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Despite a renewed interest in the origins of national income accounting, and increasing scholarship on the relationship this has to the State, there is further scope for us to better understand the context of how this came about. We do not fully understand how institutional factors shaped them or what the numbers themselves meant to the researchers. This thesis adopts a historical approach informed by the works of Geoffrey Hodgson and Quentin Skinner to better understand a critical juncture in national accounts transformation – the 1941 publication of White Paper Command Paper 6261 An analysis of War Finance and an Estimate of National Income and Expenditure – and how it was influenced by wider intellectual and institutional changes from the 1930s. The thesis is organised in two parts. In the first part, the Moments of National Accounts, Chapter 3 argues that 1930s economics drew on heroic figures from the distant past to justify new approaches to economics. Chapter 4 zooms out to consider the influence of international bodies such as the League of Nations and the Rockefeller Foundation during the 1930s upon a new data-driven, “realistic” approach to economics. Chapter 5 looks at how wider pressures for new wartime finance approaches justified new technocratic approaches which led to the publication of the first official national accounts. The second part, the Movements for National Accounts, examines the institutionalisation of this new technocratic national accounting approach through two case studies. Chapter 5 considers the way Keynes and Stone founded the Department of Applied Economics in Cambridge as a research centre for furthering a “realistic” research agenda. Chapter 6 examines a confluence of interests between the Colonial Office’s desire to export national accounts public finance, the researchers of the DAE and the colonial government of Nigeria led to the publication of the National Accounts of Nigeria in 1951. The contribution of the thesis is twofold: 1) showing how context matters to the idea of National Accounts culminating in the 1941 publication; and 2) showing why and how ideas became institutionalised after World War II. By unpacking both, this thesis shows how different bases of thought, rationale and contextual factors informed what National Accounts became in the UK, importantly, in ways that differ from thinking about National Accounts today.

The topic of insider/director trading raises interesting questions and has generated much attention from researchers, market participants and regulators. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the long-run director trading performance in the UK market. It examines relationship between aggregate director trading and indicators of the UK macroeconomy focus on the macro-aspects in Chapter 4 and 5. The extant empirical literature on aggregate director trading can be categorized into two parts: the first is the relationship between director trading and the stock market; and the second is the link between stock returns and future aggregate economic activities. Having examined the macro-picture, it goes to examine a more micro-picture. Chapter 6 examines long-run relationship between director trading and market reactions. This thesis is organized around three research studies which are presented in Chapters 4, 5 and 6 and which examine long-run director trading activities in the UK. Chapters 4 and 5 together investigate the evidence for director trading activities and the macroeconomy. There is little literature on aggregate director trading and the macro-economy: therefore Chapter 4 examines the relationship between aggregate director trading and future market excess returns. Empirical evidence is presented which demonstrates that the returns on stock market are significantly correlated to future economic growth. Chapter 5 then examines whether the forecasting ability can be improved by adding aggregate director trading as a measurement of business confidence into the forecasting model. Chapter 6 examines the long-run performance of market reaction to director roles. In order to examine the relationship between aggregate director trading and the macro-economy, the link between aggregate director trading and future market excess returns is investigated. This thesis considers the importance of the seasonality issue in UK director trading and employs a number of alternative seasonality adjustments to adjust the raw data on aggregate director trading. The positive correlation between aggregate director trading and future market excess returns is confirmed and evidence is provided that indicates directors are contrarian: in aggregate they purchase (sell) their own-company stock prior to general stock market increases (decreases). In the long-run, the empirical work demonstrates that aggregate director trading has forecasting power in terms of predicting future stock market excess returns. Additional findings are that aggregate director trading in large firms has a positive significant predictive ability for identifying future excess returns of large firms and aggregate director trading of some industries has positive significant forecasting ability for future excess returns of these industries. Having confirmed the relationship between aggregate director trading and future market movement, this thesis turns to examine the link between aggregate director trading and future UK economic growth. It measures economic growth of future real economic activity by the change in gross domestic product (GDP) and it documents a strong correlation between past aggregate director trading and future real economic activity. The predictability of future economic growth increases with both the length of forecasting horizon and past net number of director trading. In a multivariate regression analysis this thesis finds that aggregate director trading retains predicting power with respect to future GDP growth even after including popular business cycle variables (dividend yield of FTSE All share, growth rate of industrial production and term spread) as explanatory variables. This finding suggests that aggregate director trading captures things related to changes in real activity but not captured by market factors (Fama-French 3 factors: SMB, HML and RMRF) and business cycle variables. After examining the relationship between aggregate director trading, market returns and changes in GDP, the last empirical Chapter of the thesis concentrates director trading on the micro-aspects of director trading and stock movement. It examines the stock market reaction to director trading with firm characteristics and the effects of director trading pattern. Using long-run calendar-time abnormal returns (CTAR) methodology with Fama-French 3-factor model, evidence is presented that directors do have more valuable information allowing them to make significant abnormal returns than other market participants, the performance of CFOs supports the information hierarchy hypothesis in 1- and 6-month post-purchase trading time, and the director trading with firm characteristics has a significant effect on stock abnormal returns.

