Download or read book Three Essays on Macroeconomic Stabilization in Developing Countries written by Kirsta Glenn and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Macroeconomic Policy Development Economics and Economic Growth written by Navarat Temsumrit and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In order to fulfil the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Economics and Finance, at the University of St.Gallen, after the completion of the course-work and research phases, I hereby to provide the cumulative dissertation. The dissertation consists of three essays on macroeconomic policy, development economics and economic growth. The first chapter examines empirically the relationship between the cyclical pattern of fiscal policy in democratic developing countries and their quality of political institutions. This chapter uses updated data to analyse 63 developing countries from 1980 to 2013 and robustly shows that pro-cyclical fiscal policy exist in both democratic and non-democratic developing countries. The main contributions of this chapter are controlling the endogeneity issue by using the instrumental variable method and investigating the interactions between political institutions variables and the cyclicality of fiscal policy. The results suggest that an improvement in the level of institutional quality plays an important role to restrain pro-cyclical fiscal policy. These effects are larger in democratic countries than non-democratic ones. Additionally, the maturity and stability of a democratic regime influence in restraining the implementation of pro-cyclical fiscal policy. The second chapter studies the effects of demographic transition and unfunded pension system in affecting the economic growth of Thailand. The chapter adds the aspect of the informal sector and investments in children's education into the Overlapping Generation (OLG) model. We modify the model to allow individuals heterogeneity in their ages and exogenously assign to work either in the formal or informal sector. The results from our model suggest that the non-contribution pension system or old-age security schemes hinder the economic growth of the economy with a high share of the informal sector and low fertility rate like Tha.

Download or read book Three Essays on Macroeconomic Policy in Less Developed Countries written by Edward F. Buffie and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Macroeconomics in Developing Countries written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on the Macroeconomics of Developing Countries written by Mohammed Aït Lahcen and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Economic Policies in Developing and Emerging Market Economies written by Shengzu Wang and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Macroeconomic and Financial Stability written by Mei Li and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays in Macroeconomics written by Matthew Alan Talbert and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chapters one and two of the dissertation investigate the effects of political disagreement on macroeconomic outcomes. I introduce a model of governments with heterogeneous preferences over the composition of consumption between private and public goods alternating in power. Unable to commit to future policies, the party in power has incentive not only to shape consumption according to their preferences but also to manipulate the future state faced by successive governments to influence the decisions of future policy makers. Alternating governments give rise to political business cycles; fluctuations in economy-wide variables due to the political system. Political business cycles help explain the divergence in outcomes of economic variables across countries with different levels of political disagreement and political stability. The first chapter adapts a real business cycle model to include political shocks in addition to the productivity shocks. This is motivated by a key puzzle in the business cycle literature: for emerging economies the volatility of consumption is higher than the volatility of output, a feature of the data that is not explained by standard theory. The goal of this chapter is not only to replicate the data but to understand how consumption responds to political shocks differently than shocks to productivity. This model is also able to recreate endogenously the high level of volatility in government expenditure observed in the data. The model can explain up to 29% of the variation in the relative volatility of consumption across countries. Chapter two focuses on a similar model in the presence of debt instead of capital to develop a positive theory for fiscal policy (debt, expenditure, and deficits) over the business cycle to compare to historical observation. I find that political shocks are important to understand observed U.S. data moments. Chapter three investigates the welfare effects of tax-deferred retirement accounts (similar to Traditional IRAs in the US). I find that such accounts increase aggregate welfare as well as increasing economy-wide inequality. I find from an aggregate welfare perspective the optimal contribution limit for IRAs is to not have a contribution limit.

