Economic growth from a globalisation point of view is seen as being impacted to a large extent by two phenomena – foreign direct investments (FDI) and trade. FDI brings many positive spillovers such as technological progress and increases in human capital. Trade can help improve the efficiency of production allocation in which the comparative advantage lies. According to David Nellor (2008) parts of sub-Saharan Africa today experience growth rates similar to those of the first five founding members of ASEAN in the beginning of the 1980’s: Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to analyse the role of FDI and trade openness in promoting economic growth in Africa and Asia. The contrast in how FDI and openness to trade affect growth rates in these regions in particular is something that has been left out from previous studies. It may give a hint of what factor(s) are important for Africa and Asia to focus on in order to stimulate economic growth. The effects of FDI and trade openness on economic growth are empirically tested using data on a sample of 82 countries in Africa and Asia over the years of 1999-2006. Regressions are conducted using the total sample as well as the regions separately to show on differences of the importance and effects of the explanatory variables in each of the two regions. The regression results most often indicate a positive relationship between FDI, trade and their combined effect on economic growth. Despite this the results are weaker than expected and in general insignificant. A possible explanation for the unexpected results may be due to additional forces driving economic growth such as macroeconomic stability, human capital, taxes and inflation all of which have been left out from the estimated model. / Ekonomisk tillväxt påverkas ur ett globaliseringsperspektiv, av två fenomen: utländska direktinvesteringar och handel. Utländska direktinvesteringar medför många positiva tillskott, som tekniska framsteg och högre nivåer av humankapital. Handel gör länder mer effektiva, då de kan fokusera sin produktion på varor där de har komparativa fördelar. Enligt David Nellor (2008) kan delar av tillväxtnivåer i sub-Sahara jämföras med grundarna av ASEAN:s under tidigt 1980-tal: Singapore, Thailand, Filippinerna, Malaysia och Indonesien. Syftet med denna kandidatuppsats är att analysera utländska direktinvestingar och frihandels roll för att gynna ekonomisk tillväxt i Afrika och Asien. Effekten av utländska direktinvesteringar och frihandel på tillväxtnivåer i dessa två regioner är något som utelämnats i tidigare studier. Resultaten kan indikera vilken eller vilka faktor(er) är viktiga för att stimulera ekonomisk tillväxt i Afrika och Asien. Uppsatsen fokuserar på 82 länder i Afrika och Asien under åren 1999-2006. Analysen är genomförd på afrikanska och asiatiska länder tillsammans, men också för kontinentalspecifika effekter. Resultaten visar i hög grad positiva samband mellan utländska direktinvesteringar, frihandel och dess kombinerade effekt på ekonomisk tillväxt. Resultaten är svagare än förväntat och en möjlig förklaring kan vara de komplexa samband av krafter som driver ekonomisk tillväxt, till exempel makroekonomisk stabilitet, humankapital, skatter och inflation som är utelämnande från den estimerade modellen.

Die derzeitige Wiederkehr von protektionistischen Maßnahmen und Illiberalismus erfordert ein detaillierteres Verständnis der Wechselwirkungen zwischen wirtschaftlichen und politischen Faktoren. Die vorliegende Doktorarbeit besteht aus vier Artikeln, die unser Verständnis der komplexen Wechselwirkungen zwischen Handel, Demokratie, Entwicklung und Konflikt voranbringen. Der erste Artikel (Boese 2015) fragt: Führen Revolutionen zu mehr Demokratie? Die untersuchten revolutionären Konflikte sind positiv mit dem demokratischen Weg eines Landes verbunden. Darüber hinaus führt der Artikel ein neues Maß für Demokratie ein, den (X-) Pol-Index. Der zweite Artikel (Boese 2019) vergleicht die Demokratiemaße von PolityIV, Freedom House und V-Dem. V-Dem Maße übertreffen die anderen in allen Bereichen. Der Artikel bietet eine Einführung in die Demokratiemessung, einen Vergleich der Vor- und Nachteile jedes Maßes in empirischen Analysen und Fallstudien, um die Unterschiede zwischen den Indizes zu veranschaulichen. Der dritte Artikel (Boese & Kamin 2019) untersucht das Problem inkonsistenter Länderkodierungen zwischen verschiedenen Makrodatensätzen. Es führt zu einer Verzerrung der Stichprobenauswahl, da sich in Konfliktländern oft Name und Grenzen des Staates ändern. Dadurch wird die Zuverlässigkeit von Schlussfolgerungen aus statistischen Analysen, insbesondere in der Konfliktökonomie, eingeschränkt. Detaillierte Übersichtstabellen der Länderkodierungsdifferenzen werden bereitgestellt. Der vierte Artikel (mit K. Kamin, CAU Kiel) untersucht die Wechselwirkungen von Demokratie, Entwicklung, Handel und Konflikt. In einem länderspezifischen VAR werden die Auswirkungen von Schocks auf einen der vier Faktoren untersucht. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass diese Effekte im Laufe der Zeit in und innerhalb von Ländern sehr heterogen sind. Der Artikel erhielt den Michael D. Intrilligator Best PhD Student Paper Award auf der 23. International Conference on Economics and Security in Madrid (Juni 2019). / The current return to protectionist measures coinciding with a rise of illiberalism triggers the need for a more detailed understanding of the interactions of economic and political dimensions. This thesis consists of four articles advancing our understanding of the complex interactions between trade, democracy, development and conflict. The first article (Boese 2015) asks: do revolutions lead to more democracy? The revolutionary conflicts examined are positively associated with a country's democratic path. In addition, the article introduces a new measure of democracy, the (X-)Pol Index. The second article (Boese 2019) compares measure validity and reliability of Polity2, Freedom House and V-Dem democracy indices. The latter surpass the former in all relevant areas. The article provides an introduction to democracy measurement, a comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of each measure in empirical analyses and several case studies to illustrate differences across the three indices. The third article (Boese & Kamin 2019) shows that in spite of standardization efforts the problem of inconsistent country coding across and within disciplines persists. This leads to sample selection bias as countries in conflict often undergo state name and border changes. In turn, reliability of inferences drawn from statistical analysis, in particular in conflict and peace economics, is limited. Detailed overview tables of the gravest country coding discrepancies are provided. The fourth article (with K. Kamin, CAU Kiel) examines the interactions of democracy, development, trade and conflict. It employs a country-specific VAR to study the effects of shocks in any of the four factors on one another. Results show that these effects are vastly heterogenous across and within countries over time. The article received the Michael D. Intrilligator Best PhD Student Paper Award at the 23rd International Conference on Economics and Security in Madrid, Spain (June 2019).

