Conference Abstracts

OECD uses storytelling to reach new audiences for data.
Eileen Capponi, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Over the last few years OECD has been steadily building up its " At a Glance" collection in order to reach new audiences. These products, comprising ready-made tables with commentary, are very accessible and come in a range of formats such as print, online (a combination of html, Excel and PDF), USB key, and database. Titles currently available in the collection include the OECD Factbook, Health at a Glance and the Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard, to name but a few. Since the launch of these titles, dissemination has increased significantly and there's more in the pipeline -  the collection is set to expand to cover new areas such as taxation and employment and will form the backbone of a new service from OECD called "Facts and Figures".

Alternative hypothesis of cross-country convergence. A non-parametric analysis of manufacturing sectors
Silvia Dal Bianco, University of Oxford and University of Pavia

This paper examines labour productivity convergence tendencies, among 28 developed and developing countries, in manufacturing sectors, identified by production's technological content. A unified distribution dynamics framework is employed to test absolute and conditional convergence hypothesis, together with club convergence inner drivers, namely capital and technological initial conditions. The results provided are consistent with the hypothesis of club convergence in Resource Based, Low and Medium Technology sectors and with the hypothesis of absolute convergence in High Technology and Manufacturing as a whole. In particular, club convergence seems to be driven by technological initial conditions in Resource Based and Low Technology, while both capital and technology are determinant for Medium Technology overall convergence.

Effect of external debt on economic growth in middle-income countries
Marianna Koli, University of Manchester

This study investigates how external debt affects GDP per capita growth in middle-income countries. The sample includes 25 middle-income countries over the period 1980-2001.

The results indicate that debt is a large determinant of economic growth in these countries. However, other variables, such as budget balance, terms of trade changes, the maturity structure of debt, economic openness and fixed investment also influence debt, to different extents in countries with different degrees of indebtedness. In general, economic stability is found to be a major determinant of economic growth.

There is evidence of a debt-related negative growth effect in various groups of countries. However, we find it is mainly a debt overhang effect in Latin American countries and severely indebted countries; elsewhere, the effect more closely resembles crowding out. Thus, the policies for managing debt should be tailored to the particular conditions of each country, and sources for growth sought where appropriate: in government finances, trade or investment.

The critical debt burden threshold, where the marginal effect of debt becomes negative, is found at roughly 150% of GDP. The threshold level for debt service is at roughly 30% of exports. We argue that due to changes in the global capital market and a trend to finance rather than forgive debt, a high debt burden does not necessarily terminate access to international capital, and consequently the debt tolerance of middle-income nations has risen from previous decades. Finally, we introduce the concept of the cubic debt Laffer curve.

Is inflation a fiscal phenomenon in Pakistan?
Hamna Ahmad, University of Warwick

The debate on inflation, public sector deficits and the means of financing public deficits has dominated the macroeconomic literature since long now. Different economists, Khan, Montiel and Haque (1991), Easterly, Rodriquez and Hebbel (1994), Agenor and Montiel (1999), Catao and Terrones (2003), Agha and Khan (2006), Khan and Schimmelpfennig (2006), to name a few, have attempted to address various issues pertaining to this debate. This paper is geared in the same direction. More specifically it is an attempt to unravel the long run relationship between fiscal deficit, inflation and seigniorage in Pakistan

As the paper unfolds, the following questions will be answered: Is inflation always a purely monetary phenomenon as Friedman postulated? Can a country's fiscal environment influence its inflation rate? What is the nature of this influence? Is the relationship meaningful in the long run?

I have constructed a simple econometric model to examine annual time series data on inflation, fiscal deficits and seigniorage for Pakistan for the period 1956 to 2005. All the data has been taken from the International Financial Statistics repository of the IMF. The Johansen approach to co-integration analysis has been employed to assess the long run relationship. A VECM has been used for estimation.

The results indicate that inflation is positively related to both fiscal deficits and seigniorage in Pakistan. This relationship is stable in the long run.

How do different exchange rate regimes affect foreign direct investment flows?
Prof Glauco De Vita, Oxford Brookes University and Dr Andrew Abbott, University of Bath

Given its rapid growth in the last two decades, foreign direct investment (FDI) has become even more important than trade as a catalyst for economic development and now constitutes the single largest source of capital flows. These trends have prompted much research on both the determinants of FDI and its growth enhancing effects. However, much less attention has been paid to whether the choice of exchange rate regime affects FDI flows between countries. The proposed research intends to fill this gap.

