世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

An Analysis of Robert E. Lucas Jr.'s Why Doesn't Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries?

Nowhere has the divide between advocates and critics of globalization been more striking than in debates over free trade and the environment. And yet the literature on the subject is high on rhetoric and low on results. This book is the first to systematically investigate the subject using both economic theory and empirical analysis. Brian Copeland and Scott Taylor establish a powerful theoretical framework for examining the impact of international trade on local pollution levels, and use it to offer a uniquely integrated treatment of the links between economic growth, liberalized trade, and the environment. The results will surprise many.

	The authors set out the two leading theories linking international trade to environmental outcomes, develop the empirical implications, and examine their validity using data on measured sulfur dioxide concentrations from over 100 cities worldwide during the period from 1971 to 1986.

	The empirical results are provocative. For an average country in the sample, free trade is good for the environment. There is little evidence that developing countries will specialize in pollution-intensive products with further trade. In fact, the results suggest just the opposite: free trade will shift pollution-intensive goods production from poor countries with lax regulation to rich countries with tight regulation, thereby lowering world pollution. The results also suggest that pollution declines amid economic growth fueled by economy-wide technological progress but rises when growth is fueled by capital accumulation alone.

	Lucidly argued and authoritatively written, this book will provide students and researchers of international trade and environmental economics a more reliable way of thinking about this contentious issue, and the methodological tools with which to do so.

Trade and the environment : theory and evidence

This news article reports on the events occurring and the views taken at the 1995 UN Conference on Women held in Beijing China and the Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Forum. The setting in China for this decennially occurring conference was appropriate for the discussion of womens rights. Despite the selective coverage of the conference by Chinese official reports word would trickle out in whispers to Chinese women about some new ideas. Chinese visa restrictions on participants of the NGO Forum forced many women to devise ingenious ways of gaining entrance to the meetings. The alliance between the Holy See and Islam disciples threatened to undermine basic goals of conference to open up access to contraception and to change property rights. The conference chair diplomatically found justification for praise of unpopular views despite the disputes among a majority of delegates. The aim of the conference was to obtain a common understanding of some basic rights and not 100% agreement. Womens economic contributions have not been recognized in gross domestic product calculations. The World Bank has reported that about $13 billion is unaccounted for income and unwaged income of which about $8.5 billion is due to womens productivity. Women expressed the desire for recognition of their economic contribution. Since the last womens conference held in Nairobi in 1985 there has been an increase in world poverty. Uganda expends more on servicing its debt than on health and education. There was general agreement that gender equity was a goal but there was less consensus on how to achieve it.

Gross domestic product.

The present study explores the relationship between economic growth, electricity consumption, urbanization and environmental degradation in case of United Arab Emirates (UAE). The study covers the quarter frequency data over the period of 1975–2011. We have applied the ARDL bounds testing approach to examine the long run relationship between the variables in the presence of structural breaks. The VECM Granger causality is applied to investigate the direction of causal relationship between the variables. Our empirical exercise reported the existence of cointegration among the series. Further, we found an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and CO 2 emissions i.e. economic growth raises energy emissions initially and declines it after a threshold point of income per capita (EKC exists). Electricity consumption declines CO 2 emissions. The relationship between urbanization and CO 2 emissions is positive. Exports seem to improve the environmental quality by lowering CO 2 emissions. The causality analysis validates the feedback effect between CO 2 emissions and electricity consumption. Economic growth and urbanization Granger cause CO 2 emissions.

Economic growth, electricity consumption, urbanization and environmental degradation relationship in United Arab Emirates

This paper investigates regional trade agreements in Africa by using panel data spanning 1995~2014. Trade creation and diversion effects are assessed through a gravity model estimated using the Eicker-White robust covariance Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood method. This method proves superior to the usual nonlinear least square estimators, especially against heteroscedasticity and data with zero value. The findings suggest that regional trade agreements may enhance trade. The differences in effects can be matched with the effectiveness in implementation by respective member countries. The trade gains of regional trade agreements do not come at the expense of trade with non-members. By controlling for the duration within a regional trade agreement, we also show that a very small but significant share of the benefits occurs over time in the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa, Southern African Development Community, Southern African Customs Union, and West African Economic and Monetary Union. Trade benefits seem to decline over time in the East African Community.

