This paper provides a theoretical and empirical investigation of the simultaneous effects of taxes and government spending on long‐run economic growth in an endogenous growth framework. A two‐sector ...model is considered: one sector produces physical output and the other produces human capital. Government expenditure is divided into several categories, and several types of taxes are included. The property tax is especially interesting because it is a major source of revenue for local government. The theoretical model is estimated using annual panel data from North Carolina counties. This study finds that state‐level fiscal policies affect economic growth but county‐level fiscal policies do not.
This paper presents data from Brazilian Patent Office (Instituto Nacional de Propriedade Industrial, INPI) and compares them with data from the United States Patent Office (USPTO). Developing ...countries have technological activities that are important locally but not significant at international level (imitation, local learning, adaptation of foreign innovations). These activities might be patentable only at national level. Therefore, the study of domestic patents of developing countries provides a broader picture than USPTO patents. This paper compares 8309 INPI patents with 475 USPTO patents (between 1980 and 1995). Domestic patent data show peculiarities in the Brazilian case, possibly shared with other countries in similar technological level: (a) high share of individual patents; (b) foreign-owned firms with important activities; (c) low firm involvement in R&D activities. Some characteristics are shared with developed countries: (a) domestic firms as the major patentees; (b) according to firm size, there is a U-shaped distribution of patents; (c) evidences of multi-technology large firms; (d) a relatively small share of firms have more than one patent in the whole period. The contrast between USPTO and national patenting statistics shows different rankings according to ownership structure, leading firms, industrial sectors, and international patent classification. These differences highlight sources of international competitiveness and point to weaknesses in Brazilian innovative activities. This paper concludes evaluating the contributions (and weaknesses) of this database for the evaluation of the Brazilian National System of Innovation.
The analysis of the privatization of state-owned enterprises in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has been based on very incomplete and out of date data. This paper presents and discusses the preliminary ...results of a comprehensive survey of privatization transactions in SSA up until the end of 1995. While previous research has concluded that the privatization process has made only very limited process since the early-mid 1980s, the survey reveals
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(a) a generally much higher level of privatization activity than that indicated by existing data sources;
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(b) a very considerable range of country experiences with privatization; and
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(c) a marked increase in the number and overall value of privatization transactions since the early 1990s.
While serious economic and political constraints continue to hamper the implementation of privatization programs in SSA, there is a strong likelihood that the intensity of the privatization effort will continue to accelerate during the next 5–10 years.
This study empirically explores international and intersectoral R&D spillover effects on the total factor productivity growth of manufacturing and nonmanufacturing sectors based on a pooled ...time‐series data set of 14 OECD economies and 3 East Asian economies—Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. The study finds that foreign manufacturing R&D has strong influence on domestic productivity growths of both sectors and that domestic manufacturing R&D has a substantial intersectoral R&D spillover effect on domestic nonmanufacturing productivity growth. The social rates of return to manufacturing R&D are estimated to be two to six times greater than the private rates of return.
Many studies of China's economy use standard yearbook data for China's farm labor force. These data massively overestimate the number of Chinese farm workers. Our calculations show that the number of ...“phantom farmers” actually working outside agriculture may easily surpass 100 million. This paper reveals the implausible implications of the standard data, uses information from cost surveys to derive new estimates of China's farm work force, and investigates the implications of the new, lower series for agricultural employment on the measurement and interpretation of recent Chinese growth.
This paper examines the ability of beta and size to explain cross‐sectional variation in average returns in 12 European countries. We find that average stock returns are positively related to beta ...and negatively related to firm size. The beta premium is in part due to the fact that high beta countries outperform low beta countries. Within countries high beta stocks outperform low beta stocks only in January, not in other months. We reject the hypothesis that differences in average returns on size‐ and beta‐sorted portfolios can be explained by market risk and exposure to the excess return of small over large stocks (SMB). Consistent with recent US evidence, we find that after controlling for size, there is no association between average returns and exposure to SMB.
In accordance with studies for other markets, Swedish index returns exhibit high autocorrelation, (a) after days of above average performance of the stock market, (b) after low absolute returns, (c) ...when trading volume is low, and (d) following Fridays.
Contrary to the non-synchronous trading and the transaction cost hypotheses, all results extend to individual stock returns. It is concluded that autocorrelation patterns are related to the trading patterns of individual investors, and not the cross-security information processing of the market. In particular, the observed autocorrelation structure corresponds to feedback trading.
Predictions of the portfolio model of the economy are tested using regional growth data from Europe. It is shown that more aggregated regions of Europe tend to be more economically diverse than more ...disaggregated regions. Then, using different frontier estimation methods, evidence of a convex growth–instability frontier for aggregated regions is presented. At the most regionally disaggregated level for which there are data, there is weak if any evidence of the frontier. The results suggest that large economies are appropriately modeled as portfolios, whose growth processes are characterized by the convex growth–instability frontier, whereas small local economies do not display this characteristic.
ABSTRACT Trade, foreign direct investment, and inter‐regional R&D spillovers facilitate competition, the spread of knowledge, and the adoption of more advanced technologies, which in turn hastens ...total factor productivity (TFP) growth. The spread of these efficiency gains from internationalization requires a sufficient local knowledge to enable them to be adapted to the domestic productive environment. Thus, higher local knowledge and internationalization will lead to TFP growth, and the greater the complementarity between variables the higher the TFP growth. We test the complementarity hypothesis using Spanish regional data over the period 1980–1995 in which both regional local knowledge and internationalization experienced a notable increase.
The authors provide an empirical investigation of office market dynamics and model the user, investment, and development elements of this market. They recognise explicitly that the user and ...investment markets in office property influence trends in development and that development activity in turn affects office use and investment. This theoretical premise suggests that an analysis of these separate components of the market can make a significant contribution to a fuller understanding of office market dynamics, including swings in development activity. In the European context, there is a lack of research on modelling the functional elements of the office market individually, although such modelling is more common in US studies. Furthermore, most quantitative empirical work lacks an examination of the investment market for property and its intertemporal effects on development activity. In this paper, the authors estimate econometric models for rents, capital values, and development activity in the national office market in Great Britain. The results establish the significant influence of demand-side economic forces in the user market and the importance of use and investment market signals in the determination of office building output. However, the findings also strongly suggest that the investment market needs to be explored in more detail in order to identify and document the nature of the forces which interact in this sector of the office market.
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