A Study on the Optimal Ratio of Research and Development Investment in the Energy Sector: An Empirical Analysis in South Korea

Economic Vulnerabilities and Livelihoods: Impact of <scp>COVID</scp>‐19 in Fiji and Vanuatu

If you want to harvest in the autumn, you need to sow in spring. This ancient wisdom holds true not only for agriculture, but for all economic activities. When nations turned their focus from agriculture to industry, the definition of ‘sowing’ and ‘harvesting’ changed. The latter is relatively easy to identify: it is the nation's wealth in terms of economic growth, employment level, per capita income, exports, and so on. Such achievements point the way not only to re‐election of the politicians who ensure a rich harvest, but also to the well‐being of all its citizens. Slightly harder to define is the ‘sowing’ part—the public and private investments that guarantee economic growth and high employment in the long term. After the industrial revolution took place, governments needed simply to ensure that the social, political and financial structures were in place to encourage entrepreneurs to start businesses and create new jobs in the emerging industrial sector. Now, at a time of globalization, international corporations move to where they can find the best opportunities in terms of employee salaries and governmental incentives. It follows that robust manufacturing processes are being transferred from their traditional locations in the developed world to areas that offer the best financial projections and the lowest cost structures. As a result, the so‐called advanced economies have to find new ways to maintain their privileged status. The common solution is to focus on new discoveries that bring with them ownership of commercially valuable intellectual property and require a phase of development and manufacturing in a highly skilled environment. Thus, the seeds that need to be sown are now investments, from both industry and government, into science and technology, with the aim of creating well‐paid jobs in the high‐tech sector and new products for an increasingly demanding global market. > It …

We Are What We Measure

During last 10 years some G20 countries had economic instability. They have short and long term challenges such as unemployment, population ageing, globalization etc. In this study it is aimed to analyze macroeconomic indicators of G20 countries’ economic growth using panel data approach. Static linear panel data models were used for determining the effects of independent macro-economic variables on gross domestic product (GDP) of G20 countries including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Republic of Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. While dependent variable of analyze is gross domestic product (volume), the independent variables are current account balance, general government gross debt, general government revenue, general government total expenditure, gross national savings, inflation (average consumer prices), population, total investment, unemployment rate, volume of exports of goods and services, volume of imports of goods and services. The analysis proposed is based on a panel data (cross sectional time series data) approach. The dataset of this research involves 18 (unemployment rate variable of India was not available on our data set, therefore India was excluded from analysis) of G20 members (cross sectional units). The effects of 11 macroeconomic indicators on gross domestic product volume were examined by using panel data series. The findings of this paper would help G20 countries and investors for creating more effective macroeconomic strategies. For the government side, future rises, falls, and turning points of the macro indicators puts into perspective the effects of government policy created to deal with them. For the investors’ side, future values might increase the possibility of diligent investor in the financial market.

Small and medium enterprises play a key role in the economic development of many countries. Precisely for that reason, there is research that examines and analyzes this connection and these effects. Numerous studies on the role and importance of small and medium-sized companies, both in BiH and beyond, highlight and point to the importance and need to strengthen the role of small and medium-sized enterprises. Thus, the authors point out that small and medium enterprises are the drivers of development in most countries, while in BiH there is an entrepreneurial initiative but without significant government policy when it comes to implementing business ideas of entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs, despite their success spreading to society.Small and medium enterprises are the subject of numerous researches and analyzes. Among these analyzes, it is often examined how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) affect economic growth expressed in gross domestic product (GDP). Research generally confirms that SMEs boost economic growth and development, reduce unemployment, and contribute to innovation. In this context, the aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between individual microeconomic and macroeconomic components related to small and medium enterprises but also to gross domestic product. In this case, the gross domestic product is observed through GDP per capita, and the research examines the effects of the observed variables on GDP per capita. The period covered by the analysis is from 2004 to 2019. Data are on an annual basis. Theoretical and empirical research seeks to answer the following research question: Which components of SME business increase GDP per capita in BiH? The answer to this research question has been investigated using several scientific methods. The research includes a review of the literature, analyzing the data that examine these relations and which indicate their impact on economic growth and development. Examination of the correlation and influence of the analyzed variables was performed using the method of correlation and regression. The obtained research results show that the only factor that has a positive and statistically significant impact on the GDP per capita growth rate has loans granted to the private sector. Other factors, whether positive or negative, do not have a statistically significant impact on GDP per capita. The number of days required for business registration has a negative effect on GDP growth per capita. As the number of days to register a business decreases, so does GDP per capita. On the other hand, insolvency resolution of companies is positively maintained at GDP per capita. The unemployment rate has a negative effect on GDP per capita, while inflation has a positive one. Investments in RiD also have a positive effect on GDP per capita. Such findings indicate that BiH should focus on these factors if it wants to stimulate growth measured through GDP per capita through small and medium enterprises.

