This paper assesses the impact of legacy and credit scores on access to bank credit in South Africa. Typically, credit data focuses on socio-economic information. However legacy variables, factors beyond the control of individuals, have not been well considered. We find that although credit...

In this paper, we analyse the dynamic relationship between hours worked per employee (per self-employed) and marginal income tax-rate shocks in terms of both a comparative-dynamics model and a stochastic general equilibrium econometric model. The econometric model is estimated for Germany, UK...

This study investigates sustainability of external debt under a two-step non-linear framework. The first step uses a general linearity test proposed by Harvey and Leybourne (2007) to determine the linearity property of external debt. The second step applies a non-linear ADF unit root test...

The aging process that many developed economies will face in the medium-term is leading to reforms in the public pensions systems in order to solve the potential financial unsustainability generated by the foreseeable increase in the expenditure in pension benefits (assuming that the current...

Evidence on the association between widowhood and health is widely available in the literature. However, there is a dearth of analysis on the mechanism through which widowhood affects the health status of an individual, particularly in old age, specifically whether widowhood among the elderly...

For the sake of freedom, economic growth and poverty reduction the state in market economies should limit itself to regulating markets and (sometimes) correcting ‘market failures’. This neoliberal conception has been the near-consensus for the past two to three decades in the West and in...

This article investigates the effects of a large-scale public sector employment quota policy for disadvantaged minorities (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) in India on their occupational choices, as defined by skill level, during the 1980s and 1990s. We find that, first, the employment...

The existing studies of foreign direct investment and the corresponding technological diffusion process that they generate, focus either on specific parameters of the production process in isolation, or they combine certain parameters to construct indices that are not consistent across studies....

The main hypothesis tested in the paper is whether technology is a conduit of productivity growth for a country that falls behind the frontier. Although the current analysis focuses on a country growth narrative, the evidence represents a pair of countries (i.e. Greece and Germany) that...

In the traditional empirical convergence literature, a negative coefficient on initial income in a cross-country growth regression is interpreted as evidence of poor countries growing faster than richer ones. A key assumption in this work is that the relationship between initial income and...