Measurement of inflation: An alternative approach

The stochastic approach to index numbers has attracted renewed attention in recent times (e.g., Clements and Izan, 1981 and 1987; Diewert, 1995; Giles and McCann, 1994; and Selvanathan and Rao, 1994). One of the attractions of this approach is that it provides standard errors for the index numbers. This paper reviews the stochastic approach and extends the existing work by presenting an alternative approach to measure the rate of inflation. This approach has been demonstrated using consumption expenditure data for three countries, Australia, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US).stochastic approach, index numbers, inflation, standard errors

Causality between Foreign Direct Investment and Tourism : Empirical Evidence from India

This paper investigates the causal link between foreign direct investment and tourism in India by employing the Granger causality test under a VAR framework. A one-way causality link is found from foreign direct investment to tourism in India. This evidence once again adds to the need for appropriate policies and plans to further expand and develop tourism given that FDI flow into India is expected to be strong in the coming years, bringing along a demand for tourism as well.FDI, Tourism, Granger Causality

Remittances and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence from Bangladesh India and Sri Lanka

In many developing countries, remittance payments from migrant workers are increasingly becoming a significant source of export income. This paper investigates the causal link between remittances and economic growth in three countries, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka, by employing the Granger causality test under a VAR framework (Granger 1988). Using time series data over a 25 year period, we found that growth in remittances does lead to economic growth in Bangladesh. In India, there seems to be no causal relationship between growth in remittances and economic growth; but in Sri Lanka, a two-way directional causality is found; namely economic growth influences growth in remittences and vice-versa. The paper also discusses a number of policy issues arising from the results of the analysis in relation to remittances in association with liberalisation of financial institutions, gender issues, regulation and enforcement, investment and savings schemes, and promotion and education.

ANALYSING THE DEMAND FOR FINANCIAL ASSETS IN INDONESIA

This paper analyses the demand for three important financial assets (i.e. demand deposits) in Indonesia: demand deposits, saving deposits and time deposits. We use a system-wide approach to consumption economics to perform the analysis in the long and short run. The estimation results reveal that a) generally, the wealth elasticity for saving deposits is above one, for time deposits is below one, and for demand deposits it varies from 0.5 (in the short-run) to 1.1 (in the long-run); b) the own interest rate coefficients are statistically significant and positive, as expected; and  c) in the long run, while the assets of demand deposits and time deposits and saving deposits and time deposits are pairwise subsitutes, the assets of demand deposits and saving deposits are pairwise complements.This paper analyses the demand for three important financial assets (i.e. demand deposits) in Indonesia: demand deposits, saving deposits and time deposits. We use a system-wide approach to consumption economics to perform the analysis in the long and short run. The estimation results reveal that a) generally, the wealth elasticity for saving deposits is above one, for time deposits is below one, and for demand deposits it varies from 0.5 (in the short-run) to 1.1 (in the long-run); b) the own interest rate coefficients are statistically significant and positive, as expected; and  c) in the long run, while the assets of demand deposits and time deposits and saving deposits and time deposits are pairwise subsitutes, the assets of demand deposits and saving deposits are pairwise complements

Dynamic modelling of consumption patterns using LA-AIDS: : a comparative study of developed versus developing countries

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the anonymous referees and the editor of this journal for their constructive comments on an earlier version of the paper. We also thank Ms. Tanya Parker for editorial assistance. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the internal grants received from the Griffith Asia Institute and the COVID-19 Supplementary Funding Pool Scheme from Charles Darwin University to undertake this research. Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

IMPLICIT PRICES OF PRAWN AND SHRIMP ATTRIBUTES IN THE PHILIPPINE DOMESTIC MARKET

Improving quality is a major goal in the global seafood market due to increasing consciousness among buyers, who are becoming "quality consumers" rather than "quantity consumers." This paper uses the hedonic approach to determine the marketable characteristics of prawn and shrimp in a domestic market that prioritizes export of quality products to a more lucrative market. Using price and attribute data for prawn and shrimp purchased from the Philippine domestic market, we estimate a log-linear hedonic price model with combined continuous and dummy explanatory variables. The estimation results show significant implicit prices of attributes, such as: tail length, freshness, product form, species, color, size, ease of preparation, discoloration, protein, and carbohydrate content. Longer tails and banana species are highly valued. Peeling and breading to ease preparation obtain a high premium. Freezing, although commonly practiced, receives the highest discount among forms of preservation. As the characteristics of local consumers and the market in the Philippines are similar to other competing Asian exporters such as Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, the results presented in this paper will be applicable to these exporting countries.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Lost in transition: linking war, war economy and post-war crime in Sri Lanka

Scholars continue to draw attention to the link between the war economy and post-war crime. The majority of these studies are about cases of civil war that ended with peace agreements. Sri Lanka’s civil war ended with a military victory for the state armed forces; thus, it can help shed new light on the above link. Situated in the war economy perspective, this article investigates the dominant types of crimes reported from post-war Sri Lanka and the mechanisms linking them with the war economy. The culture of impunity, continued militarisation and enduring corruption are identified as key mechanisms through which the war economy and post-war bodily and material crime are linked. It suggests, although the ‘victors’ peace’ achieved by state armed forces was able to successfully dismantle the extra-legal war economy run by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, it was responsible for promoting criminality in the post-war period. Overall, this points to the urgency of breaking away from legacies of the state war economy in the post-war period, before introducing programs of longer term political and economic reform

Convolution structures on discrete spaces

The study of hypergroups in harmonic analysis was put on a firm footing with the (independent) papers published by the three authors Dunkl, Spector and Jewett in 1972. Since then work on hypergroups. together with the development of probability theory on these spaces, has progressed considerably. This thesis deals mainly with commutative discrete hypergroup structures; in particular, the hypergroup structures on the set N of natural numbers. Chapter One contains an introduction to the thesis and some general properties of a commutative discrete hypergroup arising from its structural definition and using known results proved by other authors. The idea of generalizing convolution structures has in fact been investigated by many authors. In 1974, Schwartz gave an axiomatic structure that leads to a generalized convolution for probability measures defined on N, via certain families of orthogonal functions. In the second chapter, we investigate how the convolution spaces of Schwartz relate to those developed by the other authors (in particular Gilewski and Urbanik) and develop basic probability theory for various Banach convolution algebras of probability measures on N. In Chapter Three we prove that every hermitian hypergroup structure on N can be generated (in the sense of Schwartz) by a certain family of real valued continuous functions defined on a compact interval, and we characterize such structures when the generating functions are polynomials. The fourth chapter investigates the hypergroup structures of the duals of compact groups and their hypergroup duals. From a suitable family of functions on a compact space, we develop in Chapter Five a generalized version of the results in Chapter Three to include all commutative discrete hypergroup structures. In the final chapter we develop some basic probability theory for hypergroups

How similar are alcohol drinkers? International evidence

Stigler and Becker (1977) argue that tastes neither change capriciously nor differ importantly between people; it is differences in prices and incomes that determine differences in behaviour. In this paper we analyse the alcohol consumption patterns of drinkers from 8 industrialized countries. We identify a number of empirical regularities and verify Stigler and Becker's hypothesis that income and price elasticities of demand are international constants by showing that alcohol consumption patterns in the eight countries exhibit intriguing similarities. The income and price elasticities of alcohol are found to be about 0.8 and -0.6, respectively, in all eight countries.