INFER Annual Conference 2003

Determinants of Growth and Business Cycles:

Theory, Empirical Evidence and Policy Implications

September 5 / 6, 2003, Giessen, Germany

Conference objectives and topics

The principle objective of the conference was to encourage economic research and to strengthen contact between applied and academic economics. Young researchers and professionals with a background in economics or related disciplines were invited to share their results, views and experiences.

Economic growth is one of the most demanding challenges for policy makers and economists. In industrial countries, significant demographic changes in the decades ahead will have a major influence. At the same time, the degree of interdependency between economic regions is increasing, posing a challenge for industrial as well as developing countries.

Business cycles as a topic sometimes follow a cyclical pattern themselves, as could be watched in the 1990s. Especially after long and strong boom periods the business cycle is often said to be obsolete, replaced by a new form of pattern, a ‘new’ economy or the like. On the other hand, the case of Japan apparently showed standard policy tools to be useless.

The empirical problem for analysts of both growth and business cycles is that new developments are difficult to monitor in real time. Cyclical, structural and other patterns are overlapping, making it difficult to assess the nature of observations.

Against this background, the annual conference covered a broad range of aspects:

• New developments in growth and business cycle theory
• Influence of institutional settings
• Information and intangible goods
• Business cycles and globalisation
• Ageing societies
• Role of financial markets
• EU enlargement and convergence of growth rates
• Challenges for Monetary policy from new patterns in growth and business cycles
• Growth in developing countries and in countries in transition

Conference programme

The Annual Conference was held at Justus Liebig University Giessen in the town of Giessen, Germany.

September 5, 2003: The conference started with three introductory lectures.

September 6, 2003: Accepted papers were presented in three parallel workshops.

Session I: Determinants of Growth

Chair: Laurent Maurin, INFER and European Central Bank, Frankfurt/Main, Germany

• The New European Model of the Reformed Welfare State (NEM-RWS)
  Karl Aiginger

• The Resource Curse Hypothesis and its Transmission Channels
  Elissaios Papyrakis, Reyer Gerlagh

•  The Non-Monotonic Link between Trade Policy and Growth: Evidence from a Sample of Developing Economies
  Andrea Marino

•  The Analysis of the Relation of Growth, Entrepreneurship and Risk over Business Cycles
  Panayiotis E. Petrakis, S. Kotsios

•   On the interaction between endogenuos fertility and equality
  Andreas Schäfer
   

Session II: Business Cycles - Theory and Empirical Evidence

Chair: Christoph Hausen, INFER and Gothaer Asset Management AG, Frankfurt/Main, Germany

• Growth Cycles and Credit
  Muriel Dal-Pont Legrand

• The Factors of Banking Cyclicality
  Ming-Yee Hsu

• The Impact of Imperfect Credibility in a Transition to Price Stability
  Anamaria Nicolae, Charles Nolan

• The German Business Cycle and the Global Double Dip
  Bernd Süssmuth

• Euro Area Business Cycles: The Role of Supply and Demand Disturbances
  Kevin Ross

• The South African Unemployment Insurance Fund and the Business Cycle
  Niek J. Schoeman, Jan A. Swanepoel
   

Session III: Convergence and Economic Developement

Chair: Michael H. Stierle, INFER and European Commission, Brussels, Belgium

• Regional Convergence in Central and Eastern Europe: Evidence from a Decade of Transition
  Bernhard Herz, Lukas Vogel

• GDP per Capita as an Indicator for Regional Policy
  Michael H. Stierle

• On Asymmetric Business Cycle Effects on Convergence Rates: Some European Evidence
  Ramón María-Dolores, Israel Sancho

• Convergence in an Enlarged EU? An Empirical Analysis of Regional Specialization and Sectoral Concentration
  Ulrike von Schütz, Michael H. Stierle

• Integration, Regional Specialiszation and Growth Differentials in EU Accession Countries: Evidence from Hungary
  Anna Iara, Iulia Traistaru

• Contribution of Foreign Direct Investment to Economic Growth: Evidence from Vietnam in the 1990s
  Thi Phuong Hoa Nguyen

For the detailed programme with abstracts please click here.

Publication of papers

The papers presented at the conference will be published in a conference volume in November 2003. The registration fee for speakers includes one free copy of the conference volume for each presented paper.

For information about former Annual Conferences please click here.

Conference Committee

Dr. Christoph Hausen, Marc Resinek, Nicolin Schürmann and Dr. Michael H. Stierle