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Objective One relatively neglected question raised by Amartya Sen's theory of human development is: Why do people and societies differ in their capacity to convert income and commodities into valuable human achievements ('functionings' in Sen's terminology)? I focus upon the degree to which people in developed and developing societies realize each of the six diverse types of valued functionings: long life, schooling, living in a society with less income inequality and less gender inequality, more political freedom, and greater life satisfaction. Methods Using data from all societies with a population of over 1 million ( N = 156), I first regress each type of functioning on societies' GDP per capita to obtain the residual scores. These scores indicate which societies do better than expected, as expected, or worse than expected on the basis of their level of economic development. Results and Conclusion To explain these differences, I then estimate an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model whose independent variables are economic growth rate, ethnolinguistic fractionalization, civil war fatalities, corruption, and several dummy variables for cultural regions of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proponents of inflation targeting (IT) claim that it increases the credibility of central banks, which in turn should result in smaller sacrifice ratios (SRs) - that is, the ratio of output losses to the change in trend inflation during disinflations. We show that IT does indeed reduce SRs, but only if the disinflation is long: in a four-year-long disinflation, our estimates suggest that IT reduces SRs by at least 60%. In fast disinflations, IT does not affect SRs. These results suggest that IT and fast disinflations are substitute alternatives in enhancing the credibility of disinflationary processes and reducing their costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural tourism in Romania is growing, but must be supported by various actions to align standards held by developed countries. North West of Romania's tourism potential is complex and natural and anthropogenic valuable, which is the premise, the fundamental factor and the offer in promoting rural area. The case study followed the evolution of tourism indicators (number of accommodation structures, accommodation capacity, number of arrivals and the number of overnight stays, average length of stay) for the period 2006-2013. These indicators were correlated with two other statistical indicators related to rural population (population, migratory movement of population and employment rate of rural population, grouped by age). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of emerging powers in the UN development system is undeniable, but their influence over the shape of the post-2015 agenda is less clear. This article examines recent survey data by the Future UN Development System (funds) Project in order to better gauge the perceptions of the world organisation’s problems and prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Accounts of globalisation fail to distinguish the current globalisation from that which followed the industrial revolution. Before the industrial revolution most economic activity was local, with production and consumption bundled in the close geographic proximity. In the first globalisation, production and consumption unbundled on an unprecedented global scale as natural and man-made trade costs fell. In the second unbundling the production process itself is being unbundled globally, with traditional 'made in' labels losing meaning as supply chains become more and more complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the interaction between fictitious capital and the neoliberal model of growth and distribution, inspired by the classical economic tradition. Our renewed interest in this literature has a close connection with the recent international crisis in the capitalist economy. However, this discussion takes as its point of departure the fact that standard economic theory teaches that financial capital, in this world of increasing globalization, leads to new investment opportunities which improve levels of growth, employment, income distribution, and equilibrium. Accordingly, it is said that such financial resources expand the welfare of people and countries worldwide. Here we examine some illusions and paradoxes of such a paradigm. We show some theoretical and empirical consequences of this vision, which are quite different and have harmful constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2008 financial crisis has served as a catalyst for re-examining the forces of systemic financial crisis, the leading of which was perceived to be the inaccurate credit ratings. Although sovereign credit ratings constitute a small part of the credit rating industry, the impact of unexpected downgrades or upgrades has a huge potential to distort a well-functioning financial system. There appeared plenty of researches in the literature that discussed the inaccuracy of sovereign credit ratings and argued that these measurements are negative biased toward developing countries. By using ordered response models, this paper investigates whether this bias stems partially from cross country variations in the quality of institutions. Measured by six different governance