Conference Abstracts
Data Providers
IMF Data Developments
Nick Dopuch, IMF
The presentation will include the following main topics:
- Overview of existing IMF statistical products and their current status,
- Data priorities and new statistical initiatives of the IMF Statistics Department in light of the recent financial crisis, and
- The future of IMF electronic data dissemination.
A New Industrial Statistical Database of UNIDO for Structural Analysis
Shyam Upadhyaya, UNIDO
UNIDO maintains an international industrial statistical database, which is updated regularly on the basis of data collected from national statistical offices. This database contains detailed business structure statistics covering the period 1963 to date for some 180 countries. Data are disseminated through publication of the International Yearbook of Industrial Statistics and CD products INDSTAT4 and IDSB. However, due to the periodic revision of the international standard for industrial classification (ISIC), the historical data are not fully comparable over the years. In order to meet the increasing demand of data users for analyzing long-term structural change, the Statistics Unit of UNIDO has created a new database INDSTAT2 in a single classification system for all years. Apart from providing general information on the database, in terms of countries, years and statistical indicators, this presentation will also explain how available data can be used for analyzing structural change based on different types of industry groupings.
Young Lives: a longitudinal study of childhood poverty in 4 developing countries
Caroline Knowles, Communications Manager, Young Lives
Anne Yates, Data and Survey Manager, Young Lives
This presentation gives an overview of some of the opportunities and challenges faced by Young Lives, a longitudinal study of childhood poverty. It will also serve as an introduction to our research and an insight into the richness of our datasets for future users.
Young Lives is tracking the lives of 12,000 children over 15 years in 4 developing countries (Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam). The challenges of this exciting project are associated with the multidimensional nature of the data (featuring both a household and child survey and in-depth interviews with a sub-sample of children and their caregivers), the multicultural nature of our working partnerships, and the real challenges of working across very diverse (and dispersed) geographic contexts. The opportunities are also to be found in the nature of our data. Few surveys of this scale have been undertaken across several developing countries, most research with children is thematic rather than multidimensional in nature, and it is rare that in-depth interviews are undertaken with children rather than their parents or caregivers.
Through working closely with our partners in the 4 study countries we have been able to develop strong systems for data collection, data management and data analysis, and for communicating our findings to government and other audiences at national level as well as with the international community. Public archiving of our data through ESDS is part of our commitment to disseminate our work widely and to generate good evidence to support better policymaking for children. A current project is to develop data visualisation tools that will demonstrate the richness of our datasets and make them more accessible across the development community of policymakers and practitioners as well as other researchers.
www.younglives.org.uk
UK Data Archive Study Number 5307: http://www.esds.ac.uk/international/access/I33379.asp
International Data Academic Research - Pecha Kucha session abstracts
Twin Deficits: New Evidence from Arab World
Hany Eldemerdash, University of Newcastle
The purpose of this paper is to clarify the historical association between current account and fiscal policy for the Arab world (small open economies). Specifically, the aspiration is to test the viewpoint of Ricardian infinite-horizon representative agent model, acknowledge as Ricardian Equivalence Hypothesis (REH), in which lower public savings are met by equal increases in private savings, and as a result the current account does not respond to the changes in government spending, against Keynesian's conventional viewpoint, well known as the Twin Deficits Hypothesis (TDH), in which a fall in public savings has an adverse effect on the current account balance in some countries from the Arab world. Evidence from panel data analysis supports the conventional theory of a positive relationship between fiscal and external balances. Our estimates show that a rise by one percent of the fiscal-deficit-to-GDP ratio induces the current-account-to-GDP ratio to deteriorate by 0.45 to 0.85 percentage points, which appears to strongly support TDH and reject REH for the Arab countries.
Capital-Energy Relationship, an Analysis of Three Estimation Methods for Panel Data
Miguel Angel Tovar Reaños, University of Essex
Thirty years of research about the nature of the capital-energy relationship, has failed to
reach reliable elasticities of substitution. The only thing that it is clear is that if capital
and energy are complements, energy price shocks can have harmful consequences for
economic growth.
There is a debate about the nature capital- energy relationship which was originated by
differences among estimations that are basically based on the Translog Cost
Function (TCF). This technique has led different authors to still reach very different
conclusions. A methodology that has been used to analyze differences among
estimations is by finding statistical patterns among them which is known as metaanalysis.
