Modern economic theories explain differences in productivity and economic growth across countries by differences in political and economic institutions, and differences in culture, geographical location, policies, and laws. The success of any of these theories in explaining the gap in...

It is widely believed that moderate and stable inflation rates promote the development process of a country, and hence economic growth. Moderate inflation supplements return to savers, enhances investment, and therefore, accelerates economic growth of the country. The main purpose of this study...

This paper examines the cointegration and causality among exchange rate, export, and import for Turkey during the period of 1998-2006. The econometrics results show that there is a cointegration between exports and import, but direction of causality is bi-directional between these two variables....

In this study, we investigate empirically the relationship between telephone penetration and economic growth, using data for developing countries. Using 3SLS, we estimate a system of equations that endogenizes economic growth and telecom penetration. We find that the traditional economic factors...

This study examines the financial and statistical properties of the variance and semi variance (SV). Since the mean-variance approach and its extended mean-semi variance approach assume normality of returns, it has been observed that practical and computational problems emerged in the cases of...

Many studies indicate that excessive regulatory burdens can hamper national economic performances. In spite of that, there are relatively few empirical estimates of the potential income gains that may accrue to countries that deregulate their business sectors. This paper partially fills that gap...

This paper analyses pro-competitive effects of increased trade openness in the manufacturing industry in Ecuador. The data comes from the survey of manufacturing and mining industries in Ecuador for the years 1997-2003. Estimation procedures on both industry- and establishment-level data try to...

Bilateral Free Trade Agreements have been used extensively by Chile to expand its exports and improve its competitive position in the world markets. It is the objective of this paper to analyze the role of trade agreements, price competitiveness, real income, per capita income differences and...

In this paper, we build a model for the yield curve in Germany, from 1975 to 2001, and use it to test the Lucas Critique. We provide a first application of the new general-to-specific automatic model selection algorithm embodied in PcGets to term structure odeling, and use new super exogeneity...

Applying a non-parametric Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) method, this paper attempts to investigate productivity changes of Malaysian non-bank financial institutions during the post crisis period of 2000-2004. Our results suggest that: (1) Malaysian NBFIs have exhibit productivity regress of...