indicators namely "Control of Corruption", "Voice and Accountability", "Political Stability and No Violence", "Government Effectiveness", "Regulatory Quality", and "Rule of Law", institutional quality was found to have positive impact on the rating decisions. Although the simulation of the estimation results revealed that all the governance indicators reduce prediction errors significantly, "Government Effectiveness" and "Regulatory Quality" were predominantly responsible for low sovereign credit ratings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the impact of international trade on wages in Turkey using individual-level data. It explicitly accounts for differences in the destination and origin of trade flows as well as their composition. The results suggest that only imports of inputs from developed countries have a positive effect on wages. This effect is higher for high-skilled labour, supporting the skill-enhancing trade hypothesis. While exports to developing countries positively affect wages, especially for low-skilled labour, exports to developed countries exert downward pressure on wages, pointing to a possible impact of competitive pressures from low-wage developing countries in traditional export markets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper aimed at comparing the well-being of children across the most economically advanced countries of the world while discussing the methodological issues involved in comparing children's well-being across countries. A Child Well-being Index was constructed to rank countries according to their performance in advancing child well-being. The Index used 30 indicators combined into 13 components, again summarised in 5 dimensions for 29 rich countries. Data from various sources were combined to capture aspects of child well-being: material well-being, health, education, behaviour and risks, housing and environment. The scores for the countries on all variables and combinations of variables were discussed in detail. The Child Well-being Index revealed that the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries (excluding Denmark) did relatively better than the other countries while Romania and the United States performed well below the average. Overall, serious differences existed in child well-being across countries suggesting that in many, improvement could be made in the quality of children's lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last three decades government debt has increased in most developed countries. During the same period we have also observed a significant liberalization of international financial markets. We propose a multicountry model with incomplete markets and show that governments may choose higher levels of debt when financial markets become internationally integrated. We also show that public debt increases with the volatility of uninsurable income (idiosyncratic risk). To the extent that the increase in income inequality observed in some industrialized countries has been associated with higher idiosyncratic risk, the paper suggests another potential mechanism for the rise in public debt. (JEL D31, E62, F65, H63) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greater financial integration and central bank policy initiatives in major developed markets have led to an increase in cross-asset return correlations, highlighting the interest in broad measures of market-wide sentiment. Using an extensive array of institutional behavioral metrics across asset classes, the authors find evidence that suggests market wide sentiment varies with, and can be forecasted by, broad aggregates across many indicators of institutional investor flows. The large number and wide breadth of these institutional flow measures across assets encourages aggregation into a more manageable set of elements. To this end, the authors condense this broad information set into what they call a multi-asset sentiment score (MASS), a concise measure of behavior that captures trading sentiment using a broad information set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the effect of domestic political accountability on leaders' strategies for attracting foreign direct investment to less developed countries. We consider two policy areas: the tax burden imposed on firms and the regulatory environment in which they operate. We find that democratic governments are more likely to offer relatively lower tax rates to foreign investors, whereas autocratic governments are more likely to offer relatively lax regulation. This result is driven by the greater elasticity of the political survival function to environmental and labor regulations in more democratic countries. Analyses of firm-level survey data confirm our main theoretical conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose of the article The aim of the paper is to analyze the global economic imbalances and factors that contributed to their deterioration in developed and emerging countries, primarily in the United States and China. The article assesses the main inevitable factors of the global economic imbalances that have driven the recent evolution of current account balances. In addition, the paper describes the theoretical framework of global imbalances and the relevant fundamental theories for better understanding in theoretical aspect of international economics and finance. Furthermore, provides