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72. The Impact of Reform on Economic Growth in China: A Principal Component Analysis
- Author:
- Ligang Song and Yu Sheng
- Publication Date:
- 02-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- The study decomposes the sources of Chinese growth by first making a distinction between technological progress and technical efficiency in the growth accounting framework, and then identifying a series of reform programmes, such as urbanization, structural change, privatization, liberalization, banking and fiscal system reforms as the key components in institutional innovation which facilitate the improvement of technical efficiency and through which economic growth. These components are then incorporated into the model specification, which is estimated based on a panel dataset by applying the principal component analysis (PCA) to eliminate the multicollinearity problem. The results show that urbanization, liberalization and structural change in the form of industrialization are the most important components in contributing to the improvement of technical efficiency and hence growth, highlighting the importance of government policies aimed at enhancing further urbanization, openness to trade and industrial structural adjustments to sustain the growth momentum in China. The study also found that the potential for further enhancing growth through technical efficiency in China is considerable, which can be realized by deepening state-owned enterprises (SOEs) restructuring, and banking and fiscal system reform.
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
73. Individual and Collective Resources and Health in Morocco
- Author:
- Marie-Claude Martin
- Publication Date:
- 03-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- The interaction between available individual and collective resources in the determination of health is largely ignored in the literature on the relationship between poverty and health in developing countries. We analyse the role public resources play in the perception that rural women in Morocco have of their health. These resources are taken to contribute directly and indirectly to the improvement of individual health by, on the one hand, providing a health-promoting environment and, on the other, improving the individual's ability to produce health. The empirical results of multilevel models confirm the expected associations between socioeconomic status, individual vulnerability factors and health. Furthermore, the random part of the model suggests that variation in state of health is also associated with the presence of collective resources. However, the higher the level of women's individual wealth, the less the characteristics of the community in which they live seem to be associated with their health, and the less the potential vulnerability factors seem to constrain their ability to maintain or improve health. Our results suggest that collective investments derived from various areas of activity will be more favourable to improving health, insofar as they are adapted to the initial capacity of women to benefit from them.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Health, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Morocco
74. Inflation and Financial Development: Evidence from Brazil
- Author:
- Manoel Bittencourt
- Publication Date:
- 02-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- We examine the impact of inflation on financial development in Brazil and the data available permit us to cover the period between 1985 and 2002. The results – based initially on time-series and then on panel time-series data and analysis, and robust for different estimators and financial development measures – suggest that inflation presented deleterious effects on financial development at the time. The main implication of the results is that poor macroeconomic performance has detrimental effects to financial development, a variable that is important for affecting, for example, economic growth and income inequality. Therefore, low and stable inflation, and all that it encompasses, is a necessary first step to achieve a deeper and more active financial sector with all its attached benefits.
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- Brazil and South America
75. Innovation Capacity and Economic Development: China and India
- Author:
- Peilei Fan
- Publication Date:
- 03-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Both China and India, the emerging giants in Asia, have achieved significant economic development in recent years. China has enjoyed a high annual GDP growth rate of 10 per cent and India has achieved an annual GDP growth rate of 6 per cent since 1981. Decomposing China and India's GDP growth from 1981 to 2004 into the three factors' contribution reveals that technology has contributed significantly to both countries' GDP growth, especially in the 1990s. R outputs (high-tech exports, service exports, and certified patents from USPTO) and inputs (R expenditure and human resources) further indicate that both countries have been very committed to R and their output is quite efficient.
- Topic:
- Government
- Political Geography:
- China, India, and Asia
76. International Integration and Regional Development in China
- Author:
- Thomas Gries and Margarete Redlin
- Publication Date:
- 07-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Concerns about the duration of China's growth and hence the question of a permanent significant contribution of China to world economic growth relate, amongst other things, to the problem of reducing regional disparity in China. While China's high average growth is driven by a small number of rapidly developing provinces, the majority of provinces have experienced more moderate development. To obtain broad continous growth it is important to identify the determinants of provincial growth. Therefore, we introduce a stylized model of regional development which is characterized by two pillars: (i) International integration indicated by FDI and/or trade lead to imitation of international technologies, technology spill overs and temporary dynamic scale economies, and (ii) domestic factors indicated by human and real capital available through interregional factor mobility. Using panel data analysis and GMM estimates our empirical analysis supports the predictions from our theoretical model of regional development. Positive and significant coefficients for FDI and trade support the importance of international integration and technology imitation. A negative and significant lagged GDP per capita indicates a catching up, non steady state process across China's provinces. Highly significant human and real capital identifies the importance of these domestic growth restricting factors. However, other potentially important factors like labor or government expenditures are (surprisingly) insignificant or even negative. Further, in contrast to implications from NEG models indicators for urbanization and agglomeration do not contribute significantly.
