Golden Rule of Public Finance: A Panacea?

This paper shows that adopting a golden rule does not guarantee that public investment will improve economic outcomes. Our results suggest that only when the rate of return on public capital is greater than the cost of public borrowing, expandingpublic investment is beneficial. Otherwise, both macroeconomic stability and debt sustainability are compromised. As such, we argue that policy-makers should prioritise the productivity of public investment rather than its level.Public investment, public debt, golden rule.

Public debt and Financial development: A theoretical exploration

This paper proposes an analytical framework to examine the role of public debt in financial development, which remains largely unexplored in the existing literature. We find that in countries where the banking sector extends substantial credit to government, public debt is likely to harm financial development, with unfavourable implications for economic activity. As such, our results provide an alternative explanation for the ‘contractionary fiscal expansions’. We also show that the lower the financial depth, the greater the adverse effects of public borrowing on financial development and macroeconomic outcomes.Financial sector; credit to government; public debt.

Proceedings of the Conference on Globalization and Its Discontents

Recent studies on economic globalization have used various indicators, such as the ratio of trade-to-GDP and the ratio of FDI-to-GDP, to analyze the globalization performances of national economies. Although each indicator is useful in itself, our contention is that a single composite indicator (index) can provide more comprehensive information and would enable policy-makers and researchers to compare and rank the globalization performances of different countries, country groups and regions in a given year (or period) and over time. Accordingly, in this paper, we developed the economic globalization index to measure the extent of globalization of national economies. We have constructed the economic globalization index for the period 1975-2005. The overall results indicate that rich countries tend to be more globalized than poor countries. Furthermore, rich countries have improved their globalization –relative global integration level- from 1975 to 2005; however, many of poor countries’ relative levels of global integration have deteriorated during the same period. Our results seem to be in line with studies that characterize the recent situation in the world as “truncated globalization” or simply “triadization”.globalization, economic globalization index

Knowledge and Economic Growth: A Dynamic Panel Data Analysis for OECD Countries

This paper aims to investigate the role of knowledge in the economic growth convergence of the OECD member countries during the 1995-2011 period, by utilizing production function approach. In our augmented production function framework, in addition to human capital, we consider other important channels of knowledge (R&D, trade and ICTs) to understand how knowledge contributes to the growth performance and growth convergence of the OECD countries. Furthermore, in contrast to most of the existing studies which used traditional panel data analysis, this study utilizes the dynamic panel data techniques. This approach enables us to utilize the long-run information in the data and hence gives us the possibility to analyze the impact of knowledge indicators on economic growth by focusing on equilibrium relations over longer time horizon. The empirical results suggest a positive impact of knowledge indicators on the economic growth performances of OECD countries and that there is convergence to a common long-run equilibrium in OECD

The Role of Knowledge on Economic Growth: The Case of Turkey, 1963-2010

The importance of knowledge for long-run economic growth has long been an important research area for economists and policy makers. This paper attempts to analyze the impact of knowledge on economic growth in Turkey over the 1963-2010 period, by using a production function approach. In contrast to early studies, which have analyzed the impact of a single dimension of knowledge on economic growth, a knowledge index is constructed to see the impact of various dimensions of knowledge with a single and comprehensive measure of the “level” of knowledge in the economy. Moreover, time series methods -such as cointegration and impulse response analysis- are used to analyze the role of knowledge on economic growth in Turkey. The empirical results indicate that higher level of knowledge had a positive impact on the growth rate of Turkish economy over the sample period. It is, therefore, necessary to create an economic environment that is conducive to enhance the level of knowledge and hence economic growth in Turkey

Productivity and growth in an unstable emerging market economy: The case of Turkey, 1960-2004

This paper explores sources of growth in the Turkish economy by performing growth accounting exercises over the 1960-2004 period and relevant subperiods. It also analyzes the role of a number of important policy-related factors, such as infrastructure investment, macroeconomic instability, and imports, on total factor productivity (TFP) by performing cointegration and impulse response analyses. The results suggest that both TFP and capital accumulation were crucial sources of growth during the sample period. Nevertheless, TFP growth displayed enormous variation from 1960 to 2004. The descriptive and empirical evidence suggests that TFP is positively affected by imports and public infrastructure investment and negatively affected by macroeconomic instability. Copyright © 2009 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved

Does central bank independence lower inflation?

This paper provides a potential explanation for the recent findings of no significant relationship between central bank independence (CBI) and lower inflation. We argue that although CBI delivers lower inflation in the short-term, it may reduce the scope for productivity enhancing public investment and so harm future growth potential. We also argue that the effects on growth make CBI less likely to achieve lower inflation in the long-term

The role of macroeconomic instability in public and private capital accumulation and growth: the case of Turkey 1963-1999

This study investigates the empirical relationship(s) between macroeconomic instability, public and private capital accumulation and growth in Turkey over the period 1963-1999. Time series econometric techniques. such as cointegration and impulse response analysis, are used. The results of this paper suggest that the chronic and increasing macroeconomic instability of the Turkish economy has seriously affected her capital formation and growth. Furthermore, the Turkish experience indicates that chronic macroeconomic instability seems to be a serious impediment to public investment, especially to its infrastructural component, and shatters, or even reverses. the cornplementarity between public and private investment in the long run