Thesis discusses the theory of human capital and the strong interdependence between economic growth and human investments. The essence of human capital concept lies in the fact that investments in education and healthcare create the human capital in the same way as expenses on the equipment and materials create physical capital. The rate of return of human investments, in the long run, is much higher than of investments into physical capital. The theory of human capital is applied in the comparative analysis of Federal Subjects of the Russian Federation with the purpose to determine interrelation between the level of education and economic development of the country with the focus on the level of education, differences in income level and vocational and professional structure of the labor.

The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate the effect of corruption on income inequality (that could serve as indicator of the welfare of whole society). Since post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe had issues with providing effective policies for adapting to the market economy, we want to discover main drivers of this situation. We examined previous researches that suggest both positive and negative correlation between corruption level and income inequality. Main obstacle of the research is inherent heterogeneity present across countries. Our analysis was performed on two datasets: 11 post- communist countries CEE and additional 17 European Union countries. We implemented different estimation methods and discovered that panel Vector autoregressive model is the best choice. Within the panel structure we tackled individual heterogeneity by estimating fixed effects and clustering on the country level, implemented dynamic relationship in the dependent variable and solved endogeneity problem by using instrumental variable. We found that corruption has positive relationship with income inequality. Furthermore, other important drivers are: social spending, education level and unemployment. As a result, we suggested the ways to decrease corruption on the appropriate example of...

The paper aims to analyze the development of the shadow banking system in China and its role in the rapid economic growth in China for the past three decades. The shadow banking system supports small and medium sized firms and agricultural development projects. This has an important impact on poverty reduction in China as farmers largely refer to informal financial channels to get credit support for seeds, chemicals and animals. The shadow banking system offers credit supplies to lenders who cannot easily obtain credit from the official banking system. The credit supplies they offered use different financial instruments, come with higher interest rates, and were often disguised as financial products landing within the regulatory framework of the administration. The commercial banks also used the shadow banking financial instruments to meet capital thresholds from the People’s Bank of China. As a result, the shadow banking products create longer credit chains, distort credit flows in the financial system by diverting investments into short-term, high return, more risky financial markets. The turbulences in the interbank transaction market, the financial derivative market, the stock exchange markets (including the main-board, the “second tier” market for SMEs and the “third tier” market for start-ups), and the real estate market are all heavily involved in transactions conducted by the shadow banking entities. The shadow banking system in China has been expanding at a pace beyond the current regulatory structure. The internet P2P investment platforms, for instance, become popular with investors and raise funds up to RMB 1 billion each platform. There exist over thousands of internet investment portals, the most popular one being “Yu E Bao”, offered by Alibaba.com. The traditional regulatory institutions, however, do not cover shadow banking investment activities made online. Neither are insurance offered to insurance made online; as the new deposit insurance scheme only cover deposits made in the official banking system. With the ambition of boosting the internationalization of the RMB, financial deepening and economic reforms in China, the financial regulators in China face the dilemma resulting from the regulatory arbitrage associated with the expanding shadow bankinBBC system. Individual investors in China purchase the shadow banking investment products and assume their purchases come with implicit government guarantees, such as wealth management products sold by commercial banks for trust companies and local government investment platforms. On the other hand, it is critical for investors to make rational investments; thus, regulators are obliged to remind investors of risks related to the shadow banking products, that the fantasy of governments repaying failing shadow banking investments will be not realized. It is also the responsibility of the regulators to divert funds collected by the shadow banking entities to long-term investments to build up industrial bases. The financial deepening in China required the transformation of the shadow banking entities and financial products offered into ones with adequate capital cushions and sufficient liquidity. The internationalization of the RMB necessates the opening up of the capital, hence financial account in China. However, the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and the hyperinflation resulting from the dollarization in Latin America has led the Chinese regulators to be cautious in conducting currency liberalization and financial reforms. The opening up of the financial account with the liberalization of the exchange rate regime doubles the financial risks, increases the possibility of financial crises, and may result in the stagnation of economic growth. The function of the central bank as the lender of the last resort demands effective and prudential regulations for SIFIs, and also seeks to functioned to boost market confidence. At this critical turning point of the Chinese economy, defining the role of the shadow banking system, bringing them into the regulatory framework, and identifying risks created should be the priority of the financial regulators in China.