Saudi Arabia introduced the VAT in 2018 in response to the nation's structural budget deficit caused, in large measure, by its dependence on revenue from oil and natural gas production. Initially the tax rate was 5 percent, but in July 2020 the rate was tripled to 15 percent. This dissertation examine the effect of the introduction of a value-added tax (VAT) on governance in Saudi Arabia. Specifically, we explore how the VAT's introduction has altered the Saudi bureaucracy, both its responsiveness and representativeness, and what is VAT effect on growth in GDP, public unemployment, and changes in national budget. The data used to analyze these research questions are collected from several sources including the Saudi General Authority for Statistics, Saudi Ministry of Finance, and World Bank. Different methods of analysis were used such as ordinary least squares, difference in differences, and least squares dummy variables to answer the research questions. The study found that VAT is associated with an increase in GDP per capita, and VAT was negatively associated with total debt per capita, deficit per capita, and non-Saudi unemployment. In addition, government spending did change after the introduction of VAT to internal development more than external focus. Finally, VAT is not associated with an increase in e-participation or voice and accountability. However, VAT is associated with increase in government effectiveness and control of corruption. In other words, VAT impact on the quality of public administration is more pronounced than citizen engagement.

This research applies data analytics techniques and algorithms to analyze and forecast UAE’s trade. Regression model was applied to study the relationship between exports, imports, and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP is “the total monetary or market value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific time period. As a broad measure of overall domestic production, it functions as a comprehensive scorecard of a given country’s economic health” (Gross Domestic Product(GDP), 2022) . In this project we applied several data analytics techniques to analyze UAE trade data. We also concluded that, based on analyzed data, exports have a positive relationship to GDP. On the other hand, Imports, based on analyzed data, have a negative relationship to GDP. ARIMA model was applied to analyze and forecast the UAE’s exports and imports trends. Python programming language was applied to perform the data preprocessing, data exploration, data analytics techniques and algorithms implementation and visualizations. The data sets used in this analysis cover 19 years from (2001-2019) with annual intervals from different international organizations such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO), and UNCTAD. This study will help the decision makers of UAE to formulate trade strategies based on observed trends and forecast analysis that will be performed as part of this project.

