This paper empirically examines the role of diversification in export markets on firm-level R&D activities taking account of the potential endogeneity in this relationship. We show that geographical sales diversification across different regions of the world induces UK firms to increase their R&D expenditures, as firms must innovate and develop new products to maintain a competitive edge over t...

Remittances and Income Smoothing Due to inadequate savings and binding borrowing constraints, income volatility can make households in developing countries particularly susceptible to economic hardship. We examine the role of remittances in either alleviating or increasing household income volatility using Mexican household level data over the 2000 through 2008 period. We correct for reverse ca...

UNLABELLED The objective of this paper is to verify the hypotheses presented in the literature on the causal relationship between inflation and its uncertainty, for the newest EU countries. To ensure the robustness of the results, in the study four models for inflation uncertainty are estimated in parallel: ARCH (1), GARCH (1,1), EGARCH (1,1,1) and PARCH (1,1,1). The Granger method is used to t...

Growth, History, or Institutions? What Explains State Fragility in Sub-Saharan Africa We explore the determinants of state fragility in sub-Saharan Africa. Controlling for a wide range of economic, demographic, geographic and istitutional regressors, we find that institutions, and in particular the civil liberties index and the number of revolutions, are the main determinants of fragility, even...

The Kodila-Tedika & Bolito-Losembe (2014, ADR) finding on no evidence of causality flowing from State fragility to classical corruption or extreme corruption could have an important influence on academic and policy debates. Using updated data (1996-2010) from 53 African countries, we provide evidence of a positive (negative) nexus between political stability/no violence and corruption-control (...

This paper investigates the nature of the causal relationship between stock prices and macroeconomic aggregates in the foreign sector in India. By applying the techniques of unit–root tests, cointegration and the long–run Granger non–causality test recently proposed by Toda and Yamamoto (1995), we test the causal relationships between the BSE Sensitive Index and the three macroeconomic variable...

This paper infers the terms of trade effects of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) implemented in the 1990s. We estimate large FTA effects on bilateral trade volume in 2 digit manufacturing goods from 1990-2002, using panel data gravity methods to resolve two way causality. The terms of trade changes implied by these volume effects are deduced for 40 countries plus a rest-of-the-world aggregate using...

Despite the large amount of private and public resources spent on foreign education, there is no systematic evidence that foreign educated individuals foster democracy in their home countries. Using a unique panel dataset on foreign students starting from 1950, I show that foreigneducated individuals promote democracy in their home country, but only if the foreign education is acquired in democ...

iran is one of the most concentrated areas of afghan migrants and refugees. most afghans dispersed throughout the country mixed with iranian households. the majority of afghan immigrants are typically unskilled and illegal workers. this study aims at investigating the nature of the causal relationship between afghan immigrants and two main labor market indicators, average wages and unemployment...

The growth effects of schooling are often assumed to be exaggerated because of feedback effects from growth to schooling. This paper investigates the nexus between productivity growth and schooling at different levels using a sample of 19 OECD countries over the period 1870 to 2006. The empirical estimates show 1) that schooling is independent of expected growth and most other variables that ar...