著者

ACHARYA Chakra Pani LEON-GONZALEZ Roberto

出版者

GRIPS Policy Research Center

雑誌

GRIPS Discussion Papers

巻号頁・発行日

vol.18-01, 2018-05

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We examine the impact of remittances on economic growth using panel data (1975-2014) for 18 countries in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) that are similar in size and development level. We allow for heterogeneous production functions across countries and calculate the average marginal effects of remittances using the panel dynamic ordinary least squares estimator. The estimation results show that remittances increase growth significantly, especially through investments in human capital. In addition we find that: (i) remittances have a modest impact on growth when controlling for physical and human capital channels through which remittances potentially affect output growth; (ii) when we do not control for human capital the effect is larger regardless of the sub-samples considered − the elasticity of output with respect to remittances is 7.3 percent in the full sample, and 18.6 percent among Asian countries; (iii) remittances have a significant positive long-run effect on human capital formation regardless of the sub-samples considered but the effect on physical capital accumulation is significant only among middle income and Asian countries. The findings suggest that channeling the remittances towards investments in physical capital and adoption of new knowledge, skills and technology is crucial for high economic growth in low income countries.

著者

TAKYI Paul Owusu LEON-GONZALEZ Roberto

出版者

GRIPS Policy Research Center

雑誌

GRIPS Discussion Papers

巻号頁・発行日

vol.19-31, 2020-01

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This study explores the role of financial inclusion in the mitigation of the effects of a health shock at the household level. To that end, we examine empirically the effect of financial inclusion on household working hours and health care utilization, using round six of the Ghana Living Standard Survey data. We find that a health shock does decrease household working hours and increase the likelihood of health care utilization. This suggests that households in Ghana are not able to fully insure themselves against a health shock. However, we find that, faced with a health shock, households who are financially excluded see their working hours reduce more than those who enjoy full financial inclusion. Also, financial inclusion increases the likelihood of health care utilization when households experience a health shock. We find evidence that loan acquisition (borrowing) is one of the main mechanisms by which households can insure themselves against a health shock. Generally, our findings support the financial inclusion agenda of policymakers in Ghana and many other countries. Thus, efforts to ensure full financial inclusion will increase the probability of households using the financial sector as a means of insulating themselves against the effects of health shocks.

著者

CHAN Joshua DOUCET Arnaud LEON-GONZALEZ Roberto STRACHAN Rodney W.

出版者

GRIPS Policy Research Center

雑誌

GRIPS Discussion Papers

巻号頁・発行日

vol.18-12, 2018-10

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This paper develops a new methodology that decomposes shocks into homoscedastic and heteroscedastic components. This specification implies there exist linear combinations of heteroscedastic variables that eliminate heteroscedasticity. That is, these linear combinations are homoscedastic; a property we call co-heteroscedasticity. The heteroscedastic part of the model uses a multivariate stochastic volatility inverse Wishart process. The resulting model is invariant to the ordering of the variables, which we show is important for impulse response analysis but is generally important for, e.g., volatility estimation and variance decompositions. The specification allows estimation in moderately high-dimensions. The computational strategy uses a novel particle filter algorithm, a reparameterization that substantially improves algorithmic convergence and an alternating-order particle Gibbs that reduces the amount of particles needed for accurate estimation. We provide two empirical applications; one to exchange rate data and another to a large Vector Autoregression (VAR) of US macroeconomic variables. We find strong evidence for co-heteroscedasticity and, in the second application, estimate the impact of monetary policy on the homoscedastic and heteroscedastic components of macroeconomic variables.

著者

ACHARYA Chakra P. LEON-GONZALEZ Roberto

出版者

GRIPS Policy Research Center

雑誌

GRIPS Discussion Papers

巻号頁・発行日

vol.15-25, 2016-03

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Using primary field data from recently developed urban areas of Nepal, we identify households who migrated from rural to urban areas and analyze the impact of international remittances on their investment in education. The results show that rural-urban migrant households who receive international remittances have lower income and consumption but higher human-capital investment, measured by the level and budget share of expenditure on children’s education and the time their children spend studying at home, in comparison to local households and other types of migrant households. The findings suggest that an important motivation for rural-urban migration is the search for higher-quality education, because the experience of international migration helps households to know the higher returns to education abroad and international remittances help to finance the costs of both internal migration and education. We also observe that the quality of education is an increasingly important concern in contemporary Nepalese society, possibly due to the anticipated higher returns to education in the global labor market.

著者

TAKYI Paul Owusu LEON-GONZALEZ Roberto

出版者

GRIPS Policy Research Center

雑誌

GRIPS Discussion Papers

巻号頁・発行日

vol.19-15, 2019-09

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This study develops and estimates a standard New-Keynesian DSGE model for the Ghanaian economy, for the analysis of the impacts of government spending, consumption tax, and labor income tax shocks on household consumption and working hours. It also applies the model to examination of the effects of fiscal policy shocks on key macroeconomic variables in the Ghanaian economy. The model features heterogeneous households of two types, financially excluded and financially included, and considers two labor markets: perfectly and monopolistically competitive labor markets. We use quarterly time series data from 1985Q1-2017Q4 to estimate the model’s parameters using a Bayesian approach. The results show that a positive government spending shock has an expansionary effect on the consumption of financially excluded households but has a decreased effect on that of fully financially included ones. We find that positive consumption and labor income tax shocks decrease the consumption of financially excluded households more than that of financially included ones. From a policy perspective, government spending is effective for increasing output, employment, and the consumption of financially excluded households, although it reduces that of financially included ones.

