The rate of economic growth varies extensively between different countries. The underlying reasons to the differences are dissimilarities in productivity and efficiency, which in turn seem to be affected by factors such as the institutional setup, the rate of economic freedom, the level of human and social capital, corruption and interpersonal trust.This thesis investigates the relationship between economic growth and the level of democracy in developing countries, as a well-functioning democracy to a large extent corresponds to an inclusive institutional setup. The empirical investigation is conducted with a regression analysis. Using secondary data from acknowledged organizations and institutes, possible factors that may affect average GDP per capita growth are examined. The estimations included in the regression are democracy, foreign direct investment, education expectancy, initial GDP per capita, population growth rate, life expectancy, corruption, Rule of Law and Internet users. The empirical result shows that democracy has no significant effect on growth, but suggests that the effect might be indirect since factors such as good maintenance of Rule of Law, low level of corruption, high interpersonal trust, a high level of economic freedom and enhanced property rights are empirically proven to correspond to well functioning institutions. This result is in accordance with previous research and seems to support the idea that a good institutional setup is important for economic growth.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the effects of gender inequality on GDP and GDP per capita. A cross sectional analysis of 177 countries over the time period 1998 to 2008 is undertaken with the use of linear regressions. There are several different factors that contribute to the gender inequality within a country and several ways to measure that disparity. The most well known measurement is the Gender-related Development Index and the components within this composite index have been studied thoroughly, although the index as a whole has not. This thesis then contributes with an overall view of how the gender inequality is important for the GDP and GDP per capita. The findings illustrate how significant equality between the genders is for the economy, irrespective of the human development level within the countries. The implication of this is that gender equality is important for the GDP and GDP per capita, which is in accordance with the theories. One large issue is that there is no way of confirming the way of causality between gender equality and GDP or GDP per capita.

Abstract Attractiveness may be defined by a variety of factors but you should see it in the public planning as it is to have a positive population growth and economic growth, through working with communications, service, housing, to name a few. This is done primarily through direct projects both within the municipality and through various partnerships between local and regional level. The progress we have seen in recent years has gone more towards a clear shell level, particularly a regional level where these have had a much greater freedom with clear geographical boundaries in between each other. Within these regions there are also clear regional groupings that have common interests and competing between each other. In my thesis, we have been distinguished including three levels of scale levels. At the local level Osby municipality, together with the other municipalities in Skåne Nordost working Sound region and at regional level, Region Skåne after that will the national level and global level. Osby has for several years worked with attractiveness both within its own municipality, and through collaborations with both north-east Skåne, Region Skåne and a number of other formal and informal collaborations. Efforts to increase its attractiveness has been assumed to have a stable population and a positive economic growth. This work has been made concrete by using the outline above, and that through various projects, such as this can Pågatågen and Boda like to mention. Both projects are designed to increase the attractiveness of just Osby. Through working with these projects and to always show up, so will these projects lead to Osby will have a positive population growth and economic growth. Osby municipality has a good location for the future, especially their geographical position, especially in view of the main line gives them an edge against other municipalities located in the periphery of a strong growth region. Another reason that makes Osby has a good location that they went through a restructuring during the high economic climate and with it so has it been able to adapt its business is now located at a high national level.

The purpose of this paper is to study China’s income inequality under rapid economic growth.Does the relationship between economic growth and income inequality in China follow theKuznets hypothesis? What is the main cause and trend of China’s income inequality? We usedata which covers the period 1980-2005 to analyze the overall inequality, and data coveringthe period 1980-2002 to analyze the inequality inside rural and urban areas. The derivedresults doubt the validity of Kuznets hypothesis on explaining the relationship betweeneconomic growth and income inequality in China. Also we derive the trend of China’sincreased income inequality and find that the urban-rural income disparity is the main causeof China’s income inequality.

Since the floating exchange rate regime was set up in 1973, the issue of exchange rate has been concerned not only by corporate organizations but also folks. For multinational corporate institutions, exchange rate plays an important role in their profit. For folks, exchange rate influences the cost of going abroad. What¡¦s more, it is also one of investment tool for making profits. There are many empirical researches attesting that the term structure can forecast economic growth, and the exchange rate can be predicted by economic growth. However, no researches have shown the direct relationship between the term structure and the exchange rate. Therefore, the main purpose of this article is to examine whether the term structure can predict the exchange rate or not, and then to us this result to compare with the empirical result in which many researches claim that the real long term interest rate can predict the exchange rate very well. In the final step, we use the method of out of sample test to examine our model and random work model to make our examination more robust. In conclusion, our empirical research attests that the relationship between the term structure and the exchange rate is significantly negative. This result also shows that the ability of our model¡¦s prediction is better than that of others.