overview of the fundamental causes and drivers of global imbalances, namely current account. Methodology/methods In relation to the subject and purpose of this paper have been used the logical methods of examination which mainly include analysis, correlation and regression analysis, abstraction, synthesis, induction and deduction, the methods of descriptive and mathematical statistics, comparative and empirical methods and the selected forecasting methods (causal prognosis methods). Scientific aim The global imbalances are considered as the most disputable and well known of the global current economic problem, which possibly explain the causes of the global financial crisis. The global financial imbalances were quite massive even before the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008. Therefore, the main scientific goal of this paper to analyse what is behind the current account imbalances in both countries, e.i. the USA and China. Findings The persistent current account imbalances reflected the imbalances in the world investment and savings ratios. Whereas the U.S. national savings rate kept falling, the Chinese savings rate rose. Current account imbalances will keep on growing due to a problem of insufficient global saving. Conclusions (limits, implications etc)The size of global imbalances has become narrow compared to the prior crisis's level, but it did not vanish due to the implementation of global rebalancing process. Putting the current account imbalance to cooperation of all participating countries is strongly necessary. The policy response will need to involve many more countries, even G20 process, and coordinating this response will require considerable efforts of every party members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars are researching how to assess a country's sustainable development performance. However, not many proposals differentiate the performance via the three dimensions of sustainable development: social, economic and environmental. This article proposes to assess a country's sustainable development performance in general as well as in each of the dimensions. It pursues three objectives: (1) identifying sustainably developed countries; (2) assessing the best performers in terms of sustainable development; and (3) understanding the relations between the dimensions. Results show a globally bad sustainable development performance, with no sustainably developed countries. They also show that the economic dimension is not the best performing dimension at a global level and that very high levels of gross national income (GNI) per capita usually imply a bad environmental performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different regulatory instruments have sought to promote sustainable development, most especially the integration of social and economic concerns in development activities. Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) have taken it upon themselves to promote sustainable development practices by designing guidelines for their project financing activities and promoting sustainable financing practice through their clients. This approach ensures that the people affected by a project are better off as a result of its construction and operation. This article investigates the extent to which the International Finance Corporation (IFC) guidelines are ensuring the diffusion of sustainable development practices in developing countries. The article discusses the updated provisions contained in the IFC's 2012 Performance Standards in relation to the promotion of sustainable development and considers the critique and the impact of commercial bank project financing activities and their effect on promoting sustainable development. The article concludes that the guidelines of the IFC provide an important framework for promoting sustainable development practices in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I challenge an influential analysis (the 'participation account') that attributes human rights violations to the global economic system, and attributes complicity with those violations to citizens of affluent countries. The participation account is shown to rest on a faulty account of wrongful action. An alternative, and superior, account of wrongful action (the 'agency account') is proposed, and used to analyse the rules of the global economic order. These include the 'foreground rules' of trade agreements and the 'background rules' of state privileges. The agency account identifies wrongful action with unreasonably imposing losses/risks. The systemic bad effects of the economic system and its rules are shown not to be due to agents in the system acting unreasonably in this sense. The metaphor that the economic system 'violates rights' and that we act in complicity with this are thus shown not to stand up to analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the authors' views on the South-South trade in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region. They mention a hypothesis from economist Andrew Lewis on commercial exchange and its role as a global economic growth engine powered by industrial expansion in developed nations. They note its depiction of an intra-regional phenomenon and expansion through production sharing schemes. An overview of the contribution of developing countries to the gross domestic product (GDP) worldwide is also presented.

