No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Regional economics addresses a number of major tasks related to regional and local area development issues such as the planning of investment (private and public), the provision of public goods, urban redevelopment schemes, fiscal and financial relations among various levels of government and subsidy and area development programs. These issues are often surrounded by a sense of urgency stemming in part from the strong spirit of development in many communities and the rising awareness of regional disparity. Yet, the lack of adequate information on subnational economies has traditionally hampered efforts at analyzing many of these issues and at providing adequate choices for decision making.</p> <p>The inadequacy of statistical data at the regional level seldom means, however, a complete lack of information. The available statistical and administrative data are usually prepared by a variety of government agencies and sources for different purposes and, consequently, lack a coherent or systematic framework which relates them meaningfully to each other and to data on the total economy. There is, thus, an obvious need to integrate these data sets with each other and with information on the economy as a whole in order to enhance their usefulness for analysis and decision making at the regional level.</p> <p>It is maintained in this dissertation that a system of economic accounts provides a suitable framework for the integration and systematic treatment of available regional microdata. The application of economic accounting to various types of regional information can give rise to a complete set of regional economic accounts useful for economic analysis at the regional level. This has been demonstrated by designing a system of regional accounts - based on national (provincial) accounting concepts - to Ontario and by estimating the accounting entries for each of its 10 economic regions. The estimation of regional entries is accomplished by a disaggregation or apportionment of the Ontario Accounts totals in the year of estimate (1971) on the basis of various allocation techniques and by using the microdata sets available at the industry and regional levels as allocators.</p> <p>The systematic integration of fragmented regional data by means of an economic accounting framework produces consistency, comprehensiveness and comparability of economic data among the regions and between them and the total economy. It is hoped that economic accounting in Ontario at the regional level will increasingly become recognized as a flexible tool of analysis which can generate a useful interaction between data and method thereby improving both theory and empirical results. The principal achievement has been to highlight areas of weakness in constructing regional economic accounts. It is also hoped that it can serve as a benchmark in future research efforts.</p> <p>The set of regional accounts for Ontario derived in this study was utilized in the context of a regional macro model (based on aggregate demand and supply) for the purpose of calculating a set of regional income multipliers. The multipliers based on regional accounting data are a precise and powerful tool of analysis - especially in determining the multiplier effects of exogenous expenditure in each region - which enriches our knowledge of regional economies and appreciation of the effect of regional policies.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Most studies of the investment-cash flow sensitivity hypothesis in the literature compare estimates of the sensitivity coefficients from cross sectional regressions across groups of firms classified into more or less financially constrained groups based on some measure of perceived financial constraint. These studies report conflicting results depending on the classification scheme used to stratify the sample. They have been criticized on conceptual and methodological grounds. In this study we mitigate some of these problems reported in the literature by using the insights from Cleary, Povel and Raith (2007) in a new research design. We test for the significances of the changes in the investment-cash flow sensitivity, in a time-series rather than cross sectional framework, for the same set of firms surrounding an exogenous shock to the firms' information asymmetry. The CPR (2007) model predicts an unambiguous increase (decrease) in investment-cash flow sensitivity when information asymmetry of the firm increases (decreases). Further, by examining the differences in the sensitivity coefficients we expect some of the biases in the coefficient from measurement errors in Q to cancel out. The two events we study are (i) the implementation of SOX which is expected to decrease information asymmetry from improved and increased disclosure and (ii) the deregulation of industries which is expected to increase information asymmetry largely from the lifting of price controls and entry barriers. We report that information asymmetry decreases following SOX and that there is a commensurate decrease in the investment-cash flow sensitivity, pre- to post SOX. The hypothesis that a greater change in investment cash flow sensitivity is associated with a greater change in information asymmetry is only weakly supported by the data. We also report that information asymmetry increases following deregulation with a commensurate increase in investment cash flow sensitivity, pre to post deregulation. The hypothesis of a greater increase in the sensitivity for subsamples with a greater increase in information asymmetry is not supported by the data. Overall, however, the study supports the investment-cash flow sensitivity hypothesis using a research design that corrects for some of the problems identified in the existing literature on the hypothesis. / Ph. D.

This paper reviews the long-term economic performance of Tanzania since independence using long-term series of key economic and social indicators constructed from a variety of sources. The disastrous export performance for most of the period under consideration can be attributed partly to domestic policy failures and partly to a hostile external environment. However inconsistent donor support to a highly aid dependent economy at times exacerbated the constraints imposed by persistent foreign exchange shortages. Greater stability in funding and a more flexible policy dialogue are needed. The extent to which a small and poor economy with a weak indigenous private sector can rely on foreign private investment to finance investment in the early stages of adjustment is questioned. Investment in human capital beyond primary school level is also needed if growth is to be sustained.

