Narrow Results

This paper revises Sedgley's model of innovation-driven endogenous growth and applies it to the case of Taiwan. The methods of empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and constrained vector error correction (VEC model or VECM) are used in the process. The EMD is used to filter out very short term fluctuations in growth, while the VECM is used to detect the various factors that affect economic growth, including human capital, public and private capital, knowledge capital and public institutions (the index of protection of property rights). It is the first attempt to include such a rich set of factors affecting economic growth at least for the studies of Taiwan.

This study investigates whether energy futures provide the ability to hedge against inflation. Using a Markov-switching vector error correction model (MS-VECM), we find that the Brent crude oil futures index is the only index that exhibits significant inflation hedging capability, among the subindexes of energy futures. Moreover, its inflation hedging capacity exhibits substantial variation over time, with most of the hedging power emerging under the relatively longer and more common regime. Results are robust to include common stocks and bonds in the model. We do not find evidence that unleaded gas, heating oil, gas oil, and natural gas futures have inflation hedging ability. Overall, our results suggest that crude oil futures are alternative candidates for well-diversified investment portfolios with inflation protection ability.