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on Central and Western Asia |
|
Issue of 2011‒02‒05
thirteen papers chosen by Bibhu Prasad Nayak Institute for Social and Economic Change |
| By: | Hasan, Zubair |
| Abstract: | This paper deals with familiar facts in monetary economics from an unfamiliar angle. It argues that it is not factual to regard the legal tender money and bank credit as of different genus: they work in tandem to the same ends in an economy, conventional or Islamic. Also, it does not matter what serves as money – solid gold or flimsy paper – for keeping its value stable; only the blind would argue that staff is indispensable for walking. Money is just an instrument: it was never nor can ever be classified into Islamic and non-Islamic. What it does – good or bad – depends on how we use it. Money does not generate crises; its mismanagement does. It follows that the refuge the world is searching today from recurring financial crises does not lie in money substance: history testifies that national economies could not remain turmoil-free during the centuries of the yellow metal sway over the monetary scene. The paper concludes that it is the human factor that has been the source of good or evil for mankind including money matters. And the quality of human factor true religion can alone improve: morality without faith is rudderless. |
| Keywords: | Key words: Monetary policies; Gold standard; managed currency; Islamic banking; Central banks |
| JEL: | E62 E42 E58 B50 B25 |
| Date: | 2011–01–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:28366&r=cwa |
| By: | Coskun, Yener |
| Abstract: | Real estate is one of the foremost and traditional investments for Turkish household. In addition to this traditional demand, it has also observed that Turkish real estate market becomes one of the popular investment destination for foreign investors. 2003-2007 period would be accepted as the boom period for Turkish economy in general and real estate sector in specific. Although there are considerable opportunities in the market, both Turkish economy and real estate sector suffer important structural problems. Hence, the objective assesment for the Turkish real estate market requires a costbenefit analysis. In this paper, the author is attempting to reach an objective approach presenting both strong and also weak sides of market. The critical point is current deficiencies of the market may result negative impacts on further development. As a solution, we suggest that Real Estate Regulation and Supervision Agency should be established as a new government agency. To our view, primary expectation of this agency is to issue regulations/standards for real estate brokerage/ marketing/appraisal,and also housing finance to enhance consumer protection, public interest and market efficiency. |
| Keywords: | Turkish real estate market; consumer protection in real estate; real estate appraisal; Real Estate Regulation and Supervision Agency |
| JEL: | O18 R14 G21 |
| Date: | 2010–06–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:28361&r=cwa |
| By: | Islam, Faridul; Shahbaz, Muhammad; Shabbir, Muhammad |
| Abstract: | The paper explores the existence and the stability of Phillips curve for North Cyprus, a small developing economy, using time series data. ADF unit root test is employed to check for stationarity. ARDL and DOLS approaches to cointegration have been used to explore the long run relation and ECM to understand short run dynamics. The predictive properties DOLS are better than those of the conventional methods. The estimates point to the existence of Phillips curve both in the long and the short run. CUSUM and CUSUMsq tests confirm a stable relation. |
| Keywords: | Inflation; Unemployment; ADF; Cointegration; DOLS |
| JEL: | E24 E31 C22 |
| Date: | 2011–01–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:28397&r=cwa |
| By: | Alrubaie, falah.K.Ali |
| Abstract: | Economic policy, especially fiscal policy are Gaining exceptional importance, in the Iraqi economy in the current circumstances , where are the Revenues of oil center of gravity in the movements of each of the budget, internal and external, and leave it from the shocks of external display negative or positive. After that increased government intervention in economic activity, and increased monetary effects of fiscal policy, which is reflected in particular on the general level of prices and money supply and credit volume and interest rates. Reveal Reviewed scrutinizing economic policy in Iraq for the critical role of fiscal policies as a result of the misuse of oil revenues, and the consequent prevalence of the manifestations of backwardness, declining standards of production and productivity in various economic activities, and the accompanying dominance of the oil sector on the major contributors to the GDP, and falling the role of the commodity sectors, particularly the industrial sector, agriculture and the growing sectors, parasitic, and deepen the manifestations of the imbalances and distortions in the economic structure as well as distortions in the exchange rate of the dinar, and distortions in the tax system, distortion in prices, and distortions in the distribution of income and wealth that resulted from poor coordination between monetary policies and Finance |