Investment screening is the process by which a host state uses its sovereign judicial and/or administrative jurisdiction to supervise investments made by foreign investors, in particular direct investments made in the host country. Needless to say, the host nations would use their legislative authority in areas that are extremely important to them, such as defence, energy, transportation, and natural resources. On the other hand, FDI has been shown to have positive effects on economic growth and employment both directly and indirectly. It is generally agreed, at least in principle, that there should be an appropriate balance between the legislative authority of host governments and the safety of foreign investments. Therefore, on one side, we have the investment screening system, and on the other, we have protection for investors and investments. The safeguarding of investments is a crucial aspect not only during the preestablishment phase but also in the post-establishment phase, through ex-post screening conducted by the competent authority of the host state. Irrespective of their sovereign powers, states are obligated to provide a specific degree of legal protection as guaranteed by international treaties in both scenarios. The aforementioned criteria encompass, among others, the principles of impartiality, equal treatment for domestic and foreign entities, preferential treatment for none, and just and unbiased treatment. As will be expounded upon, if the level of obstruction violates any of the principles that are enshrined in said agreements, nations may be held accountable. Notwithstanding, most states have a means of recourse in the event of a violation of treaty obligations, commonly referred to as ‘security exception clauses’ within the doctrine.  The investment screening mechanism is implemented to safeguard national security. In this regard, pertinent exception clauses may be utilised to substantiate treaty violations. The matter at hand shall be examined according to the principles of BIT practice, as well as the Regional and Sectoral Investment Treaties.

Thesis advisor: Anant Nyshadham / Thesis advisor: Kit Baum / The dissertation consists of three independent explorations of labor market dynamics in developing countries. I first investigate how minimum wages affect employment and investment decision of firms in India and how they can lead to accelerated automation and offshoring. Then, I investigate how managers of garment production lines in India's largest ready-made garment producer establish informal agreements to deal with worker absenteeism shocks. Finally, I study how Indonesian households learn about their productivity in different sectors of the economy and show that they often spend years, if not decades, in sectors where they are less productive which depresses their earning potentials, but they converge to their most productive sector over time. In the first chapter, "Effect of Minimum Wages on Automation and Offshoring Decisions of Firms: Evidence from India", I study the effect of India's local minimum wages on the production structure of firms in the formal economy. I compile data on the country's numerous minimum wages which vary at the state, year, and industry level, and show that changes to these wages have important effects on firm-level capital investment and employment of different types of employees. The effects depend on the firms' ability to automate and offshore certain tasks. Using a difference-in-difference approach, I show that firms in the average industry, that is, firms in industries neither intensive in routine nor offshorable tasks, continue to invest in machinery and computers at a rate of 8% per year following a minimum wage hike. However, they substitute payroll workers with managers and contract workers less likely to be bound by the minimum wage. Firms in industries intensive in routine tasks that are easier to automate invest 6.1% more in machinery and 4% more in computers, at the expense of payroll workers. Firms in industries intensive in tasks easier to do remotely continue to invest in machinery and computers, but the rate of investment in computers falls by 6.2% following a minimum wage hike, and payroll worker employment falls as well. This suggests that some tasks that combine workers and computers, like data analysis, may be offshored. These results support the predictions of a task-based production model, and indicate that minimum wages have a strong effect on the structure of production at the firm level, leading some towards increased rates of automation and offshoring. In the second chapter, "Absenteeism, Productivity, and Relational Contracts Inside the Firm", joint with other researchers, we study relational contracts among managers using unique data that tracks transfers of workers across teams in Indian ready-made garment factories. We focus on how relational contracts help managers cope with worker absenteeism shocks, which are frequent, often large, weakly correlated across teams, and which substantially reduce team productivity. Together these facts imply gains from sharing workers. We show that managers respond to shocks by lending and borrowing workers in a manner consistent with relational contracting, but many potentially beneficial transfers are unrealized. This is because managers' primary relationships are with a very small subset of potential partners. A borrowing event study around main trading partners' separations from the firm reinforces the importance of relationships. We show robustness to excluding worker moves least likely to reflect relational borrowing responses to idiosyncratic absenteeism shocks. Counterfactual simulations reveal large gains to reducing costs associated with forming and maintaining additional relationships among managers. In the last chapter, "Learning, Selection, and the Misallocation of Households Across Sectors", joint with other researchers, we study the role of labor misallocation (i.e., suboptimal sorting of households across sectors) in explaining low productivity in developing countries. We estimate a generalized earnings equation with dynamic correlated random coefficients, allowing households to learn about their relative productivity across the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors. Estimates show that households sort across sectors on comparative advantage, but learn and converge slowly over time, with many households spending substantial time in a suboptimal sector. Roughly 33% of households are misallocated to start, earning 64% less on average than they could have if they were properly sorted across sectors. Our approach nests several alternative models which can be ruled out, including those without dynamics and/or heterogeneity in relative productivity across sectors. We also evaluate alternative interpretations for the dynamic sorting we observe in the data such as saving out of financial constraints and skill accumulation or learning by doing. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Yes / We derive the optimal investment timing and real option value for a facility with price and quantity uncertainty, where there might be a government subsidy proportional to production quantity. Where the subsidy is proportional to the multiplication of the price and quantity, dimensionality can be reduced. Alternatively, we provide quasi-analytical solutions for different quantity subsidy arrangements: permanent (policy is certain); retractable; suddenly permanent; and suddenly retractable. Whether policy uncertainty acts as a disincentive for early investment depends on the type of subsidy arrangement. The greatest incentive for early investment is an actual retractable subsidy, a ‘flighty bird in hand’.