It is often asserted with confidence that foreign direct investment (FDI) is beneficial for economic growth in the host economy. Empirical evidence has been mixed, and there remain gaps in the ...literature. The majority of FDI has been directed at developed countries. Single-country studies are needed, due to the heterogeneous relationship between FDI and growth, and because the impact of FDI on growth is said to be largest in open, advanced developed countries with an educated workforce and developed financial markets (although research has focused on developing countries). We fill these gaps with an improved empirical methodology to check whether FDI has enhanced growth in Spain, one of the largest receivers of FDI, whose gross domestic product growth was above average but has escaped scrutiny. During the observation period 1984-2010, FDI rose significantly, and Spain offered ideal conditions for FDI to unfold its hypothesized positive effects on growth. We run a horse race between various potential explanatory variables, including the neglected role of bank credit for the real economy. The results are robust and clear: The favorable Spanish circumstances yield no evidence for FDI to stimulate economic growth. The Spanish EU and euro entry are also found to have had no positive effect on growth. The findings call for a fundamental rethinking of methodology in economics.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This paper examines the robustness of explanatory variables in cross-country economic growth regressions. It introduces and employs a novel approach, Bayesian Averaging of Classical Estimates (BACE), ...which constructs estimates by averaging OLS coefficients across models. The weights given to individual regressions have a Bayesian justification similar to the Schwarz model selection criterion. Of 67 explanatory variables we find 18 to be significantly and robustly partially correlated with long-term growth and another three variables to be marginally related. The strongest evidence is for the relative price of investment, primary school enrollment, and the initial level of real GDP per capita.
We investigate the extent to which an increase in financial development affects the positive effect of foreign direct investment on economic growth. Although the financial sector is beneficial for ...economic growth, the effect of further financial development on growth is found to become insignificant. Using a dynamic panel threshold model on 62 middle- and high-income countries spanning the period 1987–2016, we re-examine the possible nonlinearity between finance, foreign direct investment, and growth. Consistent with the “vanishing effect” of financial development, we find significant evidence that foreign direct investment fosters growth in general, but the growth effect of foreign direct investment becomes negligible when the ratio of private sector credit to gross domestic product exceeds 95.6%. This finding is robust to different econometric methods, various subsamples and interaction analyses, and distinct financial development indicators.
•We examine how financial development is related to the link between FDI and growth.•We use a dynamic panel threshold model with GMM to address the endogeneity issue.•We identify a potential maximum financial development threshold.•The marginal effect of FDI on growth decreases as credit expands.•Too much finance is not necessarily better for the FDI-growth nexus.
We estimate the effect of broadband infrastructure, which enables high-speed internet, on economic growth in the panel of OECD countries in 1996-2007. Our instrumental variable model derives its ...non-linear first stage from a logistic diffusion model where pre-existing voice telephony and cable TV networks predict maximum broadband penetration. We find that a 10 percentage point increase in broadband penetration raised annual per capita growth by 0.9-1.5 percentage points. Results are robust to country and year fixed effects and controlling for linear second-stage effects of our instruments. We verify that our instruments predict broadband penetration but not diffusion of contemporaneous technologies like mobile telephony and computers.
In order to devise scientific and sustainable development strategy, it is vital to assess the quality of economic growth. As a useful complement to traditional economic indicators, GPI's most reputed ...virtue is its great improvement in evaluating environmental and social costs. In this paper we estimate the GPI for all 31 provinces in mainland China from 1997 to 2016. GPI estimation is highly sensitive to income inequality, climate change damage, and depletion of non-renewables. We address contestable methodological assumptions associated with the three items which have been usually ignored in empirical studies. We use the Atkinson index in place of the Gini index as a measure of income inequality. We avoid the problematic duplicated counting of climate change damage and the unjustified cost escalation factor in depletion of non-renewables. Our results show that: first, GPI per capita has recently declined in some provinces, unveiling a threat to social welfare and sustainability; second, the “relative threshold effect”—the progress of social welfare promotion is slower than the expansion of economic scale—has been found in many provinces; third, resource consumption and environmental pollution, especially water pollution and carbon emissions, would generate substantial welfare losses.
We replicate Reinhart and Rogoff (2010A and 2010B) and find that selective exclusion of available data, coding errors and inappropriate weighting of summary statistics lead to serious miscalculations ...that inaccurately represent the relationship between public debt and GDP growth among 20 advanced economies. Over 1946–2009, countries with public debt/GDP ratios above 90% averaged 2.2% real annual GDP growth, not −0.1% as published. The published results for (i) median GDP growth rates for the 1946–2009 period and (ii) mean and median GDP growth figures over 1790–2009 are all distorted by similar methodological errors, although the magnitudes of the distortions are somewhat smaller than with the mean figures for 1946–2009. Contrary to Reinhart and Rogoff's broader contentions, both mean and median GDP growth when public debt levels exceed 90% of GDP are not dramatically different from when the public debt/GDP ratios are lower. The relationship between public debt and GDP growth varies significantly by period and country. Our overall evidence refutes RR's claim that public debt/GDP ratios above 90% consistently reduce a country's GDP growth.
This paper analyzes an emergent stream of research shedding light on the institutional factors shaping entrepreneurial activity and its effect on economic growth. This integrative analysis spanning a ...broad spectrum of diverse literature enables a distinction between two different research lines in the field of entrepreneurship. The findings of this study, based on articles from the journals included in the Web of Science database, facilitate a broader comprehension of two separate lines of research, which allows an analysis of the interaction among institutions, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. The systematic literature analysis over the last 25 years (1992–2016) of research reveals that institutions could be related to economic growth through entrepreneurship, which would open new research questions about what institutional factors are conducive to entrepreneurship, which in turn spurs economic growth. Thus, not only is understanding both complex relationships and their possible sequence useful for planning strategies and public policies, but it is also helpful for advancing and providing new insights in these research fields, which could be complementary and interdisciplinary.
Using annual data for 75 countries in the period 1960-2000, we present evidence of a positive relationship between investment as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) and the long-run growth rate ...of GDP per worker. This result is robust for our full sample and for the subsample of non-OECD countries, but not for the subsample of OECD countries. Our analysis controls for time-invariant country-specific heterogeneity in growth rates, and for a range of time-varying control variables. We also address endogeneity issues, and allow for heterogeneity across countries in model parameters and for cross-section dependence.
We present a model of nonbalanced growth based on differences in factor proportions and capital deepening. Capital deepening increases the relative output of the more capital‐intensive sector but ...simultaneously induces a reallocation of capital and labor away from that sector. Using a two‐sector general equilibrium model, we show that nonbalanced growth is consistent with an asymptotic equilibrium with a constant interest rate and capital share in national income. For plausible parameter values, the model generates dynamics consistent with U.S. data, in particular, faster growth of employment and slower growth of output in less capital‐intensive sectors, and aggregate behavior consistent with the Kaldor facts.
Are Any Growth Theories Robust Durlauf, Steven N.; Kourtellos, Andros; Tan, Chih Ming
The Economic journal (London),
March 2008, Letnik:
118, Številka:
527
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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This article investigates the strength of empirical evidence for various growth theories when there is model uncertainty with respect to the correct growth model. Using model averaging methods, we ...find little evidence that so-called fundamental growth theories play an important role in explaining aggregate growth. In contrast, we find strong evidence for macroeconomic policy effects and a role for unexplained regional heterogeneity, as well as some evidence of parameter heterogeneity in the aggregate production function. We conclude that the ability of cross-country growth regressions to adjudicate the relative importance of alternative growth theories is limited.
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