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In this paper we estimate the growth effects of human capital with country-specific time series data for Australia. Previous empirical studies, based on international data, have been inconclusive, in terms of the extent of the contribution of human capital to growth. We extend the Solow (1956) growth model by using educational attainment as a measure of human capital, as developed by Barro and Lee (2010). The extended Solow (1956) model performs well after allowing for the presence of structural changes. Our results, based on alternative time series methods, show that educational attainment has a small and significant permanent effect on the growth rate of per worker output in Australia. Alternative measures of human capital are also utilized to ensure robustness of results.

This short note estimates using the Kmenta's (1967) approximation, a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function for Australia for 1960–2004. It is found that the elasticity of substitution is 2.44, technical progress is capital augmenting and the steady-state growth rate (SSGR) of Australia is about 0.34%.

This article estimates using the Bayesian methods a Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) production function for Singapore for 1960–2009. It is found that the elasticity of substitution is 0.6, technical progress is labour augmenting and the Steady-State Growth Rate (SSGR) of Singapore is about 1.8%.

In the relationship between economic growth and financial development, it is generally conceded that both variables are likely to be interdependent. However, no attempt has been made so far to estimate a simultaneous equations model to test whether finance causes growth or vice versa. This article uses the Full Information Maximum Likelihood (FIML) method to estimate a two equations model of growth and finance for India to determine the strength of this interdependence. Our results show that Financial Developments (FD) have a small but significant permanent growth effect. However, there is no evidence to support the view that ‘where enterprise leads, finance follows’.

The demand for money (M1) for the US is estimated with annual data from 1960 to 2008 and its stability is analysed with the extended Gregory and Hansen (1996b) test. In addition to estimating the canonical specification, alternative specifications are estimated which include a trend and additional variables to proxy the cost of holding money. Results with our extended specification showed that there has been a structural change in 1998 and the constraint that income elasticity is unity could not be rejected by subsample estimates. Short run dynamic adjustment equations are estimated with the lagged residuals from the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) estimates of cointegrating equation and also with the General to Specific (GETS) approach.

The Pedroni method is used to estimate the Feldstein-Horioka equation from 1960-2007 with a panel of 13 OECD countries. It is found that the Feldstein-Horioka puzzle exists in a weaker form with a much reduced saving retention coefficient. The Bretton Woods agreement in particular has weakened the Feldstein-Horioka puzzle by significantly improving the international capital mobility. In comparison the Maastricht agreement seems to have improved capital mobility only by a small magnitude. The structural break tests of Westerlund are used in this paper.

In the extended Solow growth model of Mankiw et al. (1992), human capital has only permanent level and no growth effects. In the endogenous growth models human capital is a growth-improving variable. Human capital may have both a permanent level and a permanent growth effect, we show how both can be estimated with an extension to the Solow model.

The Solow (1956) growth model is extended with an endogenous growth framework to estimate the effects of trade openness on the Steady State Growth Rate (SSGR). Estimates of the augmented production functions are used to compute the SSGRs for Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, India and Thailand. Good policies that increase the growth effects of openness is also tested with an interactive term. Our results show that Singapore has the highest SSGR of 2.75%, followed by Hong Kong and Thailand with 2.5%. India and Malaysia have lower SSGRs of 1.7% and 0.5%, respectively.

A systems GMM estimation method is used to estimate the Feldstein-Horioka equation from 1960-2007 with a panel of 12 OECD countries. It is found that the Feldstein-Horioka puzzle exists in a weaker form with a much reduced saving retention coefficient. The Bretton Woods agreement in particular has weakened the Feldstein-Horioka puzzle by significantly improving international capital mobility. In comparison the Maastricht agreement seems to have improved capital mobility only by a small magnitude. The Blundell and Bond approach systems GMM method and the structural break tests of Mancini-Griffoli and Pauwels are used in this paper.

Applied economists working with time series data face a dilemma in selecting between models with deterministic and stochastic trends. While models with deterministic trends are widely used, models with stochastic trends are not so well known. In an influential paper Harvey (1997) strongly advocates a structural time series approach with stochastic trends in place of the widely used autoregressive models based on unit root tests and cointegration techniques. Therefore, it is important to understand their relative merits. This article suggests that both methodologies are useful and they may perform differently in different models. This article provides a few guidelines to the applied economists to understand these alternative methods.

This article examines the use of specifications based on the endogenous and exogenous growth-models for country-specific growth policies. It is suggested that time-series models based on the Solow (1956) exogenous growth-model are useful and they can also be extended to capture the permanent growth-effects of some variables. Our empirical results, with data from Fiji, show that trade openness and human capital have significant and permanent growth-effects. However, these growth-effects are small and eventually converge over time.

The neoclassical growth model was extended by Mankiw et al. (1992) to estimate the level-effects of human capital. We suggest a further extension to capture their permanent growth-effects. Time-series data from Fiji are used to show that the growth-effects of human capital, although small, are significant and specifications with growth-effects perform better.

