International Economics最新文献

This study investigates whether immigration and crime rates are positively related, by applying dynamic panel threshold models to fine geographic units. This is distinct from previous studies, in which static and continuous models are applied to coarse geographic units. This analysis reveals that the immigration-crime relationship has structural breaks (or discontinuities). The favorable ethnic network externalities on crime emerge after the immigrant share reaches a certain level in the community. This analysis also shows that the immigration-crime relationship observed in fine geographic units disappears when coarsely classified units are used. If geographic aggregation obscures heterogeneity among cities, the immigration-crime relationship is underestimated. These results suggest the advantage of dynamic threshold models with fine geographic units compared to traditional static and continuous models with coarse geographic units when discussing the immigration-crime relationship.

July 20, 2023 (Revised April 15, 2024) The experiences of the 1997–98 Asian Financial Crisis and the 2008–09 Global Financial Crisis encouraged economists to develop new open-economy dynamic finance-macro models. Such models allow for nonlinearities -- to study the effects of contractionary currency devaluation -- in contrast to models of expansionary currency devaluation. The generic dynamic model of the finance-macro link in this paper includes the dynamics of the inflation rates, output gap, and financial variables (credit flows, risk premia, and exchange rates). The theoretical model with nonlinearities shows that there can be resilient or non-resilient outcomes of the dynamics. The level of resilience is however dependent on some empirical vulnerabilities. Relevant empirics show the risk premium is related not only to domestic real macro and financial variables, but also to the exchange rate and the foreign currency reserves. Econometrically, this paper explores the regime-dependent interaction of the output gap and financial variables in a two-regime non-linear Logistic Vector Smooth Transition Auto-Regressive (LVSTAR) model with a logistic-type transition function. This empirical study reveals that the financial variables of emerging economies show regime-dependent responses to external shocks. Therefore, a positive shock to the risk premia in a negative output gap regime entails an exchange rate depreciation, and accelerating contractions. Overall, however, a diversity of EM economies are examined in terms of their response to external shocks and their resilience levels. This research also has implications for international portfolio holdings.

Military conflicts and wars affect the development of a country in various dimensions. Rising inflation rates are a potentially important economic effect associated with conflict. High inflation can undermine investment, weigh on private consumption, and threaten macroeconomic stability. Furthermore, these effects are not necessarily restricted to the locality of the conflict but can also spill over to other countries. Therefore, to understand how conflict affects the economy and to make a more comprehensive assessment of the costs of armed conflict, it is important to take inflationary effects into account. To disentangle the conflict-inflation nexus and to quantify this relationship, we conduct a panel analysis for 151 countries over the period 1950–2019. To capture indirect inflationary effects, we construct a distance-based spillover index. In general, the results of our analysis confirm a statistically significant positive direct association between conflicts and inflation rates. Furthermore, we document a statistically significant positive indirect association between conflicts and inflation rates in uninvolved countries. These findings are robust across various model specifications. Moreover, our results indicate that conflict-induced inflation is not driven solely by the increase in the money supply.

Africa’s openness to migration is strongly continental (about 80% of African migrants are settled in Africa). This paper explores how intra-continental migration impacts the real exchange rates of African economies. International migration may impact the real exchange rate through many pathways (demand-side and supply-side effects on prices, indirect effects through demography structure and remittances), thus leading to contradictory effects. Using a sample of 51 African countries over the period 1990–2019, econometric estimations show evidence that an increase in net intra-African migration exerts an appreciating effect on the real exchange rate of host countries. This finding holds when controlling for potential endogeneity using gravity-based instruments for migration.

We evaluate the effects of population aging on the macroeconomic evolution of the Lebanese economy and the financial sustainability of its major pension schemes. We use an OLG model with labor market frictions as in de la Croix et al. (2013). Individuals are differentiated by their origin, age, gender, and education and choose the sector of activity, which implies that the size of the informal sector is endogenous. We assess the long-run implications of population aging and show that the public sector pension scheme is unsustainable. In contrast, the private sector scheme is insufficient to ensure decent living standards for the elderly. Finally, we evaluate the effects of two pension reforms. We first propose a mix of measures that guarantee the sustainability of the public sector scheme. Then, we evaluate the impact of the pension reform introduced in December 2023 and of an alternative reform aiming at increasing the size of the private sector scheme to improve the living standards for the elderly.

This study investigates the asymmetric effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Australian stock market using a novel methodology (multiple threshold nonlinear ARDL). We find that, in the short-term, the pandemic's impact is statistically insignificant for moderate levels of pandemic intensity (30–70% range). However, for both more severe outbreaks (above 70%) and less intense initial stages (below 30%), the pandemic shows short-term negative effects. Interestingly, these adverse effects become consistent across all intensity levels in the long-term. Additionally, our analysis reveals counterintuitive relationships between daily economic activity and stock market performance at different pandemic intensity thresholds.

This study empirically assesses the dynamics of variation in economic policy uncertainty over the financial markets of BRIC countries, including Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Using monthly frequency data from January 2003 to June 2023 and employing Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) spillover estimation framework, we find a significant influence of global economic policy uncertainty on the BRIC economies that varies with the time horizons. The findings show a total spillover of 35.65% in the global and BRIC economic policy uncertainty. The highest gross directional spillover is reported globally and in China, while Brazil shows the lowest directional gross economic policy uncertainty spillover. However, the global economic policy uncertainty transmits the highest net directional spillover. The study provides practical policy implications in adopting a comprehensive, globally informed approach to economic policy decisions and risk mitigation strategies to navigate the evolving landscape of economic policy uncertainties effectively.

The existing literature on the relationship between trade openness and economic growth is extensive, but there is a dearth of research that examines whether this relationship is contingent on the quality of governance institutions in a country. In this study, we address this gap by investigating the moderating effects of governance quality on the trade openness-economic growth nexus in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) during the 2000–2021 period. We utilize six indicators of governance quality from the World Bank's world governance indicators and employ correlation and the dynamic panel System Generalized Method of Moments technique for robust and efficient analysis, which yields more accurate results when the number of cross-sections exceeds the time dimension of the dataset. Our findings indicate that governance effectiveness, rule of law, control of corruption, and regulatory quality have a significantly positive impact on the positive relationship between trade openness and economic growth. In contrast, the moderating effects of voice and accountability and political stability on the trade openness-economic growth relationship are negative and statistically significant. Based on these results, we conclude that each governance dimension has distinct effects on the trade openness-economic growth nexus. In term of policy recommendation, policymakers need to harness the benefits of international trade for promoting economic growth; therefore, LAC countries should focus on investing in institutional quality and designing policies that would enhance the overall quality and effectiveness of governance.

Despite the growing concern about the economic costs of political risk, relatively little is known about its effect on industrialization. This paper fills the knowledge gap by investigating the impact of political risk on industrialization and relative transmission mechanisms using data from 34 African countries over the 2000–2019 period. Findings from Driscoll and Kraay (1998), system GMM, and quantile regressions show that political risk has a direct negative impact on industrialization. When considering the sub-dimensions of political risk, results show that the increase in government risk, internal and external conflict risk, military politics risk, ethnic tensions risk, investment profile risk, corruption risk, bureaucratic quality risk, and socioeconomic risk adversely affect industrialization. Further, the mediation analysis reveals that political risk does not only have a direct effect on industrialization but also an indirect impact through its adverse effects on financial integration, financial development, and internet penetration. Finally, the net impact is negative and suggests that political risk hinders Africa's industrialization.