Nevertheless, little research has been done to analyze the method itself and its
role in the estimation. To see this I used a panel data of eight UK industries and I apply
the TCF, the Generalized Leontief (GL) Cost function using the methodology suggested
by Thomsen to distinguish short and long run and an Error correction model. In this
exercise four factors are used: capital, energy, labour and intermediate materials,
distinguishing two kinds of capital and using the investment in R&D for energy
intensity. The methods of estimation are the Seemingly Unrelated Regressions, the
Generalized Method of Moments and time series techniques for panel data. Preliminary
results obtained by using the TCF classify capital and energy as complements whereas
the GL and the Dynamic Ordinary Least Square suggest substitutability in the long run
generally for all industries analyzed.
Financial Dollarization and European Union Membership
Dr Kyriakos Neanidis, University of Manchester
We analyze the effect of European Union (EU) membership on financial dollarization for a set of Central and Eastern European Countries.
Although EU membership per se is not found to have a direct impact on deposit or loan dollarization, the accession process toward EU membership has a negative impact on both types of dollarization. This effect captures the increased confidence of both depositors and lenders in the domestic currency as they consider this process to reflect their government?s commitment in promoting policies of long-run currency stability. Lenders, however, seem to respond slower than depositors to imminent EU membership due to a comparatively higher degree of currency risk they face.
Role of Financial Sector in Growth
Noureen Adnan, University of Surrey
A well developed financial systems leads to high levels of economic growth. It is the responsibility of government to support and supervise financial sectors in achieving their effective policies. In this regard the role of banks and stock markets are very important. To study the role of financial development in economic growth, the paper examines the level and growth of financial development over economic growth. Different countries with various income groups are studied. The endogeneity is also studied to observe the causal impact of financial development over economic growth.
The study involve panel of 71 countries with annual observations from 1960 to 2006. The data is taken from IMF International Financial Statistics and World Bank World Development Indicators from “ESDS international data archive”. The approach adopted is to capture the impact of financial development by using number of significant bank and stock market indicators including liquid liabilities to GDP, bank credit issued to private sector, banks, stock market capitalization, value traded ratio, turn over ratio, are taken to capture the impact of financial development. For the effects of growth, real GDP and real GDP per capita are employed.
After controlling the main macro economic indicators, including inflation, trade, exchange rate regimes, fiscal. The results for all countries by using the least square dummy variables with panel data fixed effects report that the level of financial development promotes level of economic growth whereas the growth of financial development is not found accelerating the growth of economic development.
Exploring the Causality Relationship between Trade Liberalization, Human Capital and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence from Pakistan
Dr Imran Sharif Chaudhry, former London School of Economics
There is a rapidly growing literature on the interaction between trade liberalization and economic growth but few have analyzed the impact of trade liberalization and human capital on economic growth. This paper attempts to investigate empirically the causality relationship between trade liberalization, human capital and economic growth in Pakistan by applying cointegration and Granger causality techniques of time series econometrics for the 1972-2007 period. The data on trade liberalization and economic growth are taken from the World Development Indicators, ESDS international website while human capital index is constructed based on the data from Pakistan Economic Survey. The empirical results reveal that there exist short run and long run cointegration and causality relationships among variables in the growth model. It implies an education and trade openness policies may be feasible with sustained economic growth. It is also found that causality runs from trade liberalization and human capital to economic growth. The results are also consistent with the growth theories and economic literature.
The Role of European Candidacy on FDI: the case of Turkey
Bulent Esiyok, University of Greenwich
This study investigates the effects of integration process of Turkey with European Union (EU) on outward foreign direct investment stocks from 19 OECD countries in Turkey over the period 1982-2007. The path towards full membership of EU for Turkey started with the Customs Union agreement in 1996 and followed by candidate status granted by EU in 1999 and the integration with EU gained further momentum with the start of membership negotiations in 2004. In order to capture the effects of these three stages of integration on foreign direct investment in Turkey, we augment knowledge-capital model with a dummy variable. Our country sample includes 13 EU countries and 6 non-EU countries with FDI stocks in Turkey. Due to missing values, we have unbalanced panel with 298 observations. In order to overcome autocorrelation problem of static specifications, we use a dynamic panel data analysis. Our empirical results indicate that only the start of membership of negotiation has statistically significant and positive effects on foreign direct investment in Turkey, while other two stages have positive but statistically insignificant effects. In addition, significantly positive signs of market size and trade cost associated with exporting to Turkey suggest that main motive of FDI in Turkey is horizontal.
