This thesis offers three empirical essays on the effects of structural reforms. Although these essays can be regarded as three self-contained studies, they are linked by the idea that structural reforms are characterised by significant interactions. Chapter 1 studies the interplay of trade openness, capital account liberalisation, and reform of the banking sector in a panel of 90 countries for the period 1973-2005. The estimation of flexible functional forms through nonlinear least squares, as well as of linear equations based on Taylor expansions and other related specifications, consistently produced a meaningful result. It is suggested that these three policies are complementary; the very same reform may generate very different growth outcomes depending on how policies are advanced in the other domains. Chapter 2 looks at financial deepening in the same group of countries by analysing the interaction between banking liberalisation and capital account liberalisation. The two reforms have a significant effect on domestic credit to the private sector when they coexist concurrently. In methodological terms the paper makes use of a standard multiplicative interaction term; in addition a more flexible version of the term is introduced. A supermodularity test is also implemented. Chapter 3 revisits the period of early post-communism transition to study the implications of the interplay between privatisation and liberalisation of prices for economic growth (more specifically, for the attenuation of the so-called "transformational recession"). It is suggested that privatisation should be implemented in a context of totally freed prices. Privatising in a context where an important share of prices is still the object of administrative decisions is associated with a negative contribution to economic performance.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:605166 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | da Rocha, Bruno J. T. |
| Publisher | University of Essex |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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