INFER working papers
The INFER Working Paper Series is an un-refereed publication series that covers all areas of economics. The purpose of this series is to bring early research work as quickly as possible into the public domain. Hence, the copyrights of the papers published here remain with the authors. Therefore, it is the authors' responsibility to inform INFER about any change of copyright. As a result, INFER does not accept any liability for copyright breach if INFER was not informed about copyright changes.
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The Development of the Irish Private Health Insurance Market and Evidence of Selection Effects Therein
Author: Brian Turner Edward Shinnick
Vol.: 2008.1
Publishing house: INFER
Place: London
year: 2008
No of pages: 29
ISBN none
category INFER Working Papers
price Free to download EUR
This paper tracks the development of the Irish private health insurance market, both in terms of its legislative background and the development of competition. Literature on adverse selection and risk selection is then reviewed. Data from two surveys of consumers are then analysed to determine whether evidence exists of adverse selection or risk selection in the Irish private health insurance market. Both of these issues are relevant in the context of the debate over risk equalisation in the market in Ireland.
Files to download:
- cover page: WP2008-1.jpg
- Full Paper: WP2008_1.pdf
Asymmetries in Heterogeneous Integrated Areas: Evidence from Intra-EU Sectoral Trade
Author: Helena Marques
Vol.: 2008.2
Publishing house: INFER
Place: London
year: 2008
No of pages: 21
ISBN n/a
category INFER Working Papers
price Free to download EUR
This paper estimates gravity models for both directions of trade between the EU-15 and the CEEC-10. The two groups form a heterogeneous integrated area (EU-27) with respect to country size, income levels, relative factor endowments and a different history of economic systems. The estimation was conducted on industries with different degrees of scale economies and factor-intensities in the presence of both spatial (distance and borders) and non-spatial (Eastern enlargements and Euro membership) trade costs. The results highlight the asymmetry in intra-bloc trade when the latter is heterogeneous: country size, income, factor endowments and the various trade barriers or facilitators are found to be significant determinants of intra-EU trade but to an extent that is country and industry-specific. The results also show how this heterogeneity eliminates the equivalence between exports and imports as the dependent variable in gravity models and makes the results sensitive to the definition of the bilateral flows to be estimated.
Files to download:
- cover page: WP2008.2.jpg
- Full Paper: WP2008_2.pdf
The Impact of R&D Spillovers on Export Value: Does the Transmission Channel matter?
Author: Jan Van Hove
Vol.: 2008.3
Publishing house: INFER
Place: London
year: 2008
No of pages: 34
ISBN n/a
category INFER Working Papers
price Free to download EUR
There is overwhelming evidence in the literature that open economies benefit from spillover effects from foreign R&D efforts. These effects increase in particular total factor productivity. Several transmission channels have been detected and studied intensively. Most of them are related to foreign direct investments or international trade. These real economic phenomena are themselves affected by spillovers, either indirectly through their effect on total factor productivity or directly through, for example, increased business contacts between investors, traders and producers. In this empirical paper we study the effects of R&D spillovers on exports within the OECD. Previous evidence pointed to the crucial role of the transmission channel for such spillovers. Therefore we distinguish between trade-related and foreign-direct-investment related channels and indicators. By doing so we are able to determine the relevance and importance of each of the suggested channels and measures. We control for alternative determinants of export value by extending the well-accepted gravity model for international trade by incorporating R&D spillovers in the standard gravity specification. Our results indicate that – at least at the macro-level – the choice of the transmission channel matters. In particular we find clear evidence that imports are an important transmission channel for technological spillovers, whereas there is only weak evidence in favour of any role for foreign direct investments. Hence these findings simply that openness to trade is a better policy in order to benefit from foreign knowledge than openness to investments.
Files to download:
- cover page: WP2008.3.jpg
- Full Paper: WP2008.3.pdf
Social Energy - A New Form of Perceiving Capital in Postmodern Economy
Author: Artur Mazurkiewicz
Vol.: 2008.4
Publishing house: INFER
Place: London
year: 2008
No of pages: 22
ISBN n/a
category INFER Working Papers
price Free to download EUR
The presented paper deals with the issue of social creation of knowledge in the postmodern economic order. The concept of beneficients as a core idea of this conception in connection with thermodynamic analogy in interdisciplinary problem leads to the materialistic and intellectual dual analysis of sustainable phenomenon of development and creation of knowledge. The paper discusses the possibility of a new way of development of institutional economy in the direction of knowledge economy and the change in an approach to an organisation from the traditional systemic to a cooperating community. The presented considerations are a germ of intellectual infrastructure and supporting the process of structural learning and sustainable development with artificial intelligence. It has been suggested that social energy should be considered as an alternative way of perceiving development.
Files to download:
- cover page: wp2008.4.jpg
- Full Paper: wp2008.4.pdf
Educational Thresholds and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence from Brazilian States
Author: Tulio A. Cravo Elias Soukiazis
Vol.: 2009.1
Publishing house: INFER
Place: London
year: 2009
No of pages: 27
ISBN n/a
category INFER Working Papers
price Free to download EUR
This paper examines the convergence process in Brazil over the period of 1985-2004, giving a special attention to the role of human capital as a conditioning factor to convergence. It examines how different levels of human capital influence growth in different regions of Brazil. Different measures of human capital are used in the growth regressions and the results show that they play a significant role in explaining the growth process. The evidence indicates that different levels of human capital have different impacts on the per capita income growth, depending on the level of development of the states. Lower levels of human capital explain better the convergence among the less developed states and higher levels of human capital are more adequate among the more developed states. The impact of the relative intermediate levels of human capital on growth is stronger in all samples, suggesting the existence of threshold effect in education.
