Economics Commons^™

Investors' Willingness To Pay For Urban Land: The Case Of Addis Ababa City, Alebel Bayrau, Genanew Bekele

International Conference on African Development Archives

The spatial, physical and socio-economic conditions of Addis Ababa City, in general, is by far behind the requirements fundamental to sustain the livelihood of the city. In addressing the problems of the city, the suggested government intervention strategies include, among others, the relocation and resettlement of residents for efficient utilization of potential sites, and bringing balanced and coordinated investment/development in different parts of the city. These strategies, so far, seam to concentrate on the supply side and neglected the effective demand of the majority of investors. This study, therefore, aims to assess determinants of investors' willingness to pay for a …

2007 International Conference On Ethiopian Development Studies (4th Iceds) A Multidisciplinary Conference On The Challenges Of Peace And Development In Ethiopia & The Horn Of Africa, Western Michigan University

International Conference on African Development Archives

Proceedings from the 2007 International Conference on Ethiopian Development Studies (4th ICEDS) A Multidisciplinary Conference on the Challenges of Peace and Development in Ethiopia & the Horn of Africa, held in Kalamazoo, Michigan (WMU), August 2-4, 2007.

Private Transfers, Informal Loans And Risk Sharing Among Poor Urban Households, Eskander Alvi, Seife Dendir

International Conference on African Development Archives

This paper contributes to a growing literature that investigates the mechanisms of risk-sharing among poor households. There are two aspects of the paper that are particularly relevant in the context of the literature. First, it focuses on poor urban areas. The disproportionate focus in the literature on rural households has meant that we know relatively little about the risk-sharing practices of poor urban households. Given that formal insurance is largely absent even in urban areas of most developing economies, it is apparent that these households may be no less vulnerable to income risk than their rural counterparts. Furthermore, because of …

How Much Should Foreign Talent Be Paid?, Manoj Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Singapore needs foreign talent — and there’s no need to feel bad about it. It is a statistical fact of life. For every top Singaporean in any field — be it science, medicine, finance, sports or whatever — we will find about 500 professionals of equal calibre in China and India. Not because we are 500 times less talented, just that they have 500 times more people.

Characterizing Exchange Rate Policy In East Asia: A Reconsideration, Hwee Kwan Chow, Yoonbai Kim, Wei Sun

Research Collection School Of Economics

Frankel and Wei (1994) developed and popularized a method for uncovering the implicit weights assigned to major international currencies constituting a currency basket. We extend the methodology in two dimensions: include regional competitive pressure and employ a vector autoregressive (VAR) model to overcome simultaneity bias. With these modifications, we confirm the prominent role of the US dollar in the exchange rate policy of East Asian economies beyond the short run. However, despite the high degree of commitment to nominal exchange rate stability prior to the crisis, fluctuations in most East Asian currencies are also significantly influenced by country specific shocks. …

Omanization Of Oman's Private Sector: Implementation, Challenges, And Solutions, Mazid Al-Rawas

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study was designed to determine the status of the implementation of the Omanization policy, challenges associated with the Omani government in implementing the Omanization policy, and the solutions appropriate to overcome these challenges in the implementation of Omanization. Data for this study was collected through a survey that included 13 Likert-type statements developed by the researcher. The population of this study consisted of 50 human resource managers in private companies; these companies were randomly selected from the list of all companies registered in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry for the Sultanate of Oman. The researcher received a total …

Iraq: Post-Invasion Reconstruction Or Deconstruction, Heba Saleh

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Financial Liberalization And Monetary Policy Cooperation In East Asia, Hwee Kwan Chow, Peter N. Kriz, Roberto S. Mariano, Augustine H. H. Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

As the countries in East Asia embark on financial liberalization, a key issue that confronts policymakers is the greater complexity of risks that is injected into the financial system. In particular, capital account liberalization may potentially increase the vulnerability of individual countries to external financial shocks. This paper advocates the optimally cascading of financial liberalization that is consistent across three dimensions: extent of domestic financial liberalization; the degree of exchange rate flexibility; and the scope of capital account liberalization. Unless the process of liberalization is properly managed, it could provoke destabilizing capital flows and lead to volatile exchange rates. Smooth …

Global And Regional Sources Of Risk In Equity Markets: Evidence From Factor Models With Time-Varying Conditional Skewness, Aamir R. Hashmi, Anthony S. Tay

Research Collection School Of Economics

We examine the influence of global and regional factors on the conditional distribution of stock returns from six Asian markets, using factor models in which unexpected returns comprise global, regional and local shocks. The models allow for conditional heteroskedasticity and time-varying conditional skewness, and are used to measure mean, variance, and skewness spillovers. We find that incorporating time-varying conditional skewness improves the fit of our spillover models, and can alter measurements of variance spillovers. However, time-varying conditional skewness is mostly a local phenomenon; with exceptions, there is little spillover in skewness from global and regional factors.

