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Copyright of International Economics / Economia Internazionale is the property of Camera di Commercio di Genova 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 International Economics / Economia Internazionale is the property of Camera di Commercio di Genova 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.)

This paper asserts that political leaders around the world and the emergence of digital information technologies have contributed remarkably to the amplifications and normalizations of telling big lies, thus the noticeable increase in the global consumption of big lies at varying degrees. To underscore this assertion, this paper uses the theoretical framework of utility maximization to show that human beings, in a world in which "we are all liars," consume truths and big lies subject to their information constraints. Furthermore, we use the concept of welfare economics to underscore the assertion that truths generate positive externalities, which can lead to outcomes that are social welfare-enhancing while big lies generate negative externalities, which can result in outcomes that are social welfare-retarding. The United States provides an illustrative example of a country where the consumption of big lies may be outpacing the consumption of truths because big lies have become the political philosophy of one of the political parties whose objective is to use big lies as the weapons of democracy destruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines changes in economic growth that are likely to result from changes in trade policies, exports, and investment in 12 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Using a vector error correction model (VECM), our results indicate that trade policies, exports, and investment rate shocks have a significant impact on economic growth in 10 of the 12 SSA countries. This suggests that it is possible to stimulate economic growth in some African countries through an outward-looking strategy of export expansion. More significantly, the results further suggest the importance as well as the need for African countries to embark on trade liberalization policies in order to enhance economic growth in the current world economy. Key words - trade policies, exports, investment, economic growth, sub-Saharan Africa, vector error correction

This paper posits that the global COVID-19 pandemic shock propelled the rational voters to the ballot box in 2020 presidential election to repudiate the 45th President of the United States (POTUS) for mishandling the pandemic and for propagating baseless conspiracy theories and disinformation, thus the resuscitation of representative democracy in the United States. We utilize a composite linear equation to derive the democracy strangulation coefficients and the democracy resuscitation coefficients to highlight the magnitude of the strangulation and the resuscitation. In addition, we derive and compute the democracy resuscitation index from which one can conclude that less than one percent of the net 7,052,770 winning votes barely resuscitated representative democracy in 2020. The strangulation of representative democracy is still ongoing because many aspiring candidates in the Republican Party, running for political offices at different levels, have strategically adopted the democracy strangulation playbook that the 45th President embedded in the Republican Party in order to achieve ochlocratic autocracy if they win and control the three coequal branches of government in 2025. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Economics / Economia Internazionale is the property of Camera di Commercio di Genova 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.)

This paper postulates that highly educated leaders matter in economic growth and development and that this is one of the fundamental causes of the differences in income between countries. To verify this assertion, we examine Central African Republic and Singapore within the neoclassical growth model that incorporates educational attainments of leaders as the functionally relevant explanatory variable. We found the mean years of schooling of educated leaders to be statistically and significantly different in both countries, but more importantly, educational attainments of leaders have a positive and statistically significant effect on economic growth in Singapore, but negative in Central African Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Economics / Economia Internazionale is the property of Camera di Commercio di Genova 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.)

This article examines the causal relationship between tax revenues and government expenditures in twenty-two OECD countries, eleven European Union (EU) member states, and eleven non-EU. We use the Autorgressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds test and the Toda-Yamamoto Granger noncausality approach to test for causality. The results show that the long-run and short-run causal patterns differ across these groups within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). For the long-run causal patterns, we find evidence to confirm the tax-and-spend hypothesis in eight of the twenty-two countries; but the evidence is more prevalent within the EU countries, where tax burdens are much higher, than in the non-EU OECD countries. In addition, the long-run causality results also confirm the institutional separation hypothesis in twelve countries, with two-thirds coming from the non-EU OECD countries. While we have no evidence to support the fiscal synchronization hypothesis in the long run, the short-run results show evidence of fiscal synchronization in five out of twenty-two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the choice of monetary targets in Nigeria since the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) in 1986. We employed cointegration vector error correction methodology using quarterly in order to ascertain if M2 targeting over M1 targeting was a prudent monetary policy rule. We tested for the stability of real M1 and real M2 money demand functions and found the former to be an unstable during the SAP period. Both the CUSUM and CUSUMSQ tests confirmed the stability of the short- and long run parameters of the real M2 money demand function but not for real M1. The stability of the real M2 money demand function supports its choice as an intermediate target. Furthermore, we found that the actual real M2 monetary growth deviated from the annual target rates, which indicated that the Central Bank of Nigeria did not strongly commit to its annual M2 money growth targets. Further tests showed that the deviations of actual real M2 growth from the annual target growth rates affected real GDP growth and inflation rate adversely during the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the global economic and financial crisis, experts and analysts agreed that the initial effects on African financial sectors would be minimal because of the limited exposure to the international financial markets. However, African countries are more integrated than before with the world economy through the following transmission channels: international trade, foreign direct and portfolio investments, foreign aid flows, private remittances, and tourism; and since they are predominantly primary commodity exporters, their economies was negatively affected by the recession in many developed countries due to the sharp decline in world demand for commodities and in their prices. This paper takes the view that African countries were more susceptible to external shocks than other developing regions of the world because of their flawed macroeconomic fundamentals, but more importantly, the transmission channels emphasize the extent of the region's vulnerabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]