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This paper examines the beginning and end of potentially speculative explosive public debt patterns occurring in 29 major OECD countries. The method we use is most appropriate for practical implementation with a time series and delivers a consistent date-stamping strategy for the origination and termination of multiple explosive behaviors. Our results also test that most OECD countries, except for Israel, Luxembourg, and Turkey, have experienced periods of explosive public debt. The stationarity of public debt varies by country. Approximately two-thirds of the explosive periods occurred prior to 2012. Based on the scale, structure, and safety of government debt for dynamic monitoring and evaluation, governments can improve risk management measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the catching-up hypothesis among the 29 transition countries using the time series approach to investigate income convergence. In this study, we propose a model which specifies a trend function incorporating both sharp and smooth breaks using dummy variables and Fourier functions, respectively. Our empirical results indicate that two convergence clubs are forming among the transition countries and one club is among the rich and the other club is among the poor countries, where most middle income countries will disappear and move into one of the two clubs. Also, our results indicate that the 1980s was an ominous decade for growth in the transition countries with income in most diverging from the USA. With recovery in the 1990s, we find that in the 2000s income per capita in most of these countries was catching up toward the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comprehensively investigates the effect of government ideology on the type of exchange rate regime that a country implements via multinomial logit and multinomial probit models for 147 countries in the period 1974-2009. Our results clearly indicate that a left-wing government increases the likelihood that a country implements a flexible regime in the classifications of exchange rate regimes. Nevertheless, evidence is weaker when using the de jure IMF course classification, which is set up by Ilzetzki et al. (). In a deeper investigation, we find that left-wing governments are more likely to choose a flexible regime relative to a fixed one in our sample of OECD, non- OECD and non-Eurozone countries, as the impacts from government ideology on the determinant of the choice of exchange rate regime in Eurozone countries disappear. More importantly, we present many explanations for exchange rate regime choices when macroeconomic conditions, political constraints and institutions impact the choice of exchange rate regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of government ideology on energy efficiency using data for a panel of 23 OECD countries over the 1980-2013 period. With dynamic panel data method applied, our evidence suggests that government ideology is a significant determinant of energy efficiency. Specifically, we show that left-wing parties are associated with energy efficiency improvements. Overall, our results are robust to the two measures of energy efficiency variables, alternative measures of government ideology variables, using annual and 3-year averages of the data, the inclusion of economic and political variables, and to model specifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study applies the bootstrap panel Granger causality test to test whether insurance activity promotes economic growth, using data from 10 OECD countries over the period of 1979–2006. Empirical results indicate that one-way Granger causality running from all insurance activities to economic growth for France, Japan, Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UK, and economic growth Granger causes insurance activities in Canada (for life insurance), Italy (for total and life insurance) and the USA (for total and non-life insurance). There is a two-way Granger causality between life insurance activity and economic growth in the USA, while no causality between insurance activities and economic growth is found in Belgium (for all insurance), Canada (for total and non-life insurance), Italy (for non-life insurance) and Sweden (for life insurance). Our results also confirm the finding of Ward and Zurbruegg [Does insurance promote economic growth? Evidence from OECD economies.Journal of Risk and Insurance67, no. 4: 489–506] showing that the insurance–growth nexus varies across countries, since their paper have previously demonstrated heterogeneity in this vein. In an analysis of a broader, though overlapping 17-country sample and taking into account banking activities, the results suggest the importance of including banking activities when investigating the insurance–growth relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies panel cointegration tests and panel vector error correction models for 17 OECD countries and considers cross-sectional dependence and structural breaks to investigate the interrelationship between an insurance market's development and real output, controlling for banking activities. We first obtain evidence of a fairly strong long-run equilibrium relationship among them. Second, we find that insurance market development has positive effects on real output and that banking activities have an unfavorable, if not negative, effect on real output. In fact, insurance market activity is much more productive than banking sector activity. Finally, there exists bidirectional causality between insurance premiums and economic growth in the long run, suggesting the existence of the feedback hypothesis for the insurance–output nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper re-examines the stationarity of inflation rates in 19 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries with the use of cross-sectional information. We employ the panel unit-root tests that allow for cross-sectional dependency and the covariate point optimal test. These tests have high power in common due to the exploitation of cross-sectional information, and they can assist mutually to draw a concrete conclusion on inflation dynamics for all series in the panel. Our empirical results show that allowing for cross-sectional dependency rejects the null hypothesis that all series in the panel have a unit root, implying that there is at least one stationary series in the panel. With the help of the results of the covariate test, we can distinguish the panel into a group of stationary and a group of non-stationary series. For robustness, the two groups of series are re-confirmed by the panel tests. Our results reveal evidence of mean reversion in inflation for 15 of 19 countries, which is significantly stronger as compared to that obtained by the state-of-the-art univariate unit-root tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies the new heterogeneous panel cointegration technique to re-investigate the long-run comovements and causal relationships between tourism development and economic growth for OECD and nonOECD countries (including those in Asia, Latin America and Sub-Sahara Africa) for the 1990–2002 period. On the global scale, after allowing for the heterogeneous country effect, a cointegrated relationship between GDP and tourism development is substantiated. It is also determined that tourism development has a greater impact on GDP in nonOECD countries than in OECD countries, and when the variable is tourism receipts, the greatest impact is in Sub-Sahara African countries. Additionally, the real effective exchange rate has significant effects on economic growth. Finally, in the long run, the panel causality test shows unidirectional causality relationships from tourism development to economic growth in OECD countries, bidirectional relationships in nonOECD countries, but only weak relationships in Asia. Our empirical findings have major policy implications. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Using panel data unit root tests and panel cointegration tests, as well as estimation techniques appropriate for heterogeneous panels such as the full modified OLS, this paper re-examines the long-run co-movement and the causal relationship between GDP and social security expenditure in a bivariate model, employing data on 25 OECD countries from 1980 to 2001. Our cointegration test results show strong evidence in favour of the existence of a long-run equilibrium cointegrating relationship between GDP and social security expenditure after allowing for a heterogeneous country effect. Regarding the panel-based error correction model, we find that GDP and social security expenditure lack short-run causality, but reveal the existence of long-run bidirectional causality. This shows that, in the long run, economic growth must be based on a social welfare policy that should be carried out, and economic growth can facilitate contiguous development in a social welfare policy. Lastly, we also provide evidence to support that social security expenditure can affect growth through the savings and human capital accumulation in OECD countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]