Browsing by Author "Dunne, John Paul"
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- ItemOpen AccessThe economics of military spending, conflict and growth(2015) Tian, Nan; Dunne, John PaulThis dissertation is a collection of studies on the economics of peace and security. Chapter one introduces the roles military spending and conic play in affecting economic growth, while also considering the causes of civil conflict. Chapter two investigates the relationship between military expenditure and economic growth, considering group heterogeneity and non-linearity. Using an exogenous growth model and dynamic panel approach, the results suggest military burden to have a negative effect on growth. Breaking the overall panel down into various sub-samples shows estimates that are remark-ably consistent with the full panel. These results provide strong support for the argument that military spending has an adverse effect on growth. There are, however, some intriguing results suggesting that for certain types of countries military burden has no negative growth effect. Chapter three deals with the transnational spatial spillover effects of conflict on neighbouring countries. It moves beyond using geographical dis-tance as a spillover measurement and allows for economic and political distances. The initial empirical results suggest that conflict has a strong negative spillover effect on directly contiguous countries growth, but no significant impacts were observed for non-contiguous countries. When economic and political factors are considered, this result remains, but the spillover effect is smaller. While the impact of conflict remains devastating, it is important to take other factors into account as studies using only geographical distance may be overestimating the impact on neighbours. The fourth chapter examines the determinants of civil war, using a zero-inflated modelling approach to deal with excess zeroes in the dependent variable. Traditional probit and logit models have limited capacity in dealing with this issue and can create misleading results, which is illustrated through replicating published work. A general greed-grievance model is then estimated giving further support to using zero-inflated models. While the standard probit models tend to emphasise opportunity variables, consistent in other studies, the zero inflated model gives supports both opportunity and grievance variables. In particular, ethnicity, democracy and inequality are found to play a significant role in civil war prevalence. Finally, chapter five summarises the findings of the dissertation, providing some policy recommendations, concluding remarks and discusses future research opportunities.
- ItemOpen AccessFirm growth, survival and productivity in South Africa(2017) Masenyetse, Rethabile Francis; Dunne, John Paul; Black, AnthonyIn developing economies, the existence of a healthy industrial structure is vital to the pursuit of long term policy objectives of employment and sustainable economic growth. This makes it important to understand the dynamics of firm survival and growth. There has been little attention on the topic in developing countries because of data limitations, which prevalent in most developing countries except for few countries with established stock exchanges such as South Africa. This thesis studies the relationship between firm growth, survival and productivity using South Africa as the case study and fills the gap in industrial organisation literature by providing new empirical evidence on developing countries. The first paper analyses the changing size distribution, concentration rates and reasons for non-survival. The data on companies listed in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) during the period 2000-2010 is used. Firm sales is adopted as the main measure of firm size while assets are used for comparison purposes. Following the Law of Proportionate Effects (LPE) framework, it evaluates of the relative growth rates of large and small companies in general and at sectoral and industrial levels. The result indicates that smaller firms are growing faster than larger ones, and more interestingly it is the smallest of the small and medium firms that are growing the fastest indicating that the industrial structure in South Africa is quite healthy. This finding is robust to correction of potential econometric problems of sample selection bias, growth persistence and heteroscedasticity. The second paper considers the patterns of growth and survival and specifies a simple logit binary survival model that allows for firm and industry specific characteristics as determinants of survival. The model is improved upon using the non-parametric Kaplan-Meier product limit method and estimating Cox proportional hazard model. The results indicate that large firms, high leverage and profitability operating in the primary sector have higher probability of survival in South Africa. This is robust after taking into account the global financial crisis of 2008-2009. The last paper tests the validity of the link between firm finance and total factor productivity. Using leverage and liquidity are the indicators of finance, the results from panel data estimation indicates that low leverage firms are more productive compared to the high leverage, while the low liquid firms are less productive compared to high liquid firms. The results were subjected to a number of robustness tests to address potential econometric issues that may invalidate the findings.
- ItemMetadata onlyGovernment spending, corruption and economic growth(Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, ) d'Agostino, Giorgio; Dunne, John Paul; Pieroni, Luca
- ItemMetadata onlyMilitary expenditure and economic growth: A survey(The Economics of Peace and Security Journal, ) Dunne, John Paul; Tian, Nan
- ItemMetadata onlyMilitary Expenditure, Economic Growth and HeterogeneityDunne, John Paul; Tian, Nan
- ItemOpen AccessMilitary spending, economic growth and endogeneity a panel analysis 1988-2010(2013) Tian, Nan; Dunne, John PaulThis paper examines the impact of military expenditure on economic growth on a large balanced panel, using an exogenous growth model and dynamic panel data methods for 104 countries over the period 1988-2010. The prime objective of the paper is to consider the possibility of non-linearity, group heterogeneity and endogeneity within the sample. Having estimated and appraised a full sample, it is stratified based upon a range of potentially relevant factors; different levels of income, conflict experience, natural resource abundance, openness and aid. Following the stratification process, a set of instrumental variables are taken for military spending. Using 2SLS and a dynamic Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) method, the sample is regressed to identify for military expenditure.