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on Central and Western Asia |
| By: | Sandeep Kapur; Mamta Murthi (School of Economics, Mathematics & Statistics, Birkbeck) |
| Abstract: | Literacy refers to an individual’s ability to communicate through reading and writing. The literacy rate for any population measures the fraction of the population, above a certain cut-off age, that is literate. Based on the most recent statistics compiled by UNESCO, more than one in three Indians above the age of 15 years is unable to read and write. Further, the roughly 268 million adult illiterates in India constitute one-third of the global population of illiterates. International comparisons show that the Indian literacy rate is well below those for other populous countries like China and also below those for developing countries in general. |
| Date: | 2009–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bbk:bbkefp:0907&r=cwa |
| By: | V. Chandra; Osorio-Rodarte , I.; Braga, C. A. Primo |
| Abstract: | This paper tests a neo-Schumpeterian model with industry-level data to analyze how Brazil, India, and China are catching up with South Korea’s technological frontier in a globalized world. The paper validates Aghion et al.’s inverted-U hypothesis that industries that are closer to the technological frontier innovate to escape competition while longer distances discourage innovating. It suggests that for effective catching up, distance-shortening (or innovation-enhancing) policies may be a necessary complement to liberalization. South Korea and China combined a variety of distance-shortening policies with financial subsidies to promote high tech industries and an export-led growth strategy. Post-liberalization, they leveraged swift competition to spur catch-up. In comparison, Brazil, which was as rich as South Korea, and India, which was as rich as China in 1980, are catching up more slowly. Import-substitution industrialization strategies saddled Brazil and India with a large anti-export bias, and unfocused attention to innovation-enhancing policies dampened global competitiveness. Post liberalization, many of their industries were too far behind the technological frontier to effectively benefit from competition. The catch-up experiences of Brazil, India, and China with South Korea illustrate that distance from the technological frontier matters and that the design of country-specific distance- shortening policies can be an important complement to trade liberalization in promoting catching up with richer countries. |
| Keywords: | Labor Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Water and Industry,E-Business,Knowledge for Development |
| Date: | 2009–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5101&r=cwa |
| By: | Timilsina, Govinda R.; Shrestha, Ashish |
| Abstract: | Rapidly increasing emissions of carbon dioxide from the transport sector, particularly in urban areas, is a major challenge to sustainable development in developing countries. This study analyzes the factors responsible for transport sector CO2 emissions growth in selected developing Asian countries during 1980-2005. The analysis splits the annual emissions growth into components representing economic development; population growth; shifts in transportation modes; and changes in fuel mix, emission coefficients, and transportation energy intensity. The study also reviews existing government policies to limit CO2 emissions growth, particularly various fiscal and regulatory policy instruments. The study finds that of the six factors considered, three - economic development, population growth, and transportation energy intensity - are responsible for driving up transport sector CO2 emissions in Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Vietnam. In contrast, only economic development and population growth are responsible in the case of China, India, Indonesia, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. CO2 emissions exhibit a downward trend in Mongolia due to decreasing transportation energy intensity. The study also finds that some existing policy instruments help reduce transport sector CO2 emissions, although they were not necessarily targeted for this purpose when introduced. |
| Keywords: | Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Climate Change Mitigation and Green House Gases,Energy Production and Transportation,Climate Change Economics,Transport and Environment |
| Date: | 2009–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5098&r=cwa |
| By: | Datt, Gaurav; Ravallion, Martin |
| Abstract: | The extent to which India's poor have benefited from the country’s economic growth has long been debated. This paper revisits the issues using a new series of consumption-based poverty measures spanning 50 years, and including a 15-year period after economic reforms began in earnest in the early 1990s. Growth has tended to reduce poverty, including in the post-reform period. There is no robust evidence that the responsiveness of poverty to growth has increased, or decreased, since the reforms began, although there are signs of rising inequality. The impact of growth is higher for poverty measures that reflect distribution below the poverty line, and it is higher using growth rates calculated from household surveys than national accounts. The urban-rural pattern of growth matters to the pace of poverty reduction. However, in marked contrast to the pre-reform period, the post-reform process of urban economic growth has brought significant gains to the rural poor as well as the urban poor. |