Download or read book Three Essays on the Macroeconomic Impact of Inflation Targeting written by Najib Khan and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This doctoral thesis contains three essays on the macroeconomic impact of inflation targeting: (1) Inflation-targeting regime, as a framework for monetary policy conduct, has been adopted by central banks in thirty countries. Some of these countries enjoy high incomes while others have middle incomes. In contrast to the development-based classification -often applied in the literature, thus ignoring income disparity- this study employs income-based classification in constructing the data sample. The objective is to investigate, using a panel of middle-income countries, whether inflation targeting is a good remedy for high inflation. In addition to the commonly used covariates in the literature, this study also includes in its covariate matrix the worldwide governance indicators as proxy for institutional quality. The findings exhibit a significant reduction of inflation and its volatility among the inflation-targeting adopters compared to the non-adopting middle-income countries. The results are robust to the exclusion of high inflation episodes, and to using the alternative measures of inflation. The results are also robust to the post-estimation sensitivity tests recommended for such empirical analysis. (2) Many economists acknowledge the paramount role that foreign investment plays in fostering economic development and growth via integrating economies around the globe. Studies have shown that foreign investment, particularly foreign direct investment (FDI) is attracted to countries that exhibit good governance, low uncertainty and a high degree of macroeconomic stability. The literature also argues that monetary policy under inflation targeting (IT) mitigates uncertainty, enhances governance and brings macroeconomic stability to the adopting countries. Hence, it would seem that the IT-adoption should enable the adopting countries attract the largest FDI inflows. To verify this conjecture, this study performs a comparison between the IT-adopting countries and the non-adopters in attracting FDI. Using a panel of OECD and middle-income countries, the empirical findings exhibit an interesting but contradicting pattern: when it comes to the OECD countries, the results show that the IT-adopters do better than the non-adopters in attracting the FDI inflows. For the middle-income countries, however, the IT-adoption appears to have the opposite effect: a significant reduction in the FDI inflows is witnessed among the IT-adopters compared to their counterparts. The results are robust to the post-estimation sensitivity tests. (3) Inflation targeting, as a monetary-policy framework, is said to promote economic efficiency and growth. Yet, when evaluating the macroeconomic performance of inflation-targeting regimes, the existing literature only emphasizes the dynamics of inflation and the costs associated with taming inflation. There is hardly any assessment of the claim of efficiency and growth. To fill this gap, and to measure the causal impact of inflation-targeting adoption on economic efficiency, we compare the dynamics of output growth and long-term unemployment between countries that have adopted inflation targeting and the non-adopting countries. Our findings seem to refute the efficiency claim, and paint a bleak picture of inflation targeting: when compared to the countries that did not adopt inflation targeting, there is a significant reduction in the average growth rate among the inflation-targeting adopters by over 1⁄2 percentage point. Additionally, long-term unemployment significantly rises among the inflation-targeting countries by almost 2 percentage points as compared to the non-adopters. These results are robust to both the exclusion of the outlier observations and to the sensitivity tests recommended for such analysis.

Download or read book Three Essays on Monetary Policy and Financial Development written by Xiaodai Xin and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: Both economic growth and stabilization require a well-functioning financial system, which includes the central bank and private financial institutions. This dissertation is comprised of three essays on monetary policy and financial development which are related to the roles of the central bank and private financial institutions. To better stabilize the economy, a central bank needs to formulate an optimal strategy for monetary policy and pursues an appropriate objective (targeting regime). In a forward-looking New Keynesian model with persistent output and inflation, the first essay (chapter 2) evaluates a broad hybrid targeting regime when the central bank operates under discretionary monetary policy. By employing the numerical analysis and comparing the performance of different targeting regimes, I find that the hybrid targeting regime yields a social loss closest to that under the optimal committed policy, generating a better outcome than other policy regimes. The second essay (chapter 3) provides new micro-level evidence for the positive relationship between financial development and economic growth based on a large sample of cross-country firm-level data. By examining an important micro channel through which financial development reduces the costs of external finance to firms, I find that firms that are more externally dependent grow faster in countries with more developed financial systems. The third essay (chapter 4) investigates the impact of external debt on long-term investment and its interaction with domestic financial intermediation in emerging markets. Extending the Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans model to a small open economy with the role of financial intermediation, I find that the overall effect of a high level of external debt on investment depends heavily on the degree of domestic financial intermediation. Using a large sample of panel data on 76 developing countries over the last three decades, the empirical results indicate that when a country's domestic banking sector develops to a certain degree, the high level of external debt facilitates investment.

Download or read book Three Essays on Macroeconomic Policy and Endogenous Growth written by Sailesh Kumar Jha and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on the Transmission of Macroeconomic Policies written by Simone Meier and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Varieties of Stabilization Experience written by Lance Taylor and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1988 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspecting the orthodox "neoclassical" of "monetarist" approach of the IMF and the World Bank, this book presents a synthesis of recent work on the experiences of developing countries with stabilization programs.