Nowadays, income inequality is one of the most controversial topics among the economists. The aim of the present paper is to analyze the factors that generate the wage gaps inside a country, with a particular focus on the developed economies, and to identify the trends of income inequalities in these states during the last three decades. Our results show that, starting with the end of the XXth century, the wage inequality became an important issue for countries, especially for the United States, which had the largest income gaps from all the other developed economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Social Security / SGD-Sosyal Güvenlik Dergisi is the property of Journal of Social Security / SGD-Sosyal Güvenlik Dergisi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We discuss the effect of formal political institutions (electoral systems, fiscal decentralization, presidential and parliamentary regimes) on the extent and direction of income (re-)distribution. Empirical evidence is presented for a large sample of 70 economies and a panel of 13 OECD countries between 1981 and 1998. The evidence indicates that presidential regimes are associated with a less equal distribution of disposable incomes, while electoral systems have no significant effects. Fiscal competition is associated with less income redistribution and a less equal distribution of disposable incomes, but also with a more equal primary income distribution. Our evidence also is in line with earlier empirical contributions that find a positive relationship between trade openness and equality in primary and disposable incomes, as well as the overall redistributive effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article extends the meta-analysis presented in Knell and Stix (2005, 2006) to investigate the possible sources of variations in empirical findings about the income elasticity of money demand in advanced and developing countries. In the case of advanced countries, we find that the income elasticities of money demand are significantly higher if broader definitions of the monetary aggregates are used. In addition, financial reforms and wealth seem to have significantly reduced the estimates of the income elasticity. However, we achieved quite different findings for the developing countries. It appears that the broader definitions of monetary aggregates seem to produce income elasticity estimates that are only marginally higher than the narrower aggregates. While the wealth (financial reform) impacts on income elasticity are statistically insignificant (weakly significant), both seems to have reduced the income elasticity estimates only marginally. Moreover, some contrasting results between advanced and developing countries are also attained with respect to the proxies of cost of holding money. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we 'slice up the global value chain' using a decomposition technique that has recently become feasible due to the development of the World Input-Output Database. We trace the value added by all labor and capital that is directly and indirectly needed for the production of final manufacturing goods. The production systems of these goods are highly prone to international fragmentation as many stages can be undertaken in any country with little variation in quality. We seek to establish a series of facts concerning the global fragmentation of production that can serve as a starting point for future analysis. We describe four major trends. First, international fragmentation, as measured by the foreign value-added content of production, has rapidly increased since the early 1990s. Second, in most global value chains there is a strong shift towards value being added by capital and high-skilled labor, and away from less-skilled labor. Third, within global value chains, advanced nations increasingly specialize in activities carried out by high-skilled workers. Fourth, emerging economies surprisingly specialize in capital-intensive activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the evolution of real per capita GDP around 100 systemic banking crises. Part of the costs of these crises owes to the protracted nature of recovery. On average, it takes about 8 years to reach the pre-crisis level of income; the median is about 6.5 years. Five to six years after the onset of crisis, only Germany and the United States (out of 12 systemic cases) have reached their 2007-2008 peaks in real income. Forty-five percent of the episodes recorded double dips. Post-war business cycles are not the relevant comparator for the recent crises in advanced economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1980 to 1992, emerging and developing countries grew by 3.4 percent per year. Their annual rate of growth increased to 5.4 percent between 1993 and 2012. No such increase occurred for advanced nations, whose average growth from 1980 to 2012 was roughly constant (excluding the impact of the 2008-2009 Recession). Developing nations turned themselves around by embracing discipline-sustained commitment to a pragmatic and flexible growth strategy. Three illustrations of discipline through the lens of trade, fiscal, and debt reforms in the developing world offer relevant, practical lessons for recovery in advanced economies and continued catch-up growth in developing nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several powerful trends are contributing to an aging of much of the world's population, especially in economically developed countries. To mitigate the negative effects of rapidly ageing populations, societies must act early to plan for the welfare, medical care and residential arrangements of their senior citizens, and for the manpower and associated training needed to execute these plans. This paper describes the development of an Ambient Intelligent Community Care Platform (AICCP), which creates an environment of Ambient Intelligence through the use of sensor network and mobile agent (MA) technologies. The AICCP allows caregivers to quickly and accurately locate their charges; access, update and share critical treatment and wellness data; and automatically archive all records. The AICCP presented in this paper is expected to enable caregivers and communities to offer pervasive, accurate and context-aware care services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The great story of the last decade has been the 'rise of the rest'-emerging economies such as China, Brazil, Turkey and India-to a position rivaling that of the established, advanced economies. As the aftershocks of the financial crisis of 2008-2009 continue to ripple through the global system, will the rising rest stay