Narrow Results

This paper analyzes the effect of financial deepening on poverty in the emerging Black Sea market economies with new generation causality analysis techniques utilizing panel data from 1996 to 2020. The econometric method of panel data is applied to the six emerging economies. It can be seen that the causal relationship between domestic loans to the private sector (DPS) and per capita household consumption expenditure (HCE) is significant in Georgia, Turkey and Ukraine. In addition, a bidirectional causality relationship is observed in Georgia. Romania, Georgia, Turkey and Ukraine are countries where the causality between HCE and DPS is significant. It is concluded that DPS increases per capita HCE and thus effectively reduces poverty.

This study proposes a novel statistical procedure to test the export-led growth hypothesis. The procedure integrates a Fisher-type causality method in the statistical analysis. In order to demonstrate the application of this procedure, this study examined the exports–growth nexus in low-income and lower middle-income countries in Africa. The findings obtained from the newly-proposed integrated statistical procedure were more conclusive compared to the results obtained from the individual causality tests; the findings also highlighted a complex nature of the exports–growth nexus in Africa.

The deepening waves of globalization since late eighties and the growth in the international integrated production networks (IPN) over the past decade have significantly increased both Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and merchandise trade flows. India, whose share in global FDI inward stock and global merchandise exports have increased from 0.08 percent to 1.13 percent and 0.51 percent to 1.60 percent over 1989–2015 respectively, is no exception to this trend. The current paper attempts to explain the influence of FDI inflows on India’s exports through a time series analysis with quarterly data over the period 1990–91 (Q1) to 2015–16 (Q4) in the presence of multiple structural breaks. The empirical analysis indicates that while exports influence FDI inflows, the reverse is not true in the Indian context. The result underlines the fact that FDI inflows in the country may primarily be targeting the growing domestic sectors, rather than utilizing the domestic resources for reaching the world market.

Conference Board’s leading economic index (LEI) is constructed to reveal common turning point patterns in economic data, indirectly guiding fiscal and monetary policy aimed at the dual objectives of increasing the real GDP and reducing the unemployment rate. We study new econometric tools to help identify the exogenous macroeconomic time series “causally” driving the dual objectives. We study components of LEI including oil prices, building permits, stock prices, leading credit index, interest-rate spreads, productivity, among others. Such identification allows policymakers to focus on providing incentives for guiding the actionable variables to achieve dual objectives.