The sustainability of fiscal policy: A group-mean panel estimator approach

There has been a rising interest recently on studying sustainability of fiscal policy using panel data. Generally, these kinds of studies will in their last come up with a conclusion that a panel of countries have or haven’t a sustainable fiscal policy. To come up with such kind of conclusion, most of those studies implicitly assume that there is a common cointegrated relationship in government revenue and expenditure between countries in their panel data. However there is not much argument could support that necessarily those countries shares a same long run relationship. This paper employs recently developed techniques, group-mean panel estimator (include group-mean panel FMOLS and DOLS), for investigating the sustainability of fiscal policy in a panel of countries , but without assuming that there must be a common cointegrated relationship in government revenue and expenditure between countries in their panel data. To our knowledge, this is the first paper adopt a group-mean panel estimator to investigate whether countries have a sustainable fiscal policy

The sustainability of fiscal policy: A group-mean panel estimator approach

There has been a rising interest recently on studying sustainability of fiscal policy using panel data. Generally, these kinds of studies will in their last come up with a conclusion that a panel of countries have or haven’t a sustainable fiscal policy. To come up with such kind of conclusion, most of those studies implicitly assume that there is a common cointegrated relationship in government revenue and expenditure between countries in their panel data. However there is not much argument could support that necessarily those countries shares a same long run relationship. This paper employs recently developed techniques, group-mean panel estimator (include group-mean panel FMOLS and DOLS), for investigating the sustainability of fiscal policy in a panel of countries , but without assuming that there must be a common cointegrated relationship in government revenue and expenditure between countries in their panel data. To our knowledge, this is the first paper adopt a group-mean panel estimator to investigate whether countries have a sustainable fiscal policy

Eel osmotic stress transcriptional factor 1 (Ostf1) is highly expressed in gill mitochondria-rich cells, where ERK phosphorylated

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Osmotic stress transcriptional factor 1 (Ostf1) was firstly identified in tilapia in 2005. Then numerous studies have investigated its regulation and expression profile in fish gill tissues in related to osmoregulation. Generally, hyperosmotic stress induced <it>ostf1 </it>mRNA expression level, however there is no report studying the cellular localization of Ostf1 expression in any osmoregulatory tissue. In this study immunohistochemical (IHC) approach was used to study the cellular localization of Ostf1 in gill cells of Japanese eels.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>Ostf1 protein was found to be localized in branchial mitochondria-rich/chloride cell (MRC/CC) as revealed by Naα5 and CFTR co-localization. The protein was detectable at day 3 after fresh water to seawater transfer and was mainly localized in MRCs. Moreover, elevated levels of extracellular signal regulated kinase (ERK) phosphorylation was observed at day 3 of the transfer and was co-localized with MRCs.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our data identified Ostf1 expression in gill MRCs. The observation supports the role of Ostf1 in osmosensing and/or osmoregulation in fish gills, particularly its functional relationship with MRCs. The observation of the co-expression of pERK and Ostf1 in MRCs suggests a cross-talk mechanism between the mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) and Ostf1 in response to hyperosmotic challenge. To summarize, this report has addressed the cellular localization of Ostf1 and provides evidence to illustrate the involvement of Ostf1 and ERK on osmosensing and osmoregulatory function of gill MRCs.</p

Long-Run Movement and Predictability of Bond Spread for BRICS and PIIGS: The Role of Economic, Financial and Political Risks#

We examine co-movement and predictability of Bond Spread of BRICS and PIIGS with respect to political risk (PR), financial risk (FR), and economic risk (ER). Our linear Granger causality findings imply that PR is the most important risk in predicting bond spread, followed by ER in both BRICS and in PIIGS, while FR is useful in predicting bond spread in BRICS only. Our nonlinear individual causality results infer that ER is the most important risk in predicting bond spread, followed by FR, and PR. We make a conjecture that linear and nonlinear causality are independent and our findings support this

Efficiency of electricity use and productivity change of electricity in China: A nonparametric approach

This paper tries to investigate efficiency of electricity use of 30 administration regions and productivity change of electricity in China for the period 2003-2008. We use the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method to measure the efficiency of electricity use and productivity change of electricity. From an empirical perspective, we provide a framework to investigate the situation of relative efficiency of electricity use and the growth rate of electricity’s productivity. The results indicate that the efficiency gap between regions is very large and the east areas have a higher level of electricity efficiency than the western areas. Moreover, both the technical and efficiency change in China from 2003 to 2008 is also slow. Based on these results, we propose some reasons behind and also give some suggestions about it

Efficiency of electricity use and productivity change of electricity in China: A nonparametric approach

This paper tries to investigate efficiency of electricity use of 30 administration regions and productivity change of electricity in China for the period 2003-2008. We use the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method to measure the efficiency of electricity use and productivity change of electricity. From an empirical perspective, we provide a framework to investigate the situation of relative efficiency of electricity use and the growth rate of electricity’s productivity. The results indicate that the efficiency gap between regions is very large and the east areas have a higher level of electricity efficiency than the western areas. Moreover, both the technical and efficiency change in China from 2003 to 2008 is also slow. Based on these results, we propose some reasons behind and also give some suggestions about it

Stock Market Liberalizations and Efficiency: The Case of Latin America

This investigation is among the first to examine the impact of stock market liberalization on the efficiency of Latin American stock markets. It is also among the first to apply the martingale hypothesis test and a stochastic dominance approach to study the issue of efficient markets. Daily stock indices from Latin American countries, including Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago, are used in our analysis. To examine the impact of stock market liberalization on efficiency, we employ several approaches, including the runs test, Chow-Denning multiple variation ratio test, Wright variance ratio test, the martingale hypothesis test and the SD test, the stock market indices of the countries above. We find that stock market liberalization does not significantly improve stock market efficiency in Latin America

Do both demand-following and supply-leading theories hold true in developing countries?

To overcome the limitations of the traditional approach which uses linear causality to examine whether the supply-leading and demand-following theories hold. As certain countries will be found not to follow the theory by using the traditional approach, this paper first suggests using all the proxies of financial development and economic growth as well as both multivariate and bivariate linear and nonlinear causality tests to analyze the relationship between financial development and economic growth. The multivariate nonlinear test not only takes into consideration both dependent and joint effects among variables, but is also able to detect a multivariate nonlinear deterministic process that cannot be detected by using any linear causality test. We find five more countries in which the supply-leading hypothesis and/or demand-following hypothesis hold true than with the traditional approach. However, there is still one country, Pakistan, for which no linear or nonlinear causality is found between its financial development and economic growth. To overcome this limitation, this paper suggests including cointegration in the analysis. This leads us to conclude that either supply-leading or demand-following hypotheses or both hold for all countries without any exception. There will be some types of relationships between economic growth and financial development in any country such that either they move together or economic growth causes financial development or financial development causes economic growth without any exception. The finding in our paper is may be useful for governments, politicians, and other international institutions in their decision making process for the development of the countries and reducing poverty

Stock Market Liberalizations and Efficiency: The Case of Latin America

This investigation is among the first to examine the impact of stock market liberalization on the efficiency of Latin American stock markets. It is also among the first to apply the martingale hypothesis test and a stochastic dominance approach to study the issue of efficient markets. Daily stock indices from Latin American countries, including Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago, are used in our analysis. To examine the impact of stock market liberalization on efficiency, we employ several approaches, including the runs test, Chow-Denning multiple variation ratio test, Wright variance ratio test, the martingale hypothesis test and the SD test, the stock market indices of the countries above. We find that stock market liberalization does not significantly improve stock market efficiency in Latin America