Applied Econometrics

Major arguments within export diversification parlance has been that, if developing countries do not put in place strategic measures to mitigate the current persistent depreciation in the price of  crude-oil in the global oil market, they will experience untold economic hardship in the near future. Based on this, the paper empirically examined the impact of export diversification philosophy on sustainable economic growth in Nigeria from 1984 to 2018. The study adopted the Autoregressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) model to ascertain the short and long-run impact of export diversification as well as other determining factors which affect the growth of the Nigerian economy. The regression results revealed that, the extent of Trade Openness had indirect (negative) impact on the present and past values of GDP Per Capita. Conversely, IMF Export Diversification Index, Foreign investment inflows (% of GDP inflows), and Real Exchange Rate all had direct (positive) impact on the present and past values GDP Per Capita in Nigeria. Notably, only IMF Export Diversification and extent of Trade Openness passed the test of statistical significance on the short run. The study recommended that; the Nigerian government should intensify her export diversification philosophy by expanding her product reach. They may as well engage in export subsidization as well as create a more free trade business environment. However, this must be done with caution due to the fact that increased trade openness may make an economy to be more susceptible to global shock.

The study provides new evidence on the effect of financial openness on FDI inflows in Nigeria using data that span the period from 1981 to 2016. The FMOLS estimator is employed. The study finds that financial openness is negatively and significantly related to FDI inflows, but its interaction with political regime is positive and significant. This suggests that the effect of liberalization of capital accounts on FDI inflows is regime-dependent: the more democratic the government is, the more FDI the country attracts. It also finds that trade openness, expansion of domestic market, infrastructural development and acceptable levels of inflation enhance the attractiveness of the economy to FDI. In view of the evidence, the need for the government to be more democratic, investment in infrastructural development, greater integration of the economy with the global market, expansion of domestic market size by way of enhancement of per capita income are recommended to enhance inflow of FDI to the country.

The evaluation of the efficient operational costs is one of the main requirements to the price
cap scheme adopted in Brazil since 1995 to regulate the electricity tariff. This work presents a
Bayesian stochastic frontier model and the results obtained for a sample with the 45 more
important Brazilian electricity distribution utilities.

In this article, we studied 13 parametric CAViaR models for 27 stock's indices concerning the bias-variance dilemma, providing an empirical golden rule for choosing the CAViaR structure over unknown information distributional features of financial data. Our findings pointed out that the adaptive model should be chosen when no prior information is available since it presented the smallest MSE in 23 of 27 assets. Furthermore, we also noted that in most cases, the CAViaR models overestimate the validation value-at-risk. This might not be troublesome from a regulators' point of view, since firms and financial institutions that would use those models will likely overestimate risk and hence adopt more conservative politics. However, from the firm's point of view, this means that they will likely operate in a suboptimal risk regime which.

According to World Bank statistics reported in 2016, the Gross Domestic Product per capita (RGDP) in Nigeria was 2,548.20 United States Dollar (USD) in 2015. Also, Nigeria's highest ever GDP recorded was 568.508 billion USD in 2014, with this exceptional growth in the economy, the World Bank and National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) forecast GDP for 2016 to be very high but unfortunately, the GDP published by NBS and CBN as at June 2016 was 22.26 billion USD, which was the lowest ever since returning to democracy in 1999. This sharp fall in GDP reduced Nigeria GDP per capita drastically. It is based on this we employed Dynamic Multiple Linear Regression Model to fit a model of RGDP of Nigeria using some world development indicators as explanatory variables. Data was collected from 1970 to 2015 from World Bank database and National Bureaus of Statistics (NBS) on the six World Development Indicators (WDI), total Import, official exchange rate, broad money, inflation rate, total natural resources rents and foreign direct investment. The dynamic weighted least square (DWLS) was used rather than the dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS). The result of the analysis shows that imports of goods and services positively affect RGDP of Nigeria significantly, while other explanatory variables negatively affect RGDP significantly. Based on this result, we recommend that rather than closing boarder to imports of goods and services, we need to restructure the economy, so that, Nigerian made goods can compete favorably with the imported goods and services, thereby reduce importation naturally instead of forcefully halt importation.

This pepper proposes estimates of verification of Okun’s law for developed and developing countries, namely:  France, Italy, Spain, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and South Africa, over a period that lasts from 1991-2020 for the two variables: "Growth rate" and "Unemployment rate". Indeed, the existence of a linear relationship by the ARDL model for all the countries except for Italy, as well as the Okun relationship is accepted.

