FOREIGN AID AND DOMESTIC SAVINGS: THE CROWDING OUT EFFECT

The paper examines the relationship between foreign aid and savings using annual data for 119 countries. Regressions for each country are run separately in order to find which countries have a positive aid-saving experience. The explanatory variables chosen are thought to be exogenous to current economic policy. Countries are placed into five categories according to the strength of the aid-saving relationship. Few countries show evidence of substantial crowding out. Consequently, aid is found to be clearly beneficial to saving and, hence, investment for the preponderance of these countries.

Why Should State Government Invest in College Education? An Equilibrium Approach for the US in 2000

This paper is a preliminary look at the benefits to states in the US of subsidizing college education. The benefits studies are the external benefits of college education on the earnings of both college graduates and those who have not graduated from college. In completing a college education individuals earn more. In addition, if there are positive external benefits others will also earn more because the average level of college graduates in the state has risen. This study confirms the existence of these positive externalities for the US in 2000 in estimates using the Current Population Survey. Furthermore, these external benefits are large enough that if confirmed in more complete studies would suggest that states invest too little in college education.human capital, externalities, higher education

A Dynamic, Keynesian Model of Development

The Harrod-Domar growth model is extended in a way that introduces the possibility of persistent excess capacity as a potential source of slow growth. This extended model has five growth rates, which must be equal for there to be a full-employment, full-capacity dynamic equilibrium, instead of the three growth rates in the standard Harrod-Domar model. These growth rates will be called the justified, the actual, the warranted, the potential and the natural rate of growth. This model is held to provide a consistent framework for discussing many disparate view of economic development. Specifically, much of development theory can be divided in to three types of theories, which focus on different structural rigidities in the economy. First, there are theories that emphasize a lack of saving and thus propose mechanisms for augmenting saving. Second, theories emphasizing a shortage of investment and thus the existence of excess capacity. Third, there are theories emphasizing inadequate labor absorption and the need to develop or employ labor by using capital saving technology. It is argued that the essence of Keynesian development economics is the belief that the development process is served better by pursuing policies that enhance growth with existing obstacles than by simply trying to remove these obstacles in the hope that development will then occur.

The Working Hours of Immigrants in Germany: Temporary versus Permanent

Migration is often viewed as an investment decision. Temporary migrants can be expected to invest less in accumulating human capital specific to the host country. Instead, they work more hours in order to accumulate savings and invest in financial capital that can be transferred back to their country of origin upon return. In this paper, using German panel data, we explore how temporary migrants differ from permanent migrants in their labor supply decisions and behavior. Upon correcting for endogeneity bias, temporary migrants are found to work more hours than permanent ones. This result supports the human capital theory and a household production model of migration where migrants may be temporary by choice and not because of legal restrictions or even a bad experience in the labor market.migration, temporary migrants, labor supply, Germany

The Impact of Relative Cohort Size on U.S. Fertility, 1913-2001

This paper tests for the long-term and short-term relationships between fertility and relative cohort size for the United States using the annual time series data between 1913 and 2001. An error correction model, imbedded with the cointegration theory, is coupled with the general impulse response function. Empirical evidence on relationships is found lending support to the Easterlin hypothesis in that the change in relative cohort size is an important explanatory variable to include in studies of human fertility both in the short run and in the long-run for the United States. In addition, our results support the catching-up hypothesis and that the child tax deduction has been an important policy variable influencing births.catching-up, age structure, relative cohort size, Easterlin hypothesis, child tax deduction

Intralesional corticosteroid-induced hypopigmentation and atrophy

Intralesional corticosteroids are associated with various, uncommon, local adverse events [1]. Atrophy and hypopigmentation most commonlyremain localized to sites of injection. However, outward radiation in a linear, streaky pattern has been reported and is termed “perilesional/perilymphatic hypopigmentation or atrophy [2].” We report a case of this rare adverse event

The Monterey event in the Mediterranean: A record from shelf sediments of Malta

Oligo-Miocene carbonate platform and shelf sediments outcropping on the Maltese Islands provide an excellent archive of the paleoceanography of the central Mediterranean. A sequence of shallow water limestones, than shelf limestones, and marls, followed again by shallow water limestones, reflects drowning of a carbonate platform, the establishment of a shelf environment and, in the late Miocene, renewed progradation and aggradation of shallow water carbonates. The sequence recording the deepening of the Maltese platform contains several phosphorite hardgrounds and phosphorite pebble beds. These phosphorites were dated with strontium isotopes. Major episodes of phosphogenesis occurred between 25 and 16 Ma, and they are coeval with those phosphorite events reported from Florida and North Carolina. A Miocene carbon isotope and oxygen isotope stratigraphy was established on planktic and benthic foraminifera and on bulk samples. A major carbon isotope excursion with an amplitude of up to +l‰ between 18 and 12.5 Ma can be correlated with the globally recognized Monterey carbon isotope excursion. This is the first record of this event both in shallow water sediments and in the Mediterranean. The carbon isotope excursion precedes an oxygen isotope excursion which also was recognized in deep-sea records. Major episodes of phosphogenesis and platform drowning preceded the carbon isotope excursion by up to millions of years

Estimating The Causal Effect of Income on Health: Evidence from Post Reunification East Germany

In this paper we investigate if there was a causal effect of changes in current and 'permanent' income on the health of East Germans in the years following reunification. Reunification was completely unanticipated and therefore can be seen as a providing some exogenous variation, which resulted in a substantial increase in average household incomes for East Germans. Our data source is the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) between 1991 and 1999, and we fit both random and fixed-effects estimators to our ordinal health measures. Whilst the exogeneity of reunification allows us to establish the causality between income and health, the fixed-effects methodology additionally enables us to control for individual unobservable heterogeneity such as parental background and general attitudes to health. We also provide new evidence on how major life-events impact on health, and we pay close attention to the issue of panel attrition, given that there might be endogenous exits from the panel if the unhealthy are more likely to drop out of the sample. Using cross-sectional variations in income and health we find evidence of a significant positive effect of current income on health. However, after controlling for heterogeneity and using a new decomposition of the fixed-effects estimates, we find no evidence that increased income leads to improved health. This is the case with respect to current income and a measure of 'permanent' income and two alternative definitions of health. We also find no evidence of an effect of regional income on health.Income, Health, German Reunification, Panel Data, Attrition

ASIAN DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION: AN INSTRUMENTAL-VARIABLES PANEL APPROACH

We examine patterns in fertility during the demographic transition using a panel data set across 25 Asian countries for 1975-2003. The adult female literacy rate is used as an instrumental variable for the endogenous female labor force participation rate, which has been unsolved in the population literature. The preliminary panel data analysis suggests that relative cohort size is significant in explaining the decline in fertility before controlling for simultaneity bias. This result, however, may be spurious. After considering the instrumental variables estimation in the panel data structure, the age structure variable no longer plays a dominant role in explaining declining fertility rates in many Asian countries. Systematic differences were found between East and South Asia. A policy implication in South Asia is that development may reduce fertility directly through increasing income rather than indirectly through a change in female labor force participation or urbanization. In East Asia, the indirect effects dominate.Fertility, Easterlin hypothesis, Transition Economies, Relative Cohort Size, Age Structure