James E. Payne

Measuring efficiency in the National Basketball Association1

Abstract This paper investigates how closely teams in the National Basketball Association play up to their potential. Using the stochastic production frontier model, we provide efficiency measures for each of the 27 NBA teams for the 1992–1993 season.

A Survey of the International Empirical Evidence on the Tax-Spend Debate

The concern over budget deficits in the mid-1980s generated a strand of literature known as the tax-spend debate, sometimes labeled the revenue-expenditure nexus. This literature has focused on the intertemporal relationship between revenues and expenditures in the generation of budget deficits. In light of the numerous empirical time-series studies on the subject, the intent of this survey article is to provide an overview of the work to date as well as provide suggestions for future research in this area.

International evidence on the sustainability of budget deficits

The sustainability of budget deficits of the G-7 countries is examined in this paper. Following the approach taken by Hakkio and Rush it is found that in the case of Germany it appears for each dollar increase in expenditures, revenues increase by an equal amount. For France, Japan, and Italy (real per GDP measure) the budget deficits of these countries may not be sustainable due to the lack of cointegration. In the cases of Canada, Italy (real levels and real per capita measures), United Kingdom, and the United States (real levels and real per capita) cointegration is present between revenues and expenditures. However, the estimated coefficients on expenditures for these countries are significantly less than one which suggests that government spending is growing faster than government revenue.

The Tax-Spend Debate: Time Series Evidence from State Budgets

This paper examines the temporal relationship between revenues and expenditures for the forty-eight contiguous states over an annual period 1942 to 1992. Using an error-correction model, we find that the tax-spend hypothesis is supported for twenty-four states. The spend-tax hypothesis is valid for eight states while the fiscal synchronization hypothesis is supported for eleven states. The remaining five states failed the diagnostic tests for error-correction modeling.

Evidence from lesser developed countries on the Fisher hypothesis: a cointegration analysis

This paper examines the Fisher hypothesis for a sample of less developed countries. Recognizing the possibility of spurious regression results, tests of the Fisher hypothesis are undertaken utilizing the Johansen-Juselius cointegration procedure. Of the nine countries studied, only Malaysia, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka provide evidence to support the full Fisher effect in which a unit proportional relationship exists between nominal interest rates and inflation.

A Reexamination of Budgetary Disequilibria

Recent research has found that the time path of revenue and expenditure equations fails to respond to budgetary disequilibria but does adjust toward their long-run relationship to the gross national product. This result has been used to reject both the tax-and-spend and spend-and-tax models of the budgetary process. The purpose of this article is to reexamine the debate on the temporal relationships between federal government revenues and expenditures using quarterly U.S data over the 1955.1 to 1994 2 time frame. Using time-series techniques such as cointegration analysis and autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic models, the authors find that, although revenue equations do respond to both budgetary and fiscal disequili bria, expenditure equations do not respond to either disequilibria individually. Thus, the time path of the expenditure equations are not affected by movements in the budget deficit or by the overall movements in the economy at large.

Money growth and interest rate volatility and the demand for money

In this paper the author empirically examines the effects of both money growth and interest rate volatility measures upon the demand for real balances. The findings of this study suggest that both money growth and interest rate volatility measures are statistically insignificant. However, evidence suggests a structural shift in the demand for money in the post-1979 period. Moreover, there is a noticeable change in the speed of adjustment moving from actual to desired real balances with the adjustment coefficient in the post-1979 period increasing roughly in magnitude nine and half, times the adjustment coefficient in the pre-1979 period.

Economic Behavior, Economic Freedom, and Entrepreneurship

Expert editors add to an important field of research, the economics of entrepreneurship, and explore how institutions influence entrepreneurial behavior. This book provides comprehensive and contemporary insights into the interaction between economic behavior of firms and households, economic freedom, and entrepreneurship, and how it generates an environment with greater opportunities for growth and development for individuals, households, and private-sector firms.

Population and economic growth: a cointegration analysis of lesser developed countries

The authors examine the temporal relationship between population growth and economic growth in Nepal, India, Ghana, Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Philippines, Guatemala, Syria, Peru, Thailand, Chile, Argentina, and Mexico, conducting Granger-causality tests in the context of error correction models when cointegration is present. Their goal is to provide additional time series econometric evidence on the short-run and long-run time series behavior of population growth and the growth of real per capita gross domestic product for a sample of low to middle income developing countries. Cointegration was found in only 3 of the 13 countries examined. Even though 10 countries in this study exhibited no properties of cointegration, researchers conducting time series studies of the relationship between population growth and economic growth using differenced data should nonetheless evaluate the possible long-term relationship. Capturing the short- and long-run behaviors of the respective time series may give the researcher a more robust test of Granger-causality.

Re-examination of the velocity-money growth variability debate

In this paper the author re-examines the money growth variability debate set forth by Milton Friedman. Six time periods are analyzed in the study. The pre-1979 period is found to be the only period which exhibits any evidence that money growth variability Granger-causes velocity.