Asian Currency Baskets: A Useful Surveillance Tool?, Charles Adams, Hwee Kwan Chow

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper considers whether an intra-regional currency basket and the associated divergence indicators could play a useful role in official exchange rate surveillance. Recently, proponents of an Asian currency basket have referred to the role the European Currency Unit played in constructing exchange rate divergence indicators as evidence of the usefulness of intra-regional currency baskets for exchange rate monitoring. The paper shows that such indicators have a number of features that can lead to them obscuring underlying changes in exchange rates and that the signals they emit will often be difficult to interpret. In addition, the use of regional currency …

The Effect Of Micro-Credit On Poverty Alleviation: The Case Of Urban And Rural Egypt, Raghda El Ebrashi

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Devaluation On Output In The Egyptian Economy: A Vector Autoregression Analysis, Sahar Mohamed Abdel-Haleim Abdel-Moneim

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Business Output And Business Experience: Evidence From China's Nongovernmental Businesses, Liangjun Su

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study the application of the Solow growth model in China's non-governmental businesses and propose a reasonable modification for it. Our analysis indicates that business experience is closely tied to the output of China's non-governmental businesses. Our major findings include: (1) the business experience has little overall impact on the elasticity of output with respect to labour; (2) the business experience has a large impact on the elasticity of output with respect to capital and the elasticity increases as the business experience increases; (3) the adjusted Solow residual that reflects technological progress exhibits a negative relationship with the business experience, …

No. 45: Medical Recruits: The Temptation Of South African Health Care Professionals, Christian M. Rogerson

Southern African Migration Programme

Health workers are one of the categories of skilled professionals most affected by globalization. Over the past decade, there has emerged a substantial body of research that tracks patterns of international migration of health personnel, assesses causes and consequences, and debates policy responses at global and national scales. Within this literature, the case of South Africa is attracting growing interest. For almost 15 years South Africa has been the target of a ‘global raiding’ of skilled professionals by several developed countries. How to deal with the consequences of the resultant outflow of health professionals is a core policy issue for …

No. 47: The Haemorrhage Of Health Professionals From South Africa: Medical Opinions, Wade Pendleton, Jonathan Crush, Kate Lefko-Everett

Southern African Migration Programme

The health sector has been especially hard hit by the brain drain from South Africa. Unless the push factors are successfully addressed, intense interest in emigration will continue to translate into departure for as long as demand exists abroad (and there is little sign of this letting up.) Health professional decision-making about leaving, staying or returning is poorly-understood and primarily anecdotal. To understand how push and pull factors interact in decision- making (and the mediating role of variables such as profession, race, class, age, gender income and experience), the opinions of health professionals themselves need to be sought.

This paper …

Vol. 8, No. 1: South African Immigration Reform, Vincent Williams

Southern African Migration Programme

No abstract provided.

No. 46: Voices From The Margins: Migrant Women’S Experiences In Southern Africa, Kate Lefko-Everett

Southern African Migration Programme

The concept of the feminization of migration traditionally refers to the growth in numbers and relative importance of women’s migration, particularly from and within developing countries. In Africa, for example, the proportion of female migrants rose from 42% of the total in 1 960 to almost 50% at the present time. This process is a result, first, of the continued impoverishment and marginalization of many women in developing countries; and second, of the increasing demand for female labour in the service industries of industrial and industrializing countries.

The United Nations suggests that the full implications of migration and mobility for …

On The Wealth Of Nations By P.J. O'Rourke, Sonnet Frisbie

Global Tides

A book review of On the Wealth of Nations (2006) by P.J. O'Rourke.

Moving Window Unit Root Test: Locating Real Estate Price Bubbles In Seoul Apartment Market, Shuping Shi

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Bubbles are characterized by rapid expansion followed by a contraction. Evans (1991) shows that stationarity tests suggested by Hamilton and Whiteman (1985) and Diba and Grossman (1988) are incapable of detecting periodically collapsing bubbles. Phillips, Wu, and Yu (2006) advanced the forward recursive unit root test which improves the power significantly in the presence of periodically collapsing bubbles. In this paper, we consider rolling window unit root test with a pre-selected optimum window. A combining use of conventional unit root test and forward recursive unit root test is suggested from the results of power comparison. Furthermore, we apply those three …

Ownership And Wages: Estimating Public-Private And Foreign-Domestic Differentials With Leed From Hungary, 1986-2003, John S. Earle, Álmos Telegdy

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

How do state, domestic, private, and foreign ownership of firms differ in average wages? We address these questions using linked employer-employee panel data containing 1.35mln worker-year observations for 21,238 firms from 1986 to 2003 in Hungary. Our econometric methods exploit the long panel together with the presence of 3,700 switches of ownership type in the postsocialist Hungarian transition to estimate these wage differentials.

