Search results for "Gross domestic product"

An empirical analysis of growth volatility: A Markov chain approach

2005

This paper studies the determinants of growth rate volatility, focusing on the effect of level of GDP, structural change and the size of economy. First we provide a graphical analysis based on nonparametric techniques, then a quantitative analysis which follows the distribution dynamics approach. Growth volatility appears to (i) decrease with per capita GDP, (ii) increase with the share of the agricultural sector on GDP and, (iii) decrease with the size of the economy, measured by a combination of total GDP and trade openness. However, we show that the explanatory power of per capita GDP tends to vanish when we control for the size of the economy. © 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Growth Volatility Indices

2006

We study the determinants of growth rate volatility in a multisector economy where sectors are heterogeneous in their individual volatility. We propose a model where aggregate volatility is explained by structural change and the size of the economy. We present a first attempt to test these predictions measuring growth volatility by indices based on Markov transition matrices. Growth volatility appears to (i) decrease with total GDP and (ii) increase with the share of the agricultural sector on GDP, although some nonlinearities appear. Trade openness, which we relate to the size of the economy, also plays a role. In accordance with our model, the explanatory power of per capita GDP, a releva…

The instability of the adjusted and unadjusted environmental Kuznets curves

2006

We test the stability of the unadjusted and adjusted environmental Kuznets curves (EKCs). Our results provide evidence in favour of a theoretically funded "adjusted EKC hypothesis" in which the impact of per capita GDP on CO2 emissions is evaluated conditionally to the effects of the industry mix and of the energy-supply infrastructure. In this specification, the shape of the GDP-CO2 relationship appears quite sensitive to changes in the estimation period. In the final part of the paper, signs and dynamics of fixed effects of individual countries in different specifications are interpreted as measures of virtuous or vicious of environmental behaviour. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserve…

2016

Climate change is a major challenge for sustainable development, impacting human health, wellbeing, security, and livelihoods. While the post-2015 development agenda sets out action on climate change as one of the Sustainable Development Goals, there is little provision on how this can be achieved in tandem with the desired economic progress and the required improvements in health and wellbeing. This paper examines synergies and tensions between the goals addressing climate change and economic progress. We identify reductionist approaches in economics, such as ‘externalities’, reliance on the metric of the Gross Domestic Product, positive discount rates, and short-term profit targets as som…

How costly are debt crises?

2011

The aim of this paper is to assess the short- and medium-term impact of debt crises on GDP. Using an unbalanced panel of 154 countries from 1970 to 2008, the paper shows that debt crises produce significant and long-lasting output losses, reducing output by about 10 percent after eight years. The results also suggest that debt crises tend to be more detrimental than banking and currency crises. The significance of the results is robust to different specifications, identification and endogeneity checks, and datasets.

The global economic crisis as a critical Juncture? The crisis's impact on migration movements and policies in Europe and the US

2016

The current global economic crisis has resulted in the strongest recession in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries since the Great Depression in the early 1930s and the 1970s oil shocks. This special issue sets out to explore how the most recent economic crisis impacted immigration and immigration-related policy in the United States of America and in European countries that are part of the OECD. The crisis of the late 2000s was offset by the collapse of the subprime US housing market, destabilising the financial system and leading to a sovereign debt crisis. The shock was marked by a “sudden […] deterioration of most, or all, key macroeconomic indicator…

The Importance of Creative Services Firms in Explaining the Wealth of European Regions

2013

This chapter shows the important impact that a specific set of services, those belonging to the creative industries, have on regional economic development and wealth generation. Creative industries are a set of knowledge-based activities focused on the generation of meaning, contents and aesthetic attributes through the use of creativity, skill and talent, and have the potential to create wealth from trade and intellectual property rights. A key hypothesis in this paper is that creative services firms are a “growth driver” that promotes wealth in the regions where they are located. This is due to the fact that firms in creative industries introduce new ideas that are subsequently transferre…

Global Perspective on Marital Satisfaction

2020

Across the world, millions of couples get married each year. One of the strongest predictors of whether partners will remain in their relationship is their reported satisfaction. Marital satisfaction is commonly found to be a key predictor of both individual and relational well-being. Despite its importance in predicting relationship longevity, there are relatively few empirical research studies examining predictors of marital satisfaction outside of a Western context. To address this gap in the literature and complete the existing knowledge about global predictors of marital satisfaction, we used an open-access database of self-reported assessments of self-reported marital satisfaction wit…

Trying to control migration between zones in the world

2019

It is a fact that migration is a worrying problem in some world areas. Literature shows many studies about it. Nevertheless, no sound solutions have been proposed. Assuming that the key implied factors are development and demography, we suggest in this research, as a first step, to state a stochastic and dynamic demographic model neither considering sexes nor ages, but including the necessary and adequate economic, education and health variables. This model will be able to optimize, by means of a genetic algorithm, the amount and proportion of the main development indicators in different areas of the world along time, in order to reach the desired values of the population present in each ar…

Assessing the Beneficial Effects of Economic Growth: The Harmonic Growth Index

2011

In this paper we introduce the multidimensional notion of harmonic growth as a situation of diffused well-being associated to an increase of per capita GDP. We say that a country experienced a harmonic growth if during the observed period all the key indicators, proxies of the endogenous and exogenous forces driving population well-being, show a significantly common pattern with the income dynamics. The notion is operationalized via an index of time series harmony which follows the functional data analysis approach. This Harmonic Growth Index (HGI) is based on comparisons between the coefficients from cubic B-splines interpolation. Such indices are then synthesized in order to provide the g…