世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

Legal and accounting reform that strengthens creditor rights, contract enforcement, and accounting practices boosts financial development and accelerates economic growth. Levine, Loayza, and Beck evaluate: Whether the level of development of financial intermediaries exerts a casual influence on economic growth. Whether cross-country differences in legal and accounting systems (such as creditor rights, contract enforcement, and accounting standards) explain differences in the level of financial development. Using both traditional cross-section, instrumental-variable procedures and recent dynamic panel techniques, they find that development of financial intermediaries exerts a large causal impact on growth. The data also show that cross-country differences in legal and accounting systems help determine differences in financial development. Together, these findings suggest that legal and accounting reform that strengthens creditor rights, contract enforcement, and accounting practices boosts financial development and accelerates economic growth. This paper - a product of Macroeconomics and Growth, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the links between the financial system and economic growth. Thorsten Beck may be contacted at tbeck@worldbank.org.

Financial Intermediation and Growth: Causality and Causes

Aid has a positive impact on growth in developing countries with good fiscal, monetary, and trade policies. Aid appears not to affect policies systematically either for good or for ill. Any tendency for aid to reward good policies has been overwhelmed by donorse pursuit of their own strategic interests. Burnside and Dollar use a new database on foreign aid to examine the relationships among foreign aid, economic policies, and growth of per capita GDP. In panel growth regressions for 56 developing countries and six four-year periods (1970-93), they find that the policies that have a great effect on growth are those related to fiscal surplus, inflation, and trade openness. They construct an index for those three policies and have that index interact with foreign aid. They have instruments for both aid and aid interacting with policies. They find that aid has a positive impact on growth in developing countries with good fiscal, monetary, and trade policies. In the presence of poor policies, aid has no positive effect on growth. This result is robust in a variety of specifications, which include or exclude middle-income countries, include or exclude outliers, and treat policies as exogenous or endogenous. They examine the determinants of policy and find no evidence that aid has systematically affected policies, either for good or for ill. They estimate an aid allocation equation and show that any tendency for aid to reward good policies has been overwhelmed by donors' pursuit of their own strategic interests. In a counterfactual, they reallocate aid, reducing the role of donor interests and increasing the importance of policy. Such a reallocation would have a large positive effect on developing countries' growth rates. This paper - a product of the Macroeconomics and Growth Division, Policy Research Department - is part of a larger effort in the department to study the effectiveness of foreign aid. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under research project Economic Policies and the Effectiveness of Foreign Aid (RPO 681-70).

Aid, Policies, and Growth

http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/ross_levine/Papers/2000_JME_Fin%20Int%20Growth%20Causality.pdf

Financial intermediation and growth: Causality and causes ☆

Development of the banking sector exerts a large, causal impact on total factor productivity growth, which in turn causes GDP to grow. Whether banking development has a long-run effect on capital growth or private saving remains to be seen. Beck, Levine, and Loayza evaluate whether the level of development in the banking sector exerts a causal impact on economic growth and its sources- total factor productivity growth, physical capital accumulation, and private saving. They use (1) a pure cross-country instrumental variable estimator to extract the exogenous component of banking development and (2) a new panel technique that controls for country-specific effects and endogeneity. They find that: - Banks do exert a large, causal impact on total factor productivity growth, which feeds through to overall GDP growth. - The long-run links between banking development and both capital growth and private savings are more tenuous. This paper - a product of Finance, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the links between the financial system and economic growth.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID569227_code382649.pdf?abstractid=569227&rulid=5428171&mirid=4