The relationship between population changes and economic growth has been debated since Malthus. Initially focusing on population growth, the notion of demographic dividend has shifted the attention to changes in age structures with an assumed window of opportunity that opens when falling birth rates lead to a relatively higher proportion of the working-age population. This has become the dominant paradigm in the field of population and development, and an advocacy tool for highlighting the benefits of family planning and fertility decline. While this view acknowledges that the dividend can only be realized if associated with investments in human capital, its causal trigger is still seen in exogenous fertility decline. In contrast, unified growth theory has established human capital as a trigger of both demographic transition and economic growth. We assess the relative importance of changing age structure and increasing human capital for economic growth for a panel of 165 countries during the time period of 1980-2015. The results show a clear dominance of improving education over age structure and give evidence that the demographic dividend is driven by human capital. Declining youth dependency ratios even show negative impacts on income growth when combined with low education. Based on a multidimensional understanding of demography that considers education in addition to age, and with a view to the additional effects of education on health and general resilience, we conclude that the true demographic dividend is a human capital dividend. Global population policies should thus focus on strengthening the human resource base for sustainable development.

For any developing country, infrastructure is at the core of economic growth and development. South Africa has a modern and well-developed transport infrastructure. The air and rail networks are the largest on the continent, and roads in good condition. To this degree of quality and quantity the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether or not public infrastructure investment contributes to economic growth, which is denoted as GDP per capita in this paper. The period of research is from 1960-2017. The Granger Causality method is applied, to find if a causal relationship exists between these two variables. Additionally, a log-log n OLS name of regression regression will beis run to see how variables, other than public infrastructure investment, affect GDP per capita. The endogenous growth theory is used as the main theory, in order to capture the essence of how the government endogenously affects output per capita in an economy. Findings reveal that there is a unidirectional relationship between public infrastructure investment and economic growth in South Africa. The direction of the causal relationship runs from public infrastructure investment to GDP per capita. Additionally, the infrastructure investment is found to be significant in the logged regression.  run. Which could impliesy that it affects economic growth. For further interest, a dummy variable was added in the regression to check whether the structural break in 1994 in South Africa has significantaffects the interpretation of the results.  changes in interpretation of results.This yielded in no significant changes in the results for infrastructure investment and GDP per capita.  (structural break and more important findings) (variables?) (what organisations can use these findings forFurther, Oorganisations and policy makers can use this paper as an indicator of how infrastructure investment plays a role in an economy, especially in developing countries.

The attention drawn towards tourism can often be misconstrued and underestimated duly to the difficulty of composing a definition that can be straightforward. Tourism as a sector is becoming more prominent globally, influencing social and economic sectors upon nations and regions. Hence, this research paper draws its attention to one of the developing world’s most dynamic economies where tourism plays a huge role – Thailand. The primary purpose of this study was to research the relationship between tourism in Thailand and economic growth by analysing the magnitude of effect. Simultaneously, investigating the contribution from the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) member states as our secondary focus. Our contribution to this field of research is the unique perspective of using monthly data instead of annual. The natural choice is to use Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of economic growth; however, it is only available on a quarterly or yearly basis. This then led us to use the Industrial Production Index (IPI) as a proxy of economic growth and as our regressand, with tourism arrivals from the World and the ASEAN as our main regressors. To be able to test this hypothesis we ran a Log-Log Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) Regression for the monthly timeline between 2011 and 2017. The findings show that the relationship between IPI and tourism arrivals postulated was indeed positive, as well as that ASEAN member states contribute a significant amount more than the World.

Introduction – The introduction gives background to exchange rate volatility and the negative effects on economic growth that emerges when the exchange rate volatility is high.  Exchange rate volatility can affect economic growth in different ways such as establishing trade barriers or investment uncertainty. Previous studies have become quite outdated and the studies that have focused around the EMU have only compared smaller economies, hence this paper investigates the topic for developed economies and with new up-to-date data. The paper also examines two different types of exchange rate volatility, effective nominal exchange rate volatility and nominal exchange rate volatility to test if the choice of exchange rate volatility has an impact on the results. The sample for the paper contains the 36 OECD countries and the time period is 2000-2016.   Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore how exchange rate volatility affects growth for the OECD countries. The paper also looks at what the effect of adopting the Euro as a primary currency has been for the countries in the OECD sample when looking at the exchange rate volatility and economic growth. Method – This study is conducted with a quantitative methodology, investigating a sample of 36 countries over 17 time periods from 2000-2016. The effect from exchange rate volatility on growth is analyzed through a content analysis and four panel-data regressions. This study also introduces a causality test to see if the exchange rate affects the economic growth or if economic growth affects the exchange rate volatility. Conclusion – The paper finds that both measures of exchange rate volatility have a negative effect on economic growth. There is also evidence that adopting the Euro as your currency for the time period has been negative for economic growth. Regarding the causality between exchange rate volatility and economic growth the paper finds evidence for a bidirectional causality, meaning that exchange rate volatility affects economic growth and economic growth affects exchange rate volatility.

