ACCOUNTING FOR SRI LANKA'S EXPENDITURE INEQUALITY 1980–2002: REGRESSION‐BASED DECOMPOSITION APPROACHES

Sri Lanka liberalised its economy in 1977, paving the way for more rapid economic growth and higher rates of job creation. But tensions over distributional issues still plague the body politic. This paper investigates the evolution of Sri Lanka's income distribution in the period 1980-2002 and uses the Shapley value decomposition methodology to determine underlying causes. The study finds that while average incomes rose across strata, the rich experienced more rapid income growth leading to greater inequality. Inequality change was driven by differential access to infrastructure, education, and occupation status. Demographic factors including ethnicity, and spatial factors, contributed very little. The study recommends policies that ensure more equitable access to income earning assets such as education and infrastructure services and make sure that increases in inequality do not take place along sectoral, regional and ethnic fault lines.

Karachi, megapolis has witnessed numerous massive homicide incidents waves through the ages. More than ten thousand persons were murdered during 2009-2017. Being a largest cosmopolitan and commercial city of Pakistan, Karachi has a variety of ethnic groups clustered into a highly variegated number of ethnic political groups who on the slightest pretext entangle clashes and head on collisions. Homicide, a primeval crime has been constantly increasing globally with varying spatio-temporal fluctuations depending on level of development of countries, which influences the socio-cultural and political environments of societies. There are various studies on crimes in Karachi but none of them have evaluated their ethnic jolts line with reference of geo-demography. The study is aimed to facilitate concerned authorities, policy makers and scholars towards designing crime elimination guidelines and policies for the most politically, economically and socially strategic hub of the country. Data limitations were experienced during the work although ground truthing with the help of GPS was conducted for location of homicide hotspots and IDW techniques were employed for accuracy of spatial analysis. The result has identified the heart of the city as the most sensitive homicide zone, though 2017 revealed substantial decrease due to the operation initiated in September 2014 by newly elected federal govt. The lucrativeness of Karachi, has favored it as a haven Routine Activity Theory with fluctuating volumes of homicides concentrate and trajectories through 2009 until 2017. The trajectories being guided by social, ethnicity, magnified by ignorance of the minimal existent socioeconomic policies through official guardian, manifested along the ethnic fault lines. Keywords: Ethnic fault lines, geography and crimes, homicides, Karachi, spatio-temporal analysis

The paper investigates whether the decline in environmental quality in BRIC economies is due to high energy consumption level which is a resultant of rapid economic growth. We answer this using environmental, macroeconomic and financial variables along with Kyoto Protocol indicators based on panel data from 1992 to 2004. The long run equilibrium relationship between energy consumption and economic growth was examined. Through the panel data, feasible general least squares (FGLS) procedure was employed to estimate the environmental degradation caused by the increase in energy consumption. Pooled regression analysis is used to estimate the relationship between energy consumption and growth variables. We study the impact of excessive economic growth rates on energy consumption levels by means of threshold pooled ordinary least squares (POLS) method. Moreover, our analysis also attempts to fulfill the econometric criticism of the Environmental Kuznets Curve faced by Stern (2004). Our results reveal that higher energy consumption indeed leads to CO2 emission in the countries under consideration. We find that energy consumption is a resultant of rapid economic growth, creating scope for large demand which is caused by increase in investment levels, population, and trade in energy intensive products. We show that rapid economic growth rate further increases the energy consumption levels in BRIC economies. The results of cointegration analysis also confirm these findings. Finally, the inclusion of USA and Japan as a world's largest energy consumers into our analysis does not significantly change the results.

The importance of free innovative entry (deregulation) for diversity of structure and competition is studied. I demonstrate quantitatively that even with a narrow definition of entry (firms), and given observed entry behavior, successful entrants completely dominate the long-run performance characteristics of the economy. Rapid and stable long-run macro economic growth can only be achieved if innovative competitive entry is vigorous. Free access to markets alone is a necessary condition, with competence a sufficient condition. It is probably wrong to believe that the (ex ante) threat of entry is sufficient for dynamic competition. A growing economy requires a steady showering with optimistic entrants, a few of which turn out ex post to be superior performers. Failing and exiting firms are part of the innovation costs to society for steady and rapid economic growth. The benefits of financial innovations like junk bonds are to reduce barriers to competitive entry to make both successes and failures possible.

Various factors have contributed to China's rapid economic growth, such as capital accumulation, technological progress, structural change, resource optimization, system and institutional innovation. But the rapid growth is motivated by other reasons as well, for example, the demographic factor. This paper contributes to the domain by analyzing and studying the relationship between labor force and economic growth. Firstly, the development of China's labor force is described, which is beneficial to the economic growth for a long time. Additionally, Cobb-Douglas production function model is established to confirm that the labor force has a positive impact on economic growth. Finally, the future economic growth is forecasted based on GM (1, 1) metabolic prediction model, which calculates the labor's contribution to China's economic growth and helps to analyze the main problem on China's labor force as well as makes effective suggestions to promote the economic growth.

