Determinants of Economic Growth: A Bayesian Panel Data Approach

Model uncertainty hampers consensus on the key determinants of economic growth. Some recent cross-country, cross-sectional analyses have employed Bayesian Model Averaging to address the issue of model uncertainty. This paper extends that approach to panel data models with country-specific fixed effects. The empirical results show that the most robust growth determinants are the price of investment goods, distance to major world cities, and political rights. This suggests that growth-promoting policy strategies should aim to reduce taxes and distortions that raise the prices of investment goods; improve access to international markets; and promote democracy-enhancing institutional reforms. Moreover, the empirical results are robust to different prior assumptions on expected model size.accounting; Average growth; Average growth rate; benchmark; calculations; capital accumulation; civil liberties; conditional convergence; Contribution; convergence parameter; country regressions

Bayesian posterior prediction and meta-analysis: an application to the value of travel time savings.

In the evaluation of transportation infrastructure projects, some non-tradable goods such as time are usually key determinants of the result. However, obtaining monetary values for these goods is not always easy. This paper introduces a novel approach based on the combination of bayesian posterior prediction and meta-analysis. This methodology will allow to obtain predictive distributions of the monetary values for this type of goods. Therefore, uncertainty is formally considered in the analysis. Moreover, the proposed method is easy to apply and inexpensive both in terms of time and money. Finally, an application to the value of travel time savings is also presented.Bayesian Prediction; Meta-Analysis; Uncertainty; Value of Travel Time Savings

Auto-consistent metallicity and star formation history of the nearest blue compact dwarf galaxy NGC 6789

We present a detailed auto-consistent study of the nearest blue compact dwarf galaxy NGC 6789 by means of optical and UV archive photometry data and optical long-slit ISIS-WHT spectroscopy observations of the five brightest star-forming knots. The analysis of the spectra in all knots allowed the derivation of ionic chemical abundances of oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, argon and neon using measures of both the high- and low-excitation electron temperatures, leading to the conclusion that NGC 6789 is chemically homogeneous with low values of the abundance of oxygen in the range 12+log(O/H) = 7.80-7.93, but presenting at the same time higher values of the nitrogen-to-oxygen ratio than expected for its metal regime. We used archival HST/WFPC2 F555W and F814W observations of NGC 6789 to perform a photometric study of the colour-magnitude diagram (CMD) of the resolved stellar populations and derive its star formation history (SFH), which is compatible with the presence of different young and old stellar populations whose metallicities do not necessarily increase with age. We fit the observed optical spectrum in all the five knots using the STARLIGHT code and a combination of single stellar populations following the SFH obtained from the CMD. We compare the resulting stellar masses and the relative fractions of the ionising populations with a non-constrained SFH case. The properties of the younger populations were obtained using CLOUDY photoionisation models, giving similar ages in all the knots in the range 3-6 Myr and the estimation of the dust absorption factor, which correlates with the observed GALEX FUV-NUV colour indices. The total photometric extinction and dust-absorption corrected H\alpha\ fluxes were finally used to derive the star formation rates.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, 10 tables; accepted by MNRA

Income and Democracy: Revisiting the Evidence

It is well-known in the literature that income per capita is strongly correlated with the level of democracy across countries. In an influential paper, Acemoglu et al. (2008) find that this linear correlation disappears once they control for country-specific effects focusing on within-country variation. In this paper we find evidence of a non-linear effect from income to democracy even after controlling for country-specific effects. While a positive effect emerges for poor countries, this effect vanishes for rich countries.Democracy; Income; Lipset hypothesis; panel data

The continuous star formation history of a giant HII region in M101

We present results about the star formation process in the giant HII region NGC 5471 in the outskirts of M101. From resolved HST/WPFC2 photometry we find that star formation has been going for the last 70 Myr. We further compare previous results from integrated infrared-optical photometry with the stellar resolved CMD and we discuss the star formation properties of this region and its individual knots, as well as characterizing the different stellar content. This result has very important consequences in our understanding of the burst versus continuous star formation activity in spiral galaxies.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figures. Proceeding of the conference From Stars to Galaxies: Building the pieces to build up the Universe (Venice, Italy

