Impact of EU- FDI on Economic Growth in Middle Eastern Countries
This paper develops a simultaneous equations model to test the process of interaction between foreign direct investment, exports and economic growth in three Middle Eastern countries: Egypt, Jordan, Oman, and test for any possible feedback effects. Most of the FDI in these countries flows from the EU. The simultaneous equations model results suggest that higher rates of economic growth result in a greater inflow of foreign capital. The regression results also suggest that interest rate differentials exert a much stronger effect than economic growth on the attraction of foreign capital in the case of Egypt. However, this variable does not seem to play a significant role in the case of Oman. Moreover, the simultaneous equations model results suggest that there is a feedback effect in the relationship between economic growth and capital inflow in all sample countries. A greater inflow of foreign capital leads to growth in the exports of good and services. The expansion in exports leads to growth in GNP, which in turn, encourages the attraction of more foreign capital.
An initial push for successful transition from import substitution to export-orientation in Taiwan and China: The FDI-led hypothesis
This paper examines the association between government policy interventions, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and exports in Taiwan and China by applying the LP (Lumsdaine and Papell, 1997), approach allowing two endogenous structural breaks. This paper further explores the cointegrating relationship between FDI and exports in Taiwan by using the Johansen and Juselius (1990) approach and causal relationships between FDI and exports in both Taiwan and China by using the Granger causality tests respectively. We found that significant trend breaks in the FDI and export time series detected in both countries coincided with extensive government interventions, mainly in the form of Export Processing Zones (EPZ), encouraging FDI during a transition period from import substitution to export orientation. The results emerging from our research indicate no long-run cointegrating relationship in Taiwan and one-way causal relationship flows from exports to FDI in China and FDI to exports in Taiwan. The growing fear is that the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) involvement in deregulating EPZs may narrow the differences between the zones and the rest of the economy and prevent new firms from entering the zones. The EPZs may no longer be the transitional strategy for poor/developing countries.
Strategy and Manipulation in Medieval Elections
There are many goals in developing electoral protocols, including a desire for a system which is transparent, in that it is clear what the rule or procedure to follow is; nonmanipulable, in that it is not in a person’s best interest to misrepresent their preferences; honest, in the sense that it elects the ‘right’ candidate; and not open to strategizing, i.e., bribery or collusion. However, these desiderata are in tension with each other: Often, transparent electoral procedures are the least strategy resistant, and many honest procedures encourage manipulation. Thus a balance between these different goals must be sought. In modern times, since the seminal result on vote manipulation, the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem [5, 6], much attention has been devoted to developing voting rules where manipulation is never in the best interest of the voters [4] or which are computationally too complex for the average bounded agent to be able to manipulate [1]. This focus on computational aspects of electoral methods is one of the hallmarks of modern studies on voting. But pursuit of these goals is not restricted to modern times: Those participating in elections in the Middle Ages also sought transparency, non-manipulability, honesty, and strategyproofness in so far as these properties can be consistently expressed in a single procedure. However, given the lack of computational sophistication in the Middle Ages, alternate approaches were needed in order to promote honesty, discourage strategizing, etc. These approaches can be classified as either external (constraints introduced outside of the electoral procedure, such as incentives for coming to consensus quickly) or internal (constraints introduced within the electoral procedure, such as voting rules which cannot be manipulated without adverse effects, or which are too difficult for the average bounded agent to manipulate). Surveying examples of both approaches in the context of medieval ecclesiastical and secular elections provides an interesting comparison to modern electoral procedures. Elections in the Middle Ages were used for the same reasons that they are today: To select suitable candidate(s) for a particular office, duty, or obligation. However, it is important to note that the term electio was used in the Middle Ages in a broader sense than our modern ‘election’. Its primary sense was ‘selection’ or ‘choice’, and only secondarily ‘election’ in the modern sense. Thus, many records which purportedly discuss elections are not discussing elections of the type which interests us. We can identify four categories of medieval electoral processes: (1) Election by an external authority having no direct interest in the election; (2) Indirect election, where electors name other electors who then select or elect the officials; (3) Election by lot; and (4) Election by ballot. Elections of the first and third types are generally computationally uninteresting; the first type corresponds to dictatorial voting rules, and the third type collapses to probability theory. In general, interesting voting methods are found only in the fourth type, election by ballot, though they can also occur in indirect election.