Droughts are the most ambiguous of all natural hazards and yet are often cited as the most destructive and are responsible for the most widespread damage across all sectors of society. The purpose of this study was to further understand the impact that drought has on various sectors of society, especially the economic sector, and how various regions across the United States are specifically impacted by droughts and drought effects. In order to quantify the impact that drought has on the economic sector, an analysis was performed internationally between each country’s GDP and various drought indices such as PDSI, SPI, and SPEI. In order to account for exponential growth in GDP, the correlation was performed on detrended GDP using logarithmic trend free pre-whitening (TFPW) and logarithmic quadratic methods. The combination of PDSI and Log. TFPW gave the most complete understanding of negative correlation between drought and a nation’s economy. In order to focus on drought impact in the United States, ARIMA modeling was used to establish a forecasting model for PDSI time series for various climatic regions around the country. The accuracy of these forecasting models was quantified through an approximate AIC method and compared to precipitation and temperature of each of the regions to determine the influence each drought component had on model accuracy. The regions with lower temperatures such as the Upper Midwest gave the more accurate drought forecasting models. The applicability of each of these climatic regions towards drought studies were tested by Severity Area Frequency curve analysis. While the Northwest region of America necessitated a need for two drought sub-regions, most of the climatic regions were affected by droughts homogenously.

Bangladesh, one of the five fastest-growing economies of the world achieved remarkable economic growth over the last two decades and now considered as the next Asian tiger despite so many obstacles like frequent natural disasters, corruption, and political unrest. Although it achieves strong economic growth, all the economic sectors are not performing well. Again, the growth is not evenly happened throughout the country and all the regions are not performing at the same pace. Regional inequality is a hindrance to social justice and equity and the persistence of regional disparities impedes the ability of a country to promote economic growth and social integration. This research was aimed to study the influential sectors and determinant factors that drive the economy of Bangladesh towards such growth. The study identified the important sectors and prominent determinant factors using regression and correlation analysis, and spatial regression techniques. The study has explored the regional variation and spatial pattern in these sectors and factors using the 64 administrative districts as the spatial unit of analysis. Regional variation has been assessed using the mapping technique while the spatial pattern has been identified using spatial autocorrelation technique: Global Moran’s I, General G Statistics, and LISA. The study has clearly delineated the lagging regions in terms of the performance of these sectors and factors. Those regions should be prioritized in any future economic development plan. In addition, the ever-increasing trend of income inequality should be addressed. Otherwise, a large section of the population cannot be benefited from this economic growth due to unequal growth of income.

The economic framework of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) presents unique challenges because of its absence of taxation and peg to the United States dollar (USD). Accordingly, it is important for policy-makers to examine the effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policy to achieve their economic objectives. Specifically, this research examines the relative effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policies on Saudi Arabian total gross domestic product (GDP), oil GDP and non-oil GDP. The data employed included GDP, money supply, interest rates, commercial bank claims on the private sector, inflation, merchandise exports, merchandise imports, government expenditure and government revenues. Annual data for the period 1980–2017 were employed for the analysis, obtained from the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) and the General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT). An autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test was estimated to investigate the effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policies on Saudi GDP sectors, in the short-term and long-term. Several robustness tests were also employed. The estimation results for total GDP and oil GDP shared similarities. For instance, fiscal policy, represented by government expenditure and revenues, were shown to have a positive and significant impact in the long-term. In the short run, however, fiscal policy via government revenue was indeterminate for both total GDP and oil GDP, while government expenditure had a significant negative impact on total GDP. For oil GDP, government expenditure had a significant and positive effect in the first lag but a negative and significant impact in the second lag. For monetary policy, the estimation results demonstrated that the interest rate, commercial bank claims on the private sector and inflation had a significant positive effect in the long-term on total and oil GDP. However, in the short-term, monetary policy produced a significant negative impact only for inflation; for the other variables, it was shown to be indeterminate. In addition, money supply had a significant negative effect on oil GDP but an insignificant negative effect for total GDP in the long-term, while it was indeterminate in the short-term. Openness to the world was represented by merchandise exports and merchandise imports. The former had a positive and significant effect for the long-term and the short-term, while the latter was shown to have a significant negative effect in the long-term as well as in the first lag of the short-term; however, the second lag of the short-term was positive and significant. For fiscal policy, the estimation results for non-oil GDP had negative and significant effects in the long-term for both government expenditure and government revenues. However, in the short-term, government revenues had significant and negative effects in the first lag but significant and positive effects in the second lag, while government expenditure was indeterminate. With respect to monetary policy, money supply had a significant and positive impact for both the long-term and the short-term in the first lag, but a negative and significant effect in the second lag. For the variables interest rates and commercial bank claims, the results were positive and insignificant in the long-term, and indeterminate in the short-term. In addition, inflation was shown to have a significant and negative effect in both the long and short-term. With respect to openness to the world, merchandise exports and imports were found to have positive and significant effects on non-oil GDP in the long-term, and the short-term for merchandise exports; however, merchandise imports were indeterminate in the short-term. The potential policy implications arising from the study include the following. First, fiscal policy should be enhanced to engender a significant impact in the short-term; for instance, fiscal policy should centre on attracting more private investors to mitigate crowding-out effect outcomes related to non-oil GDP. Second, further enhancement of monetary policy tools to assist the Saudi government in achieving economic diversity given their impact on non-oil GDP is required. Third, refining the use of fiscal policy to impact non-oil GDP is also required. This would contribute to achieving the goals of Vision 2030, and could take the form of the adoption of a modern taxation system that could provide a more stable source of income to help insulate the KSA from plunging oil prices. Finally, greater consideration should be given to the adoption of monetary policy tools that comply with Islamic principles. This could assist the government to assert greater control over its monetary policy.

