GDP and GDP per capita are widely used to gauge for living standards across countries. However, they have originally not been constructed for this purpose and are therefore subject to significant limitations. This paper aims at developing a better and non-monetary development index with which cross-country living standards can be assessed. This index, the BDI, can then be utilized for policy making. When constructing the BDI, this study utilizes time series analysis and panel unit root tests. A major finding of this study is that the BDI does indeed produce statistically significantly different results/ rankings for a special set of countries, compared to GDP and GDP per capita.

There has been much research regarding Trade Immigrant link for different countries, states and provinces which reveal that Immigration impacts bilateral Trade positively. In this study the Trade –Immigrant for Sweden for a period of 2000-2011 for 184 trading partners has been tested which shows that trade and Immigration have positive relationship. Using random effect model, with every 10% increase in Immigrants, there is 4.0% increase in imports and 4.4% increase in exports of Sweden from particular trading partner. In second hypothesis of the study Trade-Emigrant link for Sweden and its 185 trading partners has been checked in cross country sample for year 2010.To the best of my knowledge, this study is first to test the Trade-Emigrant link for Sweden. The results show that there is positive link between trade and Emigration from Sweden. An extended Gravity Model has been used in this study. Using ordinary least square method, with every 10% increase in Emigrants, there is 7.2% increase in imports and 4.3% increase in exports of Sweden for that particular trading partner.

This thesis examines the bilateral trade between Vietnam and twenty three European countries based on a gravity model and panel data for years 1993 to 2004. Estimates indicate that economic size, market size and real exchange rate of Vietnam and twenty three European countries play major role in bilateral trade between Vietnam and these countries. Distance and history, however, do not seem to drive the bilateral trade. The results of gravity model are also applied to calculate the trade potential between Vietnam and twenty three European countries. It shows that Vietnam’s trade with twenty three European countries has considerable room for growth.

Gross domestic product (GDP) is generally considered as the most important index and comprehensive measure of the size of economy. This paper investigates empirically the relationship between transport infrastructure (focus on highways) and GDP growth based on a production function approach. The physical stocks of transport infrastructure were used instead of monetary data to measure public capital together with several other variables (labor and private capital) that were hypothesized to affect economic growth. Then we explore a number of subsequent studies that use panel data covering the period between 1992 and 2004. An investigation was done to compare developed countries and developing countries. Results indicate that physical units are positively and significantly related to economic growth. Furthermore there was an interesting finding that the output elasticity with respect to physical units for developed countries is higher than developing countries.

This paper investigates the impact of inward FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) on international trade of China empirically on the country level by using panel data from 1984 to 2007. Two separate transformed models which are based on the gravity equation and refer to the econometric models of some previous studies, are used in this paper to estimate the effect of FDI inflows on exports and imports respectively. The estimation results confirmed the complementary relationship between FDI inflows and trade of China both on exports and imports, which has also been supported by previous empirical studies.

¡@¡@By utilizing longitudinal data over 10 years, this research tries to examine the relationships between distinctive political linkages by family members and the diversification implications in family business group in Taiwan. The past researches have highlighted that the political linkages established by family members have significant influence on the family business group¡¦s diversification. However, there is little researches examine who¡¦s political linkage is critical in determining the diversification decision in family business group. From social capital viewpoint, this research tries to investigate the diversification implications of political linkages established by three family roles, i.e., the founder, the sons, and the marriage roles, in family business groups. The results reveal that the founder¡¦s informal political linkages have significantly positive influence on the diversification. Furthermore, the political linkages established by marriage roles do not reveal significant influence on the group¡¦s diversification. However, the son¡¦s political linkages have distinctive influences on the diversification decision. In that, the son¡¦s formal political linkages have significantly negative influence on diversification, but the son¡¦s informal political linkages have significantly positive influence on diversification. The results indicate that the differential roles in family business groups have distinctive influence on the strategy decisions. The results provide insightful theoretical and practical implications in diversification issue and political linkages issues in largely family business groups.

This paper investigates the impact of income inequality on grand total crime, larceny and violent crime by using the dynamic panel data of 20 cities and counties in Taiwan during 1998 to 2010. The empirical results show that income inequality has a significant positive impact on grand total crime, larceny and violent crime, but unemployment rate and the proportion of the population between 15 and 64 years old both have no significant influence on three kinds of crimes. Moreover the effect of the other explanatory variables is significant on at least one kind of crimes. The empirical results also support that the criminal expected utility theory, social anomic, disorganization, conflict and strain theories are helpful to explain the criminal behavior of Taiwan.