This study empirically examines the determinants of government expenditure in South Africa using annual data for the period from 1970 to 2014; and provides an overview of the South African government expenditure. The Johansen-Juselius co-integration test established that there is a long-run relationship between government expenditure and its determinants. The error correction model was used to examine the key determinants. The results of this study show that urbanisation rate, national income, poverty reduction; trade openness lagged one period and the wage rate significantly influence the size of government expenditure. Therefore, the study recommend that government create job opportunities; increase its expenditure in developing rural areas; and find ways to manage the public sector wage bill. The study concludes that population growth, inflation and trade openness in current period are not important in determining government expenditure in South Africa / Economics / M. Com. (Economics)

In the first paper, the effects of trade openness and conflict risk on income inequality are investigated. I obtain that the effect of trade openness on inequality depends on the level of conflict risk. More precisely, there exists a threshold effect: trade openness worsens income inequality in countries where the risk of internal and external conflicts is high. Moreover, I find that countries with higher risk of conflicts are more unequal, and that more ethnically diverse countries increase income inequality. Finally, I obtain that democratic regimes decrease inequality. In the second paper, we analyze the general-equilibrium consequences of property right enforcement in the natural resource sector. Assuming that exclusion requires both private and public enforcement efforts, we compare states that differ by their ability to provide protection services. This ability is referred to as state capacity. We obtain that public protection services can effectively act as either substitutes or complements to private enforcement, and this strongly depends on state capacity. Under low state capacity, an increase in state protection services leads to a drop in national income as labor is drawn away from the directly productive activities. The opposite holds for high-capacity states. As a result, public protection services have an ambiguous effect on national income even though they can unambiguously increase resource rents. In the third paper, we argue that the right to hold dual citizenship can generate important social and economic benefits beyond its political dimension. We assemble a large panel dataset on dual citizenship. We find that in developing countries, dual citizenship recognition increases remittance inflows by US$1.19 billion, GDP and household consumption, and improves child survival. In developed countries, however, dual citizenship recognition decreases remittance inflows by US$1.44 billion, but increases FDI by US$828 billion, raises household consumption, gross capital formation and trade, and provides incentives for skilled workers to move to other countries.