In this paper, the author uses country-level educational enrollment data parceled into primary-, secondary-, and tertiary-attainment, to delineate connections with specific development outcomes in low- and middle-income countries. The analyses are conducted using OLS Regression to assess education’s impact on total fertility rate, HIV prevalence, under-five mortality rate, life expectancy, GDP per capita growth rate, and the proportion of women in parliament. The author found that the levels of educational attainment have differentiated impacts on the development outcomes tested with secondary attainment having the strongest relationship to the total fertility rate while tertiary attainment has the strongest relationship of the attainment variables to under five mortality rate, HIV prevalence, and life expectancy. These results provide information for policy-makers looking to improve various indicators of wellbeing in their country.

Social spending is a large and controversial program within the United States. Though a number of studies examined its effects on Gross Domestic Product (“GDP”) between countries, very few specifically looked at its effectiveness solely within the United States. By doing so, international political policy deviations are controlled for. Further, most studies neglect the externalities of social spending on living standards. This paper fills these gaps by utilizing two US Census aid datasets – state & local spending and federal aid & transfer payments – for all 50 states to study the effects of social spending on Gross Domestic Product, Income, and Personal Consumption Expenditures Using two-stage residual inclusion estimation, the analysis first predicts social spending variables using its lags and Gross Domestic Product, Income, or Personal Consumption. In the second stage, the first-stage residuals predict Gross Domestic Product, Income, or Personal Consumption. Using this method, the short-term positive marginal benefits were found for Housing (≈$12 on GDP and income), Incapacity (≈$3 on income), Workers’ Compensation (≈$31 on GDP and income) and Other (≈$1.75 on income and personal consumption) spending. Negative effects were found to varying degrees on GDP, income and personal consumption for Family, Health, Labor, Unemployment and Old Age spending. Most variables were consistent between the two datasets and with prior studies. However, differences in the direction from prior studies of the effect on Gross Domestic Product arose for Health, Old Age and Unemployment. Additionally, this paper looks into the interplay of politics with social spending. In particular, how particular years, the political party and gubernatorial turnover are related to social spending and its effects on both the economy and standards of living. Both Labor and Welfare spending show strong influences from political policies.

