Homogeneous Groups Of Countries Research Articles

Factors influencing disclosure practices in emerging markets: Case of the gulf countries

The paper focuses on one homogeneous group of countries in the Middle East North Africa Region, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, which provides an opportunity to better understand the environment and context, and help shape future research. The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of three factors affecting corporate disclosure practices in the GCC countries including: economy, capital markets, and laws and enforcement mechanisms. Several recommendations that would help improve disclosure and financial reporting practices in the GCC are presented. Accounting researchers, especially those with interests in disclosure and financial reporting issues, should take into account the impact of the previous factors while designing their empirical research and reporting its findings

The environmental Kuznets curve: functional form, time‐varying heterogeneity and outliers in a panel setting

This paper contributes to extend the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) literature by introducing a new estimation technique able to deal with the issue of slope heterogeneity, functional form issues, the role of unobserved time‐dependent factors and the presence of outliers in the data. A robust hidden Markov model is used to estimate an Environmental Kuznets Curve for a sample of 28 Organisation of Economic Co‐operation and Development countries over the period 1968 to 2006. Dependent mixture models provide more flexibility than single‐distributions do by assuming the existence of a latent process that follows a finite state first‐order Markov chain and affects the distribution of the response variable. The main results indicate that the relationship between emissions and income is country‐specific and changes over time. By using robust estimation, five homogeneous groups of countries are identified and country‐membership transition dynamics are shown. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Social networks amongst older people in OECD countries: a qualitative comparative analysis

Using data from The International Social Survey Programme this paper compares the social networks of those aged 50 and above in 18 countries. Two different types of networks are conceptualised: family contact and community participation. Using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), international sets are established for four groups of countries. Set one includes countries that only satisfy a minimal number of social network thresholds (France, Norway, Great Britain, Denmark and the USA). Set two includes a homogeneous group of countries with above-threshold rates of marriage and community participation (Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Austria and Canada). Other separate sets with stronger social network features comprise Eastern European countries (set three) and Southern Europe countries (set four) in these sets, family contacts are above the international country average but community participation is less strong. Country sets with low comparative threshold scores in the QCA are argued to be likely to be in greater need of government care policy interventions.

Social Cohesion and the Labour Market: Societal Regimes of Civic Attitudes and Labour Market Regimes

The aim of this paper is to test the connections between the indicators used in the literature on social cohesion, which usually reflect 'general' values or behaviours, and indicators specific to a particular space, namely the labour market. A key question is the stability of the social cohesion's indicators when moving from a societal level to the labour market. Based on data from the World Value Survey, and following a restrictive definition of social cohesion, a comparison is done, for European countries. Examination of the situation in the two spheres makes it possible to identify more or less homogeneous groups of countries and also to point to instabilities. 'Regimes' of social cohesion begin to emerge. As in most analyses, the Nordic countries (excluding Finland) have high scores in all the dimensions. Conversely, most of the new EU member states from the former Eastern bloc have low scores, particularly in the horizontal dimension of trust between individuals.

An empirical analysis of patents flows and R&D flows around the world

In this article, we empirically investigate the effect of Research and Development (R&D) flows on patent flows around the world. We do this using an unbalanced panel consisting primarily of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries that have both patent and R&D expenditure information broken down by domestic and foreign sources. Our analysis shows that even among a fairly homogeneous group of countries, the sources of patents and R&D differ substantially. Using a dynamic panel framework, we find that domestic R&D per capita increases domestic patents per capita only for the European Patent Convention (EPC) countries that already have a decentralized approach to innovation. Foreign R&D per capita increases foreign patents per capita in all countries even though foreign R&D constitutes a very small fraction of total R&D. We find that some of these differences can be attributed to the locations of the patent applications, including those to the European Patent Office (EPO), United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and triadic patent applications to the EPO, USPTO and Japan Patent Office (JPO) simultaneously.

