The Impact of Foreign Direct Investment on Unemployment: Panel Data Approach

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of foreign direct investment on unemployment in six countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey, as this region is considered one of the most regions in the world with a high rate of unemployment. The study employed panel data for the period from 1990 to 2018, where three economic models were used to examine the impact of FDI on unemployment, male unemployment, and female unemployment, in the long run, using the Fixed Effect Model (FEM) and Random Effect Model (REM), in addition to finding the causal relationship in the short term using Panel VAR (Granger causality tests). The results showed that FDI reduces the unemployment rate, the male unemployment rate, and the female unemployment rate in the long run. The results of the study also revealed that there is no causal relationship in the short term between FDI and unemployment in its various forms, while there is a bidirectional causal relationship between FDI and exports according to the three economic models. This paper is the first of its kind in terms of examining the effect of FDI on unemployment in the six countries as a grouped and a sample of the MENA region

Good neighbours matter: economic geography and the diffusion of human rights

© 2018, © 2018 Regional Studies Association. Using multi-country panel data, this paper investigates the geopolitical and economic aspects of human rights performance. Human rights performance depends on the relative levels of economic development and spatial proximity to ‘good’ and ‘bad’ neighbours. The paper tests for basic effects of income, and applies spatial weighting models, to analyse the neighbours’ impact on human rights levels, treating this impact as partly endogenous. It takes into account size and distance when comparing each country’s human rights performance with what would be predicted from a weighted average of its neighbours’ performance. There are (1) geographical clusters and (2) size and proximity effects for human rights performance

Economic geography and human rights

This paper investigates the geo-political and international economic aspects of human rights performance using a pooled cross-section time-series data set. We start with simple descriptive accounts of the recent geographic history of human rights performance. We then test for basic economic effects of income and then apply tools from the spatial economics literature to examine the degree to which clusters of relative human rights performance exist. Using spatial weighting models we analyse the spatial impact of proximity and human rights performance of neghbours on overall levels of human rights performance. Unlike previous studies, our approach treats this spatial impact as partly endogenous: one country’s human rights performance may affect its neighbours through a variety of potential geographical spillover mechanisms. The spatial weighting models take into account size and distance of neighbours in order to compare each country’s human rights performance with what would be predicted by regression on a weighted average of its neighbours’ performance. The findings sugest that there are (a) geographical clusters of human rights performance and (b) size and proximity effects for human rights performance, both of which have significant implications for the promotion and protection of human rights

Design and Analysis of an AC Coupled Photovoltaic System for an Off-grid Community in Chittagong Hill Tracts

This paper presents the design of an AC-coupled off-grid photovoltaic (PV) system for a remote village in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh which has no access to national utility grid. A field survey was conducted to collect load demand data of the population for designing an optimal PV system architecture to serve that community. The proposed system consists of 18 kW PV arrays, two 6 kW grid-tied inverters, a 6 kW battery inverter and a 19.2 kWh nominal capacity battery bank. Further, the technical feasibility of the system was evaluated using HOMER (Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable) Pro software. The analytical results indicate that the proposed AC-coupled stand-alone solar system can meet a load demand of 46.58 kWh at daytime and 7.02 kWh at night in that village. Currently, the infrastructure of proposed PV plant as well as the transmission and distribution network are being developed at the selected site. Moreover, insights into the benefits of AC-coupling over DC-coupling for large off-grid systems in remote hilly areas are provided in the paper

Congenital hyperinsulinism: clinical and molecular characterisation of compound heterozygous ABCC8 mutation responsive to Diazoxide therapy

Mutations in ABCC8 and KCNJ11 are the most common cause of congenital hyperinsulinism (CHI). Recessive as well as dominant acting ABCC8/KCNJ11 mutations have been described. Diazoxide, which is the first line medication for CHI, is usually ineffective in recessive ABCC8 mutations. We describe the clinical and molecular characterisation of a recessive ABCC8 mutation in a CHI patient that is diazoxide response