The objective of this study is to gauge the potential and constraints of China’s low-carbon goods exports by first evaluating its exports performance, then finding the engines for exports growth, using the constant market share (CMS) analysis. The results of the empirical analysis covering the period 2006-2015 indicate that the market distribution effect is the main determinant for China’s low-carbon goods exports growth. While the diversification of China’s low-carbon commodity composition has the potential to increase China’s low-carbon export growth, its low-carbon goods exports appear to be not competitive against the exports from other competitor countries during the period of analysis.

The present paper considers a closed economy model with infrastructure service which is an excludable, impure public good, e.g. metro railway service, electricity service, and telephone service etc. The physical capital required by infrastructure sector is provided by public-private partnership. Public and private investment may be complementary or substitute to each other in infrastructure production. We assume government runs a balanced budget. We find there exists unique, saddle path stable growth rate in both the cases. We find that PPP model is optimal in the provision of infrastructure no matter public capital and private capital are a substitute or complementary to each other. But, PPP solution is not growth maximizing in case of substitute relationship between the public capital and private capital. It also makes a comparative study of decentralized economy and command economy. We find that in case of substitute relationship between private capital and public capital, command economy growth rate is higher than the competitive economy growth rate but in the case of complementary relationship between two, command economy growth rate may not be higher than the competitive economy growth rate.

This paper explores the relationship between household income inequality at county level and Body Mass Index (BMI). The hypotheses associating BMI with income inequality are tested. Unlike most literature that found positive linear relationship between prevalence of overweight or obesity and household income inequality, by using a longitudinal data from China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) between 1991 and 2011, we find that BMI will first decrease with household income inequality and then increase at an increasing rate, which suggests that high inequality may speed up the possibility of being overweight and obese. Policy measures on controlling obesity should be directed towards reducing inequality.

A competitive banking industry leads to an efficient allocation of financial resources, consequently increasing investment and economic growth. However, pervasive market inefficiencies and outmoded business practices often deter competition in the banking industry of developing countries. The present study examines the determinants of bank competition in such nations for the period 1995-2014 and compares that with high income countries. Employing both fixed-effects and GMM estimations and using two different measures of bank competition, we find greater diversification, credit risks and economic freedom to promote competition in developing countries while higher capitalization, profitability and cost efficiency increases market power.

This paper evaluates the influence of financial development on the cyclicality of monetary policy in a sample of 22 Sub Saharan African countries. We use a GMM model to estimate an equation of monetary policy stance based on Taylori¯s rule over the period 1984-2012. We obtain the following results. Monetary policy is pro-cyclical in Sub Saharan African countries. Central Banks implement counter-cyclical monetary policy when the country exhibits high level of financial development and pro-cyclical monetary policy in the presence of low level of financial development. The threshold level at which monetary policy is a-cyclical lies between 15% and 18%.

The entire subject of what creates a curse rather than a blessing and how to bring about the second and avoid the earlier is a particularly complex area for discussion. It is conspicuous that countries with natural resource wealth have experienced inferior economic growth in comparison to those devoid of such gifts. We advance the following propositions: i) there is evidence that natural resource abundance is associated with negative development outcomes; ii) current explanations of the resource curse do not sufficiently account for the role of the socio-economic background; iii) counteractive policy measures in alleviating/ preventing the resource curse are feasible.

This study attempts to highlight, in the development context, the impact of mobile telephony on householdsi¯ poverty in terms of welfare indicator improvement derived from the total household expenditure. By using the data from the National Survey of Household Living Conditions and Agriculture of 2011 (ECVMA-2011) in Niger, econometric regressions were performed by assuming on the one hand the exogeneity of the variable of interest and taking into account its endogeneity following the approach of the instrumental variable, on the other hand. In both cases, the impact of mobile telephony on household welfare is positive and significant but with different magnitude. Furthermore, by considering the welfare indicator derived from household food expenditure, we find that the mobile phone ownership has significant impact in reducing food poverty confirming, thus, the robustness of the findings. Therefore, the use of mobile phony can constitute a powerful mean of poverty reduction in developing countries.

The paper examines the role of financial development and economic growth in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. Causality tests conducted by using the stepwise Granger causality method, after addressing respective unknown exogenous structural changes, and using bounds testing approach to determine the level relationships between economic growth and each respective real financial development proxies, produced more robust results. Thus, economic growth drives real financial development in the short-run in all three countries, with Trinidad-Tobagoi¯s results being overwhelming. Long-run weak exogeneity tests from respective factor loadings indicate similar demand-following phenomenon in Jamaica, although results are mixed in Barbados and Trinidad-Tobago. Policymakers are therefore advised to make the overall economic growth of Jamaica their policy priority, and not favor its financial market with special policies over both near term and long-run. Similar policy is strongly recommended for both Trinidad-Tobago and Barbados. However, in Barbados and Trinidad-Tobago, mixed Granger causal relationship results suggest that extending resources as incentives to boost up both financial market development and economic growth will benefit them over the long-run.

Inadequate quantity and quality of animal water and feed resources are major factors limiting the productivity of livestock farming in Ethiopia. It is common that households spend a considerable share of their daily time to search for theses scarce resources by displacing available labor time away from more productive farming activities and leisure consumption. This paper examines the impact of time spent looking for animal water and grazing feeds on householdsi¯ agricultural food production and per capita food consumption expenditure using NMBU-MU Tigrai Rural Household Survey of 518 sample farmers. To address our objectives, we employ IV 2SLS for estimating per capita food consumption expenditure and double log for estimating food production drawing on non-separable farm household model. Our results do support the hypothesis of a negative relationship between total household labour input to crop farming and resource scarcity. Likewise, the findings confirm that reducing time spent looking for water leads to an increase in food production, per capita food consumption, and food security. In addition for the median household, the total impact revealed that decreasing searching time for water, grazing and collecting time for straw leads to an increment in food security. The results from the quantile regression further proved that the effect of these scarce resources is not uniform across the food production and consumption distribution. In line with our suspicion, the income variable was found to be endogenous and instrumental variables for it were statistically significant and bear the expected signs.