Oil Price & Exchange Rate: A Comparative Study between Net Oil Exporting and Net Oil Importing Countries
Mukhriz Izraf Azman Aziz, Lancaster University
The goal of this paper is to estimate the long run effects of real oil price and real interest rate differential on real exchange rate for a monthly panel of 8 countries from 1980 to 2008. The modelling exercise follows three steps. In the first step, the paper investigates the integrational properties of the data and finds them to be integrated of order one. In the second step, using several different panel cointegration tests, the paper finds evidence for cointegration among the three variables. In the third step, using pooled mean group estimator, the paper finds a positive and statistically significant impact of real oil price on real exchange rate for net oil importing countries, implying that increase in oil price leads to real exchange rate depreciation. In contrast, there is no evidence of long run relationship between real oil price and real exchange rate in a panel that consists of net oil exporting countries.
Findings from the Fourth European Working Conditions Survey
Maija Lyly-Yrjanainen, Monitoring and Surveys Unit, Eurofound
In 2005 the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) conducted the 4th European Working Conditions Survey in the 27 EU Member States, Croatia, Turkey, Switzerland and Norway. Following the survey in-depth analysis was carried out on key themes relating to working conditions in the EU from which one topic was diversity in the forms of work organisation across Europe. In the analysis four forms of work organisation are identified: discretionary learning, lean production, taylorist, and traditional or simple structure forms. The forms of work organisation adopted in the 27 EU Member States depend on countries but also sector of economic activity or occupational category; from a cross-national point of view there are wide differences in terms of importance of the four forms of work organisation across Europe. Furthermore, the relationships between work organisation and various dimensions of quality of work and employment and HR policies are explored giving some insight on the well-being of the workers in each work organisation cluster.
Application of Petri Nets for the analysis of monetary flow
Giorgio Castagneto Gissey, Warwick University
Keynes model is valid only when money issued by the States has a real intrinsic value, while in the case of “chartal” money created and extinguished by the bank system on account of its capital the model can not apply. Therefore, while in the circulation model the quantity of money follows the law of supply and demand with subsequent endogenous adjustment, in a system of fiat money there will be no independent supply function and the supply and demand function can not longer move at steady state.
The attainment by banks of increasing profits, implying the interest rates on lending and borrowing are increasingly divergent, has caused a greater volume of money creation through interest receipts accumulation, thereby increasing the growth of money in the economy, and finally determining rising inflation levels.
On this ground, we aimed at investigating the role of commercial banks profit margin on inflation and other primary macroeconomic variables.
Poster Abstracts
Money Supply and Inflation, How and how much can the Money Supply affect the Inflation Rate?
Amedeo Strano, University of East London
In this paper we are going to demonstrate the relationship between Money Supply and Inflation using a sample of ten different countries, given the Iceland as term of comparison.
Any increase in expenditure which cannot be met by an increase in output (or in imports) will result in a rise in prices, and the view that an increase in expenditure will lead to a change in price rather than quantity is, like the view that people want money only in order to spend it, a very long-established view in economics. It is part of what is usually referred to as the quantity theory of mone
Openness, Economic Growth, and Human Development: Evidence from South Asian Countries from 1990-2007
Ghulam Mustafa, Middlesex University
The paper empirically examined the direct and indirect relationships between openness, economic growth and human development for South Asian countries for the period from 1990 to 2007. The current investigation is an improvement over Nourzad and Powell (2003) in both model specification and econometric technique. I have used three - stage least squares method for estimation of simultaneous equations system consisting of three equations using panel data for South Asia. This analysis would be first comprehensive econometric attempt to address these issues for South Asia and update the existing evidence. The study has found strong evidence that openness has a positive impact on economic growth in South Asia. The evidence of positive effect of openness on human development is not strong. The investigation shows that external debt reduces the economic growth while remittances have been positively contributing to economic growth in the region. The analysis suggests that human capital seems to increase economic growth. In addition, the study has found a negative impact of FDI on economic growth of South Asia. The negative effect of FDI on economic growth has raised a few concerns for economists and policy makers in South Asia. The study found some support for Nourzad and Powell (2003) findings that economic growth derails human development although both variables seem to be inversely related. The analysis shows that urban population and access to safe drinking water stimulate human development in the region. This investigation suggests that domestic investment and human development promote openness in the region. The results have found strong evidence that increase in FDI and economic growth increases openness in South Asia. The evidence provides an interesting finding that fast growing countries are more open to international trade in South Asia. The results should be applied more cautiously due to limited time series data.