Drawing from several exchange rate regime classification schemes and using a thoroughly documented panel data model that includes a comprehensive set of theory-based variables expected to have explanatory power in the determination of FDI, we aim to empirically investigate the impact of a wide menu of exchange rate regimes on bilateral FDI flows between country-pairs.

The analysis, to be conducted using instrumental variable estimation of a dynamic panel model within a system generalised methods of moments (system-GMM) framework, will cover the period from 1980 to 2003 and the following OECD and non-OECD countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium-Luxembourg, Canada, Chinese Taipei, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Kuwait, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and the United States.

We expect both academics and policy makers to benefit from the research. Researchers in the fields of international economics and monetary economics will benefit from increased understanding of the FDI response to different exchange rate regimes. Our findings should also prove very useful in highlighting the inward investment implications of different exchange rate regime policy options and in shaping the policy dialogue with government departments, central banks and international policy makers.

ESDS International demonstrations

Accessing Data via Beyond 20/20, Nesstar and using the Linking Macro and Micro Data e-Learning Materials
Susan Noble, Jack Kneeshaw and Celia Russell, ESDS International

ESDS International provides access to a range of international databanks produced by intergovernmental organisations such as the IMF and World Bank. We also help UK-based users to locate and acquire micro data from other social science data archives within Europe and worldwide, via a system of data exchange agreements. The service aims to promote and facilitate increased and more effective use of international datasets in research, learning and teaching across a range of disciplines. This presentation will demonstrate how to access and download international macro via Beyond 20/20 and micro data via Nesstar.

The Linking Macro and Micro Data (LIMMD) project provides an interactive online training course that identifies the potential benefits and problems associated with linking international aggregate and survey data. The project also promotes the resources available to researchers through the ESDS International data service. The materials are freely available to the UK academic community and will be demonstrated in this session.

Poster Abstracts

The determinants of business cycle correlations: a comparison between OECD and non-OECD economies.
Styliani Christodoulopoulou, Department of Economics, University of Essex, UK

This paper examines empirically which factors determine output correlations in a sample of 76 economies over the period 1973-1997. We split our sample between OECD and non-OECD economies and examine explicitly which factors affect specifically each group. Emphasis is given to the role of policy variables examined only in studies for OECD economies so far. We use a large range of cross section and panel estimation techniques. Although we are able to replicate results for OECD economies, we are unable to identify which channels play a major role in the case of the non-OECD economies. The main findings of this paper are: 1) The determinants between OECD and non-OECD economies are different, 2) we are able to confirm the results of previous literature on OECD economies, 3) monetary policy has an indirect effect on business cycles through fostering bilateral trade, 4) labour market rigidities do not play a significant role on business cycle correlations, 5) law and order and legal origin similarity affect directly and indirectly the correlations depending on the sample used and 6) only regional effects seem to matter in a sample where the non-OECD economies are considered.

Income Inequality, Economic Growth and the role of Financial Markets; some new empirical evidence
Gabriele Amorosi, Department of Economics, University of Kent, UK

The aim of the paper is to analyze how financial development can affect the evolution of income inequality. Recent empirical work analyzing the determinants of income inequality includes, among the others, Lundberg and Squire (EJ, 2003), Fielding and Torres (JEI, 2005) and Beck, Levine and Demirguc-Kunt (JEG, 2007). However, the link between financial intermediation and the changes in the distribution of income is thoroughly analyzed by the latter, who find financial development to be particularly beneficial for the poorest people.

We believe that the approach used in the literature has some shortcomings. The variables usually used to identify the extent of financial development are the ratios of M2 to GDP or of private credit by deposit money banks to GDP. If these are the most common proxies identified for detecting the degree of financial market development, high values of these variables do not necessarily indicate that the financial system is providing credit to a larger part of the population. As an intuitive explanation, one might think of small countries that have opened up their financial markets and have experienced the entry of multinational enterprises. Most of the borrowing, in this case, is likely to be concentrated in a small number of (often) foreign owned companies. Moreover, these variables do not seem to properly capture the extent to which an economy is credit constrained.

In our view, what really matters for income distribution is the access to financial resources by the largest part of families and consumers. Better access to credit may certainly allow for a different and, perhaps more equal, redistribution of income, by enhancing investment and consumption opportunities. This is why we make use of a new indicator of financial services availability, specifically the number of bank branches per inhabitant. Furthermore, we also think that a variable more suitable to measure the degree of credit constraint is the interest spread between Lending and Deposit rates or between Lending and Treasury Bill (risk free) rates. The use of the latter is also supported by the work of Gertler, Hubbard and Kashyap (NEBR WP3495, 1990).