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia successfully implemented Kyoto protocol commitments in the period from 2008 to 2012. Moreover, targets of the Europe 2020 strategy, in which countries committed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of 1990 by 20% until 2020 are also achievable for Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It is forecasted that the reduction of GHG emissions in 2020 in the Baltic States will be much higher than EU average target. Baltic States have achieved significant reduction of GHG emissions during 1990-2015, especially in energy sector which is the major sources of GHG emissions in Baltic States. During the period 1990?2013, Lithuania?s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita increased by 56.8 per cent, while GHG emissions per GDP and GHG emissions per capita decreased by 66.7 and 47.8 per cent, respectively. The major reason for the decrease in per capita emissions are the structural changes in the energy sector. At the same period, Latvia?s population decreased by 24.4 per cent, GDP per capita increased by 64.0 per cent, while GHG emissions per GDP and GHG emissions per capita decreased by 66.4 and 44.8 per cent, respectively. Latvia?s economy grew rapidly in the period 2000?2007, with a GDP increase of 82.0 per cent. Economic growth rates and climatic conditions have been the most important drivers for GHG emissions trends in Latvia. Estonia?s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita increased by 85.1 per cent, while GHG emissions per GDP and GHG emissions per capita decreased by 65.1 and 35.3 per cent, respectively. Such significant GHG emission reduction in Estonia was driven by restructuring of the economy and efficiency improvement in the energy industry and energy demand sectors. There is a significant decoupling of emissions from economic growth in all three countries however countries have very different energy supply balances and implemented various climate change mitigation policies.

This study seeks to examine the impact of financial deepening on economic growth in Nigeria. An annual data covering the period of 1990 – 2017 was used . In other to test the objective of the study, multiple regression techniques were used, also, error correction model was conducted to test the long run equilibrium of the model. Findings revealed that the variable has a long run effect on economic growth since the ECM result reveals a negative and significant relationship. Also based on the short run test, the result reveals that there is a negative and insignificant relationship between the ratio of credit to private sector to gross domestic product (CPS_GDP) and gross domestic product (GDP). T here is also a negative and insignificant relationship between inflation rate (INFL) and gross domestic product (GDP). Furthermore, the result shows that there is a positive and insignificant relationship between the ratio of gross fixed capital formation to gross domestic product and gross domestic product (GDP). Also, it was found that there is a negative and insignificant relationship between the ratio of money supply to gross domestic product in the economy and gross domestic product (GDP). Based on the findings, we recommended that government policy should motive financial institutions to grant low cost loans and advances to private investors and to monitor the use of the loan in the economy. Government should also ensure that they create enabling environment for domestic investors to invest funds. Finally, the government yearly budgets should be directed towards capital expenditure rather than recurrent expenditure in the country

Can we live within environmental limits and still reduce poverty? Degrowth or decoupling?

The Somaliland economy is driven by the private sector. Unlike most other economies in the world, the government footprint is limited, amounting to under 10 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). As will be presented in this report, this context is both a structural advantage and constraint to further economic growth and the capacity of the private sector to create the jobs demanded by a growing population, after a generation of hard work building a political system and economy from the remains of a destructive civil war. The report strives to take stock of the progress to date in private sector performance and development and to identify policy priorities that the government, in partnership with the private sector, can pursue in furtherance of job creation and growth objectives. The target audience for this report is principally the Government of Somaliland (GoS) and its private and financial sectors. The report also hopes to contribute to the work of Somaliland’s other development partners. To this end, the report commences with an overview of the structure of the private sector and a recap of the business environment within which it operates, drawing for this latter aspect on the findings of the Doing Business in Hargeisa 2012 report (World Bank and IFC 2012). The report then proceeds with a more in-depth look at the characteristics of the three key ‘sectors’ that drive the Somaliland economy, the private, financial, and government sectors, and the factors that impact their overall performance in achieving government policy objectives, as set out in the GoS’s document titled Somaliland National Vision 2030. The specific issues addressed include, as requested by the GoS, enterprise formalization, financial inclusion, government capacity, and economic governance. This is most appropriate, as the analysis clearly points to these issues being of primary importance to the achievement of a growing and job-creating economy. The report concludes with some recommended short-, medium-, and longer-term policy priorities for each of the three key sectors.

