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on Central and Western Asia |
| By: | Basant Rakesh; Chandra Pankaj |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the role played by academic institutions in Bangalore and Pune cities of India. It shows that there exists a large variety of linkages between industry and academia in the two Indian cities; a hierarchy of institutions satisfies a hierarchy of local demands ranging from skills to new technologies. While labor market linkages continue to dominate, global and local changes are creating opportunities for knowledge based linkages. With enhanced competition and privatization of research and education, these linkages are bound to undergo significant change in the future and policy should facilitate this transition. |
| Keywords: | India, South Asia, spatial clusters, academia-industry linkages |
| Date: | 2006–02–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iim:iimawp:2006-02-01&r=cwa |
| By: | Aghion, Philippe; Burgess, Robin; Redding, Stephen J; Zilibotti, Fabrizio |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates whether the effects, on registered manufacturing output, employment, entry and investment, of dismantling the 'license raj' - a system of central controls regulating entry and production activity in this sector - vary across Indian states with different labour market regulations. The effects are found to be unequal depending on the institutional environment in which industries are embedded. In particular, following delicensing, industries located in states with pro-employer labour market institutions grew more quickly than those in pro-worker environments. Our results emphasize how local institutions matter for whether industry in a region benefits or is harmed by the nationwide delicensing reform. |
| Keywords: | delicensing; economic development; labour regulation |
| JEL: | O14 O18 O21 |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5492&r=cwa |
| By: | Buiter, Willem H; Patel, Urjit R. |
| Abstract: | Capital formation is a key driver of the growth of potential output. With continuing widespread capital controls and persistently small inward FDI the volume of capital formation in India is constrained by domestic saving. The national saving rate in India (the sum of the saving rates of households, enterprises and the state) is depressed by the continuing large public sector deficits (and much below the near 40% of GDP saving rates achieved by China). Even this saving rate should be able to support a higher growth rate than has been achieved thus far. The reason it does not is that the intermediation of this saving into domestic capital formation is inefficient. Since the middle of the 1990s, India's public debt has risen steadily as a share of GDP, but remains below the levels achieved at the time of the 1991 currency crisis. The composition of this debt is, however, significantly different from that in 1991: external public debt is modest and international gold and foreign exchange reserves stand at historically high levels. The domestic debt is rupee-denominated. For all these reasons, government solvency may not be a pressing issue at this stage. Globally, risk-free rates at all maturities and all imaginable credit risk spreads are extraordinarily and unsustainably low. Continuation of the pattern of recent years - a steady increase in the debt-GDP ratio - will sooner or later raise the public debt to unsustainable levels. The fiscal rules adopted by the Indian Central Government under the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act do not address the key distortions imposed by the authorities on the private sector through financial repression, misguided regulations and inefficient ownership and incentive structures. Nor do they address the underlying fiscal sustainability problem faced by the Indian state. In addition, they create a mechanism for macroeconomic volatility-enhancing, pro-cyclical fiscal policy. |
| Keywords: | financial intermediation; financial repression; fiscal sustainability; Indian public finance |
| JEL: | E5 E6 G1 G2 H6 O5 |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5502&r=cwa |
| By: | Jaeger, David A; Paserman, Marco Daniele |
| Abstract: | In this study we extend our previous work to examine the dynamic relationship between violence committed by Palestinian factions and that committed by Israel during the Second Intifada. We find a statistically significant relationship between Israeli fatalities claimed by groups associated with the ruling political party, Fatah, and subsequent Palestinian fatalities. We do not find a similar relationship for Israeli fatalities claimed by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian factions. We conjecture that these differences are due to the different positions of the factions vis-à-vis bargaining over a two-state solution to the conflict as well as the organizational structures of the factions. |
| Keywords: | bargaining; conflict resolution; Intifada; terrorism; violence |
| JEL: | C32 D71 D74 H56 |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5498&r=cwa |
| By: | Christophe Muller (Universidad de Alicante); Christophe Nordman (DIAL, París) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we study the return to human capital variables for wages of workers observed in Tunisian matched worker-firm data in 1999. We develop a new method based on multivariate analysis of firm characteristics, which allows us most of the benefits obtained by introducing firm dummies in wage equations. It also provides a human capital interpretation of the effect of these dummy variables. Moreover, in the studied data, using three firm characteristics easily collectable yields results close to those obtained by using the matched structure of the data. |
| Keywords: | wage, returns to human capital, matched worker-firm data, quantile regressions, factor analysis, Tunisia |
| JEL: | J24 J31 O12 |
| Date: | 2004–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ivi:wpasad:2004-28&r=cwa |
| By: | Murat Iyigun (University of Colorado, Sabanci University and IZA Bonn) |
| Abstract: | This paper emphasizes that the evolution of religious institutions in Europe was influenced by the expansionary threat posed by the Ottoman Empire five centuries ago. This threat intensified in the second half of the 15th century and peaked in the first half of the 16th century with the Ottoman Empire’s territorial expansion in Eastern Europe. Various historical accounts have suggested that the Ottomans’ rise helped the Protestant Reform movement as well as its various offshoots, such as Zwinglianism, Anabaptism and Calvinism, survive their infancy and mature. In an attempt to conceptualize these effects, I develop a model in which social, cultural or religious affiliation between otherwise heterogenous and conflicting groups can lead to cooperation (at the very least, to a secession of hostilities) when such groups are faced with the threat of potentially stronger rivals of a different affiliation. The overall patterns of conflict in continental Europe as well as those between the Protestant Reformers and the Catholic Counter-Reform movement between the 15th and 17th centuries support the idea that Ottoman military conquests in Europe significantly reduced intra-European feuds. |
| Keywords: | cooperation, conflict, religion, institutions, economic development |
| JEL: | C72 D74 N33 N43 O10 |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1973&r=cwa |
| By: | Erdal Atukeren (Swiss Institute for Business Cycle Research (KOF), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH)) |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the politico-economic determinants of the crowding-in effects of public investments in a cross-section of 25 developing countries for the 1975-2000 period using multivariate probit analysis. The estimation results show that public fixed capital investments may crowd in private investments, but this still depends on the developments in the economic, political, and legal environment of business in individual countries. As such, our findings capture the essence of the mixed results found in this literature well and shed further light on the conditions under which public investments are more likely (not) to crowd in private investments in developing countries. |
| Keywords: | Public investment, crowding-in effects, environment of private business, institutions, rule of law, property rights |
| JEL: | E62 H54 O11 |
| Date: | 2006–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kof:wpskof:06-126&r=cwa |