Download or read book Essays on Macroeconomic Stabilization Policy in Small Open Economies written by Ruhui Liu and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on the Evaluation of Development Policies written by Maja Schling and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation focuses on the evaluation of three distinct developing country policies, which, despite having been implemented in different parts of the world, are uniformly relevant to the field of development economics as well as effective policy design. Consequently, each essay contributes to the literature in its own way, either by evaluating a new and innovative intervention, by enhancing the theoretical understanding of policy-relevant interactions between public and private investment behavior, or by assessing the effectiveness of a broadly implemented, but yet unevaluated development policy. The results of the individual essays therefore convey one common conclusion; that a truly effective development policy must review carefully how its components interact with the behavioral responses of beneficiaries to identify the pathways through which impacts can be achieved.Chapter 1 examines whether computer-assisted instruction has a positive impact on the cognitive development as well as literacy and numeracy skills of early grade students. The analysis focuses on an educational intervention implemented in the rural region of Eastern Zambia that integrated technology into classroom activity in order to mitigate weaknesses in teaching skills and address specific unmet student needs. Using two control groups to compare the program's success to both standard government schools and lower-quality community schools, a difference-in-difference approach combined with inverse propensity score weighting is used to identify impact. While the program is unable to significantly advantage students in treated schools with respect to literacy, numeracy, and cognitive skills, estimates indicate that the program does succeed in leveling out initial differences, especially in comparison to government school students. This leveling by the program is accomplished at a third of the cost of government schools. An analysis of the heterogeneous impact further shows that effects are stronger for grade two students than for first graders. This is potentially because benefits take time to accumulate or because computer-assisted instruction becomes more important in supporting teachers as teaching becomes more complex and requires more materials. These results drive home the importance of integration of technology into curriculum and teaching methodology and how this can be a cost effective means to improve student learning.Chapter 2 examines how public education expenditures affect household spending on schooling and provides new theoretical underpinnings that highlight the importance of incorporating models of household decision-making processes into policy design. The study takes advantage of two country cases, Indonesia and Peru, which offer sufficient variation in public expenditures at the local level, and therefore lend themselves to assessing the important effect of government education expenditures at the district level on household spending on schooling. Employing a fixed-effects regression and an instrumental variable approach in Indonesia and a pseudo-panel approach in Peru, results indicate that a 1% increase in public-level education expenditures per school is estimated to decrease household-level spending on schooling per school-aged child by approximately 0.5% in Indonesia and 0.04% in Peru. This suggests that government spending may crowd out private investment in schooling, which represents an important indirect effect of any educational policy and can potentially diminish policy effectiveness. A closer look at household expenditures revealed that the specific (country) context will determine how parents reallocate their resources in response to changes in public spending levels.Lastly, Chapter 3 presents the first rigorous impact evaluation of a shoreline stabilization program in Barbados and attempts to assess whether shoreline stabilization investments indeed have beneficial effects on medium-term economic growth in Small Island Developing States through stimulating tourism demand and real estate development. The analysis relies on a carefully designed geographic information systems (GIS) dataset, which comprises extensive panel data from Barbados' touristic West and South Coasts on key infrastructure, beach characteristics, and real estate activity, as well as remotely-sensed luminosity data as a proxy of economic growth. The synthetic control method is employed to construct a counterfactual from a combination of all control beach sites and subsequently estimate program impact on per capita luminosity as a proxy for GDP per capita. Results indicate that even in the first three years after treatment, economic effects are positive and indicate a strong positive trend. This suggests that shoreline stabilization works may not only help preserve fragile ecological conditions, but further lead to sustainable growth in the local economy.

Download or read book Essays on Macroeconomics and Risk Premium written by Dejanir Henrique Silva and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thesis consists of three essays on how macroeconomic policy can be an important determinant of risk premium and how variations in risk premium may affect macroeconomic policy. Unconventional monetary policy represents a main example of how the transmission of macroeconomic policy is mediated by movements in risk premium. In the first essay, I examine how unconventional monetary policy affects asset prices by reallocating risk in the economy. I consider an environment with heterogeneity in risk tolerance and limited asset market participation. Risk-tolerant investors take leveraged positions, exposing the economy to balance sheet recessions. Limited asset market participation implies the balance sheet of the central bank is non-neutral. Unconventional monetary policy reduces the risk premium and endogenous volatility. During balance sheet recessions, asset purchases boost investment and growth. In contrast, during normal times, the expectation of future interventions reduces growth. Leveraged institutions respond to the policy by reducing risk-taking relatively more than risk-averse investors. As risk concentration falls, the probability of negative tail-events is reduced, enhancing financial stability. An important determinant of entrepreneurial activity in developing countries is the amount of risk the entrepreneur must bear. The second essay, joint with Robert M. Townsend, analyzes the risk-taking behavior of entrepreneurs. Using data from a survey conducted in villages in Thailand, we document substantial heterogeneity in entrepreneurial activity. The fraction of net worth invested by entrepreneurs in risky activities decreases over the life cycle. Consumption-to-wealth ratio is U-shaped, being high for young and old entrepreneurs. We propose a model that captures both the life cycle patterns and limited idiosyncratic insurance observed in the Thai data. An expansion in idiosyncratic insurance will reduce the idiosyncratic risk premium, increasing the proportion of wealth invested in risky activities and aggregate output. However, as the return on the project falls, entrepreneurs accumulate less wealth, reducing their welfare in the long-run. The third essay studies the optimal response of fiscal policy to a risk premium shock when a country is in a currency union. In the context of an open economy New Keynesian model, I show that the government should not deviate from the optimal provision of public goods at an attempt to stabilize the economy. A consumption tax is used to lean against the wind and reduce the real interest rate in the presence of a positive risk premium shock. A VAT tax allows the government to independently influence the terms of trade. Optimal fiscal policy has the property of being revenue-generating. Therefore, there is not necessarily a trade off between stabilization policy and fiscal consolidation.

Download or read book The New Global Economy and the Developing Countries written by Gerald K. Helleiner and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 1990 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprises papers and articles originally published between 1981 and 1989.