Suchergebnisse

This paper uses an instrumental variables approach to estimate the relationship between trade openness and economic growth in Sub‐Saharan Africa. Instrumental variables estimates show that economic growth has a significant negative contemporaneous effect on trade openness, while trade openness has a significant positive effect on economic growth. A 1 percentage point increase in the ratio of trade over GDP is associated with a short‐run increase in growth of approximately 0.5% in a given year; the cumulative long‐run effect on the level of GDP per capita is larger, reaching about 2%.

This paper estimates the effect of income inequality on real gross domestic product per capita using a panel of 104 countries during the period 1970–2010. The empirical analysis addresses endogeneity issues by using instrumental variables estimation and controlling for country and time fixed effects. The analysis finds that, on average, income inequality has a significant negative effect on transitional gross domestic product per capita growth and the long-run level of gross domestic product per capita. However, the impact varies by the level of economic development, so much so that in poor countries income inequality has a significant positive effect on gross domestic product per capita.

In 2009 the Australian government delivered $8 billion in direct payments to households. These payments were pre-announced and randomly allocated over a 5-week period. We exploit this random allocation to estimate the causal response of households consumption expenditures. While we don't find a effect on consumption expenditures at the time of transfer we find a small, albeit statistically significant increase in consumption expenditures at the time of the announcement of the fiscal stimulus.