| Keywords: | السياسة الاقتصادية ، النفط ، الاقتصاد العراقي ،التنمية |
| JEL: | E60 |
| Date: | 2010–03–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:28371&r=cwa |
| By: | CHATTI, Mohamed Ali; KABLAN, Sandrine; YOUSFI, Ouidad |
| Abstract: | The current paper analyzes the performance and the choice of portfolio in Islamic banks. We consider a sample of 8 Malaysian universal Islamic banks between 2004 and 2008. We use the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) as an indicator of the degree of diversification. The performance of the banks is measured by the return on assets ratio (ROA) and the Risk Adjusted Return On Capital ratio (RAROC). Finally, we use the Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) of Markowitz to define the efficient frontier and the optimal portfolio.The results show that the corporate and investment activity increases significantly returns on assets. However, retail and commercial activity improves the results and performance of these banks. We find evidence that the level of diversification is not too high and recommend that they become concentrated on just one type of these activities. Finally, the MPT supports the idea that Islamic banks are not efficient. |
| Keywords: | Diversification; performance; Islamic banks; Herfindhal Hirschmann Index; Modern Portfolio Theory. |
| JEL: | G11 C01 G21 |
| Date: | 2010–01–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:28348&r=cwa |
| By: | Magnus Hatlebakk; Vegard Iversen; Gaute Torsvik |
| Abstract: | We study how local connections to persons in influential positions affect access to lucrative international migrant jobs and attractive government employment. In rural Nepal, it would not be surprising if social status, captured by a household’s caste but also by wealth or education, strongly influenced or perhaps even exclusively determined the access to attractive labour market opportunities. This is not the case. Although much of the variation in migration can be attributed to wealth, education and social identity, household networks have a separate impact on external employment. Well-connected households are more likely to get government jobs and appear to have favorable access to the manpower agencies and the informal loans required to finance migration to the Persian Gulf or Malaysia. |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:chm:wpaper:wp2010-3&r=cwa |
| By: | Sujoy Chakravarty; Carine Sebi; E. Somanathan; E. Theophilus |
| Abstract: | The public goods problem (Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons,1968), either viewed as a problem of extraction and optimal use of a resource, or that of shared contributions to the cost of a resource, has had a long history in the social sciences. Our experimental design, using methods in experimental economics, uses a standard Voluntary Contributions Mechanism (VCM) game with a moderately large group of ten and face-to-face communication between the participants. The subjects, who are villagers in the Gori-Ganga Basin of the Central Himalayas, are not re-matched every period. Our results are somewhat different from laboratory experiments using a similar design such as Isaac and Walker (1988a, 1988b). [Occasional paper 29]. |
| Keywords: | communication, participants, VCM, economics, public goods problems, INDIAN HIMALAYAS, villagers, resource, gori-ganga, social sciences |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:3490&r=cwa |
| By: | ACKET Sylvain; BORSENBERGER Monique; DICKES Paul; SARRACINO Francesco |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to provide a synthetic macro index of social cohesion based on the observation of several individual level variables. Based on the definition of social cohesion by Bernard (1999) and Chan et al. (2006) an index of social cohesion (henceforth VALCOS Index) was created. It covers the political and sociocultural domains of life in their formal and substantial relations. Results suggest that the VALCOS-Index of social cohesion is strongly and significantly correlated with other macro indicators largely used by the scientific community. The aggregation of EVS 2008 data on social cohesion together with many macro indicators of several dimensions of social life (including economic, socio-demographic, health and subjective well-being indicators) allowed us to rank social cohesion across 39 European countries and to explore differences across groups of countries. Subsequently, we validated our index by correlating it with many national level variables. |
| Keywords: | social cohesion; methodology; macro index; micro index; EVS |
| JEL: | A10 D60 I30 Z13 |
| Date: | 2011–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:irs:cepswp:2011-08&r=cwa |
| By: | Magazzino, Cosimo |
| Abstract: | The aim of this article is to assess the empirical evidence of the nexus between public expenditure and inflation for the Mediterranean countries during the period 1970-2009, using a time-series approach. After a brief introduction, a concise survey of the economic literature on this issue is shown, before discussing the data and introducing some econometric techniques. Stationarity tests reveal, generally, that public expenditure/GDP ratio is a I(1) process, while prices index is a I(2) process. Moreover, we find a long-run relationship between the growth of public expenditure and inflation only for Portugal. Furthermore, Granger causality tests results show a short-run evidence of a directional flow from expenditure to inflation for Cyprus, Malta and Spain; of a bidirectional flow for Italy; and from inflation to public expenditure for France. Some notes on the policy implications of our empirical results conclude the paper. |
