A bulk of empirical literature has emerged that explores the role of various location factors as determinants of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs). A notable feature of these studies is that their empirical approaches abstract from third-country (spatial) effects in FDI across the home and host country dimensions. Neglecting these effects could bias results concerning the role of location factors for attracting FDI. This in turn may lead to misguided economic policy conclusions. The current paper adds to the literature by applying the recently proposed spatial "origin-destinationow model" of LeSage and Pace (2008) to FDI ows from 7 Western OECD home countries to 8 CEE host countries. Controlling for country-pair and time effects our results indicate that (a) spatial interactions across the host country dimension matter for FDI revealing that vertical complex FDI ows dominate total FDI ows to CEECs; (b) spatial autocorrelation in the home country dimension is absent; (c) results of previous studies remain valid as coefficient estimates on location factors change only slightly when spatial interdependencies are considered and (d) effective corporate income taxes and the endowment with production-related material infrastruc- ture are statistically and economically signifficant determinants of FDI in CEECs. (author's abstract) / Series: Discussion Papers SFB International Tax Coordination

This paper evaluates the monetary and macroprudential policies that mitigate the procyclicality arising from the interlinkages between current account deficits and financial vulnerabilities. We develop a two-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with heterogeneous households and collateralised debt. The model predicts that external shocks are important in driving current account deficits that are coupled with run-ups in house prices and household debt. In this context, optimal policy features an interest-rate response to credit and a LTV ratio that countercyclically responds to house price dynamics. By allowing an interest-rate response to changes in financial variables, the monetary policy authority improves social welfare, because of the large welfare gains accrued to the savers. The additional use of a countercyclical LTV ratio that responds to house prices, increases the ability of borrowers to smooth consumption over the cycle and is Pareto improving. Domestic and foreign shocks account for a similar fraction of the welfare gains delivered by such a policy. (authors' abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

It is increasingly acknowledged that the proper objective of government efforts towards economic development should be aimed at improvements beyond simple measures of growth, poverty and inequality towards richer measures of human well-being. Herein, the economic and non-economic quality of life, as well as the quantity of life, becomes important indicators. Economists and other social planners therefore need to develop more meaningful indicators of the quality of life. Objective and subjective indicators of the quality of life can be distinguished. For various reasons, this thesis will focus on the search for more meaningful objective indicators of the quality of life. One of the most wellknown objective indicators of quality of life is the Human Development Index (HDI). There is, however, a growing dissatisfaction with the HDI. In this thesis, two recent methodological advances in the measurement of quality of life are applied and combined and, in particular, in the measurement of the non-economic quality of life, to the sub-national quality of life in South Africa. As such, this thesis’ contribution is twofold. First, it investigates the extent to which the quality of life differs within a developing country, as opposed to most studies that focus on either inter-country differences in quality of life, or studies that focus only on spatial inequalities within countries using a restricted set of measures such as per capita income or poverty rates and headcounts. Secondly, this thesis applies a recent methodology proposed by McGillivray (2005) to isolate the non-economic (non-monetary) quality of life in various composite indices and to focus on the non-economic quality of life across 351 South African magisterial districts Indices for the non-economic quality of life are compiled for geographical quality, for demographic quality, and based on the human development index. Furthermore, given that composite indices used in the construction of measures of quality of life consist of weightings of multiple proxies, this thesis implements the method of Lubotsky and Wittenberg (2006) which proposed a new estimator for the case where multiple proxies are to be used for a single, unobserved variable such as quality of life. This thesis establishes that when the non-economic quality of life of the demographic index is considered, the top ten regions in 1001 were as follows: Pretoria, Johannesburg, Soweto, Port Elizabeth, Durban, Inanda, Pietermaritzburg, Wynberg, Mitchellsplain and Vanderbijlpark. It is important to note that, when interpreting these results, one should take caution since variables such as the number of people, number of households etc. is included in this index and as a region grows in population size the more negative consequences such as a higher crime rate can be associated with the particular region. The top ten regions in which to reside in 1004 as determined by the geography quality of life index were: Calvinia, Gordonia, Namaqualand, Kenhardt, Carnarvon, Ubombo, Williston, Hlabisa, Ceres and Ingwavuma. This geography index measures a region's natural beauty which, according to Wey (2000), contributes positively to one's perceived quality of life. Considering changes in non-economic quality of life indices between 1996 and 2004, the conclusion can he drawn that the South African government has been successful to a certain degree in addressing non-economic quality of life. Social policies such as health care, education, housing, water and sanitation appear to have had a positive effect on people's perceived non-economic quality of life in areas that were relatively deprived in 1996. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Economics))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007

This paper examines the long-term relationship between primary energy consumption and other key macroeconomic variables, including real GDP, labour force, capital stock and technology, using a panel dataset for 64 countries over the period 1965-2009. Deploying panel error correction models, we find that there is a positive relationship running from physical capital, GDP, and population to primary energy consumption. We observe however a negative relationship between total factor productivity and primary energy usage. Significant differences arise in the magnitude of the cointegration coefficients, when we allow for differences in geopolitics and wealth levels. We also argue that inference on the basis of a single model without taking model uncertainty into account can lead to biased conclusions. Consequently, we address this problem by applying simple model averaging techniques to the estimated panel cointegration models. We find that tackling the uncertainty associated with selecting a single model with model averaging techniques leads to a more accurate representation of the link between energy consumption and the other macroeconomic variables, and to a significantly increased out-of-sample forecast performance. (authors' abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Past focus in the panel gravity literature has been on multidimensional fixed effects specifications in an effort to accommodate heterogeneity. After introducing fixed effects for each origin- destination dyad and time-period speciffic effects, we find evidence of cross-sectional dependence in flows. We propose a simultaneous dependence gravity model that allows for network dependence in flows, along with computationally efficient MCMC estimation methods that produce a Monte Carlo integration estimate of log-marginal likelihood useful for model comparison. Application of the model to a panel of trade flows points to network spillover effects, suggesting the presence of network dependence and biased estimates from conventional trade flow specifications. / Series: Working Papers in Regional Science

Corporate Growth is a concept that has been widely treated in a specific way or as part of strategy theories, in definition and in econometric models and has also been studied in many different aspects and approaches. The author describes in depth the main variables affecting corporate growth and the underlying business processes. This empirical research has focused on Sales, Profit-Cash Flow, Risk, Created Shareholder Value, Market Value and Overall Performance econometric models. These panel data models are based on the 500 Companies of the Standard & Poor’s 500. The methodology used has been very strict in identifying exogenous variables, walking through the different alternative econometric models, discussing results, and, in the end, describing the practical implications in today’s business corporate management. We basically assume that the Functions/Departments act independently in the same company, many times with different objectives, and in this situation clear processes are key to clarify the situations, roles and responsibilities. We also assume that growth implies interactions among the different functions in a company and the CEO acts to lead and coach his immediate Directors as a referee of the key conflicts through his Operating Mechanism. The objective of this PhD Dissertation is to clarify the business priorities and identify the most relevant variables in every process leading to the highest efficiency in reaching a sustainable and profitable growth. It covers the lack of academic studies on the nature and specific driving factors of corporate growth and provides a working framework for Entrepreneurs and Management leading to the Company’s success.