Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) Opportunities and Challenges
This paper reviews major issues involved in achieving the objectives of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). Using a simple framework for evaluation, the analysis highlights considerations relevant to policymakers in the areas of poverty reduction, macroeconomic policies, trade promotion, attracting capital flows, and governance and institutional reforms. The analysis also identifies risks involved in achieving NEPAD's objectives. To minimize these risks, it will be important to make some goals more operational, to further broaden and deepen stakeholder participation, to establish a sound basis for monitoring progress, to prepare contingency plans, and to harmonize the role of regional institutions with NEPAD initiatives.
Identifying Structural Reform Gaps in Emerging Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia
Using data from the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report as an example, this paper compares structural indicators for 25 countries in Emerging Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia with a generic country with similar charactersitics that is 40 percent richer as well as a country with the average EU income. This comparison suggests that improvements will be particularly crucial in the areas of institutions, financial market development, infrastructure, goods and labor market efficiency and areas related to innovation. For the generally more ambitious goal of reaching average EU income, the reform needs are correspondingly larger. The methodology focuses on (approximate) comparisons between countries and does not try to establish the link between structural reforms and growth. While we test for changes in empirical specifications, caveats relate to the quality of structural indicators, possible non-linearities, and reform complementarities. The approach can be applied to other indicators and at a more granular level.
The Composition of Capital Flows
Over the past decade, South Africa has attracted relatively little foreign direct investment (FDI), but considerable amounts of portfolio inflows. In this context, the objective of the paper is twofold: to identify the determinants of the level and composition of capital flows to emerging markets and to draw policy conclusions for South Africa. We estimate a dynamic panel for up to 81 emerging markets using GMM (Generalized Method of Moments) techniques. The results suggest that further trade and capital control liberalization would increase the share of FDI. Additionally, a reduction in exchange rate volatility would affect the composition of capital flows in favor of FDI.
Reviving the Competitive Storage Model
We revive in this paper the empirical relevance of the competitive storage model by taking a holistic approach to food commodity prices. We augment the seminal Deaton and Laroque (1992, 1996) model by incorporating more comprehensive and realistic supply and demand factors: output and demand trends, shocks to the yield, and time-varying interest rates. While the computational burden increases exponentially, the augmented model succeeds in replicating all four key patterns of food commodity prices. Our simulation and comparative statics also show that (i) the long-run declining trend of food prices may come to a halt or even reverse due to the shifting balance between supply and demand; (ii) short-run price fluctuations are mainly attributable to sizeable, though low-probability, shocks to output such as inclement weather; and (iii) the impact of monetary policy, though small in normal times, is nonlinear and asymmetric, and can become large if the real rate passes a certain threshold.
Stock Market Developments and Private Consumer Spending in Emerging Markets
Using a panel of 16 emerging markets, the paper finds a small but statistically significant effect of stock market developments on private consumption spending. In the short run, a 10 percent decline in the annual real stock market return is associated with a reduction in real private consumption by around 0.1-0.3 percent on average. There is evidence that the link between stock market fluctuations and private consumption has become stronger during the 1990s as stock markets in emerging economies have broadened and deepened. However, there is no significant evidence that the influence is asymmetric. Stock price declines do not have a different impact on consumption than stock price increases.
Terms of Trade Shocks and Economic Recovery
This paper identifies factors that contribute to a fast recovery in growth after persistent negative terms of trade shocks, using a sample of 159 countries for 1970-2006. The results suggest that policies matter. Fast recoveries are fairly robustly related to real exchange rate depreciation and improvements in government stability and the institutional environment. A timely increase in aid may also support recovery.
Institutional Investors in the New Financial Landscape
On title page:OECD proceedings
Stock Market Liberalizations
Using a panel of 27 countries, we analyze the effects of stock market liberalization on financial and macroeconomic development. We find that liberalization is associated with a short-term increase in real private investment growth of about 14 percentage points cumulatively in the four years following liberalization and a cumulative 4 percentage point increase in real GDP per capita growth. Growth tends to be higher if institutional reforms precede liberalization. In contrast to other studies, we also find evidence for a permanent growth effect of about 0.4 percent a year in an extended sample of 72 countries.
