Services In GDP Research Articles

THE WORLD ENERGY CONSUMPTION: CHANGING in ENERGY CONSUMPTION in 1980-2005 PERIOD

This study examines how per capita energy consumption changes with respect to changes in population’s urban/rural structure, economy’s sectoral structure, and per capita income. The relationship between explanatory variables and energy consumption is formulized as single regression models.In estimations of the models, three different forms, namely second order,cubic, and exponential, are utilized. Estimation findings reveal that the relationships of explanatory variables with energy consumption are different from each other. While increase in the share of urban population raises energy consumption continuously, increase in the share of services in GDP initially reduces, and then increases energy consumption. At different levels, per capita income has different effects on energy consumption, but increases in per capita income raise energy consumption continuously.

THE IMPACT OF TRANSPORT ON THE COMPETITIVENESS OF NATIONAL ECONOMY

Transport has always been and remained one of the main driving forces in the economical development of any country including Lithuania. The paper assesses a positive impact of transport on Lithuanian economy in the light of the analysis of the main indicators measuring the success of the transport sector: the share of transport and warehousing sectors to national GDP (%) and the share of the export of transport services in GDP (%). It is also widely acknowledged that transport is going to play a crucial role in economic development in the future, especially in transit‐related transport like the Baltic States. On the other hand, the growth of transport, particularly in road transport, has had a significant impact on congestion, safety and pollution. Therefore, the task of transport decision makers is to find the key for sustainable transport development and reduction of a negative transport impact to sustain the transport sector as the engine of economy. The paper analyses both the positive and negative impacts of transport on economy and evaluates the possible ways developing the sustainable transport system.

Services Policy Reform and Economic Growth in Transition Economies

Major changes have occurred in the structure of former centrally planned economies, including a sharp rise in the share of services in GDP, employment, and international transactions. However, large differences exist across transition economies with respect to services intensity and services policy reforms. We find that reforms in policies toward financial and infrastructure services, including telecommunications, power, and transport, are highly correlated with inward FDI. Controlling for regressors commonly used in the growth literature, we find that measures of services policy reform are statistically significant explanatory variables for the post-1990 economic performance of transition economies. These findings suggest services policies should be considered more generally in empirical analyses of economic growth.

The Case for FDI in the Retail Sector in India

Services sector has emerged as the largest and fastest-growing sector in the world economy in the last two decades, providing more than 60 per cent of global output and, in many countries, an even larger share of employment. Not only has the services sector grown in terms of its share in global output and employment, its share in total trade has also grown rapidly in this period. Along with this, we find that global FDI is also shifting away from manufacturing towards services sector. Now services trade grew at the same rate as goods trade in the 1990s, i.e., about 6.5 per cent. In the FDI mode, share of services investment in the global annual flow of FDI has been over 50% in the late 1990s. Consequently, the importance of service activities in the global stock of FDI has risen to a share of about 43 per cent. According to the WTO, the value of commercial services has grown sevenfold as compared to fivefold increase in trade in goods during the period 1980 to 1999. Accordingly, we find that the share of services in GDP has increased steadily in both developed as well as developing countries in the last two decades. This study tries to build a case for, FDI in the retail sector in India by evaluating current FDI regime and looks at the Market size, market potential of the retail in the future and how this industry can grow at a very fast rate provided FDI is opened up.

Services Policy Reform and Economic Growth in Transition Economies, 1990-2004

Major changes have occurred in the structure of former centrally planned economies, including a sharp rise in the share of services in GDP, employment, and international transactions. However, large differences exist across transition economies with respect to services intensity and services policy reforms. The authors find that reforms in policies toward financial and infrastructure services, including telecommunications, power, and transport, are highly correlated with inward foreign direct investment. Controlling for regressors commonly used in the growth literature, they find that measures of services policy reform are statistically significant explanatory variables for the post-1990 economic performance of transition economies. These findings suggest services policies should be considered more generally in empirical analyses of economic growth

DO‐IT‐YOURSELF AND GDP*

Do‐it‐yourself activities are, by definition, those for which a choice must exist between doing it oneself or hiring someone else. This means they typically involve the own account production of services, but whereas it is customary to include most goods produced on own account in GDP services are conventionally excluded. In principle, however, it is possible to envisage a comprehensive and unique measure of the total final output of all the goods and services produced within an economy whether for sale or own use. Such a measure would be better than GDP as an indicator of long term changes in economic welfare, being independent of any shifts in the ratio of market to non‐market production. Moreover, it would be a homogeneous measure with clearly defined limits in contrast to improvised indices of welfare which mix economic and non‐economic variables in arbitrary and subjective ways. However, the need for a measure of market output, or something very close to it such as GDP, is still as strong as ever as soon as attention is switched from measurement of long term growth to problems associated with market disequilibria, such as unemployment and inflation.