Democracy, Globalization and Private Investment in Ghana

The article examines the effects of democracy and globalization on private investment in Ghana for the period 1980–2012, using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test for cointegration and the error correction model (ECM). Two models are used. In Model 1, democracy is proxy by an index for institutional quality (Polity 2), while Model 2 uses an index for civil liberties as proxy for democracy. The results for Model 1 show globalization and public investment increase private investment, while exchange rate volatility and trade openness decrease private investment in both the long and short run. In addition, national income and interest rate reduce private investment in the short run. In the case of Model 2, credit to the private sector and public investment increase private investment, while exchange rate volatility and trade openness decrease private investment in both the long and short run. Finally, national income and interest rate reduce private investment in the short run. The findings and policy recommendations of the article provide vital information for policy implementation in Ghana

Optimal public policy with endogenous mortality

We analyze the welfare-maximizing policy mix between explicit and implicit taxation, where the probability of survival of the young agents depends upon the share of government expenditure on health, education and infrastructure. We show that increases in the survival probability lead to an increase in the reliance on seigniorage as a welfare maximizing outcome. However, the seigniorage tax base must be large enough for the benevolent planner to use the inflation tax.monetary exchange overlapping generations model, probability of survival, welfare maximizing policy mix,

Why do stabilizations fail?

This paper is an empirical analysis of the likelihood of failure of inflation stabilization programs. Random effects logit models are estimated on a dataset of 39 programs implemented in 10 countries, in order to determine which economic and political variables affect the probability of failure of stabilizations. This study's main contribution is to show that political factors are very important determinants of the success or failure of stabilization programs. There is empirical evidence that political instability, party fractionalization, autocracy, longer time in office and left-wing ideological orientation of incumbents lead to higher probabilities of failure of stabilization attempts.inflation stabilization, failure, political economy,