著者

ACHARYA Chakra Pani LEON-GONZALEZ Roberto

出版者

GRIPS Policy Research Center

雑誌

GRIPS Discussion Papers

巻号頁・発行日

vol.17-13, 2018-02

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Despite a large growth in domestic and international migration and remittances in recent decades, there are limited works that systematically identify and establish interactions between internal and international migration. Using primary data from new urban areas of Nepal, we identify households that had migrated from rural to urban areas, explore their migration practices and educational investment behaviors, and analyze the effects of international migration and remittances on investment in education. The results show that, despite their lower income and consumption, migrant households that have members abroad have higher human capital investment measured by the level and budget share of expenditure on children’s education and the time their children spend for studying at home than do urban-native and other types of migrant households. Our findings suggest that searching for better education is one important motivation for migrating to urban areas among rural households having members abroad.

著者

TSENG Fu-Min PETRIE Dennis LEON-GONZALEZ Roberto

出版者

GRIPS Policy Research Center

雑誌

GRIPS Discussion Papers

巻号頁・発行日

vol.14, 2014-09

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経済学 / EconomicsBereavement is a grieved and inevitable event in our life. For an aging society, the incidence of spousal bereavement and parental bereavement is higher than the other kinds of bereavement events. This study employs the difference-in-differences (DiD) strategy and the Taiwanese panel Survey of Health and Living Status of the Elderly (SHLSE) to evaluate the impact of losing a spouse on well-being measured by self-assessed health status, depression, and life satisfaction.The results show that spousal bereavement causes substantial depression and loss in life satisfaction. The spousal bereavement impact increases depression by 1.46 CES-D points and reduces life satisfaction by 0.71 points. The decay effect of time is not observed in this study. We also examine the demographic differences of the spousal bereavement impact and find that the gap in life satisfaction between the bereaved who received more than 9 years education and the bereaved who received 9 years or less is 1.43 points, which implies that spousal bereavement causes less impact on more educated people in terms of life satisfaction. The increase in depression for the bereaved in a larger household is smaller than that for those in a small household by 2.75 CES-D points but it is weakly significant.The self-reported health outcomes are the intermediate outcomes between spousal bereavement and societal costs such as healthcare utilisation and death. The association between self-reported health status and mortality and health utilization has been well documented by literature. Thus, our results also provide the policy insight that giving proper interventions on the onset of bereavement may cause less societal costs afterwards.http://www.grips.ac.jp/list/jp/facultyinfo/leon_gonzalez_roberto/

著者

LEON-GONZALEZ Roberto

出版者

GRIPS Policy Research Center

雑誌

GRIPS Discussion Papers

巻号頁・発行日

vol.17-16, 2018-03

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This paper develops a novel and efficient algorithm for Bayesian inference in inverse Gamma Stochastic Volatility models. It is shown that by conditioning on auxiliary variables, it is possible to sample all the volatilities jointly directly from their posterior conditional density, using simple and easy to draw from distributions. Furthermore, this paper develops a generalized inverse Gamma process with more flexible tails in the distribution of volatilities, which still allows for simple and efficient calculations. Using several macroeconomic and financial datasets, it is shown that the inverse Gamma and Generalized inverse Gamma processes can greatly outperform the commonly used log normal volatility processes with student-t errors or jumps in the mean equation.

著者

LUINTEL Kul B KHAN Mosahid LEON-GONZALEZ Roberto LI Guangjie

出版者

GRIPS Policy Research Center

雑誌

GRIPS Discussion Papers

巻号頁・発行日

vol.15-27, 2016-03

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The existing weight of evidence suggests that financial structure (the classification of a financial system as bank-based versus market-based) is irrelevant for economic growth. This contradicts the common belief that the institutional structure of a financial system matters. We re-examine this issue using a novel dataset covering 69 countries over 1989-2011 in a Bayesian framework. Our results are conformable to the belief - a market-based system is relevant - with sizable economic effects for the high-income but not for the middle-and-low-income countries. Our findings provide a counterexample to the weight of evidence. We also identify a regime shift in 2008.

著者

MENG Channarith LEON-GONZALEZ Roberto

出版者

GRIPS Policy Research Center

雑誌

GRIPS Discussion Papers

巻号頁・発行日

vol.15-22, 2016-01

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While earlier studies focus on credit booms in advanced and emerging market countries, this paper examines the characteristics and determinants of credit booms in developing countries. The results find that credit booms in developing countries are less likely to be associated with systemic banking crises. Rather, they are more likely to be the result of financial deepening than of dangerous buildups of financial risks; the prevention of credit booms in developing countries may thus be associated with higher opportunity costs in terms of foregone growth opportunities. Random effect probit and tobit regressions find some evidence that size of financial system and favorable macroeconomic conditions are among the determinants of credit booms. Although monetary and fiscal policies do not help in preventing credit booms in developing countries, we find that prudential regulations and supervision can play a much more effective role in preventing “bad” booms, while incurring substantially lower costs. Although “bad” booms are hard to identify ahead of time, the duration and size of booms, as well as the level of credit aggregates, appear to be useful indicators in determining them.

著者

LEON-GONZALEZ Roberto

出版者

GRIPS Policy Research Center

雑誌

GRIPS Discussion Papers

巻号頁・発行日

vol.15-17, 2015-10

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This paper develops a novel and efficient algorithm for Bayesian inference in inverse Gamma Stochastic Volatility models. It is shown that by conditioning on auxiliary variables, it is possible to sample all the volatilities jointly directly from their posterior conditional density, using simple and easy to draw from distributions. Furthermore, this paper develops a generalized inverse Gamma process with more fl‡exible tails in the distribution of volatilities, which still allows for simple and efficient calculations. Using several macroeconomic and fi…nancial datasets, it is shown that the inverse Gamma and Generalized inverse Gamma processes can greatly outperform the commonly used log normal volatility processes with student-t errors.