent in a wide variety of tasks, especially when the uncertainty is not the result of randomness but the result of unknown factors and relationships that are difficult to explain. They also provide us with the instruments to treat vague and imprecise linguistic values and to model nonlinear relationships. This paper presents empirical results from analysing the Finnish currency crisis in 1992 using the fuzzy C-means clustering method. We first provide the relevant background knowledge and introduce the fuzzy clustering method. We then show how the use of fuzzy C-means method can help us to identify the critical levels of important economic indicators for predicting of financial crises. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the properties of various measures of poverty and of the ‘difficulty of alleviation of poverty’. It is found that the ranking properties of both kinds of indices can be quite counter-intuitive and that they could be misleading if used for policy evaluation. An alternative index is proposed; it is compared to the other indices and seems to fare rather well. To illustrate, a special reference is made to S. Anand's recent article on poverty in Malaysia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overview: darkness before the dawn? A number of indicators suggest the global economy may decelerate into the year-end., One especially worrying development is an apparent renewed softening in world trade growth. Our OE export indicator dropped in October to its lowest level since May 2013 and some other trade indicators (e.g. for container trade) have also been subdued., At a country level, growth has remained subdued in the Eurozone, prompting another slight forecast downgrade this month. Japan meanwhile slipped back into technical recession in Q3., Emerging markets remain mixed but with an overall soft tone. Among the BRIC economies there are few signs yet of a significant cyclical upturn - and in Russia the situation has deteriorated further., There has been better news from the US, where Q3 growth again came in at an annualised rate above 3% and jobs growth continues at over 200,000 a month. Consumer spending growth ebbed a little in Q3 but we expect it to pick up in the quarters ahead., Despite some gloomy near-term signals, there are a number of key positive factors for 2015 and beyond. The first is the fall in oil prices - now almost 30% down from the June peak - which will support consumer spending and lower business costs., And global policy settings are becoming more supportive. Though the US has now ended asset purchases, the Bank of Japan has announced a big increase in asset purchases. And with the ECB suggesting a possible €1 trillion increase in its balance sheet, the flow of central bank policy support in 2015/16 may not be very different from 2014., Fiscal policy may also be moving in a more positive direction. The Eurozone seems to be edging away from austerity while in Japan there is a strong possibility that the second rise in the consumption tax, planned for Q4 2015, will be delayed., These positive factors mean that we expect world GDP growth to firm from 2.6% in 2014 to 2.8% next year. This will be the best year since 2011, though growth will remain sub-par for a recovery period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the consequences of various types of infrastructure provision in a panel of countries from 1950 to 1992. We develop new tests which enable us to isolate the sign and direction of long-run effects in a manner that is robust to the presence of unknown heterogeneous short-run causal relationships. We show that while infrastructure does tend to cause long-run economic growth, there is substantial variation across countries. We also provide evidence that each infrastructure type is provided at close to the growth-maximizing level on average globally, but is under-supplied in some countries and over-supplied in others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canadian poverty rates have persisted at disappointingly high levels despite almost 15 years of continuous economic growth. The problem is exacerbated by some communities and neighborhoods having exceedingly high poverty, including very high rates for vulnerable demographic groups, such as aboriginals and recent immigrants. We investigate low-income rates (poverty rates) for 2,400 Canadian “communities” over the 1981–2001 period. By focusing on communities, we fill a void in the related Canadian literature, which tends to focus on individuals, case studies, or more aggregate measures, such as provinces. Our approach allows us to assess the role of place-based policies. Particular attention is given to communities with differing shares of aboriginal Canadians and recent immigrants. One novel feature is our analysis of both “short-term” and “long-term” causes of differential community poverty rates. The results suggest that community low-income rates are more affected by initial economic conditions in the short term, with certain demographic factors becoming relatively more important in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a survey of research in Chinese economic history. The study of Chinese economic history is as old as China's modern history itself. The field has been led and dominated by the West. Scholarly attempts have been made since the beginning of this century to explain China's premodern success and its downfall after the Opium War. Two approaches can be identified: the "Sinological approach" which refers to China only and the "comparative method" which compares China with the West. The former tries to find out what achievements China managed to make and when and how it made them, and the latter seeks to understand why premodern China was not industrialized. With rich historical materials to work on, China embraces in its past almost all the key issues for economic history. The country's importance and utility in world economic history will remain, and research in Chinese economic history will attract even greater attention from the scholarly world in this new millennium. Among the great diversity of topics, the function of the Chinese state including the standardization of time, language, roads, currency, weights and measures, as well as construction and maintenance of the Great Walls and grand canals, may well have been the state response to the demand for public goods from the general public to lower transaction costs in the economy rather than the means to strengthen imperial rule.