Finance and the Sources of Growth

Saving rates vary considerably across countries and over time. Policies that spur development are an indirect but effective way to raise private saving rates - which rise with the level and growth rate of real per capita income. Loayza, Schmidt-Hebbel, and Serven investigate the policy and nonpolicy factors behind saving disparities, using a large panel data set and an encompassing approach including several relevant determinants of private saving. They extend the literature in several dimensions by: · Using the largest data set on aggregate saving assembled to date. · Using panel instrumental variable techniques to correct for endogeneity and heterogeneity. · Performing robustness checks on changes in estimation procedures, data samples, and model specification. Their main empirical findings: · Private saving rates show considerable inertia (are highly serially correlated even after controlling for other relevant factors). · Private saving rates rise with the level and growth rate of real per capita income. So policies that spur development are an indirect but effective way to raise private saving rates. · Predictions of the life-cycle hypothesis are supported in that dependency ratios generally have a negative effect on private saving rates. · The precautionary motive for saving is supported by the finding that inflation - conventionally taken as a summary measure of macroeconomic volatility - has a positive impact on private saving, holding other facts constant. · Fiscal policy is a moderately effective tool for raising national saving. · The direct effects of financial liberalization are largely detrimental to private saving rates. Greater availability of credit reduces the private saving rate; financial depth and higher real interest rates do not increase saving. This paper - a product of Macroeconomics and Growth, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the determinants of saving in developing countries. The study was funded by the Bank`s Research Support Budget under the research project Saving in the World: Puzzles and Policies (RPO 681-36). The authors may be contacted at nloayza@worldbank.org or lserven@worldbank.org.

What Drives Private Saving Around the World

This paper offers an empirical evaluation of the output contribution of infrastructure. Drawing from a large data set on infrastructure stocks covering 88 countries and spanning the years 1960-2000, and using a panel time-series approach, the paper estimates a long-run aggregate production function relating GDP to human capital, physical capital, and a synthetic measure of infrastructure given by the first principal component of infrastructure endowments in transport, power, and telecommunications. Tests of the cointegration rank allowing it to vary across countries reveal a common rank with a single cointegrating vector, which is taken to represent the long-run production function. Estimation of its parameters is performed using the pooled mean group estimator, which allows for unrestricted short-run parameter heterogeneity across countries while imposing the (testable) restriction of long-run parameter homogeneity. The long-run elasticity of output with respect to the synthetic infrastructure index ranges between 0.07 and 0.10. The estimates are highly significant, both statistically and economically, and robust to alternative dynamic specifications and infrastructure measures. There is little evidence of long-run parameter heterogeneity across countries, whether heterogeneity is unconditional, or conditional on their level of development, population size, or infrastructure endowments.

/pdf/is-infrastructure-capital-productive-a-dynamic-heterogeneous-46lcavc7qd.pdf

Is infrastructure capital productive ? a dynamic heterogeneous approach

Macroeconomic volatility, both a source and a reflection of underdevelopment, is a fundamental concern for developing countries. Their high aggregate instability results from a combination of large external shocks, volatile macroeconomic policies, microeconomic rigidities, and weak institutions. Volatility entails a direct welfare cost for risk-averse individuals, as well as an indirect one through its adverse effect on income growth and development. This article provides a brief overview of the recent literature on macroeconomic volatility in developing countries, highlighting its causes, consequences, and possible remedies. It then introduces the contributions of a recent conference on the subject, sponsored by the World Bank and Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona.

/pdf/macroeconomic-volatility-and-welfare-in-developing-countries-49wbinb71b.pdf

Macroeconomic Volatility and Welfare in Developing Countries: An Introduction

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/6468/wps4487.pdf?sequence=1

Fiscal Redistribution and Income Inequality in Latin America

An adequate supply of infrastructure services has long been viewed by both academics and policy-makers as a key ingredient for economic development Sub-Saharan Africa ranks consistently at the bottom of all developing regions in terms of infrastructure performance, and an increasing number of observers point to deficient infrastructure as a major obstacle for growth and poverty reduction across the region This paper offers an empirical assessment of the impact of infrastructure development on growth and inequality, with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa The paper uses a comparative cross-regional perspective to place Africa's experience in the international context Drawing from an updated data set of infrastructure quantity and quality indicators covering more than 100 countries and spanning the years 1960--2005, the paper estimates empirical growth and inequality equations including a standard set of control variables augmented by infrastructure quantity and quality measures, and controlling for the potential endogeneity of the latter The estimates illustrate the potential contribution of infrastructure development to growth and equity across Africa Copyright The author 2010 Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for the Study of African Economies All rights reserved For permissions, please email: journalspermissions@oxfordjournalsorg, Oxford University Press

Luis Servén

Papers

What Drives Private Saving Around the World

Is infrastructure capital productive ? a dynamic heterogeneous approach

Macroeconomic Volatility and Welfare in Developing Countries: An Introduction

Fiscal Redistribution and Income Inequality in Latin America

Infrastructure and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa-super- †