Global Economy Journal

The relationship between intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and foreign direct investment (FDI) continues to pose a challenging puzzle. While several studies have found that these two variables are positively correlated, others have not been able to find conclusive results. We contend that a partial explanation resides on institutional differences among host countries. We find that increases in IPR protection encourage FDI in countries in which the institutional environment, as proxied by indices of economic freedom, is efficient but not otherwise. We use threshold regression techniques on samples ranging from 81 to 102 countries during the 1990 - 2010 period.

In this paper we explore the trade effects of bilateral real exchange rate changes between the 50 US states and China over the period of 2005–2012. The empirical results based on state-level trade flows and state-level relative prices suggest that the long-run real exchange rates elasticity of US exports to China is in the range of [–3.77, –2.85] and that of Chinese exports to the US is in the range of [–0.23, –3.34]. We also find that state-level differences in human capital and financial development are significant determinants of their export performances with respect to China. Based on the most optimistic scenario, our results suggest that the RMB needs to further appreciate against the dollar by at least 1.8 percent a year for 16 years for the US to achieve balanced trade with China.

The paper examines the empirical relationship between remittances and economic growth for a sample of 62 developing countries over the time period 1990–2014. Remittances seem to promote growth only in the ‘more open’ countries. That is because remittances are in themselves not sufficient for growth. The extent of the benefit depends on domestic institutions and macroeconomic environment in the receiving country. Unlike the ‘less open’ countries, ‘more open’ countries have better institutions and better financial markets to take advantage of the remittances income and channelise them into profitable investments which, in turn, accelerates the rate of economic growth in these countries.

This paper analyses the importance of ECB monetary policy shocks in the domestic activities of a non-EMU member, Croatia, with the main focus on the inflation rate. Using a Vector Autoregressive Model with an exogenous variable specification, it is found that the contraction of foreign monetary shocks have a significant positive impact on the local inflation rate and output. Interestingly, the interest rate gap exerts a statistically significant effect on the economic activities of Croatia, suggesting that targeting exchange rate stability does not eliminate the significance of ECB’s monetary policy changes.

Based on a sample during 1978–2014, this paper finds that India’s real GDP has a positive relationship with real depreciation during 1978–2002, the government debt/GDP ratio, the real stock price, the growth rate of U.S. real GDP, and a negative relationship with real depreciation during 2003–2014, the real lending rate and the expected inflation rate. Therefore, the stage of economic development may play an important role in deciding whether real depreciation or real appreciation may promote economic growth.

This paper aims to reveal the sources of the rapid growth of the Vietnamese economy since economic reform over the period 1986–2013. It applies the autoregressive distributed lags variance bounds test and the error correction model, focusing on the roles of globalization and aid in economic growth. The empirical evidence supports neither the export-led nor the FDI-led economic growth hypothesis. Rather, the increase in import values is revealed to have caused economic growth. When the import variable is excluded from the estimated model, aid inflows are shown to have caused the economic growth in Vietnam.

In investigating the short run and the long run impact of currency depreciation on Pakistan’s trade balance, previous studies have either relied on using bilateral trade data between Pakistan and her trade partners or between Pakistan and the rest of the world and have found not much support for successful depreciation. Suspecting that these studies may suffer from aggregation bias, in this paper we use disaggregated trade data at commodity level from 77 industries that trade between Pakistan and EU. While we find short-run significant effects in 22 industries, these effects do not last into the long run in most industries. Most of the affected industries are found to be small, as measured by their trade shares.

This paper examines the role of inflationary threshold effects in the finance-growth relationship for Ghana and Nigeria. Ghana and Nigeria are relatively homogenous in terms of financial development, economic growth, and inflationary history and therefore provide an acceptable choice for this empirical analysis. Due to lack of data availability, the sample spans the period 1964–2011 for Ghana and 1961–2011 for Nigeria. Using appropriately specified threshold regressions, we found inflationary thresholds in both countries during the study periods. Specifically, the inflationary threshold range for Ghana is 10.73 %–29.83 %. For Nigeria, the inflationary threshold range is 10.07 %–19.25 %. By estimating the threshold regressions, we found financial development to have positive and significant effect on economic growth during low and moderate inflationary regimes; and insignificant effect on growth during high inflationary regimes, for both countries. In particular, financial development impact greatly on growth in Ghana when the rate of inflation is below a threshold of 10.73 % but dissipates when inflation rate reaches and exceeds 29.83 %. Similarly, financial development impact greatly on growth in Nigeria when the rate of inflation is below a threshold of 10.07 % but dissipates when inflation rate reaches and exceeds 19.25 %. The results imply that policymakers in these countries should take inflation into account when devising policies to promote financial development with the aim of generating economic growth. For without low or moderate inflation rates, such policies will not achieve their intended purposes.