This study uses annual data for the period 1975-2014 for South Africa and Botswana, and 1979-2013 for Lesotho to examine empirically the impact of trade openness on economic growth in these three South African Customs Union (SACU) countries. The motivation for this study is that SACU countries are governed by the common agreement for the union that oversees the movement of goods that enter the SACU area. However, although these countries are in a com-mon union, they have quite different levels of development. Based on the country’s level of development, Lesotho is a lower middle-income and least developed country, whereas Botswana and South Africa are upper middle-income economies. Thus, these disparities in the levels of economic development of SACU countries i are expected to have different implications in relation to the extent to which trade openness affects economic growth. It is within this background that the current study seeks to examine what impact trade openness has on economic growth in each of the three selected countries. To check the robustness of the empirical results, this study uses four equations based on four different indicators of trade openness to examine the linkage between trade openness and economic growth. While Equation 1, Equation 2 and Equation 3 employ trade-based indicators of openness, Equation 4 uses a modified version of the UNCTAD (2012a) trade openness index that incorporates differences in country size and geography. Using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration and error-correction modelling, the study found that the impact of trade openness on economic growth varies across the three SACU countries. Based on the results for the first three equations, the study found that trade openness has a positive impact on economic growth in South Africa and Botswana, whereas it has no significant impact on economic growth in Lesotho. Based on Equation 4 results, the study found that after taking the differences in country size and geography into account, trade openness has a positive impact on economic growth in Botswana, but an insignificant impact in South Africa and Lesotho. For South Africa and Botswana, the main recommendation from this study is that policy makers should pursue policies that promote total trade to increase economic growth in both the short and the long run. For Lesotho, the study recommends, among other things, the adoption of policies aimed at enhancing human capital and infrastructural development as well as the broadening of exports, so as to enable the economy to grow to a threshold level necessary for the realisation of significant gains from trade. / Economics / Ph. D. (Economics)

In the first paper, the effects of trade openness and conflict risk on income inequality are investigated. I obtain that the effect of trade openness on inequality depends on the level of conflict risk. More precisely, there exists a threshold effect: trade openness worsens income inequality in countries where the risk of internal and external conflicts is high. Moreover, I find that countries with higher risk of conflicts are more unequal, and that more ethnically diverse countries increase income inequality. Finally, I obtain that democratic regimes decrease inequality. In the second paper, we analyze the general-equilibrium consequences of property right enforcement in the natural resource sector. Assuming that exclusion requires both private and public enforcement efforts, we compare states that differ by their ability to provide protection services. This ability is referred to as state capacity. We obtain that public protection services can effectively act as either substitutes or complements to private enforcement, and this strongly depends on state capacity. Under low state capacity, an increase in state protection services leads to a drop in national income as labor is drawn away from the directly productive activities. The opposite holds for high-capacity states. As a result, public protection services have an ambiguous effect on national income even though they can unambiguously increase resource rents. In the third paper, we argue that the right to hold dual citizenship can generate important social and economic benefits beyond its political dimension. We assemble a large panel dataset on dual citizenship. We find that in developing countries, dual citizenship recognition increases remittance inflows by US$1.19 billion, GDP and household consumption, and improves child survival. In developed countries, however, dual citizenship recognition decreases remittance inflows by US$1.44 billion, but increases FDI by US$828 billion, raises household consumption, gross capital formation and trade, and provides incentives for skilled workers to move to other countries.

La présente thèse est composée d’un ensemble de travaux de recherche en économie appliquée qui s’inscrivent dans le champ contemporain de l’économie de l’assurance. La thèse s’interroge sur comment les pays en développement pourraient développer davantage le secteur d’assurance afin de bénéficier des effets sur l’économie domestique. La première partie de la thèse analyse les déterminants macroéconomiques du développement du secteur d’assurance. Premièrement, les résultats montrent que l'augmentation du revenu par habitant conduit à une augmentation des primes d'assurance-vie et l’assurance-vie est un bien de luxe en Afrique Subsaharienne (chapitre 2). On trouve également des preuves que l’impact marginal du revenu dépend de la qualité de l'environnement juridique et politique. Deuxièmement, l’analyse de l’effet des IDE montre que, ceux-ci constituent un facteur clé dans l'augmentation des primes d'assurance non-vie à la fois dans les pays d’Afrique Subsaharienne (ASS) et dans les autres pays en développement (chapitre 3). Troisièmement, les activités d’assurance-vie et bancaire sont substituables en ASS, cependant les résultats indiquent une causalité unidirectionnelle allant du crédit bancaire au secteur privé vers le développement des activités d’assurance-vie (chapitre 4). La deuxième partie de la thèse analyse l’impact du développement du secteur d’assurance sur l’économie des pays en développement. Premièrement, il apparaît que le développement de l'assurance-vie a un effet positif sur la croissance économique dans les pays en développement d'une part et d'autre part, l’effet marginal de l’assurance-vie est influencé par les caractéristiques structurelles des pays (chapitre 5). Les primes d'assurance augmentent de façon significative la valeur des titres négociés sur le marché financier aussi bien avant et après la crise de 2007(chapitre 6). Troisièmement, la thèse a montré qu’il existe une relation à long terme entre le développement de l’assurance non-vie et l’ouverture commerciale et que les primes d'assurance non-vie améliorent l'ouverture au commerce international aussi bien dans les pays en développement que spécifiquement dans les pays à faible et moyen revenu (chapitre 7). / This thesis is composed of a set of research in applied economics that enroll in the contemporary field of economics of insurance. The thesis analyses how developing countries could develop more the insurance sector and benefit from these effects on local economy. The first part explored the determinants of insurance development from a macroeconomic perspective. First, the results show that increase of income per capita leads to an increase in life insurance premiums and that life insurance is a luxury commodity in Sub-Saharan Africa (chapter 2). We also find evidence that the marginal impact of income varies according to the quality of legal and political environment. Second, analysis of effect of the FDI inflows shows that these are a key factor in increase of non-life insurance premiums in countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and in other developing countries (chapter 3). In chapter 4, the results highlighted that the activities of life insurance and banking are substitutable in SSA and, however, there is presence of unidirectional causality running from real private credit density to life insurance and insurance density. The second part of the thesis has analysed effect of development of insurance sector on economy in developing countries. First, it appears that the development of life insurance has a positive effect on economic growth on the one hand and on the other hand marginal effect of life insurance is influenced by the structural characteristics of countries (chapter 5). In chapter 6, the results showed that the insurance premiums significantly increase stock market value traded, before as well and after the 2007's economic crisis. Finally, the thesis showed that there is a long term relationship between the development of non-life insurance and trade openness and that non-life insurance premiums improve openness to international trade as well in developing countries than specifically in low and middle income countries (chapter 7).