| Keywords: | Rural Poverty Reduction,Achieving Shared Growth,Services&Transfers to Poor,Inequality |
| Date: | 2009–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5103&r=cwa |
| By: | Mustafa Kemal, Bicerli; Naci, Gundogan |
| Abstract: | Urbanization -as a worldwide pheonemenon- has increased its pace especially in the twentieth century in all over the World. Turkey is no exception of this process. In Turkey, urbanization has been accelerated since 1950 and it still carries on by increasing its speed. While only 25% of the population had lived in cities in 1927, nowadays this portion of the population has reached to aproximately 70.0 %. Like in many developing countries, women in rural labor markets of Turkey mostly work as unpaid family workers in agriculture and in some non-market activities such as home production and voluntary jobs. It is observed that from 1950’s to today women’s labor force participation rates (LFPRs) in urban areas have been diminished dramatically. Besides other factors that reduces women’s LFP in urban areas, ongoing migration from rural to urban areas seems to play the dominant role in this result. It appears that as a result of migration rural female workers are left without any jobs in the cities. Several factors can be taken into account to explain this transformation such as; cultural values against women’s participation in market work, women’s lack of education and marketable skills, unfavorable labor market conditions and increases in enrollment rates in all levels of schooling. In this paper, we have explained the characteristics, causes and dimensions of female labor force participation in urbanization process of Turkey. |
| Keywords: | Urbanization; female labor force participation in Turkey; unemployment; gender discrimination |
| JEL: | J21 J82 J16 |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:18249&r=cwa |
| By: | Atiq, Atiq-ur-Rehman; Anis, Hafsa; Khan, Saud Ahmed |
| Abstract: | Higher Education is believed to be a very important determinant of economic growth. The growth can be optimized with a suitable combination of skills in various subjects. A mismatch between required combination of skills and available combination of skills carries heavy costs for developing economies since import of skill from foreign is much more in expensive for such economies. We compare skill shortage in Pakistan with the subjects choice of students recently enrolled in institutes of higher learning. We found that there is a mismatch between skill shortage and the enrollment trend. We propose that the Government should regulate recruitment of students into various subjects in order to create greater harmony between national needs and students enrollment. |
| Keywords: | Subject Choice; Skill Shortage; National Needs |
| JEL: | J08 J82 |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:18298&r=cwa |
| By: | Gülsün Gürkan Yay (Yildiz Technical University, Department of Economics, Istanbul, Turkey); Serkan Keçeli (Turkish Statistical Institute, Turkey) |
| Abstract: | In this study, the leading activities of Turkish Economy whose changes in their structure of production, value-added and employment are interrelated with the other activities of the economy, are found by using the input-output model which is presented and called as an ‘Application of the General Equilibrium Theory’ by Leontief. For this purpose; firstly theoretical foundations of the input-output model are examined. After that, 59 activities of the 2002 Input-Output Table of the Turkish Economy are aggregated at 52 sectors and classified into three categories as Ricardo Sectors, High-Technology Sectors and Heckscher-Ohlin Sectors like Dasgupta and Chakraborty did for the Indian Economy in 2005. Then, the leading, key or strong activities of the economy that are more interrelated with other activities are calculated and found by the Static Leontief Model which is used by the Traditional Methods as the techniques to calculate the linkage effects like Chenery-Watanabe and Rasmussen methods to determine the sectors having the highest priority at investment policies according to the Hirschmanian Unbalanced Growth Model. As a result of the interpretation of Leontief Model, using the traditional methods of Chenery-Watanabe and Rasmussen while calculating the linkage effects rather than the hypothesis extraction methods like Strassert’s Original Extraction Method, Cella’s Extraction Method, Sonis’ Pure Linkage Method and Dietzenbacher and Van der Linden’s Method or a SAM (Social Accounting Method) model which does not omit the income generating process (distributing income among primary factors and households as a result of production) of a sector, in Turkey, the Heckscher-Ohlin Sectors mostly seen in the manufacturing industry which Kaldor refers as the engine of growth, are stronger than the other sectors. |
| Keywords: | Leontief Input-Output Model, Ricardo Sectors, Heckscher-Ohlin Sectors and High-Technology Sectors, General Equilibrium Analysis, Multiplier Analysis |
| JEL: | C67 D57 |
| Date: | 2009–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:voj:wpaper:200932&r=cwa |
| By: | Yucel, M. Eray |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a bibliometric assessment of the research papers produced in the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey from 1988 to 2009. Concentration over subjects and the Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification codes are provided in addition to the time distribution of bibliography cited in the research papers. Overall, it is observed that the examined series did provide an adequate pool of knowledge for both academics and the general public. |