This paper examined the impact of human capital development on economic growth in Germany from 1991 to 2018, using time series data from the World Bank Indicator and the National Bureau of Statistics. In Germany, the service industry accounts for up to 85% of total employment, with a heavy focus on education, research, the cultural and creative sectors as well as health services. Despite being shrunk since reunification, the public sector continues to account for the vast majority of employment. The health services industry, which employs over 180 000 people in Berlin, is the most significant economic sector. As the most common type of organization in the private sector, small and medium-sized firms account for 80% of total employment in Berlin. Berlin's social structure is characterized by a significant migrant population, which is reflected in its economy. The goal of this research was to investigate the link between human capital indices (education and health) and economic growth. The ordinary least square regression analysis is used in this study to examine the impact of human capital development on German economic growth from 1991 to 2018. The empirical findings show that human capital development has a significant impact on economic growth, as measured by GDP. According to theory, the human capital development indicators of secondary school enrollment, primary school enrollment, gross capital formation, total labor, gross domestic product and life expectancy have a positive and statistically significant run long impact on Germany’s economic growth, implying that these indicators are critical in achieving growth in the German economy in the long run. Life expectancy and gross capital formation, on the other hand, have a positive and statistically significant impact on Germany's economic growth in the short run. According to the study, the German government should ensure that adequate resources are allocated for human capital development in order to boost economic growth in Germany. Keywords: Human Capital, Economic growth, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Life expectancy DOI: 10.7176/JESD/12-22-05 Publication date: November 30 th 2021

This study explores the relations between Oil Prices (OP) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries using the asymmetric causality test for the period of 1996-2018. The results of the standard bootstrap causality test reveal bidirectional causality between the OP and the GDP per capita in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The results of asymmetric causality tests are different for some countries, which demonstrate the unidirectional causality running from OP+ to GDP+ in Oman and Saudi Arabia. Whereas, the bidirectional causality exists between the GDP- and OP- in Kuwait and Oman and unidirectional causality exists between the OP- and the GDP- per capita in Bahrain, Qatar, and UAE. The results support the Real Business Cycle Theory (RBC Theory), which states that external positive or negative shocks have significant impact on GDP per capita through consumption and investment channels. GCC countries should channelize the huge revenues towards other private sectors, which will create more prospects for the GDP and will provide substitution in case of arising any crisis. In addition, the GCC countries must diversify their economic activities since the OP are quite volatile and uncertain and the revenues of these countries are dependent on the OP to a large extent. Sustainable development can be achieved through a balanced path between government expenditures and future savings.

Growth theory suggests that technological development is the primary determinant of long-term economic growth, and research and development (R&amp;amp;D) activities are considered the driving force of technological development. This study aims to investigate the relationship between economic growth and R&amp;amp;D spending. To this end, we study the relationship between gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and the ratio of R&amp;amp;D expenditures to GDP in a group of developing and newly developed economies (namely, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Indonesia, India, Peru, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, Singapore, Thailand, and Türkiye) using annual data from 2000 to 2020. Using the fixed effects model, a panel data analysis is estimated, where gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is used as the dependent variable; R&amp;amp;D expenditures as a ratio of GDP, number of technicians in the R&amp;amp;D sector, and number of researchers in the R&amp;amp;D sector are used as independent variables. We also utilized gross fixed capital formation, labor force, and aggregate government expenditures as a ratio of GDP as control variables. The results indicate a significant and positive relation between economic growth and R&amp;amp;D-related explanatory variables. We also find that the model’s control variables have positive and significant effects on economic growth. Given its favorable impact on economic growth, especially developing countries may be advised to allocate more resources to R&amp;amp;D activities.

If Rome Is Burning, Why Are We Fiddling?

