Stefana Dima

Immigration and trade

Abstract This paper investigates the relationship between intra-industry trade (IIT), horizontal IIT, vertical IIT (VIIT) and immigration flows using a gravity model for the period 1995-2008 amongst Portugal and European Union’s Member States (EU-27). Using a panel data approach, the results show a positive correlation between immigration and IIT. These outcomes indicate that the immigration can reduce transaction costs between home and host country. We also consider the economic dimension which appears to exercise a positive effect on trade. Our research confirms the hypothesis that there is a negative effect of transportation costs on trade.

New empirical evidence of the linkages between governance and economic output in the European Union

This paper uses data for the 27 Member States of the European Union (EU) from 2000 to 2010 to support the thesis that a positive and significant correlation exists between a nation’s quality of governance and its economic output. To achieve this goal, the elements of governance that have been reported by the Worldwide Governance Indicators project are considered. Four individual indicators for the quality of policies and institutions and a global indicator of governance quality are constructed. We estimate that, for our database, a standard deviation shock in these indicators causes changes between 0.03-fold and 0.05-fold in income per capita.

NATIONAL LEGISLATIVE SYSTEMS AND FOREIGN STANDARDS AND REGULATIONS: THE CASE OF INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL REPORTING STANDARDS` ADOPTION

Abstract This study is focused on the linkages between the legislative families as descriptors of national legislative systems and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). We consider such analysis as a case study for the more general issue of explaining the preferences of national regulators in the adoption of foreign norms, rules, standards and practices. By using a dataset of 162 jurisdictions and dummy variables designed to capture the current stage of IFRSs adoption and, respectively, the taxonomy of their legislative systems, we find that a full IFRSs adoption is more likely to occur in countries which have principles-based on legislative mono-systems. In addition, we observe that a strong rule of law, with an effective mechanism of property rights reinforcement, as well as the pre-adoption existence of a pro-growth set of public policies can contribute to the encouragement of IFRSs adoption.

Marginal Intra-industry Trade and Adjustment Costs in Labour Market

The objective of this study is to provide some empirical evidences on the existence of labor market adjustments according to smooth adjustment hypothesis (SAH) under the impact of intra-industry trade (IIT) considering the Portuguese case over a time span between 1995 and 2006. The main methodological issue of this study consists in showing that it is preferable to use the GMM-System approach with orthogonal transformation of data. The key outcome consists in highlighting a negative linkage between marginal intra-industry trade and the amplitude of employment changes for this particular market. In addition, we find a negative correlation between changes of employment and changes in domestic consumption. Moreover, the relationship between growth of productivity and market structure is according to smooth adjustment hypothesis.

New Empirical Evidences on the Linkages between Governance and Growth

By using data from 145 jurisdictions, for the time span 2002-2009, the present paper supports the thesis of a positive and significant correlation between governance’ quality and economic growth. In order to achieve this outcome, the elements of governance reported by Worldwide Governance Indicators World Bank’ project are considered and a global indicator in a principal components analysis framework is constructed. Based on this estimator, we identify a clear pattern of the benefic impact of “good governance” on growth, by involving a GMM-System estimation. This pattern appears robust to the check for governance endogeneity and to the changes in the estimation methodology.