This paper examines how energy-output ratios (EYRs) in Fiji have responded to the major energy crises and in particular if these ratios have declined after the energy shocks. The expectation is that energy efficiency should improve after an energy crisis. For this purpose we have used at first a few simpler procedures and then a recently developed more powerful tests for structural breaks by Bai and Perron [Bai, J., Perron, P., 1998. Estimating and testing linear models with multiple structural changes. Econometrica 66, 47–78; Bai, J., Perron, P., 2003a. Computation and analysis of multiple structural change models. Journal of Applied Econometrics 18, 1–22; Bai, J., Perron, P., 2003b. Critical values for multiple structural change tests. Econometrics Journal 6, 72–78]. Policy implications of our results are discussed.

Accurate estimates of the price and income elasticities of exports are valuable for growth policies based on trade promotion. However, not sufficient attention seems to have been paid to the specification of the relative price variable in some influential empirical works. This article estimates the export equation for Fiji, to show that inappropriate specification of the relative price variable may give underestimates of the price elasticity and overestimates of the income elasticity.

Many applied economists face problems in selecting an appropriate technique to estimate short and long-run relationships with the time series methods. This article reviews three alternative approaches viz., general to specific, vector autoregressions and the vector error correction models. As in other methodological controversies, definite answers are difficult. It is suggested that if these techniques are seen as tools to summarize data, as in Smith (2000), often there maybe only minor differences in their estimates. Therefore a computationally attractive technique is likely to be popular.

In the cross-country and time series studies on the determinants of the growth rate, capital stock is often proxied with the investment ratio due to lack of reliable data. While investment ratio may give good results with OLS, their robustness is doubtful. In addition there are other problems: (a) investment ratio may be a good proxy for the change in capital stock, but combining it with the level of employment to estimate a production function leads to misspecification bias; (b) it is not possible to impose any valid constraints on the coefficients of these variables and (c) if instrument variables are used to minimize any endogenous variable bias, the equation with the investment ratio seems to be fragile.

This article estimates with the Least Trimmed Least Squares (LTS) a specification suitable to estimate the permanent growth effects of human capital, using educational attainment (H) as a proxy. Our results show that H has significant permanent growth effects but these are much smaller than in Temple (1999).

This article examines the existence and stability of the consumption function in the United States of America (US) beginning in the 1950s. In order to obtain a stable long run relationship, we have introduced two innovative elements into the analysis of the life-cycle of the consumption function with wealth effects: 1) a shift level break in the cointegrating relationship, and 2) using inflation as an additional explanatory variable. By implementing a well structured estimation strategy, we found that after taking the level shift into account, a cointegrating equation, including inflation, exists and is more stable for the critical sub-samples than traditional consumption function models.

This article estimates the forward looking, backward looking and an extended version of the New Keynesian IS curve for Australia. The validity of these models is investigated by imposing the constraint on real rate of interest as well as when the constraint is relaxed. Two measures of output gap, namely GAP1 (constructed using the unobserved components approach) and GAP2 (constructed using a quadratic trend) are utilized. Our results suggest that the baseline backward looking and forward looking models are overwhelmingly rejected by the data. This evidence strongly supports the extended backward looking model (with GAP2) being relevant for monetary policy analysis.

Time series panel data estimation methods are used to estimate the cointegrating equations for the demand for money (M1) for a panel of 11 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries for which consistent quarterly data are available. The effects of financial reforms are analysed with structural break tests and estimates for alternative sub-samples. Our results for the post-reform sub-samples show that the income elasticity of the demand for money has decreased and response to interest rate changes has increased.

Since the early 1970s, there has been a worldwide upsurge in the price of energy and in particular of gasoline. Therefore, demand functions for energy and its components like gasoline have received much attention. However, since confidence in the estimated demand functions is important for use in policy and forecasting, following [Amarawickrama, H.A., Hunt, L.C., 2008. Electricity demand for Sri Lanka: A time series analysis. Energy Economics 33, 724–739], this paper estimates the demand for gasoline is estimated with five alternative time series techniques with data from Fiji. Estimates with these alternative techniques are very close, and thus increase our confidence in them. We found that gasoline demand is both price and income inelastic.

Whether or not there is a need for the unit roots and cointegration based time series econometric methods is a methodological issue. An alternative is the econometrics of the London School of Economics (LSE) and Hendry approach based on the simpler classical methods of estimation. This is known as the general to specific method (GETS). Like all other methodological issues it is difficult to resolve which approach is better. However, we think that GETS is conceptually simpler and very useful in applied work.

We use the LSE-Hendry general to specific approach to analyse if US gasoline price adjustments are asymmetric with respect to changes in crude oil prices. Furthermore, we modify some weaknesses in the earlier works by Boreinstein, Cameron and Gilbert (1997) and Bachmeier and Griffin (2003) and shows that if the price adjustment equations are properly specified and estimated, alternative specifications and temporal aggregation of data do not affect the results. Monthly US data are used to show that alternative specifications give equally good results and there is no asymmetry in the US gasoline price adjustments.

So far the new classical model and the policy ineffectiveness proposition have been tested essentially within an equilibrium framework and disequilibrium methods of estimation have been used to estimate the labor-market models. In this paper, the authors develop an aggregate goods market model for the United Kingdom in which the new classical rational expectations hypothesis and the disequilibrium approach are integrated. Their estimates of the model show that the structural parameters are well determined and price adjustment in the United Kingdom is very sluggish. Therefore, the new classical policy ineffectiveness proposition is not valid for the United Kingdom. Copyright 1991 by Royal Economic Society.