The two main current economic problems in Russia and Iran are Western sanctions and oil price spikes. On the one hand, the West introduced economic sanctions against these two countries, which affected the national economy of these two countries. On the other hand, since Iran and Russia are heavily dependent on revenues from oil exports, any sharp changes in world oil prices significantly affect the budgets of these two countries. Despite the implementation of the various strategies of the two countries against sanctions and the collision with oil price shocks, their economies are sensitive to these two hyper problems. The main goal of this work is to study probable scenarios for the future economies of Iran and Russia under the conditions of Western sanctions and oil price fluctuations. Our article shows that for the future economies of Iran and Russia there are four economic scenarios in the form of transformation of the economic structure, rapid economic growth, economic stagnation and economic crisis. In the first scenario, there is an increase in sanctions by the West and its allies against the economies of Iran and Russia, and on the other hand, the price of oil is increasing. This scenario is the most possible future for the economies of Russia and Iran. The second possible scenario for the future economies of Russia and Iran is the rapid economic development and economic growth that will arise as a result of a decrease in political tension with the West, which ended with the lifting of economic sanctions and rising world oil prices. The third option that can be foreseen for the future economies of Russia and Iran is economic stagnation, which will occur if the sanctions of the West and its allies are reduced and world oil prices are reduced again. The fourth possible scenario for the economies of Iran and Russia is an economic crisis. Such a scenario appears when the conflict with the West increases and global oil prices fall, resulting in a large-scale decline and as a result of the economic crisis for the future economies of Iran and Russia. By the way, these two economies must adapt to such unpredictable economic events. They can accelerate import substitution, multilateralism in the Eurasian region, and so on.

The development of China’s economy not only contains the commonalities of all countries in the world, which can be explained by existing theories to a large extent, but also presents many development characteristics that are different from other countries, which needs to be explored from a new perspective. Analyzing the data on output, consumption, and investment in the 40 years after the reform and opening up from 1978 to 2018, we can find the following characteristics: (1) The economy of China is more volatile than those of developed countries, and consumption volatility is greater than that of output, a phenomenon in sharp contrast with the rational consumption behavior obtained from the permanent income hypothesis. (2) Since 1978, China’s economic volatility has shown a downward trend, and consumption volatility has declined even faster than that of output. (3) Since 2008, China’s economic growth rate has continued to decline.The academic circles attribute the miracle of China’s economic development to a series of institutional reforms since the reform and opening up. However, what has been ignored by the academic circles is that since the institutional reforms are the main driver of China’s rapid economic growth in the past 40 years, as a logical corollary, they must also be an important factor that leads to sometimes rapid and sometimes slow performance of China’s economic growth and the formation of several development cycles. Different from the deviation from trend caused by various random shocks, such as government purchases, money and information, and financial and non-financial frictions, a series of institutional reforms such as the transformation from a planned economy to a market one, the development of private enterprises from illegal to mushrooming, and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization impact the trend itself, changing and supporting China’s rapid economic growth, intertwining its trend fluctuations with cyclical fluctuations.In order to illustrate the above characteristics, this paper constructs a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of small open economies with persistent trend shocks and liquidity constraints. The research results show that: First, after the reform and opening up, a series of institutional changes are an important cause for China’s economic fluctuations to be greater than that of developed countries. Second, there is an obvious random trend in China’s economy. Large fluctuations in output, especially in consumption, are caused by both trend shocks and cyclical shocks. Third, these two shocks are not enough to explain large fluctuations in consumption, especially the fact that consumption fluctuations are greater than that of output, but their combination with liquidity constraints explains this feature pretty well. The introduction of trend shocks increases consumption volatility through the permanent income hypothesis, while the introduction of liquidity constraint increases consumption volatility by reducing the inter-temporal substitution of consumption. Fourth, through comparative analysis of the changes in the driving factors of economic fluctuations in the two stages from 1978 to 1999 and from 2000 to 2018, it is found that with the gradual improvement of the market economic system, both the cyclical shock that has a temporary impact and the trend shock that has a persistent impact on economic fluctuations show a gradual attenuation trend, reducing China’s economic volatility. As the impact of trend shocks declines faster, cyclical shocks gradually play a dominant role in China’s economic fluctuations.

