Walter Korpi argues in a previous issue of Challenge (March/April 2000) that Swedish economists' claim that Sweden's growth performance has been inferior to that of other industrialized countries is at odds with the facts. Since Sweden has not grown slowly relative to other countries, there is...

Iranian government budget on military over the last decade has been higher than the average of the world. The current increasing international sanctions aim to reduce the military capabilities and capacities of the Iranian government. In this study, we analyze the response of the Iranian economy...

In the growth literature, there is a nonlinear relationship between economic growth and government size, which is similar to an inverted U-shaped curve. This curve can be used to determine the optimum share of government expenditures. This paper, using threshold panel approach, attempts to...

The notion that more government expenditures can stimulate growth is controversial. The causation between government expenditures and economic growth in Thailand is examined using the Granger causality test. There is no cointegration between government expenditures and economic growth. A...

This paper uses a sample of 36 countries for the time period 1990-2011 in order to examine the relationship between countries’ electricity consumption from renewable sources and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) levels. Several nonparametric techniques are applied to investigate the effect of...

By applying conditional and unconditional data envelopment analysis (DEA) models along side with statistical inference using bootstrap techniques; this paper investigates the link between China’s carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) environmental efficiency and its economic growth (measured in GNI...

This paper presents three local nonparametric forecasting methods that are able to utilize the isolated periods of revised real-time PCE and core PCE for 62 vintages within a historic framework with respect to the nonparametric exclusion-from-core inflation persistence model. The flexibility,...

Using parametric and nonparametric methods, inflation persistence is examined through the relationship between the exclusions-from-core measure of inflation and total inflation for two sample periods and five in-sample forecast horizons ranging from one to twelve quarters over fifty vintages of...

Using parametric and nonparametric methods, inflation persistence is examined through the relationship between exclusions-from-core inflation and total inflation for two sample periods and in five in-sample forecast horizons ranging from one quarter to three years over fifty vintages of...