It is widely recognised that the construction industry has a positive role to accelerate the wheel of economic growth in any country. This research is concerned with the Libyan construction industry (LCI). Libya is a developing country which suffered from a big loss in its infrastructures and its unemployment rate increased to 30% in the middle of 2013. Regarding the importance of the construction industry through the role it has in providing infrastructure and creating employment and the poor economic condition of Libya, the rationale of this research follows the example of other nations such as Turkey, Singapore, Malaysia , and Middle East countries where the construction industry was evolved with a target to further boost up the process of economic development. The case of Libya in this regard is valid for the financial stability in the country given its oil reserves and the capacity of the country to absorb migrated skilled labour. This situation is expected to follow the fall of Gaddafi’s regime. The approach of selecting construction as providing input to economic growth follows the strong evidence of the significant role that the construction industry plays in economic growth of the country. The construction industry contributes to economic growth from the demand side and in the traditional Keynesian economy, sustainable short-run economic growth is dependent on the increased demand. For example, in the UK, construction’s 2.5% growth in the third quarter of 2013 helped the overall economy grow by 0.8% over the same period. In comparison with the other industries that contribute to the economic growth of developing countries, the construction industry is more labour-intensive while the developing countries are mostly labour-abundant. The main aim of this research is to investigate the contribution of the construction industry to economic development in order to establish a comprehensive list of recommendations and a guideline for achieving an efficient construction industry to accelerate the process of economic growth. For this aim, the first objective is to examine the causal relationship between the construction industry and gross domestic product (GDP) as a measure of the economic growth and between the construction industry and other economic sectors. To achieve the aim of this research, Granger causality tests have been conducted. The financial data about the expenditure on the construction industry in Libya and its share in the GDP of the country and the share of the other economic sectors in the GDP during 1986-2009 was provided by an authority from the Libyan construction industry. First, The Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) and the Philip Perron (PP) unit root tests were conducted to confirm that the tested time series are stationary. After that, to determine the existence of the long-run causal relationship between the CI and GDP, Engle-Granger co-integration test was used and, finally, vector error correction (VER) model was employed to detect the direction of the causal relationship between the two variables. The study found that in Libya, like in other countries, the relationship between the construction industry and GDP is bi-directional: GDP produces a short-term impact on the investment in the construction industry while investment in the construction industry produces a long-term impact on GDP. However, except for trade, no economic sector was found to have a causal relationship with the construction industry. According to these findings, another objective was established in this research: to identify safety and total quality management (TQM) which can play an important role in growing the efficiency of the Libyan construction industry. To achieve this objective, telephone conversations were conducted with the officials of the largest construction company in the city of Benghazi. The findings indicated that the TQM does not exist in the construction company and, although the safety department does exist, it works via strict procedures. Thus, opportunity to increase the performance of the CI in order to increase its contribution to economic growth does exist through implementation of the safety and TQM implementation in Licccbyan construction companies. The previous studies used the causal relationship just to prove specific hypotheses. The novelty of this research is to obtain benefits from the existence of the causal relationship from the CI to GDP in the long term through suggesting major issues as safety and TQM implementation to raise the performance of the CI in the current period in order to increase its contribution to the economic growth in the future.

The Asian financial crisis of 1997 led to output declines in South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. In response, the three countries have turned to fiscal policy to stimulate output. This study investigates the empirical evidence on the viabiltiy of fiscal policy for these three Asian countries using data starting in the 1950s. While fiscal expansion can raise output under certain theoretical conditions, deficit spending implies higher taxes that could eliminate even transitory effects. This article explores these issues, and examines the empirical relationships between government spending, taxes, and output in these three Asian tigers. The literature includes varying views on the links between fiscal policy, government spending, and output. The tax-and-spend hypothesis of Buchanan and Wagner (1978) and Friedman (1978) is that taxes lead to government spending. On the other hand, according to the spend-and-tax hypothesis of Peacock and Wiseman (1979), temporary increases in government spending lead to permanent tax increases. Meltzer and Richard (1981), describe fiscal synchronization and state that spending and taxes would adjust as the public chooses an optimal package of taxes and government spending. The related literature using Granger (1988) causality includes yon Furstenberg, Green, and Jeong (1986), Owoye (1995), Hasan and Lincoln (1997), and Darrat (1998). In addition, Koren and Stiassny (1998) consider whether taxes and spending are cointegrated. The dynamic responses of taxes, spending, and income are examined in this article using vector autoregression (VAR) analysis. Impulse response and variance decomposition are also included as in Baffes and Shah (1994) and Koren and Stiassny (1998), because coefficients of a VAR are difficult to gauge. Impulse responses trace the reaction of an endogenous variable to an innovation, capturing dynamic interactions and adjustment speeds. Variance decomposition measures the share of forecast error variance due to a shock to the system and own innovations would explain the forecast error variance of exogenous variables. This article focuses on real government spending, taxes, and gross domestic product. Fiscal policy could affect interest rates, and in turn investment spending. Interest rates could be included in the study, but it is not clear which rate to use and expected inflation clouds the issue. The empirical links between the fiscal variables and output may provide some indication of the viability of a more active fiscal policy stance in these Asian economies. The article is organized as follows. The next section briefly describes the recent history of fiscal policy in South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. Section II presents empirical tests of fiscal policy and output, while Section III concludes. I. The Recent History of Fiscal Policy in South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand have achieved relatively high growth since the 1960s and in all three countries, macroeconomic policies have focused on export-led growth. Thailand's growth, in particular, was very high during the 1990s. Among the three countries, South Korea and Taiwan share many similar features in terms of economic growth, size, population, and dependency on energy imports. With regard to their characteristics, public spending patterns are also similar in these three countries. Mundle (1999) points out that public spending has been under 30 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in Taiwan, 25 per cent in South Korea, and 20 per cent in Thailand, relative to an average of about 50 per cent for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The relatively low spending levels in these three countries has been combined with government surpluses or low deficits. Episodes of inflation have generally been followed by fiscal restraint, at least up to the financial crisis of 1997. Since the crisis, along with structural reforms, South Korea and Thailand have been pursuing expansionary fiscal policy to revive economic growth. …