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West African countries have long promoted economic integration and income convergence. In recent trends, Nigeria has recorded the highest GDP per capita, and its neighbouring countries are yet to catch up with this economic growth. The paper examines the convergence of West African countries to catch up with Nigeria in terms of real per capita income. For the estimation, the paper employs fractional unit root approach to model simultaneously smooth breaks by means of flexible Fourier function in time. This approach is novel and has not been widely applied in the study of economic convergence across countries. The findings show that, while there is evidence of economic convergence and catching up in West Africa, only Ghana is likely to catch up with Nigeria in the region. As a policy recommendation, the West African countries should strengthen their human resource capacities through acquisition of relevant skills and technology transfers. This would promote income convergence and equitable economic growth. • Fractional unit root test with smooth Fourier function. • A new time series econometric approach for investigating economic convergence. • Economic convergence of West African states. • Ghana is likely to catch up economically with Nigeria in terms of Per capita Output in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes a five-step statistical procedure to examine a linkage among export diversification, mean-reversion of exports, and stability of the export–growth causality. This linkage was assessed for France, Norway, and Switzerland between 1980Q1 and 2016Q4. The findings indicated that the mean-reversion tendency of the export sectors in France and Switzerland was stronger than in Norway, which highlighted the important role of export activities for economic growth in France and Switzerland. Also, the causal relationship between exports and economic growth in Norway was found to be more unstable than in France, but more stable than in Switzerland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the relationship between exports and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. It employed innovative econometric methods, including the Fourier ADF with structural break test, a comparative analysis of three causality tests and a rolling causality test procedure. The findings suggested that there was a statistically significant relationship between exports and economic growth in several Sub-Saharan countries. However, the causal linkages between exports and economic growth in these countries were found to be weak and unstable. These empirical results have some notable policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the relationship between population growth and economic growth in China. It employed innovative econometric methods including the breakpoint unit root test, the autoregressive distributed lag method, the bounds test for cointegration and the Toda–Yamamoto causality test. The empirical analysis detected a negative long-run relationship and bidirectional causality between population and economic growth. This means that the findings suggested that population growth was a cause and an effect of economic growth. The study concluded that population expansion could be detrimental to economic growth in China. At the same time, economic growth could stem population expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study empirically examined unemployment dynamics in 12 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, namely, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand. It used quarterly data on the unemployment rates from the first quarter of 1980 to the first quarter of 2013. This paper employed three different econometric methods, including the recently-developed powerful unit root test with structural break (Lee and Strazicich, 2003, 2004) and the nonlinear unit root test (Enders and Lee, 2012). The findings indicated that the unemployment rates in five countries of the region, namely, China, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand, had highly dynamic labor markets in which higher-than-normal unemployment rates would revert to the normal level. The other seven Asia-Pacific countries had less dynamic labor markets. The findings of this study have some important policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign aid plays an important role in promoting economic development in Africa. Recently, several countries, most notably China, have emerged as alternative sources of foreign aid. However, their motives for providing foreign aid have been questioned. The present study examines and compares determinants of China's and Japan's foreign aid allocations in Africa. It assumes that the distribution of foreign aid was determined by the aid donors' self-interest and also by the aid recipients' needs. Three panel model methods, namely, the pooled OLS method, the one-way fixed effects method and the two-way fixed effects methods, were employed to examine and compare the patterns of China's and Japan's foreign aid allocation in Africa. The main finding was that the provision of foreign aid by China and Japan was primarily driven by the aid donors' self-interest. Additionally, the size of population in a recipient country was an important element to determine China's and Japan's aid allocations. The findings also suggest that Japan tended to pay more attention to the aid recipient countries' needs as well as to the quality of governance and institutions in these countries. Overall, the findings indicate that there was no considerable difference in the motives for the provision of aid between the two aid donor countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employed homogeneous and heterogeneous panel methods to examine the relationship between renewable and non-renewable electricity consumption and economic development in three transition economies in the Baltic region, namely, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, for the period of 1992–2011. The study put forward four hypotheses to examine the renewable electricity–development nexus. The findings indicated that there existed a unidirectional causality from the economic development to renewable electricity consumption. Thus, the results obtained from the statistical analyses have provided empirical evidence in support of the conservation hypothesis that postulates that economic development causes the expansion of renewable electricity consumption, but not vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined the relationship between natural gas consumption and economic development in two largest natural gas consumers in Asia, namely, China and Japan for the period of 1980–2012. It used the autoregressive distributed lags (ARDL) method for the empirical analysis. The findings revealed some similarities in the natural