With decolonization and globalization, the second half of the twentieth century saw rapid economic growth in the third world. This trend continued during the 1990 to 2015 period and saw the halving of extreme poverty and the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on poverty reduction ahead of time. But this period also saw a concentration of poverty in SSA and South Asia, a rise in inequality, health, education, and living standards lagging behind economic growth, and widespread environmental degradation forcing a rethink on the global development strategy. As we move forward on the SDG goals, the real challenge for the global community is to eradicate poverty in SSA in the face of a global slowdown. While the world was already off-track to end poverty by 2030 before COVID-19, the pandemic has further caused the goal to go astray and global poverty has increased for the first time in decades. We contend that growing risks and vulnerabilities will test the sustainable attainment of SDGs even in the post-2030 era. We urge development professionals to renew their interest in rural livelihoods to tackle the present and future challenges.KeywordsMDGSDGNon-income goalsAnthropoceneDegradationNatural disastersPopulationInequalitySustainablePoverty depthResilience

This study evaluates competing hypotheses about implications of greater female growth canalization for differences in male and female growth as developmental settings improve. Intergenerational declines in gender bias and rapid economic growth in Taiwan permit assessment of the two hypotheses using anthropometric and background information from 107 Taiwanese parents and their young adult offspring. Differences in parents' values were first evaluated across grandfathers' occupational status categories reflecting good to relatively poor early circumstances in the parental generation. The extent of intergenerational change in heights or knee heights within 56 father-son pairs were then compared with those in 51 statistically independent mother-daughter pairs across the same occupational categories using repeated measures analyses. Change in mean heights and knee heights across grandfathers' occupational categories were noticeably greater for fathers than mothers. Overall, intergenerational gains within families in height and knee height were statistically significant (p < 0.0005) in father-son (3.89 cm; 1.85 cm) and mother-daughter pairs (4.14 cm; 1.67 cm). However, among families where grandfather's occupations were "privileged," father-son pairs are similar in average height (Δ = -0.36 cm) and knee height (Δ = 0.53 cm) while mothers were significantly shorter (Δ = 3.88 cm) with shorter knee heights (Δ = 1.74 cm) than their daughters. The hypothesis that females are inherently less capable of responding to growth promoting characteristics of early environments is not supported. Intergenerational declines in male preference combined with rapid but equitable economic growth better account for intergenerational changes reported.

This thesis examines the evolution of income distribution in Indonesia during the period 1996-2008, a period characterized by the region’s worst financial crisis in 1997 as well as by economic and institutional reforms. It investigates the changes in income distribution as well as in inequality and poverty, what determining factors have the greatest impact on the changes, and the parts of the distribution influenced greatest by the factors. It draws relevant policy implications from the analysis as well. In this study, Bayesian analysis is utilized to empirically investigate the changes in Indonesia’s income distribution from the perspective of the complete distribution. Two three-parameter functions, namely, the Singh-Maddala and the Dagum distributions are proposed to model the income distribution. A model comparison confirmed that the Dagum function is the best-fitting parametric density to model the expenditure distribution for both urban and rural regions. The performance of the univariate Dagum density is then improved through the use of a mixture of Dagum densities. Next, the mixture of the Dagum densities is employed to further reveal changes in income levels, the modes and inequality and poverty measures over the observed period. To determine the potential causes that have driven the changes in the expenditure distribution as well as in the inequality and poverty, the DiNardo et al. (1996) decomposition framework is adopted. Bayesian estimation is then applied to the counterfactual densities, assuming that the densities follow the Dagum distribution. The study found that the change in the income distribution improved the welfare of a large number of individuals, however the inequality among them also increased. The findings of the decomposition analysis suggest the changes are mainly associated with gradual improvement in the levels of the formal education of the population, which acted substantially to reduce poverty. Concurrently, the same factor is also part of the cause of rising inequality over the years. The reason for this is that access to better education is still dominated by the non-poor income group, pushing their income to the upper-middle range of the distribution and thus increasing inequality. On the other hand, occupational status and age demonstrated a neutral effect on changes in poverty and inequality. In addition to adhering to policy that aims to achieve higher economic growth and liberalization, the government also needs to ensure that equal participation among the population in such growth, and thus equal access to income across regions, are realised. This can be achieved through policies that strongly regulate equal access to all levels of education and training services regardless of an individual’s background. The development of the education policy itself needs to emphasize the employability of graduates based on skills that are sought-after in the labour market, besides the quality and efficiency of education and training services. To increase the population’s productivity and participation in the economic growth and liberalization process, policies that highly stimulate rural and agricultural development and favourably promote equal employment opportunities across gender and age are also essential. The strategy also needs to be complemented by a social safety net program to ensure rapid response to vulnerable groups during difficult times.

