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Economic Freedom and the Process of Economic Growth: An Empirical Analysis Based on a New Measure
5-30Views:356This paper, relying on a conceptualization of economic freedom in terms of kinds of government actions, develops a new measure of economic freedom. However, this is not art for art’s sake; instead, it allows us to provide an explanation for how particular institutions of economic freedom enhance economic development, a view upon which scholars agree. We develop two concepts related to economic freedom, namely the freedom-compatible and freedom-non-compatible institutions and use them as tools in an analysis of the process of economic growth, especially the relationship between economic freedom and long-run income. The major argument is that freedom-compatible institutions are primary determinants of income, while freedom-non-compatible institutions depend upon them and are partly the outcomes of the growth process itself, a fact which is explained by the Misesian theory of interventionism. Our regression analyses support our theoretical insights.
JEL Classification: B53, H10, O10
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Regulatory Coherence and Economic Growth
33-54Views:165The paper is aimed at examining differences in market regulation across countries. Its starting point is the puzzle that poor countries apply more regulatory measures than rich ones do, although it has been empirically shown that those countries that regulate less grow faster. To explain this contradiction, the paper introduces the concept of regulatory coherence, and tries to explain the differences in this concept, together with the differences in the general level of regulation. The main argument is that regulatory coherence as well as the general level of regulation is dependent on the external, broad institutional system, because this affects the incentives of the regulators. The paper tries to support this theiretical argument empirically by a cluster analysis.
Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification: B53, M13, L51
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Szerződési szabadság és gazdasági növekedés az átmeneti országokban
95-114Views:138A tanulmány a verseny gazdasági növekedésre gyakorolt hatásait vizsgálja, középpontba állítva a verseny szubjektivista (modern osztrák) felfogását. Legfontosabb következtetése az, hogy a verseny a vállalkozói felfedező folyamaton keresztül tud a legjobban érvényre jutni. Ennek alapján amellett érvel, hogy a versenynek eme aspektusa a gazdasági szabadsággal mérhető, és az átmenti országok esetében ennek nagyobb a szerepe, mint a fejlett és fejletlen országokban. Az elméleti következtetést a tanulmány panelelemzéssel támasztja alá.
JEL (Journal of Economic Literature) kód: O12, O17, L14.
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The Rigidity of Labor Markets and the Unit Root in the Time Series of Unemployment rate: Raising a Problem
103-114Views:140The article is a review of the literature concerning the time series of the unemployment rate, and of the economic explanations behind the tests of these time series. We seek to identify the theoretical explanations behind a possible unit root in unemployment time series. We argue that the main difficulty faced by these unit root tests is the change in labor market institutions. The ffects of institutional changes make the traditional tests rather weak, while the panel unit root tests oversimplify the economics of the question. Our conclusion is that the possible application of the tests developed theoretically for nearly unit root processes seems to offer a way out of this dilemma.
Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classifications: C22, E24
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Classical liberalism, democracy, and economic growth: a hypothesis about the Lipset hypothesis
5-30Views:263Does economic growth create democracy, as suggested by the proposition known as the Lipset hypothesis? According to this paper, for the Lipset hypothesis to be valid, it is sufficient for an ideological and a technological condition to be fulfilled. The ideological condition is that the political agenda-setting ideology should be classical liberalism, which can be characterised as combining an aversion towards democracy with a positive assessment of economic and civil liberties. The technological condition is that the country in question should be advanced enough in the technological sense, because in such a country there is no economic growth without innovation maintained by a free market for ideas. Logit regressions run with panel data show that in the period up until the early 20th century a higher per capita income increases the probability of a democratic regime change, but afterwards it does not. The explanation is that before the early 20th century the two conditions were met, but they were not met in those countries that were about to become democratic after the first two decades of the 20th century.
Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) codes: D70, O11, O43
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Growth theory from an Austiran institutional perspective
157-174Views:125Perhaps the one fundamental question of growth theory is why some countries are poor while others are rich. The paper identifies two main lines of research approaching this question, by applying the social analysis of Williamson, and points out that both approaches give an asymmetric answer. The paper applies a critique, which was formulated in the theory of the firm, and compares it with a transaction cost approach. According to this critique, the one approach to economic growth lays too much emphasis on technology, while the other neglects the technological side and emphasizes only the transaction costs and incentives. This paper argues that a new approach, based on the insights of modern Austrian economics, is able to integrate these two sides.
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Market institutions precede market beliefs: a test with cross-country regressions
3-30Views:301The paper examines the literature on culture, economic growth and institutions to derive hypotheses about the relationships between market beliefs, institutions, and productivity. It then tests these hypotheses with cross-country regressions. First, it points out that each of the four cause-and-effect hypotheses of the possible relationships have an economic literature, in that market beliefs are seen as parts of culture. Second, the paper tests these hypotheses by making use of the fact that they consider different variables as exogenous ones. Measures of market beliefs are the coefficients of the country-dummies in the regressions run with individual data from the World Values Survey. The tests support the two hypotheses which hold that it is institutions, not market beliefs, that are exogenous.
Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) codes: L26, O43, P16
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Human capital and institutions in the early models of endogenous theory of growth
135-149Views:228The endogenous theory of growth, or, as it is often called, the new theory of growth has become a fully-developed theory within about twenty years. The original goal of the theory was to offer better explanations for facts than traditional theories. However, this was only partly achieved. If this is so, then what are the proceeds of the whole theory? The study aims at proving that though the endogenous theory does not offer a much better explanation for facts, it has deepened our understanding of economic growth and incorporated factors in the formal theory, which so far have only been dealt with by "softer" branches of the theory of growth.