Government expenditures have a close relationship with the gross domestic product (GDP). Understanding the contribution of different expenditures to GDP and improving the efficiency of the fiscal policy is really important for a country's development. The Rahn Curve theory, Rahn, R. and Fox, H. (1996), suggests that there is a level of government spending that can maximize the economic growth. Insufficient spending or over spending will hold back the economy. The main purpose of this report is through analysis of the impact of government spending during the financial crisis to determine how and why different spending levels affect the economy. The data we analyzed include the GSP (Gross state product) and the composition of the expenditures in each state in United States, for the year 2009. We use multiple linear regression to build our model and use stepwise method to select the variables to include. The result shows that pension, education and transportation have a significant positive effect on GSP. This indicates that the expenditure of pension, education and transportation play the important role in the US economy, especially in the recession period. Consequently, instead of increasing the welfare spending, which may reduce people’s motivation to work and hardly stimulates the economy, this paper recommends more allocation of expenditures to the services which can stimulate the economy and create more job opportunities, such as pension, education and transportation. In particular, depending on the survey Diana G. Carew and Dr. Michael Mandel reference have conducted, transportation, which is invested in less than its actual importance and contribution to the economy in the last decade, should get more attentions form the policy makers.

As a conserved organelle, the centrosome and its regulated biogenesis is required for cilium formation, accurate cell division, and genome integrity (Nigg and Raff, 2009). Centrosomes consist of a centriole pair surrounded by an amorphous protein network known as pericentriolar material or PCM (Nigg and Raff, 2009). PCM assembly is a tightly regulated step during centrosome biogenesis that determines the size and capability of centrosomes (Conduit et al., 2010; Kirkham et al., 2003; Piehl et al., 2004). During PCM assembly, Sas4, one of the PCM proteins activated by tubulin in GDP bound conformation, provides a scaffold for preassembled cytoplasmic complexes to be tethered to the centrosome. Tubulin directly binds to Sas4; together, they are components of cytoplasmic complexes of centrosomal proteins (Gopalakrishnan et al., 2011; Hung et al., 2004). On the basis of the guanine nucleotide bound state, tubulin can act as a molecular switch in PCM recruitment. While tubulin-GTP prevents Sas4 from forming protein complexes, tubulin-GDP promotes it (Gopalakrishnan et al., 2012).Since tubulin-GDP, instead of tubulin-GTP, promotes formation of centrosomal protein complex recruited by Sas4, it is interesting to note that in a normal, healthy cell, the proportion of GTP: GDP in cytoplasm is near 100:1 (Gamberucci et al., 1994). Thus, in this study, we hypothesize that in order to guarantee proper PCM assembly, Sas4 specifically binds to tubulin-GDP. In other words, Sas4 could be utilized as a binding probe specifically for tubulin-GDP conformation.Our research focuses on in vitro experiments that identify Sas4-tubulin interaction and the specificity under different guanine nucleotides. A number of in vitro biochemistry assays were carried out in order to test Sas4-Tubulin interaction in different guanine nucleotide statuses. Co-Immunoprecipitation, Pulldown assay, Native PAGE-Far Western and Far Western Dot-Blot methods were utilized to test our hypothesis. The results are consistent with our hypothesis that Sas4 specifically recognizes tubulin-GDP, and it is further confirmed by the fact that tandem-Sas4, a recombinant protein derived from our newly built plasmid, specifically increased the binding strength to tubulin-GDP by at least 50%.Our results further confirmed that Sas4N specifically binds tubulin-GDP and function as a core in scaffolding centrosomal protein in the maturation of centrosome. Meanwhile , it also give us a potential tool to utilize Sas4, which specifically binds to tubulin-GDP, to gain more details of insights on the function of free tubulin-GDP as molecule switch instead of a building block in biological process like microtubule dynamic instability

A history of statistical economic indicators in America, this dissertation uncovers the protracted struggle which took place in the nineteenth century over how economic life should be quantified, how social progress should be valued and how American prosperity should be measured. By revealing the historical origins of contemporary indicators such as Gross Domestic Product, and by uncovering the alternative measures that ended up on the losing side of history, this work denaturalizes the seemingly objective nature of modern economic indicators while offering a fresh take on the rise of American capitalism.

