Volume 49 / 2019
Human Development:“Can money buy Happiness?”
Author: Benjamin YAMB
Author: Jean Louis EKOMANE
Abstract: What is the relationship between the amount of money in circulation in an economy and the level of development of that economy? This is the question we seek to answer in this work. It falls within the scope of development monetary macroeconomics, applied to one hundred (100) countries selected among the 186 classified by the UNDP. This classification is done according to their Development index level, represented by the Human Development Index (HDI). For all these countries, we analyze the impact of money, measured by the macroeconomic liquidity ratio M2/GDP on HDI level. Empirical verification is based on data from the 2015 World Bank’s ranking. This aims at determining the meaning and degree of money impact on human being’s integral development. Our study finds that "money provides happiness" much more in poor countries than in rich ones, while this link is much more mitigated in emerging countries.
Classification-JEL: E51, I31, O11, O15, O57
Keywords: money, Human Development Index, happiness, poor and rich countries, BRICS
Infrastructure, Employment And Income Convergence
Author: Didit Welly UDJIANTO
Author: Joko SUSANTO
Author: PURWIYANTA
Abstract: This study analyses the income convergence in the Gunungkidul Region, Indonesia and the role of infrastructure and employment in supporting this convergence. The data published by the Central Bureau of Statistics is used in this study. Then, this study uses the regression analysis of dynamic panel data to see whether the poor district will tend to grow faster than rich ones so that all economies will eventually converge in terms of per capita income. The results show that there is an income convergence in Gunungkidul Region. The infrastructure and employment are a useful tool for supporting income convergence.
Classification-JEL: O18; R11
Keywords: infrastructure; employment; income; convergence; growth
Iterative data quality management system
Author: Svetlana JESIĻEVSKA
Author: Daina ŠĶILTERE
Abstract: High-quality data are the precondition for analyzing and using statistics and for guaranteeing the value of the data. In this paper, the Iterative data quality management system is proposed. The methodology consists of two methods developed by the authors - the Iterative method for the reducing the impact of outlying data points in 2015 and the Data Quality Scale in 2018. The novelty of the Iterative method for the reducing the impact of outliers is the following: an iterative approach for determining the outlying data points is proposed; outliers are determined considering the impact of conjoined factors; estimation of weight coefficients of the outliers and estimation of the total measurement error of the non-linear regression model is carried out. The Iterative method received the Young Statistician Prize of the International Association for Official Statistics (IAOS) in 2015. The Data Quality Scale has good expansibility and adaptability as makes it possible to evaluate the quality of data at various levels of detail: at indicators’ level, at the level of dimensions, and to determine the entire quality of data. The Data Quality Scale gives an opportunity to identify certain shortcomings of the quality of statistical data and to develop proposals to improve the quality of the data. The research results enrich the theoretical scope of the statistical data quality and lay a solid foundation for the future by establishing an assessment approach and studying evaluation algorithms.
Classification-JEL: C10, C80
Keywords: data quality, data quality dimensions, Data Quality Scale, Iterative method for reducing the impact of outlying data points
Curvatures of Productivity, Elasticities of the Output and Stages of Production
Author: Florin Marius PAVELESCU
Abstract: As a rule, the concept of marginal productivity is used in order to determine the efficient distribution of incomes or optimal levels for inputs allocations in the context of diminishing marginal returns. But the definition of the concept of the endogenous economic growth imposed the relaxation of assumptions on the feature of the marginal returns, admitting that it is possible, in certain situations, to deal with both increasing and decreasing marginal returns. This paper defines a neoclassical production function with one input, which admits both the increasing and decreasing marginal returns and, in certain manner, the existence of the Jevons paradox. The respective production function is then used for the analysis of the curvature of the marginal and average productivity and of the elasticity of the output. On this basis, we are able to reconfirm the neoclassical assumptions on the size of the elasticity of the output in the context of the decreasing marginal returns and output maximization, on the one hand, and to show that in the context of a convex curvature and of increasing of both average and marginal productivity the elasticity of the output is higher than 2, on the other hand. Also, it is propsed a redefinition of the notion of stages of production considering the features of the curvature of the average productivity and of the elasticity of the output.
Classification-JEL: B13, C02, D21, D24, J24
Keywords: non-constant marginal returns, third derivative, neoclassical production function, efficiency parameter, Jevons paradox, elasticity of the output, inflection point, stages of production