| Keywords: | Public expenditure; inflation; time-series; unit root; cointegration; causality; Mediterranean countries. |
| JEL: | C32 E62 H50 E31 N44 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:28493&r=cwa |
| By: | Simon Commander (IE Business School, EBRD); Zlatko Nikoloski (University College London) |
| Abstract: | Institutions are now widely believed to be important in explaining performance. In this paper, we analyse whether commonly used measures of institutions have any significant, measurable impact on performance, whether of countries or firms. We look at three ‘levels’ of institutions and associated conjectures. The first concerns whether the political system affects performance. The second concerns whether the business and investment environment affects the performance of countries and the third concerns whether perceived business constraints directly affect the performance of firms. In all instances, we find little evidence of a robust link between widely used measures of institutions and our indicators of performance. We consider why this might be the case and argue that mis-measurement, mis-specification, complexity and non-linearity are all relevant factors. |
| JEL: | O1 P2 P5 |
| Date: | 2010–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ebd:wpaper:121&r=cwa |
| By: | Aristotelis Boukouras (Georg-August-University Göttingen); Kostas Koufopoulos (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a model of political competition, where voter decisions are affected by their ideological adherence to political parties. We derive a number of interesting results: First, we show that an equilibrium exists even though voting is fully deterministic. Second, although politicians, because of deterministic voting, can win an election with certainty by making concessions to voters, they choose to win the election only with some probability in order to maximize their expected rents. Third, if the distribution of ideology is asymmetric, then political parties follow different platforms in equilibrium. Finally, our model generates two novel empirical predicitions, which, to the best of our knowledge, have not been tested yet: i) the higher the ideological adherence to a political party the more inefficient policies this party will follow, ii) the higher the number of extra votes required for election victory (the super-majority requirement) the higher the degree of corruption. |
| Keywords: | corruption; political instability; voting behavior |
| JEL: | G21 G28 H32 P16 P43 |
| Date: | 2011–01–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:got:gotcrc:058&r=cwa |
| By: | Charles Nolan; Alex Trew |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a simple framework for understanding endogenous transaction costs - their composition, size and implications. In a model of diversification against risk, we distinguish between investments in institutions that facilitate exchange and the costs of conducting exchange itself. Institutional quality and market size are determined by the decisions of risk averse agents and conditions are discussed under which the efficient allocation may be decentralized. We highlight a number of differences with models where transaction costs are exogenous, including the implications for taxation and measurement issues. |
| Keywords: | Exchange costs, transaction costs, general equilibrium, institutions. |
| JEL: | D02 D51 L14 |
| Date: | 2011–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:san:cdmawp:1103&r=cwa |
| By: | Jean-Christophe PEREAU (GREThA, UMR CNRS 5113); Luc DOYEN (CNRS-MNHN, CNRS, UMR 7204); Rich LITTLE (CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research); Olivier THEBAUD (CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research) |
| Abstract: | This paper deals with the sustainable management of a renewable resource based on individual and transferable quotas (ITQs) when agents differ in terms of harvesting costs or catching capabilities. In a dynamic bio-economic model, we determine the feasibility conditions under which a fishery manager can achieve sustainability objectives which simultaneously account for stock renewal, economic efficiency and maintenance of fishing activity for the agents along time. We show that the viability of quota management strategies based on fixing Total Allowable Catch (TAC) limits depends on the degree of heterogeneity of users in the fishery, the current status and the dynamics of the stock. In particular for a given stock, we compute the maximin effort for a given set of agents and we derive the maximal number of active agents for a given guaranteed effort. An application to the nephrops fishery in the Bay of Biscay illustrates the results. |
| Keywords: | Renewable resource; Sustainability; Total allowable catch; Individual and transferable quotas, maximin, feasibility set |
| JEL: | Q22 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grt:wpegrt:2011-01&r=cwa |