This dissertation consists of three essays pertaining to the causes of the levels and composition of the international trade flows of nations, and the consequential implications for the levels of per capita income and welfare of their populations. The first of these documents a pattern of comparative advantage in product level, bilateral trade data that conventional quantitative trade models have difficulty explaining. It goes on to develop a theory of product level productivity differences based on endogenous differences in the allocation of research and development into product and process innovation across countries over time, and it shows that, when fitted to cross-country manufacturing wage data, the predicted product level technology distribution is consistent with the observed trade pattern. The second essay shows that the distribution of technology levels inferred in the first essay can help explain the inability of both ad-hoc and theoretically based gravity models of trade to account for the observed positive correlation between the percentage of manufacturing output that is traded and countries' per capita income. It derives a modified gravity equation based on a Ricardian model of trade with deterministic product level technology differences across countries. It then uses estimates from a product level gravity estimation to compute the component of this equation that differs from a conventional gravity equation in order to determine the extent to which the observed concentration of comparative advantage in a common set of products for low-income countries explains the small percentage of their output that is exported. The final essay shows that a simple model of firm profit maximization in the presence of sunk costs of entering the export market is broadly consistent with the observed persistence of exporting behavior in firm level data. It uses this simple model and moments from data on US manufacturing firms to estimate the value of the sunk export entry costs faced by these firms using an indirect inference strategy. These costs are shown to be substantial relative the revenue stream of a typical firm.

By employing quarterly data from the period of 2001 through 2008, this thesis tries to test the effect of four determinants on China's demand for international reserves. The four determinants are international reserves variability, GDP, average propensity to import and interest rate spread. Empirical results shows China's holding of international reserves experiences economies of scale. Of these four determinants, international reserves variability has the most significant positive impact on the demand for international reserves. GDP has the second largest positive impact on the demand for international reserves, and the average propensity to import has much less positive impact than the former two. As measured by interest rate spread, opportunity cost of holding reserves has a small negative effect on China's demand for international reserves. If Chinese monetary authority does not want the reserves to grow further, constraints must be put on the determinants which have a positive effect on demand for reserves. While, as for opportunity cost, no substantial adjustments need to be undertaken if interest rate spread increases.

This dissertation investigates the relationship between inflation and economic growth emphasizing the financial sector and differences across countries. The first essay uses a cash-in-advance model with credit as an alternative means of payment and simulates several steady-state relationships. Exogenous financial innovations lead to upward trending velocity as has been observed in the last half century or more. Differences in financial innovation across countries, or within a country and across time, affects how inflation affects output growth. Lower costs of intermediation imply that inflation affects output less than in countries with higher costs and similar effects hold within the same country when intermediation costs have changed over time. Either case presents difficulties for empirical tests. The second essays examines the robustness of empirical inflation-growth results. Bayesian Model Averaging is used to explore the relationship between inflation and growth. Cross-sectional data over long periods of time provide no evidence of an inflation-growth relationship. Panel data, using 5-year averages, produces starkly different results, in particular, inflation is one of the more robust variables. Threshold affects are discussed but do not alter the main conclusions. Parameter heterogeneity across countries is investigated with the finding that coefficients vary widely with even small changes in the sample. The negative relationship of inflation and growth is still strong, but the importance of the point estimates is questionable. The third essay utilizes standard time series methods. Structural inflation shocks are identified by imposing long-run restrictions on the model, and the effects of inflation on separate sectors of the economy are examined. This approach is applied to seven industrialized countries, with the results that inflation affects sectoral output differently, with little similarity across countries. Sectors such as manufacturing, agriculture and finance seem to be affected in quite different manners. The agriculture sector suggests that inflation may be harmful to growth, but the evidence is weak. Inflation is positively related to manufacturing growth and this is significant in most countries. Inflation is positively related to the finance sector in three countries and has no long run effect in four countries.