Fighting poverty and child malnutrition: on the design of foreign aid policies

In this paper, we develop a two period overlapping generation model on the effects of child nutrition in developing countries.The model gives rise to multiple equilibria including a poverty trap. We show that child nutrition status affects unfavorably the evolution of human capital and leads countries into poverty. We consider different exogenous foreign aid policies implemented by international organizations such as the World Food Program (WFP). We find that school feeding programs solve social problems like child labor.However, they do not necessarily lead countries to achieve economic development. On the contrary they can lead to poverty if the initial human capital is low. We show that if subsidies are high enough they can prevent a country from going into poverty. Also, we argue that if the WFP provides fixed amount of food to households, then a quality-quantity trade off takes place. Parents decrease the nutrition of their offsprings and increase their number of children.Consequently, total nutrition decreases and the developing country is trickles down and gets locked into poverty trap for any given level of human capitalChild Nutrition; Foreign Aids; poverty traps; human capital;school meals

Fighting poverty and child malnutrition: on the design of foreign aid policies

In this paper, we have developed a two-period overlapping-generation model featuring the effects of child nutrition in developing countries. The model gives rise to multiple equilibria including a poverty trap. It shows that child nutrition status may affect the development of human capital unfavorably and leads countries into poverty. Various exogenous foreign aid policies implemented by international organizations such as the World Food Programme (WFP) are considered. School feeding programs can solve social problems like child labor. However, they do not necessarily help countries to achieve economic development. On the contrary they can lead to poverty if the initial human capital is low. Only if the subsidies are large, can they prevent a country being trapped in poverty. If the WFP provides a fixed amount of food to households, then a quality/quantity trade-off takes place: Parents decrease the nutrition of their offspring and increase the number of children they have. Consequently, total nutrition decreases and the developing country gets locked into poverty whatever its level of human capital. At the end of the paper, we estimate the changes in human capital from a sample of 66 developing countries (almost half of which are African countries), and use the estimates to explore the quantitative effects of the model. The model is then calibrated under different production functions. The results confirm the theoretical predictions.Child Nutrition; Foreign Aids; poverty traps; human capital; school meals

Globalized market for talents and inequality : what can be learnt from European football?

Complex interactions between high-skilled migration and aggregate performance govern the dynamics of growth and inequality across nations. Due to lack of data, these interdependencies have not been extensively studied in the economics literature. This paper takes advantage of the availability of rich panel data on the mobility of talented football players, and the performances of national leagues and teams to quantify the effect of a globalization" shock, the 1995 Bosman rule, on global efficiency and cross-country inequality in football. I built a micro-founded model endogenizing migration decisions, inequality and training; I estimated its structural parameters; and I used numerical simulations to compare actual data with a counterfactual no-Bosman trajectory. My analysis reveals that the Bosman shock (i) increased global efficiency in football, (ii) increased inequality across leagues, and (iii) decreased inequality across national teams. I quantify the effect of the Bosman rule on the football hierarchy of UEFA and FIFA. Countries from Africa, South except Argentina and Brazil) and Central America have produced more talents and benefitted from brain-gain type effects. My results also show that this brain-gain mechanism is the major source of efficiency gains. However, it plays only a minor role in explaining the rising inequality

Does talent migration increase inequality? A quantitative assessment in football labour market

I analyze the links between talent migration and cross-country inequality by exploiting the 1995 elimination of mobility restrictions on the European football labor market. I develop a simple model and employ an empirical dataset to estimate its parameters. Through simulation analysis, I compare actual data with a counterfactual no-mobility restriction trajectory, and conclude that the elimination of mobility barriers increases not only cross-country inequality by 25%, but also global output in the football economy by stimulating the production of new talent in Africa, Latin and Central America

Liquidity, volume and dividend yields in stock return data: Evidence from London Stock Exchange

This paper investigates monthly liquidity in FTSE 100 equity index in London Stock Exchange over the period 1986 to 2005. The relationship between excess returns, order flow, dividend yields and earning-price ratio was examined using GARCH(1,1). The variables found insignificant, but the unexpected shocks were significant. This research also examined financial crises in October 1987 and in August 1998 as dummy variables in excess returns. These dummies found to have great impact in excess returns and seemed to be very significant. The results of our analysis appear to be in contrast with the existing literature.GJR-GARCH models, liquidity, volume, dividend yields, earnings, excess returns

Massive Migration and Elections:Evidence from the Refugee Crisis in Greece

This article explores whether the massive arrival of refugees at Greek islands has had an impact on natives’ voting behaviour. Our results show a positive and significant effect of refugees’ presence on votes for the Greek extreme-right party Golden Dawn. More precisely, we find that a 1 per cent increase in the share of refugees is associated with an increase of 5 per cent in the share of votes for Golden Dawn. This outcome is robust under different estimation methodologies and placebo regressions

The social economic impact of AIDS: Accounting for intergenerational transmission, productivity and fertility

In this paper we develop a model that aims to investigate the economic and demographic impacts of three effects of the HIV-AIDS epidemic in developing countries. The direct effect of the HIV epidemic is that it hits the inherited characteristics of young adults. The two indirect effects, resulting from the first, are the reduction in productivity of adults and the transmission of the disease to their offsprings. We allow these different effects to act either separately or together, and we investigate the marginal efficiency of health expenditures on the survival probability of individuals and demographics. The direct effect of the HIV virus is that it leads adults to increase their own health expenditure and to decrease that of their children. On the contrary, the transmission effect of the HIV virus leads parents to spend more on their children than on their own. We show that the reduction in productivity of young adults decreases health expenditures for themselves and their children. Furthermore, we find that the productivity effect dominates by large the two others. Moreover, when adults decide to have fewer children because of HIV, we show that the ratio of low to high skilled workers increases. This demographic impact impoverishes the economy in the short and medium run.orphans, epidemic, transmission, productivity shock, survival rate

Forecasting the Effective Reproduction Number during a Pandemic: COVID-19 Rt forecasts, Governmental Decisions, and Economic Implications

This research empirically identifies the best-performing forecasting methods for the Effective Reproduction Number Rt of COVID-19, the most used epidemiological parameter for policymaking during the pandemic. Furthermore, based on the most accurate forecasts for the United Kingdom, we model the excess exports and imports during the pandemic (using World Trade Organization data), while simultaneously controlling for governmental decisions, i.e., lockdown(s) and vaccination. We provide empirical evidence that the longer the lockdown lasts, the larger the cost to the economy is, predominantly for international trade. We show that imposing a lockdown leads to exports falling by 16.55% in the United Kingdom; without a lockdown, the respective decrease for the same period would be only 1.57%. On the other hand, efforts towards fast population vaccination improve the economy. We believe our results can help policymakers to make better decisions before and during future pandemics

The impact of fiscal rules on sovereign risk premia:International evidence

We examine whether adopting a numerical fiscal rule framework to guide fiscal policy helps reduce sovereign risk premia in a sample of advanced and developing countries for 1985–2012. We address the self-selection problem of policy adoption by applying propensity score matching methods. The results suggest that adopting fiscal rules reduces sovereign risk premia