We estimate the long-run discount factor for a group of developed and developing countries through standard methodology incorporating adaptive expectations of inflation. We find that the discount factor of developing countries is relatively nearer to unity as compared to that of the developed...

This paper uses a unique survey questionnaire to assess the impact of the 2002 French tax cut on consumption. I find that the proportion of "spender" consumers as opposed to "Ricardian" consumers is relatively high, with 52.7 per cent of the households declaring that they consume their tax cuts....

Macrodynamic models with finite lifetime and selfish individuals may feature (dynamically) inefficient equilibria, while models with infinite lifetime and altruistic individuals cannot. Do strong intergenerational altruism and high life expectancy prevent the occurence of inefficient equilibria?...

Raising real interest rates has been cited as a way to increase private saving, and thus provide the resources for growth. But this may not be a viable approach in the poorest developing countries in which most people live at subsistence level. In these situations, consumption is not very...

Educational investment is an engine of economic development in Eritrea and thus financing education is like a blood to human body; while this is widely accepted, little empirical research has been conducted on the topic. This paper analyses patterns of educational finances in secondary education...

Hall (1978) has stimulated considerable controversy and empirical work on testing the permanent income hypothesis (PIH). Much of the empirical work is on the developed countries where opportunities for inter-temporal substitution are generally higher than in the developing countries. Therefore,...

Many people pay attention to media reports of the US stock market’s performance. Using a data-based thought experiment, we cast the market’s recent highs and lows in an unusually unattractive light. The result matters because the economic and political factors that make it relevant are...

In countries where the political-economy incentives that governments face do not foster prudent revenue management, national revenue funds (NRFs) should not be used to impose optimal expenditure paths. In such countries, NRFs should instead be used as policy tools for re-aligning the diverging...

National accountants treat as consumption all expenditure incurred in purchasing consumer durables and in forming intangible assets such as knowledge, education and good health. The case is made in this paper that the national accounts measures of saving and investment understate both the extent...

This is a detailed comment on a discussion paper of Munawar Iqbal published in an earlier issue of the same journal.It argues that it is difficult to quantify israf (frivolous expenditure on consumption.Therefore, a better way of analysing the impact of israf would be to start with a no-israf...