India's colonial legacy and linguistic diversity has given English language a prominent role in the country. This research, through a historical analysis, first understands the factors behind the persistent prevalence of the language in India. The reasons go beyond colonial legacy and globalisation, and enters the domain of economics. Particularly, India’s reliance on the service sector plays a role in accrediting the language with a superior status. Having entered the economic arena, the research, using India Human Development Survey Round 2, conceptualises and quantifies the impact of English language on economic indicators including wage rates and GDP. The results reflect a significantly positive relationship between the language and income. A fluent English speaker earns 34 percent more than a non-English speaker. Furthermore, the empirical results highlight that the response of growth to investment in a state is greater the higher the number of English speakers. The substantiation of the importance of language’s perpetuation from service-based growth is further embedded by the fact that there exists a positive and statistically significant relationship between the number of fluent English speakers in a state and the growth rate of the Gross State Domestic Product of services. The thesis further investigates the relationship between the language and the inclusivity of growth. The results highlight that the likelihood of fluent English speakers moving out of the ‘deprived’ income strata by earning INR 1.5 lakh or more annually is 33 percentage points higher than that of non-English speakers. The research thus, empirically proves that though English is helping economic growth, it is simultaneously hindering development in terms of inclusivity, hence paving way for a dichotomy that policy makers need to resolve. Finally, the research aims to suggest a solution to the dichotomy through an analysis of the education system in India. Particularly, using primary data collection in Delhi, Chandigarh and Shimla, the research evaluates the pedagogy of English Language, and its impact on the learning levels. It highlights that the pedagogy of the language within the CBSE framework requires editions to lead to an inclusive learning of the language.

This thesis consists of four studies, presented in three main essays, empirically linking economic growth to public expenditure and telecommunication infrastructure using four different sample groups of countries with data from 1972-2012. In the second chapter, in Study 1, the permanent growth effects of fiscal policy are investigated across countries with different income levels using the public-policy endogenous growth model, where public spending is classified by function. The endogeneity problems associated with taxes and investment are taken into account, as is a possible non-linear relationship between government expenditure and economic growth. The results have shown that gross capital formation is the only control variable that has a significant positive coefficient in all growth regressions, while the evidence of conditional convergence hypothesis is reaffirmed. An increase in transportation and communication spending is conducive to growth in both developing and high-income countries, whereas other types of spending are not. In the third chapter, in Study 2, we firstly consider the relationship between public spending and growth with a government budget constraint. The evidence for productive expenditure being conducive to growth only exists in high-income OECD countries. Distortionary taxes are shown to have growth-deteriorating effects in both the developing country and the high-income OECD country groups. When considering the relationship between public spending and long-run GDP per capita level in Study 3, it was found that an increase in total spending financed by non-distortionary taxes enhances the per capita level of GDP in high-income OECD countries. Regardless of implicit financing elements, increases in total spending in developing countries cannot promote long-run increases in GDP per capita levels. In developing countries, increases in the shares of health care and general public services in spending can improve long-run GDP per capita. In high-income OECD countries, increasing in the share of education in spending is conducive to increasing per capita GDP in the long-run. In the fourth chapter, in Study 4, we assess the link between telecommunication infrastructure and economic development. The system of equations is used while considering stationarity and cointegration of variables in the models. The output dividend of fixed telephones in the period from 1975 to 1990 for the group of high-income OECD countries is higher than for developing countries. When considering mobile phone infrastructure, an increase in penetration has positive effects on aggregate output in developing countries for the period from 1990 to 2012. There is only weak evidence that increased mobile phone penetration in high-income OECD countries has a negative effect. When fixed telephone penetration is low, an increase in mobile phone penetration enhances aggregate output. When fixed telephone penetration is already high, an increase in mobile phone penetration might have deteriorating effects. The results have shown that mobile phone and fixed telephone infrastructures are, in fact, substitutes for one another rather than complements.

This thesis explores the role of land reform in the production of space and relations of power in rural South Africa after 1994, based on a case study of a cluster of restitution farms in Makhado municipality in Limpopo province in northern South Africa. It uses Henri Lefebvre's theory of the production of space, which proposes that space is a dynamic social construction and that spatial and social – and hence power - relations are mutually constitutive. Land reform processes are considered using three components of the production of space identified by Lefebvre, namely the material, the conceptual and the lived. These components are applied to three core themes in land reform which emerged from the research: authority and land governance; property relations; and land use (production and settlement). The investigation was based primarily on interviews with inhabitants in the research area affected by land reform, with individuals with some historical knowledge of the area, and with various individuals from government and other support organisations with some relation to land reform in the area. The methods included an element of participant observation and some archival research. The research indicates that land reform had an uneven impact on the production of space and power relations in the area of study. Contradictions emanating from within the state in particular exacerbated this unevenness. The retention of the private property framework and the entrenchment of pre-existing forms of authority and relations of power – private landowners and traditional authorities – constituted limitations on the role land reform could play in altering rural spaces and power relations. However, land reform simultaneously facilitated openings for subterranean shifts through new practices, rooted in everyday activities at the micro-spatial level, which signalled potential broader shifts in spatial and power relations over time.