Dynamic panels with predetermined regressors : likelihood-based estimation and Bayesian averaging with an application to cross-country growth

En este documento se analiza la estimación por máxima verosimilitud de modelos lineales de datos de panel con efectos fijos y regresores endógenos. El estimador máximo verosímil resultante es asintóticamente equivalente a estimadores de panel por el Método Generalizado de Momentos (Arellano y Bond, 1991) pero tiene menores sesgos en muestras finitas como se ilustra en las simulaciones. Por otra parte, la disponibilidad de una función de verosimilitud permite aplicar métodos Bayesianos a esta clase de modelos de datos de panel. En concreto, combinando el estimador propuesto con métodos Bayesianos de promediado de modelos se estiman ecuaciones de crecimiento atajando simultáneamente los problemas de endogeneidad e incertidumbre del modelo. Los resultados empíricos obtenidos indican que sólo la inversión parece ser causante robusto del crecimiento económico a largo plazo. Por otra parte, la tasa de convergencia estimada no es significativamente diferente de cer

The microeconomic origins of the Spanish boom

El patrón de crecimiento de la economía española durante el período 1995-2007 se caracterizó por el notable aumento del empleo y de la inversión, así como por la ausencia de ganancias en productividad. Estos desarrollos macroeconómicos se combinaron con un aumento del crédito bancario, que, a su vez, se vio favorecido por incrementos sin precedentes en los precios del mercado inmobiliario. Este artículo resume una línea de investigación que explora la conexión entre estos desarrollos de acuerdo con datos microeconómicos sobre empresas y bancos españoles. La evidencia disponible sugiere que la abundante disponibilidad de crédito, parcialmente inducida por la burbuja inmobiliaria, y su propagación a través de la estructura productiva española explican una parte considerable de la acumulación masiva de empleo y capital. Además, el deterioro en la asignación de recursos entre empresas dentro de cada sector se revela como el principal responsable de la caída en la productividad agregada. La asignación del crédito entre las empresas, la relajación de los estándares crediticios de los bancos y la baja productividad de las empresas españolas pueden explicar, al menos parcialmente, este fenómenoThe Spanish growth experience over the 1995-2007 period was characterized by the remarkable surge in employment and investment as well as the dismal evolution of productivity. These macroeconomic fluctuations were coupled with an unprecedented credit boom fueled by a housing bubble. This article reviews a line of research that investigates the connection between these developments using micro-level data on Spanish fi rms and banks. The evidence suggests that the abundant availability of credit, partially induced by the real estate bubble, and its propagation through the Spanish production network explain a sizable part of the massive accumulation of labor and capital. Also, the deterioration in the allocation of resources across firms is the main responsible of the fall in aggregate productivity. The allocation of credit across firms and municipalities, the softening of banks lending standards, and the low productivity of Spanish firms can partly explain this deterioratio

Size, growth and bank dynamics

This paper investigates the size distribution of the whole population of Spanish commercial, savings and cooperative banks from a dynamic perspective over the 1970 2006 period. To investigate the evolution of the size distribution, we determine whether the data satisfies the Law of Proportionate Effect (LPE) using panel unit root tests. We find that the size-growth relationship is not stable over time but changes depending on the competitive environment of banks (liberalization, deregulation and integration). When Spanish banking was highly regulated, we find that smaller banks grew faster than their larger counterparts. In recent years, however, we find that larger banks grow at the same rate or faster than smaller banks, a result that lends towards LPE acceptance. Thus, our study corroborates the conditioned nature of the size-growth relationship and the size distribution of banks, as emphasized by recent studies for the US banking system. Results imply that the size distribution of Spanish banks will become more skewed in next years, and concentration will tend to increas