In this dissertation, I study the effects of climate change on agricultural total factor productivity and crop yields and their variability. In addition, an examination was conducted on the value of select climate change adaptation strategies in forestry. Across the study, the climate change scenarios analyzed were based on the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report. Climate change impacts on the returns to research investments were examined extending the work of Huffman and Evenson (2006), incorporating climatic effects. The conjecture is that the rate of return of agricultural research is falling due to altered resource allocations and unfavorable weather conditions, arising from the early onset of climate change. This work was done using a panel model of Agricultural Total Factor Productivity (TFP) for the forty-eight contiguous states over 1970?1999. Climatic variables such as temperature and amount and intensity of precipitation were added into the model. The main results are (1) climate change affects research productivity, varying by region; (2) this effect is generally negative; (3) additional investments are needed to achieve pre-climate change TFP rates of growth; and (4) the predicted investment increases are on the order of 18%. The second inquiry involved the impact of historical climatic conditions on the statistical distributions of crop yields through mean and variability. This was done statistically, using historical yields for several crops in the US, and climate variables, with annual observations from 1960 to 2007. The estimation shows that climate change is having an effect on the first two moments of the distribution, concluding that crop yield distributions are not stationary. The implication is that risk analysis must consider means and volatility measures that depend on future climatic conditions. The analysis shows that future mean yields will increase, but volatility will also be greater for the studied crops. These results have strong implication for future crop insurance decisions. Finally, an examination was done on the value of select forestry adaptation strategies in the face of climate change. This work is motivated by the known fact that forestry sector is already heavily adapted to changing climatic conditions. Using the Forestry and Agriculture Sector Optimization Model for the United States (FASOM), I found that rotation age is the most effective adaptation strategy being worth about 60 billion dollars, while changes in species and management intensity are worth about 1.5 billion, and land use change between forestry to agriculture is worth about 200,000.

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Abstract In recent years, many economists point out that physical capital stock and human capital stock cannot identify the difference of income effectively. Therefore, they attempt to add more interpreted variables, trying to illustrate economic growth that physical capital and human capital cannot explain. In general, economic growth theory has been applied to cross-country studies, and empirical researches of single country are limited. The main reason is that one cannot know how to measure the physical capital stock between states of a country efficiently. According to the method of Garofalo and Yamarik (2002), one can estimate the physical capital stocks of each state of the United States and justify the validity of Solow growth model. This paper specifically focuses on the so called new economy era (1990-2000). Our primary goal is to expand the existing models into more comprehensive one by including more explanatory variables. In 1999, The Nobelist -Grossman- released the concept of health capital ¡§One can choose the length of life¡¨. Each will be endowed initial value of health stock which depreciates through time and appreciates through the self-investment, exercising, for example. Health capital is also a kind of element of human capital; it will help human capital work normally. For this reason, we consider to measure U.S. output not only consider the effects of accumulation of physical capital and human capital, but also contains contributions of health capital. To analyze economic implications in three models from this study, there are several remarks can be drown¡G Firstly, physical capital and human capital provide significantly positive effect for economic growth rates of U.S. states from 1990 to 2000. The magnitude of estimated coefficient of physical capital has been decreasing, which denotes two phenomenons. In the one hand, physical capitals positively contribute the US economic growth. On the other hand, its influence to economic growth has marginally decreased over time. In contrast to physical capitals, human capital has shown constantly increasing influence to the US economic growth. Secondly, after adding the variable of health capital, the model can account the large scale of variation of the U.S. economic growth. The reason is that agents in the economy add their own length of life in the model and, then defer retirement and extend their productivities to economic growth. Thirdly, although term of is a random variable of cross states in the model; despite of technology stock, it comprises different endowment of resource, geographical location and institution etc. Therefore, it displays individual characteristics of every state. Hence, economic growth will reveal significant and positive beneficial result when we can think about more component of (for instant, adding political party variables) to improve and develop it. Lastly, we have low adjusted in this paper, and maybe because we focus on long-run output, and do not look upon puzzle of short-run business cycle. Romer (1987) denotes that short-run business cycle of economic variables dominates change of some variables for contributing long-run economic growth that will make estimation to convert nefficiently. Synthesizing the above mentioned consequences, one can find that U.S. impressed economic performance from 1990 to 2000. Not only contribute physical capital and human capital to the economy, health capital is another key element to maintain such sustained economic growth. Consequently, we suggest that if a nation pays more attention to health capital, which will result in economic growth and increase competitiveness for the nation. The results of this paper using the US as a sample may can serve as a reference to other countries using as a example to improve economic growth in the future.