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African Regional Trade Agreements and Intra-African Trade

The paper revisits the dynamic effect of trade openness on environmental quality in South Africa by employing a fresh proxy of trade openness suggested by Squalli and Wilson (The World Economy 34:1745–1770, 2011) over the period 1960–2016. Contrary to the previous literature, the new proxy is constructed to take into consideration both South Africa’s trade share of its GDP and its relative size of trade in relation to the world trade in a specified period of time. Adopting this novel approach to capture openness, the study applies the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test for cointegration approach to investigate the long-run association between trade openness and environmental quality. Our findings show that the results of the long run are materially different from those of the short run. While trade openness has a significantly beneficial impact on CO2 emissions in the short run, it has a measurably detrimental consequence on it in the long run. These findings are new to the literature and contrast with the previous studies. While confirming the existence of an inverted U-shaped curve that validates the existence of environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for South Africa, our results are further supported by the non-linear ARDL model, which reveals evidence of asymmetric pass-through effects of changes in trade openness on CO2 emissions. This paper suggests that South Africa’s policymakers must continue to improve trade policy reform with complementary policies to create a less carbon-intensive environment and promote lasting value for reductions of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and constantly support the establishment of greener technologies that ultimately lower CO2 emissions.

Revisiting trade and environment nexus in South Africa: fresh evidence from new measure

The untested hypothesis of a linear association between trade openness and economic growth in earlier studies may bring about incorrect inferences if indeed the association is nonlinear. This study uses the newly developed nonlinear autoregressive distributed lags (NARDL) framework to re-examine the link between trade openness and economic growth in South Africa over the period 1960–2016, highlighting the asymmetric effects of trade openness using an innovative proxy of trade openness proposed by Squalli and Wilson (World Econ 34(10):1745–1770, 2011). In contrast to previous studies, the new proxy is constructed to take into consideration both South Africa’s trade share of its GDP and its relative size of trade in relation to world trade in a specified period. Adopting this novel approach to capture openness permits the simultaneous testing of short- and long-run nonlinearities through positive and negative partial sum decompositions of trade openness. It also enables us to quantify the short- and long-run impacts of trade openness increases and decreases on economic growth from asymmetric dynamic multipliers. The results show that trade openness has short- and long-run asymmetric effects on economic growth. These results have important policy implications.

The asymmetric effect of trade openness on economic growth in South Africa: a nonlinear ARDL approach

A review of theories and evidence of inclusive growth: an economic perspective for Africa

This study investigates the relationship between military expenditure, state fragility and economic growth at regional economic communities of African countries. With a balanced panel of 34 African countries spanning 1990–2015. The variables of interest for this study include military expenditure, state fragility and economic growth. To measure economic growth, real gross domestic product per capita serves as the proxy, while state fragility is measured by the state fragility index, and military expenditure by military expenditure as a percentage share of GDP. We utilise: panel causality and cointegration test; and the generalised method of moments (GMM) estimation techniques. The causality results suggest a feedback relationship among our variables of interest and this justified the use of GMM. Our analysis suggests that the effect of military expenditure on growth is negative at Africa level with significant regional economic level differences, and this effect is influenced in the presence of state fragility. This imply that there exist complementary effects between military expenditure and state fragility on growth. A cut in military expenditure and a consideration of other means of dealing with fragility issues as an alternative to joint regional militarised intervention of regional governments of African countries is recommended.

Nicholas Ngepah

Papers

African Regional Trade Agreements and Intra-African Trade

Revisiting trade and environment nexus in South Africa: fresh evidence from new measure

The asymmetric effect of trade openness on economic growth in South Africa: a nonlinear ARDL approach

A review of theories and evidence of inclusive growth: an economic perspective for Africa

A cross-regional analysis of military expenditure, state fragility and economic growth in Africa