Larry Allen

The regional impact of monetary policy on house prices

This paper examines how house prices respond to monetary policy in the nine census regions of the USA. A polynomial distributed lag regression model is estimated for each region. The dependent variable in each equation includes growth for the index of regional house prices. The independent variables include: (1) growth for an index of national house prices; (2) difference between the regional unemployment rate and the national unemployment; (3) the growth in M2. The money stock variable enters each equation as a polynomial distributed lag. Given this specification, regional house prices are positively correlated with money stock growth in some regions, and negatively correlated in others.

Confucianism and Entrepreneurship in ASEAN Context

This chapter explores the role that Confucian culture plays in the expansion of ICT industries in East Asia, particularly Taiwan and China. For over 100 years economists and sociologists have studied and debated the positive and negative influences that Confucian culture exerts on economic development and entrepreneurship. The burst of East Asian economic growth in the late twentieth century furnished a larger body of knowledge to study Confucian entrepreneurship. This chapter aims to show how two unrelated phenomena, the growth of female entrepreneurship and the unrelated issue of intellectual piracy in separate ways throw light on Confucian culture as a stimulant to entrepreneurship. This chapter concludes that the secret to Confucian dynamism lies in how Confucian philosophy educates individuals to respond to low social status and countries to loss of political status.

Macroeconomic causes of variance in house and property prices

This paper is a frankly empirical piece with the purpose of explaining the variance of housing prices as a function of macroeconomic fundamentals. The analysis is based upon data from six advanced countries, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the USA. The sample range stretches from 2001 thru 2012. A panel regression procedure is applied to the dataset. The findings suggest that housing price variance can be interpreted as a function of important macroeconomic variable. These macroeconomic variables include monetary growth, first differences in the current account as a percent of GDP, first differences in the imbalance between investment and savings, and the public debt as a percent of GDP. The rate of growth of housing prices also plays a role in individual countries.

Social and cultural factors as a determinate of ICT expenditures: an empirical study

Information and communication technologies (ICT) have come to hold an important place in strategies for promoting economic growth and development in developing countries. It is known that ICT expenditures as a percent of GDP vary between countries. An elevated rate of ICT expenditures as a percent of GDP indicates that a country is closing the digital divide gap. The primary purpose of the paper is to identify social and cultural variables that explain variations in ICT expenditures measured as a percent of GDP. A multiple regression equation is estimated to examine the impact of selected social and cultural variables on ICT expenditures. The dependent variable is ICT expenditures as a percent of GDP. The independent variables include math and science education, freedom of press, percentage of English speaking, percentage of Protestant, and number of vacation days. This study suggests two factors that give countries an advantage in assimilating information and communication technologies. One is a high quality of math and science education. Another is a government that protects freedom of the press.

The Short-Run Impact of Monetary and Fiscal Policy in a Two Sector Keynesian Model:

One of the principle achievements of con temporary macroeconomic theory has been the thorough examination of the effects of monetary and fiscal policy under a variety of circumstances and/or assumptions within a single-sector theoretical framework. This sin gle-sector theoretical paradigm, the standard IS-LM model, has gained widespread accept ance in the textbooks as an analytical device for analyzing policy, and the consequence has been the development of a monetary and fiscal policy orthodoxy. The core of this pol icy orthodoxy in its simplest form states: When wages and prices are flexible neither monetary or fiscal policy produce any per manent changes in real output and employ ment; however the price level is affected by changes in the money supply and, assuming the interest elasticity of the demand for money exceeds zero, in government spending also. Interest rates are also affected by changes in government spending under these condi tions. When the interest elasticity of the de mand for money equals zero, or the interest elasticity of investment spending is infinite, fiscal policy is totally emasculated in nominal and real terms, with the exception of its influ ence on interest rates in the case of zero money demand elasticity. If, on the contrary, the interest elasticity of the demand for money is infinite or the interest elasticity of investment spending is zero, then monetary policy is equally impotent. If the above con ditions are relaxed, including wage-price flex