This paper also uses Gini measures that are consistent with the same income concept. As showed by Knowles (JDS, 2005), using data that are comparable in this respect, can even lead to completely opposite results. For each country, the Gini index refers to data taken from the same survey and pertaining, at least, at the same income concept. Unfortunately, due to data source limitations, it is not possible to have the same type of income data for all the countries considered. In order to ease this possible problem, we test for the changes of the Gini coefficient, instead of looking at the Gini levels. This should allow for a much better reliability of the results.

Using a cross-section of countries, we try to identify some evidence on how the process of economic growth and the evolution of income inequality interact with credit constraints and financial markets accessibility. Some of the variables used are, obviously, drawn from the standard growth-inequality models used in the literature. Income Inequality data are taken from the latest version of the WIDER dataset (2007). For each country, we have calculated the absolute and the relative change in the Gini index for a time period of around ten years-it spans from eight to twelve years, depending on the availability of data. Due to data limitation, most of the econometric analysis relies on a cross sectional approach, since financial market accessibility data are available only for one year. Controlling for a number of traditionally used variables, we assess the effect of financial development, as captured by new variables we propose, on the Gini index. We include some interaction terms in order to capture the relationship between the relevant financial market variables and the process of economic development. A stepwise procedure is also employed, in order to detect which variables are likely to be the most significant ones.

Results seem to support our hypothesis that a better access to financial market leads to less inequality, while interest rate spreads are a symptom of greater income divide. Most of the relevant coefficients turn out to be highly significant and have the expected signs.

ESRC Society Today
Sarah Dickinson

Freely available, ESRC Society Today offers a broad picture of the social sciences, and research that is being planned or is already in progress around particular social science subjects. The service combines information from the ESRC Awards and Outputs Database (dating back to 1975), and a variety of other data sources and sites to offer a unique social science research resource. ESRC Society Today provides access to an unrivalled range of high quality social and economic research content that can be cross-searched in one place and provides a gateway to key materials. The site has been designed and built to be a valuable tool for ESRC researchers and the wider academic community, and more broadly is also committed to providing materials that are of relevance to government, the voluntary and business sectors, the media and the general public.

EDINA Repository projects
Stuart Macdonald, EDINA National Data Centre, University of Edinburgh

EDINA and its partners have been funded to undertake a variety of repository-related development activities to enhance and support access to scholarly and learning objects in the UK. JORUM is a national learning object repository for sharing and repurposing educational materials, which EDINA operates jointly with MIMAS. The purpose of the Depot is to ensure that all UK academics can enjoy the benefits of Open Access for their peer-reviewed post-prints by providing a repository for the interim period before every university has such repository provision. GRADE has been investigating and reporting on the technical and cultural issues around the reuse of geospatial data in the context of media-centric, informal and institutional repositories. With the DataShare project, by supporting academics who wish to share datasets on which written research outputs are based, a network of institution-based data repositories will develop a niche model for deposit of ‘orphaned datasets’ currently filled neither by centralised subject-domain data archives nor institutional repositories.

Intute: Social Sciences
Stuart Macdonald, EDINA National Data Centre, University of Edinburgh

Intute: Social Sciences provide access to a selected source of relevant, high-quality Internet resources for social science researchers, academics and practitioners. The service is based at the Universities of Bristol and Birmingham in association with over seventeen partner universities around the UK. It is part of the larger Intute service, which provides access to Internet resources in all major academic disciplines to support learning, teaching and research. Intute provides access to a selected and organized range of Internet resources for the Social Sciences in a wide range of subject areas including a dedicated section for statistics and data as well as a number of additional services to help you get the best out of the Internet for your work.

The CESSDA Data Portal
Margaret Ward and Jack Kneeshaw, UK Data Archive

The CESSDA Data Portal provides an interface to datasets from 13 social science data archives across Europe and builds on the work of the EU funded MADIERA project (http://www.madiera.net). Future planned developments will lead to the inclusion of all 21 CESSDA (Council of European Social Science Data Archives) members and also other organisations from outside of CESSDA. The information within the portal can be viewed in any of nine languages and is based on the DDI (Data Documentation Initiative) specification for documenting datasets, the ELSST thesaurus to enable multilingual functionality, and the Nesstar technology which provides the functionality for browsing and analysing data. The data within the portal can be located in a variety of ways, including the use of free text searching, browsing by topic, or browsing by keyword. Further details can be found at: http://www.cessda.org/.