The article discusses the total factor productivity growth in Great Britain after 1870. The confusion over which industries witnessed entrepreneurial shortcomings remained until the use by new economic historians of geometric and arithmetic total factor productivity indexes to test directly Aldcroft's hypothesis that Britain's rate of technical progress was inferior to that of America or Germany. Productivity indexes measure output per unit input. Unlike partial productivity indexes, principally the output-labor ratio, total factor productivity indexes measure the rate of growth of output not accounted for by the growth of all factor inputs. After subtracting the rate of growth of weighted factor inputs from the rate of growth of output, what is left unexplained is labelled technical change or productivity. In this case, the index is a residual and, more properly, has been called a measure of our ignorance. By comparing total factor productivity growth in Britain after 1870 with best practice American efficiency growth, both lagging British productivity and the entrepreneurial failure thesis were subjected to an unambiguous test.

The article examines the history of European economic growth during the period 1450-1750. According to the new school of development history, the critical period when different parts of the world set off along contrasting paths of economic growth occurred between 1450 and 1750, three centuries which witnessed the emergence and consolidation of European world economy based upon the capitalist mode of production. The evolution of trade and commerce under this old international economic order created conditions for development and underdevelopment in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A striking feature of the new history of development is the absence of systematic statistical underpinning for several of its basic hypotheses. An important omission is its failure to measure the economic significance of intercontinental trade. External trade formed only a small share of economic activity. Around 1780-1790 when something like 4 percent of Europe's gross national output was exported across national frontiers, perhaps less than 1 percent would have been sold to Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and the southern plantations of the young U.S.

The article measures the effect of public finance during the period 1793-1815 on the rate and direction of Great Britain's economic development. It explores the country's involvement in war during the period. One aspect of the war which has intermittently attracted economists" attention from the time of the "bullionist" controversy is the effect of the expedients that were adopted in the field of public finance. The article describes the sources of data which economic historian can use to be able to fairly measure the effect of the country's finance on the rate and direction of economic growth. An analysis on the economic indicators during the period is presented.

The article presents information on several articles on economic history published in various journals. Some of the articles are "Of Plymouth Plantation As A Mercantile Epic," by J. Griffith, published in the "Arizona Quarterly"; "The Planters of Colonial Maryland," by A.C. Land, published in the "Maryland Historical Magazine"; "Trade, Distribution, and Economic Growth in Colonial America," by J.F. Shepherd and G.M. Walton, published in the "Journal of Economic History"; "The Demographic History of Colonial New England," by D.S. Smith, published in the "Journal of Economic History."

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]

The article reports on issues and topics related to the economic condition of South Africa. Indications show a positive sign of the country's economic performance. According to the International Monetary Fund, the 6 percent growth target before 2010 is achievable. This notion supports economists' views that South Africa is on a structurally higher growth path that is capable of delivering annual growth in excess of 4 percent for the next few years.

Reports on the economic trends in Cameroon. Reference of a document citing the positive management of the 2005 budget; Projections about the country's economic growth; Claims regarding the difficulties in starting a business in the country.

Explains that the International Monetary Fund noted that progress in restoring macroeconomic stability has been made in Niger. Higher economic growth; Poverty reduction; Gross domestic product; Strong domestic demand underpinned by investment in social sectors; Niger faces challenges and remains vulnerable to external factors.