Molnár Gabriella - Zuti Bence

Egyetemi kontextusú globális-lokális paradoxon a tanuló régiók keretfeltételei között: a „negyedik generációs” egyetemek irányába

Napjainkban felértékelődött a tudás szerepe, felgyorsultak az innovációk, a tudásalapú gazdaság és társadalom korszakában élünk. Az egyetemek is jelentős szerepet játszanak ebben a folyamatban, a fejlett országokban nemzetközi sikereket érnek el, nemzetközi hallgatói körrel és kutatási eredményekkel rendelkeznek, emellett szorosan beágyazódtak a helyi gazdaságba is. Napi kapcsolatot ápolnak az ipari szférával és a kormányzattal, tartós versenyelőnyeik a lokális térségben gyökereznek. Ezzel szemben Magyarországon még nem tapasztalható ez a kettősség, számos esetben ugyanis ezek az egyetemek a helyi gazdaságtól, társadalomtól, munkaerőpiactól elhatárolva tevékenykednek, ugyanakkor nemzetközi sikerekre törekednek. Ebből a problémakörből kiindulva jelen dolgozat elsődleges célja, hogy megvizsgálja, megadhatóak-e egy nemzetközileg sikeres, ugyanakkor a helyi gazdaság és társadalom igényeit a lehető legnagyobb mértékben kielégítő egyetem ismérvei. E kérdés megválaszolásához három fő fejezeten át vezet az út. A dolgozat leíró jellegű módszertant alkalmaz, a témához szorosan kapcsolódó szakirodalom bemutatása után felvázolja az egyetemek sikerességi faktorait egyetemi rangsorok és nemzetközi benchmark példák alapján, mindezeket felhasználva végül kísérletet tesz arra, hogy megadja egy sikeres „negyedik generációs” egyetem keretfeltételeit. Modellek felállítására kerül sor, melyek megmutatják, hogyan is kellene kinéznie egy „negyedik generációs” egyetemnek, hogyan értelmezhető a globális-lokális paradoxon egyetemi kontextusban, illetve milyen mértékű szerepet tölt be egy „negyedik generációs” egyetem egy újraértelmezett Triple Helix modellben. Mindezek vizsgálata a tanuló régiók keretfeltételei között történik. Kutatásunk egyik legfontosabb megállapítása, hogy az egyetemek esetében is definiálható a globális-lokális paradoxon, hasonlóan a vállalatokhoz, az egyetemek nemzetközi törekvései mellett tartós sikereik forrásai a lokális térségben gyökereznek. Vizsgálódásunk további következtetése, hogy a vállalatok iparági versenyelőnyei forrásainak kategorizálása párhuzamba állítható az egyetemek versenyelőnyei forrásainak osztályozásával, definiálhatók a Porter-féle rombusz modell tényezői egyetemi dimenzióban, valamint a Triple Helix újraértelmezésével egy olyan modellt kapunk, melyben az egyetem kapja a leghangsúlyosabb szerepet, és az egész modell a helyi gazdaság és társadalom keretein belül értelmezhető.


Gabriella Molnár - Bence Zuti

Global-local Paradox in the Context of Universities within the Framework of Learning Regions: Towards the “Fourth Generation” Universities

Nowadays the role of knowledge is revalued, innovations are created even more swiftly, and we live in the era of knowledge-based economy and society. The universities play a notable role in this process as they achieve international success in developed countries, possess a number of foreign students and internationally acknowledged research results; meanwhile they integrate themselves into the local economy. They have day-to-day relations with the industrial sector and the government as their permanent competitive edge resides in the local area. Contrarily, this duality cannot be recognized in Hungary, namely the local universities function separately from the local economy, society and labor market, at the same time they aim to achieve international success. Based on this the primary goal of the paper is to examine if there are describable criteria of a university that is both internationally successful and completely satisfactory regarding the demands of local economy and society. To answer this, we compiled three main chapters. In the paper we applied descriptive methodology, after the introduction of related literature; we outline the success factors of universities with the help of university rankings and international good practices. By using these, we make an attempt to establish the framework conditions of a successful “fourth generation” university. We generate models that reveal how the “fourth generation” university should function, how can the global-local paradox be interpreted into a university context and what role does a “fourth generation” university play in a redefined Triple Helix model. All of these examinations are done within the framework of learning regions. One of the most important statements of our research is that, the global-local paradox can be interpreted in the context of universities and similarly to enterprises the permanent resources of success reside in local areas aside from international endeavors of universities. Another conclusion of our research is that the categorization of industrial competitiveness of enterprises can be parallel to the classification of competitiveness of universities, so the factors of Porter’s diamond model can be defined within the dimensions of universities. Furthermore with the reconsideration of the Triple Helix we obtain a model in which the university has the most emphasized role within the framework of local economy and society.