International collaborations
Women's Autonomy and the Nutritional Status of Children in India
Wiji Arulampalam, University of Warwick
India has one of the highest rates of malnutrition among children. The burden of malnutrition is unevenly borne by the poorer and disadvantaged sections of society. Efforts at reducing the burden of malnutrition would therefore go a long way in ensuring that the fruits of development are more evenly shared, not only across the society but also across generations and hence would greatly reduce social inequalities in the long term. Previous studies have shown that a major factor behind the South Asian Enigma is the low status of women and the persistence of gender inequality in these countries which permeates women’s autonomy. However, there is hardly any evidence based research on India to support this hypothesis. The objective of this project is to address this lacuna. The project will use data drawn from the third round of the National Family Health Survey which collected detailed health and anthropometric information on 111,781 women and 70,130 men aged 15-54 as well as on 46,655 children born in the last five years preceding the survey.
Inequalities in Access to Health Care in Brazil and India: Closing the Gap for the Poorest-Poor
Tiziana Leone, London School of Economics
The overall aim of this project is to develop a trilateral research network engaging demographers, social statisticians and economists from Brazil, India and the UK to carry out a quantitative investigation of the extent of inequalities in access to health care, how these change over time and the associated determinants, with an emphasis on the poorest-poor segment of the population living in Brazil and India. The changes over time will be evaluated in terms of whether the gap in health care access between the rich and poor have widened or narrowed and the differences between and within different wealth groups. The analyses will focus on three vulnerable populations: (i) young children, (ii) young and adult women of reproductive ages and (iii) elderly women. Women and young children are considered because of their increased health needs and that they have a high burden of morbidity and disorders. Quantitative analyses of cross-national large-scale datasets will be undertaken through a trilateral research partnership engaging an excellent team of researchers from Brazil, India and the UK. Brazil and India share a number of common socioeconomic and demographic challenges, including high population mobility from rural to urban areas fuelling urban poverty, rapid growth of middle-class social groups and differential health outcomes among social classes. Proper comparison of the Brazilian and Indian data will provide evidence of how health care policies and programmes have operated and evolved over time in these countries to achieve better health and wellbeing for women and children.
Assessing the Impact of Higher Education Expansion on Economic Restructuring , Occupational change and Access to Opportunities in Brazil and India
Kate Purcell, University of Warwick
Brazil and India are both emerging economies, faced by analogous challenges: wide disparities in economic development and resources among regions, polarisation of wealth, income and life chances, heterogeneous populations, substantial informal economies, above average population growth, high levels of illiteracy and infant mortality, and relatively low but rapidly-growing participation in higher education. As in the UK, the expansion of HE in both Brazil and India has mainly benefited those with existing educational and social advantages, despite initiatives to extend equality of opportunity and improve educational access to disadvantaged groups.
The extent to which HE expansion has contributed to higher economic growth and how far it has led to greater equality of opportunity, and the implications for future HE development are key policy-relevant questions in all three partner countries. The quality, accessibility and compatibility of employment, economic activity, industrial and educational statistical data collected nationally and regionally, and their potential for facilitating policy-relevant analysis internally and comparative international analyses, are consequently crucial in order to understand the drivers of economic growth and the factors that contribute to or obstruct increased equality of opportunity and economic participation. In this project, the researchers in India and Brazil, working with the UK team, will interrogate existing statistical resources on recent labour market trends, occupational change, higher education participation and early career outcomes, to assess their strengths and weaknesses, identify information gaps and recommend ways of filling these to inform relevant national policy development in the two ‘Rising Powers’ and, also improve potential for robust international comparisons.
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