- Topic:
- Development
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
77. Intra-Household Arrangements and Health Satisfaction: Evidence from Mexico
- Author:
- Mariano Rojas
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- This paper uses a subjective wellbeing approach to study the role of household arrangements on the health satisfaction of an individual. It also studies the impact of household arrangements on health satisfaction across different income groups, by contrasting two main theories of the family: the altruistic/communitarian theory, which emphasizes altruism within the family, implies that the within-the-household allocation of relevant health satisfaction resources leads towards an egalitarian distribution of health satisfaction, and second, the cooperative bargaining theory according to which the family emerges as the cooperative equilibrium outcome from the unilateral interests of each household member. Thus, each household member takes advantage of their bargaining power to attain an equilibrium that favours their personal interests. According to the latter approach, the intra-household allocation of relevant health satisfaction resources leads to a distribution of health satisfaction that closely follows the distribution of bargaining power.
- Topic:
- Civil Society and Health
- Political Geography:
- Mexico
78. Livelihood Risk from HIV in Semi-Arid Tropics of Rural Andhra Pradesh
- Author:
- B. Valentine Joseph Gandhi, M. Cynthia Serquiña Bantilan, and Devanathan Parthasarathy
- Publication Date:
- 04-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- This paper discusses the livelihood dynamics in the fragile landscape of the semi-arid tropics (SAT) of Andhra Pradesh. SAT is home to the poorest of the poor who live in conditions of persistent drought, subsistence agriculture and poor access to markets. This paper is a case study focusing particularly on labour migration, its role in influencing the health risk behaviour of migrants and in the spread of the HIV epidemic among SAT rural households. The most vulnerable population in these drought-prone regions are the migrant labourers, and their vulnerability is influenced by three major factors—the vulnerability and unstable productivity in the degraded and marginal landscape, the caste system that has traditionally kept them backward and vulnerable, and experiences in the external environment to which they migrate. This study—based on a theoretical framework, whereby livelihood risks lead to health risks, particularly HIV infection—outlines the process that causes a further deterioration of the household and the occurrence of cyclical health risk. The paper calls for a multisectoral approach to tackle the issue of migrant vulnerability, and for interventions with a more migrant-need sensitive approach.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Health, and Migration
- Political Geography:
- Andhra Pradesh
79. Measuring the Competitive Threat from China
- Author:
- Rhys Jenkins
- Publication Date:
- 02-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- In recent years there has been a growing literature that analyses the threat which Chinese exports pose to the exports of other developing countries. The paper provides a critique of the standard measures of export similarity which have been used to estimate the threat from China in these studies. Two alternative indices, the static and the dynamic index of competitive threat, are developed and estimated for 18 developing countries and compared with estimates for the standard measures. It is shown that the latter tend to underestimate the extent to which countries are threatened by China. They also distort both the rankings of countries according to the extent to which they face competition from China and the direction of change in the competitive threat over time.
- Topic:
- International Political Economy and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
80. Measuring the Vulnerability of Subnational Regions
- Author:
- Mark McGillivray, Wim Naudé, and Stephanié Rossouw
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- A small but growing literature has been concerned about the economic (and environmental) vulnerability on the level of countries. Less attention is paid to the economic vulnerability of different regions within countries. By focusing on the vulnerability of subnational regions, our paper contributes to the small literature on the 'vulnerability of place'. We see the vulnerability of place as being due to vulnerability in various domains, such as economic vulnerability, vulnerability of environment, and governance, demographic and health fragilities. We use a subnational dataset on 354 magisterial districts from South Africa, recognize the potential relevance of measuring vulnerability on a subnational level, and construct a local vulnerability index (LVI) for the various districts. We condition this index on district per capita income and term this a vulnerability intervention index (VII) interpreting this as an indicator of where higher income per capita, often seen in the literature as a measure of resilience, will in itself be unlikely to reduce vulnerability.
- Topic:
- Security, Demographics, Development, and Economics
- Political Geography:
- Africa and South Africa