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Intangible assets like human capital and organization capital have driven the success of India's software industry. This article analyzes the impact of intangible assets on the market value of Indian software firms using a dynamic panel data model. Measures of tangible and intangible assets are constructed using firm-level panel data. The estimation technique uses system generalized method of moments (GMM) and minimum distance estimation (MDE). This methodology accounts for unobserved firm heterogeneity, endogenous explanatory variables and persistent variables. The results conclusively show that intangible assets have a significant impact on market values of Indian software firms.

Transition from economic theory to a testable form of model invariably involves the use of certain "simplifying assumptions." If, however, these are not valid, misspecified models result. This article considers estimation of the dynamic linear panel data model, which often forms the basis of testable economic hypotheses. The estimators of such a model are frequently similarly based on certain assumptions which appear to be often untenable in practice. Here, the performance of these estimators is analyzed in scenarios where the theoretically required conditions are not met. Specifically, we consider three such instances of serial correlation of the idiosyncratic disturbance terms; correlation of the idiosyncratic disturbance terms and explanatory variables; and, finally, cross-sectional dependence (as a robustness check to these findings, we also consider correlations between observed and unobserved heterogeneity terms). The major findings are that the limited tests readily available tend to have poor power properties and that estimators' performance varies greatly across scenarios. In such a wide array of experiments, it is difficult to pick-out just one "winner." However, a robust estimator across all experiments and parameter settings was a variant of the Wansbeek–Bekker estimator. This is a significant finding, as this estimator is infrequently used in practice. When the experiments are extended to include correlations between observed and unobserved heterogeneity terms, one might also consider, for across-the-board performance, the Blundell and Bond estimator.

We examine the effects of both overall tax rate and changes in tax structure on growth by using data for more than 100 high, middle, and low income countries by employing the GMM estimation methods. In general, our results do not support the argument that overall tax rates or changes in tax structure have a significant effect on growth. However, we find that a shift from income to consumption and property taxes leads to a positive and significant effect on growth rate while a shift from consumption and property taxes to income taxes has a positive effect for low-income countries.

This paper investigates the effect of remittance inflows on financial inclusion. Using data from high remittance-receiving developing countries and applying dynamic panel data methods, we find that remittance inflow has a negative impact on financial inclusion for countries with low level of remittances. However, this relationship is positive for countries with high level of remittances. Our study found that there exists a nonlinear relationship between remittances and financial inclusion. We also show that the effect of remittances on the financial inclusion is conditional upon people’s perception about institutions.

In recent years, increases in fossil fuel consumption, along with associated resource limitations, high prices, and growing concern about climate change, have led to initiatives in favor of expanding renewable energy use. This study addresses several issues. Firstly, we review drivers and obstacles that the biofuel industry faces. Secondly, the current state of the biofuel industry with emphasis on the EU is investigated. Thirdly, the paper quantifies the factors that foster or harm biofuel use by applying dynamic panel econometric techniques (panel GMM). Economic activity (GDP), high fuel prices, greenhouse gas emissions and to a weaker extent some political characteristics are the main drivers. Our findings suggest that biofuel production will experience substantial growth, especially within developed economies primarily due to their environmental and national energy security concerns.

This paper primarily examines both causality effect of banks’ capital regulation and risk-taking behavior based on generalized methods of moment (GMM) for a dynamic unbalanced panel observation of 32 commercial banks in Bangladesh over the period 2000–2014. The empirical findings of this study suggest that capital regulation has a significant effect on risk-taking behavior, and excessive risks impede the growth of capital ratio as well as the stability. Moreover, from bank-level data, size does not uniformly affect the quantity of capital and risk. Large banks have poor capital ratio and higher inclination to risk than small size counterpart. Small size banks are well managed in capital ratio and risk-taking that glitter their stability through the periods. Besides these effects, corporate governance notably influenced banks to reduce credit risk and enhance stability. Finally, this paper provides some implications for the think tanks and stakeholders of the country.

The central aim of this paper is to empirically assess the effects of financial liberalization on economic growth in the presence of banking crises. Our empirical investigation is based on a dynamic panel model for a sample of 10 South Mediterranean countries during the period 1980-2005. Results suggest that equity market liberalization positively affects economic growth in these countries, especially in the period of fragility and banking crises. Capital account liberalization, however, has no significant effects. As expected, banking crises exert negative effects on economic growth. When we control for the presence of macroeconomic stability and appropriate openness sequencing, the anticipated effects of capital account liberalization become significant. We conclude that macroeconomic reforms and trade opening are both crucial prerequisites for the success of the capital account liberalization process.