This purpose behind this study is to develop a model for forecasting the performance of the Taiwanese economy based on monthly time series data. We first extract the useful factors through factor analysis. Next, we rank the factor scores according to the rules of the trend and interpret the scores as signals to buy or sell appropriately. Our main result is that the Sharpe ratio of out-of-sample back-testing from January 2007 to December 2010 is 0.48, indicating an ability to forecast financial crises. In addition, a Sharpe ratio of 0.95 during the 2008 financial crisis suggests that our model may have been effective in predicting this crisis. Moreover, the macroeconomic factor model can provide better forecasting skills during financial crises. To conclude, this research may be of importance in explaining the relationship between macroeconomic variables and the business cycle, as well as in providing investors with better forecasting signals of the stock market in Taiwan.

Before a government makes economic policies, it must first fully understand the causality between energy consumption and economic growth. This study uses Chow Test, Unit Root Test, Co-integration Test, Vector Autoregressive Model, Vector Error Correction Model, Granger Causality Test, Impulse Response Function and Variance Decomposition to examine whether the relationships between energy consumption and economic growth for Taiwan and Korea had changed after the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, in order to understand whether their economic policies have changed in response. Taiwan¡¦s energy consumption and GDP had one-way effect ¡V that is, her energy consumption affected GDP but not vice versa ¡V while that of South Korea exhibited a two-way relationship. However, after the Crisis, such relationship for Taiwan had changed to that of two-way. The relationship between energy consumption and GDP for South Korea remained two-way after the Crisis.

Abstract The thesis is from the angle of economic and industrial development, which proves between Taiwan's industrial structure and income distribution are positively correlated. With track of Taiwanese industry change, investigates the change of income distribution economic because of development and industrial structure change. Most of national economic development progress is associated with certain uneven distribution of income. The phenomenon of uneven income distribution is growing, however, is a concern in current worldwide economic development. In this article is the observation of Taiwanese industrial changes from early-day agricultural industry dramatically stepped to industrial industry, then expending toward service industry, to verify which is higher on uneven income distribution among them. This research takes the theories of Fisher and Clark (1939,1940) as foundation, based on productivity and GDP, to build the pragmatic model of Regression Analysis as proof of income distribution affecting to tertiary industrial sectors change in Taiwan. The substantial evidence finds the growth of the service sector increased by 1%, the impact of Taiwan's economic growth is 0.769%, the agricultural sector is 0.103%, while service sector increased by 1%. The worsening of income distribution, caused the agricultural sector decreased by 0.11%. Therefore, we can deduce that the service sector growth more has brought Taiwan's economy growth but also income distribution has significant worse. This study also considers foreign trade is an important economic lifeline of Taiwan, according to the IMF (IMF), Taiwan is the closest relations with the United States in East Asian nations, but China is coming up right after. Thus, this study conducts variables of regression analysis by putting in the United States and China, as proof that China or USA has more impact on our economic growth as policy maker¡¦s reference.

The vigorous economic growth in Japan after World War II triggered the demographic change of low fertility, low mortality and increasing life expectancy. Japan¡¦s ¡§Dankainosedai¡¨ (Baby boomer) getting old led to a rapid aging society in the past twenty years. Currently, the percentage of older people in Japan significantly exceeds global average and even reaches a level so called super-aging society. Such phenomenon of baby bust and population aging not only deteriorates the economic growth but also reduces government¡¦s budget for public construction, leads to rural-urban divide, and causes major social issues such as family support, retirement and healthcares. Recent literature focusing on influence of demographic transition on economic growth was primarily based on cross-sectional data or panel data. Few articles presented analysis using the prefecture -by- prefecture or regional data as a base. Therefore, we try to clarify the interaction between demographic change and economic growth by using 47 prefectures¡¦ statistic data of Japan, which is very well collected and ideal for conducting documental regression analysis. The objective of this paper is to provide some conclusions from Japan which might be useful for the government of Taiwan when making population and economic policy. Following Bloom and Williamson¡]1998¡^, this paper seek to examine the links between several variables, such as demographic change , and economic growth, by running regressions on panel data covering 47 prefectures of Japan during 1975-2008. We found that population growth, age structure, physical capital and industrial structure did have significant impact on growth rates of Japan. Population growth as a whole and the young and elderly dependants had a strong negative impact on economic growth, while growth of the working-age population and physical capital had strong positive impact. The result shown that the economic growth of Japan was impeded for a few years since the age structure of population was shifted to constrictive type which is caused by baby bust and aging. We also tried different frameworks to examine the influence of various variables, such as selecting some prefectures with unique feature, segmenting seven major economic regions, or dividing years in two periods ¡]before and after the year with bubble economy 1989¡^. We can make a conclusion that comparing with the period 1975 -1989, the economic growth rate during 1990-2008 slumped due to the changes of age structure, physical capital and industrial structure.

In this thesis, I take Yunnan and Heilongjiang as a sample to discuss the border trade in China. I find that there are obvious difference between southern and northern border trade because of the demand and supply of natural resource, the industrial structure, the structure of import and export, the step of economic growth of the neighbor countries, as well as the open policy and the foreign relationship among those countries.