A Monetary Union In East Asia: What Does The Common Cycles Approach Tell?, K Sato, David E. Allen, Zhaoyong Zhang

Research outputs pre 2011

There is controversy about whether a monetary union is feasible in the East Asian region. Amongst the criteria for establishing a monetary union, most of the existing studies focus on the symmetric issue of fundamental shocks and the extent of correlations by applying the Blanchard and Quah (1989) structural vector autoregression (VAR) technique, which includes the firstdifferenced variables in the model and examines only bilateral relationships. When forming a monetary union, the member countries need to renounce their monetary policy autonomy. If shocks to respective economies are symmetric, the cost of relinquishing the discretionary monetary policy is likely to be …

Wal-Mart Bank In Mexico: Money To The Masses And The Home-Host Hole, Anna Gelpern

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In November 2006 Wal-Mart's Mexican subsidiary received approval to open a bank. The application faced little opposition in Mexico, unlike the company's failed effort to start a bank in the United States. This was partly because in Mexico, Wal-Mart's entry was generally regarded as increasing competition in a historically concentrated banking sector. With over three-quarters of all Mexicans unbanked, the authorities also looked to Wal-Mart to reach the underserved. Along with the promise, Wal-Mart's entry presents a transnational regulatory dilemma with implications beyond Wal-Mart and Mexico. Because it is Wal-Mart's only banking venture, the new institution will have its Mexican …

To Use Or Not To Use?: Poverty Mapping In Cambodia, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

No abstract provided.

Open Vs Sealed Bid Auctions: Testing For Revenue Equivalence Under Singapore's Vehicle Quota System, Roberto S. Mariano, Winston T. H. Koh, Yiu Kuen Tse

Research Collection School Of Economics

Using data from the auction of vehicle quota licenses in Singapore, we study if revenue equivalence holds when the auction format was switched from a sealed-bid format (May 1990 to June 2001) to an open bidding format since July 2001. Our econometric analysis indicates the change in auction format led to a change in bidding behavior. On average, the quota license premium under the open bidding format is about US$1000 (about 7.5% of the Category E license price in June 2001) lower, compared to the forecast level that would have prevailed if there had been no change in the auction …

The Singapore Model Of Housing And The Welfare State, Sock Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

While Singapore is not generally regarded as a welfare state, the provision of housing welfare on a large scale has been a defining feature of its welfare system. The extensive housing system has played a useful role in raising savings and homeownership rates as well as contributing to sustained economic growth in general and development of the housing sector in particular. Few would dispute the description of Singapore’s housing policies as 'phenomenally successful' (Ramesh, 2003). Singapore’s economic growth record in the past four decades has brought it from third world to first world status (Lee, 2000), with homeownership widespread at …

Cuba's De-Dollarization Program: Policy Measures, Main Objectives, And Principal Motivations, Mario A. Gonzalez-Corzo

Publications and Research

This paper examines the main characteristics of Cuba’s de-dollarization program, the objectives of these policy measures, and their principal causes and motivations. The paper is organized in three sections. The first section describes the policy measures associated with the process of de-dollarization, followed by a detailed account of their main objectives (section two), and an analysis of their principal causes and motivations (section three).

Essays On The Latin American Foreign Exchange Market, Isabel Ruiz

Dissertations

During the last decade, Latin American countries have moved towards becoming more open and financially integrated. At the same time, the region has appeared to adopt a "bipolar" position concerning exchange rate regimes. Most countries have moved towards more flexible exchange rates, while others have implemented hard pegs in the form of dollarization. This dissertation has two goals. First, to measure linkages and dynamics across Latin American foreign exchange markets. Second, to explore how exchange rate uncertainty impacts U.S. foreign direct investment (FDI) into Latin America.

In order to study interactions among these markets, I focus on the level of …

Determinants And Consequences Of Workers’ Remittances, Carlos Ivan Vargas-Silva

Dissertations

In this dissertation we study the determinants and consequences of workers' remittances. It is important for developing countries to have a clear understanding of the motivations that migrants have to remit money home, in order to increase remittances inflows. It is also important to understand the impact of remittances in the receiving countries in order to develop policies that can maximize the benefits of remittances, while minimizing any possible detrimental effects. In this dissertation we concentrate on the relationship between remittances and macroeconomic variables in the receiving countries. To this end we use both individual and aggregate level data.

In …

The State‐Led Transition To Liberal Capitalism: Neoliberal, Organizational, World‐Systems, And Social Structural Explanations Of Poland’S Economic Success, Lawrence P. King, Aleksandra Sznajder Lee

Political Science Faculty Publications

Neoliberals argue that rapid liberalization and privatization can transform postcommunist economies into Western-style capitalist systems. Organizational sociologists argue that these policies produce a unique variety of capitalism, while world-systems theorists argue that they lead to underdevelopment. This article advances a social structural alternative in a crucial case. Poland’s relative economic success resulted from prolonged state ownership and an interventionist state employing various industrial policy tools that facilitated efficiency-enhancing market-oriented restructuring before ushering in beneficial foreign direct investment. The resulting capitalist system closely resembles the typical pattern found in most late industrializers.

Choice Of Currency By East Asia Bond Issuers, David Fernandez, Simon Klassen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In discussing bond markets in Asia, academics and policymakers typically begin by noting that the Asian crisis of 1997-98 in part resulted from the underdevelopment of the region’s domestic bond markets and the resultant currency and duration mismatches. When assessing the progress made in developing these markets in the post-crisis years, academics and policymakers usually observe that, while several domestic currency government bond markets have moved ahead, corporate bond markets have lagged (Asian Development Bank (2002), Reserve Bank of Australia (2003)). The policy conclusion is therefore often drawn: to prevent another Asian crisis, Asian bond markets must be further developed.