| Keywords: | Bibliometrics; Central bank research; Economic research |
| JEL: | A39 Z0 Y9 |
| Date: | 2009–11–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:18323&r=cwa |
| By: | Hardiansyah, Suteja |
| Abstract: | Why Islamic tradition in Morocco and Indonesia is different? Why Islamic patterns in urban communities such as Jakarta different with Islamic patterns of rural communities? Variation in Islam is an interesting challenge to be answered. Islam, even in aspects substance, namely spirituality, is still a historical thing. The substance of Islam manifested and expressed in public life. When embodied in aspects of life, the manifestation and expression became a tradition. The model Islam as such is the accumulation of tradition, which in this paper called Islamic religiousity (keberislaman). With modeled Islam like this, this paper discusses the dynamics of Islam in the context of social justice and poverty. Will be shown how the Muslim experience of cultural evolution, from simple becomes complex. The conclusion of this paper is that variation is a result of Islam of cultural evolution. |
| Keywords: | accumulative tradition; meme; cultural evolution; adaptive complex system; complexity paradigm; social justice; poverty; perennial (religio perennis); Islamic tradition |
| JEL: | Z12 I39 A13 Z0 A14 |
| Date: | 2009–05–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:18053&r=cwa |
| By: | Um, Paul Noumba; Straub, Stephane; Vellutini, Charles |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the impact of infrastructure on growth of total factor productivity and per capita income, using both growth accounting techniques and cross-country growth regressions. The two econometric techniques yield some consistent and some different results. Regressions based in the growth accounting framework suggest that electricity production helps explain cross-country differences in total factor productivity growth in the Middle East and North Africa region. Growth regressions support that conclusion, while also stressing an effect of telecommunications infrastructure. Finally, growth regressions also indicate quite consistently that the returns to infrastructure have been lower in the Middle East and North Africa region than in developing countries as a whole. |
| Keywords: | Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Achieving Shared Growth,Economic Growth,E-Business,Energy Production and Transportation |
| Date: | 2009–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5105&r=cwa |
| By: | Khiabani, Nasser; Mazyaki, Ali |
| Abstract: | Redistributing incomes has always been one of the main goals of Iranian policy makers, although political regimes have changed frequently between 1991 and 2004. We have applied a microsimulation using the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition and a Heckman correction for sample selection bias to compare simulation results for a hypothetical unchanged situation with the actual policy shift observed. While we are able to identify the years in which policy shifts occurred, our results suggest that the intended redistribution goals were at most partially achieved, affecting only some occupations and being offset by changes to the level of family incomes. |
| Keywords: | Income Distribution; Policy Evaluation; Oaxaca-Blinder; Heckit |
| JEL: | D0 B21 C5 C81 C8 O12 |
| Date: | 2009–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:18278&r=cwa |
| By: | Hallward-Driemeier, Mary; Thompson, Fraser |
| Abstract: | How important is firm turnover to national productivity growth? The literature points to the contribution of creative destruction being strongest in more developed countries or where market institutions are strongest. This paper looks at the case of Morocco, spanning 16 years, during which reform initiatives aiming to strengthen market forces were introduced. The paper argues that it is important to take into account i) the timing of how decompositions are structured (capturing the effects of high growth among young firms as part of the benefit of increased entry) and ii) the additional indirect impacts of firm dynamics on agglomeration externalities and competition. The paper shows there are striking differences in the productivity paths of entering and exiting firms compared with incumbents, and that restricting the time horizon of productivity decompositions to the actual year of entry or exit underestimates the productivity effects of turnover. Although it has been hypothesized that conducting decompositions over longer horizons would increase the positive contribution of net turnover, this is not the case in Morocco as losses from exiting firms rise too. Nor has the net contribution of turnover increased with market reforms; if anything, the contribution has declined over time. But the allocation of resources has improved. Both technical and allocative efficiency have risen since the mid-1990s. The paper also shows that firm turnover affects productivity through additional channels. It is closely correlated with measures of agglomeration that are associated with higher rates of exit among unproductive firms, and turnover itself is positively associated with subsequent productivity growth of incumbents. |
| Keywords: | Labor Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Labor Markets,Microfinance,E-Business |
| Date: | 2009–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5085&r=cwa |