Claire Economidou

How sensitive are Britain's inpayments and outpayments to the value of the British pound

Purpose – To avoid aggregation bias by using trade data at bilateral level so that we can determine how sensitive are Britains inpayments and outpayments to the value of the British pound. Design/methodology/approach – The method is based on the bounds testing approach to cointegration and error-correction modeling. Findings – The main finding is that while UK inpayments are not sensitive to the exchange rate, her outpayments are. Research limitations/implications – Future research must concentrate on disaggregating data further, perhaps at commodity level. Practical implications – The results could be used to identify Britains trading partners against which Britain can devalue the pound and improve her trade balance. Originality/value – No study has attempted to test the impact of real depreciation of the pound on Britains payments and receipts with her major trading partners.

Export Led Growth vs. Growth Led Exports: LDCs Experience

Previous studies that investigated the export led growth hypothesis, relied upon Granger or Sims causality detection approach. Since these approaches employ first differenced variables, any inference could be short-run in nature. In this paper we consider the relation between exports and economic growth to be a long-run phenomenon. After applying Johansens cointegration technique to establish the long-run relationship between exports and output (in presence of other factors), we rely upon weak exogeneity tests proposed by Johansen to establish exogeneity of exports or output. Annual data over 1960-99 period from 61 countries are used for analysis. The results are country specific and there is no uniform pattern.

Government sponsorship and nature of patenting activity of US universities and corporations

This paper studies the relationship between government sponsorship and nature of innovation produced by US universities and corporations. Using detailed patent data information and, in particular, from the patent document wrapper, where the applicant is obliged to disclose any federal support, we examine whether (i) federally funded patented innovations are more basic than their non-federally funded peers, and (ii) federally funded corporate and university patented innovations are very different from their existed research agenda. Our results strongly support that federally funded corporate patents are more basic in nature, while the evidence for universities is less nuanced. Also less pronounced and conclusive are the findings about university patented inventions and their ties to universitys own research agenda. Results, however, may vary depending on university (corporation) size. While the federal government finances high-risk basic projects, it appears that some firms do not incorporate them in their overall research portfolio.

Do Technology and Efficiency Differences determine Productivity

This paper investigates the forces driving output growth, namely technological, efficiency, and input changes, in 80 countries over the period 1970-2000. Relevant past studies typically assume that: (i) countries use resources efficiently, and (ii) the underlying production technology is the same for all countries. We address these issues by estimating a stochastic frontier model, which explicitly accounts for inefficiency, augmented with a latent class structure, which allows for production technologies to differ across groups of countries. Membership of these groups is estimated, rather than determined ex ante. Our results indicate the existence of three groups of countries. These groups differ significantly in terms of efficiency levels, technological change, and the development of capital and labor elasticities. However, a consistent finding across groups is that growth is driven mainly by factor accumulation (capital deepening).

Production of output and ideas: efficiency and growth patterns in the United States

ABSTRACT Production of output and ideas: efficiency and growth patterns in the United States. Regional Studies. This paper examines efficiency and growth patterns in the production of output and ideas in the United States. It employs frontier techniques and jointly estimates the production of output and the production of ideas. We find states to be particularly efficient in the use of their inputs in the production of output process, whereas there is more waste in the use of innovation resources to produce new knowledge. The results do not lend support to the common perception that richer (more innovative) states are more efficient than less rich (less innovative) states for every dollar spent.