自從2008年全球經濟衰退以來，歐元區經濟顯著的衰退，特別是歐元區各成員國的經濟表現有明顯的差異。在本文中，我們試就成員國「貿易開放程度」和「財政基本面」這兩個重要特徵，來詮釋歐元區經濟穩定這個議題。在第二章中，我們在貿易開放程度不同的國家下，比較貨幣同盟制度與浮動匯率制度對於負向衝擊產生的影響。我們發現當貨幣當局愈重視產出穩定時，相較於浮動匯率制度，貨幣同盟制度將使產出下降的更多。在第三章中，我們將短期私人債券及長期政府債券引入貨幣同盟的兩國DSGE模型。我們推斷，歐洲央行(ECB)的公共部門債券購買計劃（PSPP），對於不同財政狀況的成員國，有著不對稱的總體經濟影響。在第四章中，我們建立貨幣同盟經濟的最適貨幣政策模型。我們發現成員國間經濟差異，將影響貨幣同盟的整體福利水準。相較於傳統零利率最適貨幣政策文獻，本研究的結果顯示不論是權衡或承諾制度，增加公共部門債券購買將緩和貨幣同盟的經濟波動。 / Since the global recession in 2008, the economic performance of the Euro area has declined significantly. In particular, there have been great differences in the economic performance among member states in the Euro area. In this dissertation, we attempt to address the issue of economic stability by focusing on two key features: the trade openness and the fiscal fundamentals among member states. In Chapter 2, we compare the impacts of the adverse shocks on countries with different degrees of openness under the monetary union regime, and our finding shows that the monetary union will result in a greater decline in output if the monetary authority attaches a higher weight to output stabilization. In Chapter 3, we build a two-country DSGE model representing a monetary union with both short-term and long-term government bonds. We deduce that the ECB’s public sector purchase programme (PSPP) has asymmetric macroeconomic effects on member states under different fiscal fundamentals. In Chapter 4, we set up an optimal monetary policy model of a monetary union. We find that the differences in the economic performance of individual member states will influence the union-wide welfare. Comparing our results with classical literature of optimal monetary policy at zero lower bound, by adding the PSPP, our study indeed reflects lower volatility of the union-wide economy under either discretion or commitment.

In the first paper, the effects of trade openness and conflict risk on income inequality are investigated. I obtain that the effect of trade openness on inequality depends on the level of conflict risk. More precisely, there exists a threshold effect: trade openness worsens income inequality in countries where the risk of internal and external conflicts is high. Moreover, I find that countries with higher risk of conflicts are more unequal, and that more ethnically diverse countries increase income inequality. Finally, I obtain that democratic regimes decrease inequality. In the second paper, we analyze the general-equilibrium consequences of property right enforcement in the natural resource sector. Assuming that exclusion requires both private and public enforcement efforts, we compare states that differ by their ability to provide protection services. This ability is referred to as state capacity. We obtain that public protection services can effectively act as either substitutes or complements to private enforcement, and this strongly depends on state capacity. Under low state capacity, an increase in state protection services leads to a drop in national income as labor is drawn away from the directly productive activities. The opposite holds for high-capacity states. As a result, public protection services have an ambiguous effect on national income even though they can unambiguously increase resource rents. In the third paper, we argue that the right to hold dual citizenship can generate important social and economic benefits beyond its political dimension. We assemble a large panel dataset on dual citizenship. We find that in developing countries, dual citizenship recognition increases remittance inflows by US$1.19 billion, GDP and household consumption, and improves child survival. In developed countries, however, dual citizenship recognition decreases remittance inflows by US$1.44 billion, but increases FDI by US$828 billion, raises household consumption, gross capital formation and trade, and provides incentives for skilled workers to move to other countries.