IntroductionNowadays, entrepreneurship is considered as one of the future drivers for Asian economy. Although the majority of Asia's economies are developing ones, the region boasts 90 of the world's 691 billionaires GDP (Faustino, 2005). Yet, despite their rising incomes and rapid economic growth, Asian countries still face widespread and pervasive poverty. This picture indicates the importance of entrepreneurial skills in this region. Given this, educational or training programs particularly for young people in order to stimulate knowledge awareness/acquisition on entrepreneurship and to start up a business are necessary.Many studies have been conducted to explore and investigate entrepreneurial intentions and behaviour using various entrepreneurial indicators, such as environment and personality indicators (Mazzarol et al., 1999); psychological characteristics e.g. need for achievement (Green et al., 1996; Sengupta and Debnath, 1994). Another study by Misra and Kumar (2000) proposed a model to explain entrepreneurial behavior that incorporated several factors, such as entrepreneurial intentions, entrepreneurial environment, and demographic, psychological and situational factors. Moreover, Morrison (2000) pointed out that there was relationship between entrepreneurship and culture specificity.Furthermore, previous studies found that entrepreneurial intentions among students are a source of creating new business (Gorman et al., 1997; Kourilsky and Walstad, 1998). Their attitudes, behaviours, and knowledge on entrepreneurship tend to stimulate their intentions and willingness to start a new venture in the future. Entrepreneurial intention is defined as a process of information-searching which can be used to achieve a new venture (Katz and Gartner, 1988). People with intention to start a new venture are more ready and have better progress in running a new business rather than those without. According to Krueger and Carsrud (1993), entrepreneurial intention is recognized as the best predictor for entrepreneurial behavior. Therefore, entrepreneurial intention can be used as a basic approach to understand who want to be an entrepreneur (Choo and Wong, 2006).This study aimed to examine what factors determined the students' entrepreneurial intentions in Asia. The Asia Development Bank (2009) had explored various indicators for Asia and Pacific's development; and found that the dynamics of entrepreneurship is dominant for SMEs development in these countries. The study focused on personality and environmental factors. Personality factors include need for achievement (i.e. McClelland, 1961) and self-efficacy (Gilles and Rea, 1999), while environmental factors include factors such as social networks, capital and information access (Mazzarol et al., 1999). Similar studies have been conducted to investigate students' entrepreneurial intentions in Norway (Indarti, 2002), in Indonesia (Kristiansen and Indarti, 2004), in Japan (Indarti and Rostiani, 2008), and in Malaysia (Ismail et al., 2009). This current study was an extension of the initial study by Indarti (2002) by including additional Asian countries to compare, i.e. South Korea, Thailand and Taiwan.The output of the study is expected to participate in the debate, especially with respect to entrepreneurial intentions predictors from different countries in Asia. Furthermore, academic and government in particular may take advantage of the results of this study by taking them into consideration when developing programs to promote entrepreneurship among students. If it is possible, the programs are countryspeci fic. Then, it is expected that fresh graduates will not only be ready to work at companies but they are also prepared to be self-employed, or they are able to apply entrepreneurial principles when working within a company.As discussed previously, this study was mainly intended to investigate what factors (i.e. personality factors, environmental factors, and demographic factors) determined entrepreneurial intentions among Asian students. …

China has been in rapid economic growth and industrial structure reform for recent years, and oil, as a most important raw material for industrial production, its price fluctuations have direct impact on energy-intensive industries as well as non-energy-intensive industries and their associated industries’ overall demands. Under the price transmission mechanism, oil price volatility imposes significant influences on economic growth rate, price level, unemployment rate and monetary policy as well. This paper established VAR model among oil prices and economic indicators such as economic growth rate, price level, unemployment rate and monetary policy, and by data processing , stability test and cointegration test, we found that there existed long term stable cointegration relations among these sequences; through Granger Causality test we found that oil price volatility was the Granger cause of the fluctuations of economic growth rate, price level and monetary policy, and meanwhile, changes in economic growth rate is the Granger cause of that in price level. The result of our empirical study indicated that, oil price volatility has a profound influence on China’s economy, and thus, China should improve the establishment of the oil futures market to avoid risks of oil price volatility and secure long-term stability of its economic growth.

Income inequality, economic growth, and subjective well-being: Evidence from China

A reciprocally re-enforcing relationship exists between institutions, foreign direct investment and economic growth. Sound institutional framework which supports foreign direct investment is significant for driving rapid Economic growth. An important factor that has undermined rapid and sustained economic growth is the weak institutional structure, decrepit state capacity and low level of foreign direct investment in Nigeria. Democratic structures reflected in the rule of law, effectiveness and predictability of the judiciary and enforceability of contracts proceedings is imperative for accelerating economic growth. Employing the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimation techniques on annual time series data covering the period from 1981 to 2015, the relationship between these variables was empirically investigated. The empirical findings reveal that democratic institutions and foreign direct investment are significant variables influencing economic growth in Nigeria. In particular, the results, using Nigerian data, show that weak institutions have a destabilizing impact on growth. The impact of FDI on the other hand is found to be positive and significant. Therefore, sound institutional framework, as well as appropriate and consistent macroeconomic policies that encourage foreign direct investment to propel rapid economic growth in Nigeria needs to be put in place.

China, World Economy and Korea-China Economic Cooperation