The Indian Economy Since Liberalisation: the Structure and Composition of Exports and Industrial Transformation (1980 – 2000)

This paper assesses empirically structural change in the Indian manufacturing based export sector, based on an analysis of 143 industries / product groupings (mainly manufacturing industries). Trade indices such as Balassa’s revealed comparative advantage (RCA) index, and other variants commonly employed in the literature are used in our analysis. Regression analysis on the RSCA indices is used to further analyse structural change. Thereafter, the stability of the RCA indices is examined, as well as the process of their intertemporal evolution. Three technology categories (high technology, medium technology and low technology) are examined individually and SITC product codes are used as proxies for export industries, in order to look at industry movements within each of these groups. This analysis enables us to assess the export performance of Indian industries in the selected product-industry groupings in detail and evaluate the prospects for growth of particular Indian industrial groupings.India, revealed comparative advantage, manufacturing exports, industrial transformation

Political Economy Websites: A Researcher’s Guide

The Internet is rapidly becoming an indispensable resource for political economists. However, little work has been done to develop criteria through which the academic quality of Internet sites can be assessed. This article attempts to fill this lacuna by reviewing Internet sites concerned with two areas of political economy (global finance (GF) and transnational corporations (TNCs)). It has two main objectives: first, to develop a simple framework with which to analyse the quality of Internet; and secondly to use this framework to indicate those sites which are the most useful sources of information. For this purpose a two-tier set of criteria is used. The first tier deals with issues related to content, on the assumption that it is the content of Internet sites that is the prime determinant of their usefulness to researchers. Those sites that pass the content criteria are assessed in terms of factors considered to be of secondary importance in order to assess usability. Together these criteria are used to assess the utility of reviewed websites concerned with global finance and transnational corporations. These areas are chosen because they are the areas we are researching in and with which we are familiar. Recommendations on the basis of our tests are presented for other researchers.political economy websites research guide

Use of Bloomberg Professional in support of finance and economics teaching

yesThis paper evaluates the use of specialist software within university trading rooms in order to enable students to experience a simulated environment which allows them to gain an appreciation of “real life” decision-making within the nance and banking industry and become familiar with real-time data. An important additional aim of trading room-based instruction is to encourage responsible nancial decision-making. Our analysis focuses on business schools within the United Kingdom and provides a detailed illustration of use of such resources, in particular, as deployed at the Bradford University School of Management. We provide a critical overview of the main challenges involved in making e ective use of a trading room. We also offer recommendations to other academics to enable productive and appropriate use of resources such as Bloomberg Professional in order to enhance the student learning experience and to facilitate the development of valuable skills

Technology Adoption And Pest Control Strategies Among UK Cereal Farmers: Evidence from Parametric and Nonparametric Count Data Models

This paper examines technology adoption and integrated pest management strategies employed by UK farmers, using both parametric and nonparametric methods. We employ a unique survey data set collected from UK cereal farmers to assess the determinants of technology adoption in relation to pest management. Our preferred model specification is nonparametric which makes use of the recently developed methods of Li and Racine (2007) and Racine and Li (2004). These methods allow us to combine categorical and continuous data and thereby avoid sample splitting and resulting efficiency losses. Our analysis reveals that total area farmed is positively related to the number of technologies adopted, whereas age is negatively related. We also find evidence of significant statistical differences for number of adoptions by region across the UK.technology, adoption, cereal farming, UK, nonparametric

Bayesian Model Averaging and Identification of Structural Breaks in Time Series

Bayesian model averaging is used for testing for multiple break points in uni- variate series using conjugate normal-gamma priors. This approach can test for the number of structural breaks and produce posterior probabilities for a break at each point in time. Results are averaged over speciÖcations including: station- ary; stationary around trend; and, unit root models, each containing di§ erent types and numbers of breaks and di§ erent lag lengths. The procedures are used to test for structural breaks on 14 annual macroeconomic series and 11 natural resource price series. The results indicate that there are structural breaks in al l of the natural resource series and most of the macroeconomic series. Many of the series had multiple breaks. Our Öndings regarding the existence of unit roots, having al lowed for structural breaks in the data, are largely consistent with previous work.Bayesian Model Averaging, Structural Breaks, Unit Root, Macro- economic Data, Natural Resource data

Firm corruption in the presence of an auditor

This paper develops a framework to explore firm corruption taking account of interaction with an auditor. The basic idea is that an auditor can provide auditing and other (consultancy) services. The extent of the other services depends on firm profitability. Hence auditor profitability can increase with firm corruption that may provide an incentive to collude in corrupt practices. This basic idea is developed using a game theoretic framework. It is shown that a multiplicity of equilibria exist from stable corruption, through auditor controlled corruption, via multiple equilibria to honesty on behalf of both actors. Following the development of the model various policy options are highlighted that show the difficulty of completely removing corrupt practices.firm corruption, auditor corruption, perfect equilibrium

Non-renewable Resource Prices: Structural Breaks and Long Term Trends

In this paper we examine the time series properties of nine non-renewable resources. In particular we are concerned with understanding the relationship between the number of structural breaks in the data and the nature of the resource price path, i.e. is it stationary or a random walk. To undertake our analysis we employ a number of relevant econometric methods including Bai and Perron's (1998) multiple structural break dating method. Our results indicate that these series are in many cases stationary and subject to a number of structural breaks. These results indicate that a deterministic model of resources prices may well be appropriate.structural change, non-renewable resources, breaks, resource depletion

The Sustainability of India's current account (1950-2003): Evidence from parametric and non-parametric unit root and cointegration tests

This study conducts an investigation into the sustainability of the Indian current account over the study period 1950-2003. It is argued that a necessary condition for current account sustainability is that exports and imports are cointegrated. After testing for unit roots that allow for a structural break, we employ parametric tests for cointegration: based on Johansen (1995) and Saikonnen and LŸtkepohl (2000) as well as the nonparametric procedure proposed by Breitung (2002) and Breitung and Taylor (2003) that does not assume linearity. By employing these procedures recursively, two distinct regimes are identified characterised by whether or not imports and exports are cointegrated. The regime of non-cointegration runs until the late 1990s and the second regime of cointegration is present after that. This latter regime coincides with the liberalisation of the Indian economy.India, current account, sustainability, cointegration, nonparametric cointegration, rolling and recursive p-valuesdata

The Impact of Football Attendance on Tourist Expenditures for the United Kingdom

YesWe employ unconditional quantile regression with region of origin fixed effects, whereby we find that attending live football matches significantly increases expenditures by inbound tourist in the UK, and surprisingly we find that such effects are strongest for those who overall spend the least. Higher spending individuals spend significantly more than those who do not attend football matches, even when such individuals are otherwise similar. We analyse the impact of football attendance across the tourism expenditure distribution which is a relatively neglected aspect within previous research

Non-renewable resource prices: Structural breaks and long term trends

In this paper we examine the time series properties of nine non-renewable resources. In particular we are concerned with understanding the relationship between the number of structural breaks in the data and the nature of the resource price path, i.e. is it stationary or a random walk. To undertake our analysis we employ a number of relevant econometric methods including Bai and Perron`s (1998) multiple structural break dating method. Our results indicate that these series are in many cases stationary and subject to a number of structural breaks. These results indicate that a deterministic model of resources prices may well be appropriate.structural change, non-renewable resources, breaks, resource depletion