Spatial Differentiation of Food Production Structure and Consumption Profile in Enlarged European Union

The research refers to changes in food production structures and consumption profiles in an enlarged European Union. Annual data related to main food produces in 1993 and 2003 are collected and analysed. In order to reach as homogenous groups of countries as possible, the GCCA method is applied. We find that differences in the field of food production and consumption structures decreased in the considered period. Such countries as Greece and Poland, due to their different structures of food production, can become the partners in the international agricultural trade exchange.

Financial System Structure and Change - 1986-2005 Evidence from the OECD Countries

In this paper, we use sixteen financial indices from the World Bank's Financial Development and Structure database, to classify the OECD countries, according to their financial system structure, in five relatively homogenous clusters for the 1996-2005 period. We also examine the changes in their financial systems for the 1986-2005 period. Our analysis is based on the ‘agglomerative method', a form of hierarchical clustering that uses Ward's methodology, to identify relatively homogenous groups of countries. The findings are surprising, yet reasonable. After two decades of deregulation, liberalization and globalization, the financial systems of the OECD countries not only differ in ways challenging the perceived wisdom that classifies them along the bank-based vs. capital-market-based norms, but additionally do not seem to converge to the second norm as is widely believed. These results warn against oversimplifications regarding financial system structure and the uncritical acceptance of policy recommendations based on them.• JEL Classification: G10, G20

Efficiency of Banks in Regions at Different Stage of European Integration Process

This paper estimates commercial banks' efficiency in three relatively homogenous groups of countries with different level of economic development and different involvement in the process of European integration. The first group consists of Portugal and Greece, the second group is represented by the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia and the third group includes Bulgaria and Romania. The paper aims to reveal whether the differences among regions and countries in the stage of European integration and economic situation are visible also in banking efficiency. Thus we test the hypothesis that the higher degree of European economic integration and economic development goes hand in hand with higher baking efficiency. Employing Data Envelopment Analysis on unconsolidated data we evaluate efficiency of banks in a core of their business - financial intermediation - in 2002-2003. Results suggest that differences in banking efficiency exist among analyzed regions and the hierarchy corresponds with the hierarchy of regions and countries in terms of economic development and degree of integration. Thus, low level of financial intermediation efficiency in Central and Eastern European countries may undermine their effort to boost the economic growth and catch-up the forerunning countries. The importance of the efficiency gap is underscored by the fact that only some of the catching-up countries recorded higher growth of efficiency than the forerunners.

Manufacturing Growth and Financial Development: Evidence from OECD Countries

Recent theoretical models conjecture that the development of the financial sector is essential for economic growth. We investigate this hypothesis from a time-series perspective and find that financial sector GDP is cointegrated for many OECD countries not so much with manufacturing GDP but mostly with manufacturing total factor productivity. Moreover, this relation is in some instances characterized by long-run causality in the sense of Granger and Lin. However, even within this homogeneous group of countries, the variety of results suggests a more complex picture than is apparent from cross-sectional evidence.

Military Spending in Sub-Saharan Africa: Some Evidence for 1967-85

This article is a contribution to the debate on the determinants and economic effects of military expenditure in less-developed economies. Recent empirical work has suggested that there is much to be gained from analysing groups of relatively homogeneous countries, and to this end it focuses on a sample of thirteen Sub-Saharan African countries over the period from 1967 to 1985. The econometric analysis uses data for the group of countries as a whole, a cross-sectional analysis of the country averages, and an analysis of the pooled country data. As regards the determinants of military spending, the results suggest that economic factors play an important role in determining the level of military burden across countries and over time for the sample as a whole. When the data are pooled, strategic factors such as wars, the size of the army and inertia become important. In a time-series analysis, military expenditure is also found to have a negative effect on economic development for the countries as a whole, through its negative indirect effects on human resource accumulation, investment allocations and the balance of payments. While this result is not found across countries, or when the data are pooled, the results still imply that there is no significant positive effect of military burden on economic growth. Together, these results show the value of attempting to capture both time-series and cross-sectional effects when analysing the determinants and economic effects of military spending and the value of dealing with relatively homogeneous groups of countries.