Files to download:
- cover page: WP2009.1.jpg
- Full Paper: WP2009.1.pdf
Workers’ Remittances and Growth in MENA Labor Exporting Countries
Author: Sufian Eltayeb Mohamed
Vol.: 2009.10
Publishing house: INFER
Place: London
year: 2009
No of pages: 19
ISBN n/a
category INFER Working Papers
price Free to download EUR
This paper presents an empirical examination of effects of workers’ remittance on economic growth in a sample of 7 remittance-receiving MENA countries. In order to empirically analyze the impact of remittances we estimate growth equations using a set of 7 MENA labor exporting countries during the period 1975-2006. A standard growth models are estimated using both fixed-effects and random effects models. The empirical results show the support of the fixed –effects method as the random effects model is rejected in statistical tests. The results show the support for the view that remittances have a positive impact on growth both directly and indirectly through their interactions with financial and institutional channels.
Files to download:
- cover page: wp2009.10.jpg
- Full Paper: wp2009-10.pdf
IMMIGRATION AND DISCRIMINATION IN A FORMER EMIGRANT COUNTRY: THE CASE OF SPAIN
Author: José-Ignacio Antón Rafael Muñoz de Bustillo Miguel Carrera
Vol.: 2009.2
Publishing house: INFER
Place: London
year: 2009
No of pages: 20
ISBN n/a
category INFER Working Papers
price free to download EUR
This article analyses the immigrant-native wage differentials in Spain, which only recently has become a host country. The paper exploits the Earnings Structure Survey 2006, which is the first nationally representative sample of both foreign and Spanish employees. Using the Machado-Mata econometric procedure, wage differentials between locals and foreigners are decomposed into the gap related to characteristics and the one due to different returns on endowments (i.e., discrimination). We find that, in absolute terms, the latter component grows across wage distribution, reflecting the existence of a kind of glass ceiling consistent with the evidence of over-education found by previous research.
Files to download:
- cover page: Antoncover.jpg
- Full Paper: wp2009.2.pdf
Determinants of Export Specialization in ICT Products: A Cross-Country Analysis
Author: Klimis Vogiatzoglou
Vol.: 2009.3
Publishing house: INFER
Place: London
year: 2009
No of pages: 22
ISBN n/a
category INFER Working Papers
price Free to Download EUR
In this paper the determinants of ICT export specialization are investigated with a panel- econometric analysis, which includes 28 countries. ICT exports are broken down into three broad ICT product groups (electronic data processing machines, integrated circuits and electronic components, and telecommunications equipment), and the determinants are examined for each of the above product categories. Our results indicate that technology factors, such as Research & Development expenditure and human capital constitute significant determinants. However, other deterministic factors, related to more recent trade theories, seem to be relatively more important.
Files to download:
- Cover Page: wp2009.3.jpg
- Full Paper: wp2009.3a.pdf
Forecasting Romanian Financial System Stability using a Stochastic Simulation Model
Author: Claudiu Tiberiu Albulescu
Vol.: 2009.4
Publishing house: INFER
Place: London
year: 2009
No of pages: 22
ISBN n/a
category INFER Working Papers
price Free to Download EUR
The aim of this paper is to develop an aggregate stability index for the Romanian financial system, which is meant to enhance the set of analysis used by authorities to assess the financial system stability. The index takes into consideration indicators related to financial system development, vulnerability, soundness and also indicators which characterise the international economic climate. Another purpose of our study is to forecast the financial stability level, using a stochastic simulation model. The outcome of the study shows an improvement of the Romanian financial system stability during the period 1999-2007. The constructed aggregate index captures the financial turbulences periods like 1998-1999 Romanian banking crisis and 2007 subprime crisis. The forecasted values of the index show a deterioration of financial stability in 2009, influenced by the estimated decline of the financial and economic activity.
Files to download:
- cover page: wp2009.4.jpg
- Full Paper: wp2009.4.pdf
The demand for football tickets depending on the number of clubs in a city – Empirical evidence from Germany –
Author: Markus Breuer
Vol.: 2009.5
Publishing house: INFER
Place: London
year: 2009
No of pages: 18
ISBN n/a
category INFER Working Papers
price free todownlad EUR
The demand for football tickets in European top-leagues has been subject of several studies within the last years e. g. in France, England and Germany. These papers focussed mainly on single matches and the significance of factors like uncertainty, performance of the clubs or date and time of a competition. In contrast this paper tries to build up a simple model to estimate the average number of visitors in the course of a whole season. Moreover the market entrance of a second club is considered. While in stage one an old-established club represents a regional monopolist, in stage two another club qualifies itself for playing in the first division what breaks up the old monopolistic position. Finally the model assumptions are compared to empirical findings from Germany and its major league.
Files to download:
- cover page: Breuercover.jpg
- Full Paper: wp2009.5.pdf
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