gas consumption and economic development nexus in China and Japan. Thus, a cointegration relationship between natural gas consumption and economic development was found to exist both in China and Japan. However, there was an important difference in the findings. In the case of China, the findings indicated the existence of a unidirectional causality from natural gas consumption to economic development, which was in line with the growth hypothesis. In Japan, there was a bidirectional causality between natural gas consumption and economic development, which supported the feedback hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increases in military spending have a big impact on the socioeconomic conditions in any country. However, there is no consensus as to whether the rising military expenditure is beneficial or detrimental to economic growth. The present study chose China as a case study to empirically examine a complex relationship between military expenditure and economic development. The findings from the Johansen cointegration test indicated that there existed a long-run relationship between China’s military spending and economic growth. Furthermore, the Granger causality test detected a unidirectional causality from economic development to military expenditure. These results were further confirmed by the findings from the impulse response function. This means that China represents an example of a developing economy where the size of military expenditure expands in the process of economic transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study revisited the CO 2 emissions–development nexus. For this purpose, a comprehensive analysis was performed using recent and extensive datasets and employing three different econometric methods, namely, the cross-sectional regression, the cointegrating regression and the threshold regression. The findings revealed that an environmental regime transformation had occurred in the relationship between the CO 2 emission intensity and economic development. Thus, the results indicated that in recent decades the inverted N-shaped cubic relationship between these variables transformed into the inverted U-shaped quadratic relationship. By contrast, as far as the relationship between the CO 2 emission per capita and economic development is concerned, the U-shaped relationship between the variables remained unchanged. In other words, the present study has detected the inverted U-shaped or the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) relationship between the CO 2 emission intensity and economic development; however, it was unable to validate the EKC relationship between the CO 2 emission per capita and economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses a new statistical technique, Panel Analysis of Nonstationarity in Idiosyncratic and Common Components ( PANIC) analysis, to examine causal linkages between electricity consumption and economic development in 12 Asian countries over the period 1971-2011. The findings indicate that there was no long-run equilibrium relationship between electricity consumption and economic development in the region as a whole. More importantly, the causality tests detected unidirectional causality from economic development to electricity consumption for East Asian countries and a reverse causal relationship for South Asian countries. These findings have important policy implications for sustainable energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The life insurance sector has been growing rapidly in Malaysia with enlarged pooled funds that allowed the sector to participate actively in portfolio investments. It reflects a possible growth impact, which has not gained much attention from the current research. This study aims to examine the existence of a causal relation between the life insurance sector and the growth of the Malaysian economy. This study applies the Johansen cointegration test, and the Granger causality test based on the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) to demonstrate the possible causal relation. The results provide sufficient evidence to support a long-run relationship between the life insurance indicator (the total assets of Malaysian life insurance sector) and the real GDP, and also a short-run causal relation from the real GDP to the life insurance indicator (the total assets of Malaysian life insurance sector). The findings suggest that the life insurance sector of Malaysia could potentially be an effective financial intermediation to generate long-term savings to finance capital investments and eventually could strengthen the country's economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the issue of the existence of threshold effects in the relationship between inflation rate and growth rate of GDP in the context of Malaysia, using new endogenous threshold autoregressive (TAR) models proposed by Hansen (2000) for estimation and inference. The empirical analysis uses annual data from Malaysia for the period 1970-2005. A specific question addressed in this study was: What is the threshold inflation rate for Malaysia? The findings clearly suggest that one inflation threshold value (i.e., structural break point) exists for Malaysia; and this implies a non-linear relationship between inflation and growth. The estimated threshold regression model suggests 3.89 per cent as the threshold value of inflation rate above which inflation significantly retards growth rate of GDP. In addition, below the threshold level, there is a statistically significant positive relationship between inflation rate and growth. If Bank Negara (Central Bank of Malaysia) pays more attention to the inflation phenomena, then substantial gains can be achieved in low-inflation environment while conducting the new monetary policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of the study is to investigate the relationship between population and economic growth in Asian economies. Generally, the results of the Johansen (1988) and Gregory and Hansen (1996) cointegration methods show that there is no long-run relationship between population and economic growth. Nonetheless, the study finds that there is bidirectional Granger causality between population and economic growth for Japan, Korea, and Thailand. For China, Singapore, and the Philippines, population is found to Granger cause economic growth and not vice versa. For Hong Kong and Malaysia, economic growth is found to Granger cause population and not vice versa. For Taiwan and Indonesia, there is no evidence of Granger causality between population and economic growth. On the whole, the relationship between population and economic growth is not straightforward. Population growth could be beneficial or detrimental to economic growth and economic growth could have an impact on population growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]