or track or be derailed? Some of the world's top economists examine this question in the following section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is much controversy in the literature over whether military expenditures have a positive, negative or no relation impact on economic growth. The aim of this paper is to determine the relationship between GDP and defence expenditure. The study analyses GDP and defence expenditures of the developed countries with cross-sectional ADF and SURADF unit root tests using annual data for the years 1980–2007. We conclude that in the long term, according to the Pedroni cointegration test, there exists a relationship between defence expenditure and economic growth. Furthermore, by utilizing the Granger causality test, we find that defence expenditure is a factor in economic growth. In other words, our study validates the hypothesis that defence spending by economically developed countries positively contributes to their economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Economía Aplicada is the property of Revista de Economia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

After the Great Depression of the 1930s, a key role in outweighing the biggest financial and economic crisis has played the implementation of unconventional monetary policy measures, being used as a policy of ultra-cheap money. The need of their implementation in the developed countries is a proof that the standard measures could not provide a way out of the recession into which they have fallen, and there has been brought into question the functioning of the existing system and relations, especially the functioning of national currencies in the role of world money. It is a fact that the standard measures, through the policy of cheap money, have temporarily showed themselves as a proper vehicle for leading a relaxed monetary and fiscal policy in the developed economies, but in the end they have resulted in financial and debt crisis. However, it is a problem that the way out of recession was looked for within the implementation of unconventional monetary policy measures, by which, in fact, there has been increased the level of its relaxation, and thus the danger of future crises too. It is known that the thing which led to crisis cannot help outweigh it. By implementing unconventional measures within the existing International Monetary System, the crisis can only be carried in other countries and it is not solved permanently. For that reason, it is necessary to be created a global currency as a result of which, the national systems will turn themselves back to the implementation of conventional measures, with no possibilities for carrying the national economic problems into other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the globalization in context of financial economy and economic morality across the world. It mentions gap in economic performance and social progress of developed and developing countries. It highlights the history of global financial depressions, attenuation of labor theory of value and gradual decline in employment opportunities due to mechanization, automation and computerization.

The aim of this paper is to make the research on the possibilities of the economy stimulation in the case of developed countries, more precisely, to determine the ways of the GDP growth staying within the model framework that was built. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Providing services has become the most important sector of the economy and the main dynamic factor of the economic competition, within the developed countries economies. In such economies, the sector of economies has assimilated the workforce issued in the other sector, when this over plus of labor force represented simultaneously the cause of its expansion. The services have had a double part: they contribute on both the material entertainment of the labor force, as well as on maintaining the reestablishment of people's health, to their physical and intellectual recovery, to the development of the individual, as regards the cultural and scientific points of view, and implicitly, to the growth of the living standards. For the time being, one can characterize the economies of the developed countries, as well as of many other countries in progress of development, as services oriented economies; the development and diversification of services has been determined by the need of satisfying diversified social needs. In this way, the part of services aims on becoming proportional to their contribution within the process of economic growth. One can definitely say that between services and the economic growth, a double conditioning takes place, meaning: on one hand, the development of services appears as a consequence of the economic growth, and on the other hand, it grows up the economic growth, thus contributing on diversifying the production and on improving the level of training or qualification of the labor force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic crisis in Euro- Atlantic economy came in it's fifth year although governments of developed countries have taken all measures that they were using more or less successfully in last 60 years. And while governments keep looking for more drastically measures to end the crisis, we believe that the time has come for analyzing this situation from another angle. That angle is integral historical analyses of actual roots of this crisis instead of shallow partial analysis that take place these days. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comparative political economy of developed countries has often neglected the growing interest in producing well-being indicators that go beyond GDP. This was largely due to lack of reliable and comparable data. In spite of this, Osberg and Sharpe have recently provided a time-series cross-section data set of the Index of Economic Well-Being (IEWB) for selected OECD countries. Accordingly, this article tries to plug the current gap between the comparative political economy and well-being literature by presenting an empirical study about the impact of partisanship and state intervention on the IEWB and its four domains (that is, consumption flows, stocks of wealth, economic equality, economic security). A main lesson can be drawn from the econometric analysis: left cabinets and their favorite policies increase stocks of wealth, economic equality and economic security, rather than consumption flows. This means that leftist governments do not promote the current prosperity of a typical citizen but the future and widespread well-being of most population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]