COVID-19 economic stimulus packages, tourism industry and external debt: The influence of extreme poverty.

The COVID-19 outbreak has had a catastrophic effect on the tourism sector and poverty alleviation efforts. This is especially the case, given the crucial role the tourism sector plays in poverty alleviation and the generation of foreign exchange earnings. This study investigates the moderating influence of extreme poverty on the underlying link between the size of the tourism industry and COVID-19 Economic Stimulus Packages (ESPs) while accounting for the influence of external debt. The results show that tourism-dependent economies with a larger share of individuals living in extreme poverty introduced larger ESPs to cushion the impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak. In addition, economies with larger external debt have less fiscal and monetary leeway to alleviate the negative effects of the COVID-19 outbreak.

(In)tolerância como política: os discursos de direita e de esquerda no facebook / (In)tolerance as policy: the rightist and leftist discourses on facebook / (In)tolerancia como política: los discursos de la derecha y la izquierda en facebook

Este estudo tem como objetivo analisar traços da mentalidade potencialmente autoritária a partir do discurso de usuários do Facebook vinculados a páginas de cunho político autodeclarado de direita e de esquerda no Brasil. A Netnografia é utilizada como aporte metodológico para imersão on-line nas páginas "Eu era Direita e não sabia" e "Jovens de Esquerda", selecionadas por meio do Facebook Audience Insights, ferramenta disponibilizada pelo Facebook. Delas, foram extraídas oito postagens com maior engajamento (número de comentários, curtidas e compartilhamentos), identificadas pelo Netvizz. Foram coletados 3.489 comentários, os quais foram organizados em um corpus textual submetido ao software IRAMUTEQ e analisados sob a perspectiva da análise crítica imanente da teoria crítica. Como resultado, apresenta-se a forma como o pensamento autoritário se manifesta na racionalização da sociedade contemporânea e nas práticas discursivas em redes sociais on-line, enraizada no âmbito sociopolítico brasileiro, ameaçando o processo democrático e a construção de uma sociedade plural e liberta.(AU)

This study aims to analyze traits of the potentially authoritarian mentality from the speech of Facebook users linked to political pages self-declared as rightist and leftist in Brazil. Netnography is used as a methodological contribution for online immersion in the pages "Eu era Direita e não sabia" and "Jovens de Esquerda" selected via Facebook Audience Insights, a tool provided by Facebook. From these, eight posts with greater engagement (number of comments, likes and shares), identified by Netvizz, were extracted. We collected 3,489 comments, which were organized in a textual corpus submitted to IRAMUTEQ software and analyzed from the perspective of immanent critical analysis of Critical Theory. As a result, we present the way in which authoritarian thinking manifests itself in the rationalization of contemporary society and in discursive practices in online social networks, rooted in the Brazilian socio-political sphere, threatening the democratic process and the construction of a plural and free society.(AU)

Este estudio tiene como objetivo analizar las huellas de la mentalidad potencialmente autoritaria a partir de los discursos de usuarios en Facebook vinculados a páginas políticas autodeclaradas de derecha y de izquierda en Brasil. La netnografía se utiliza como marco metodológico para la inmersión en línea en las páginas "Eu era Direita e não sabia" y "Jovens de Esquerda", seleccionadas por Facebook Audience Insights, herramienta proporcionada por Facebook. Se extrajeron las ocho publicaciones con mayor compromiso (número de comentarios, gustos y compartidas), identificadas por Netvizz. Se recogieron 3.489 comentarios, los cuales fueron organizados en un corpus textual sometido al software IRAMUTEQ y analizado bajo la perspectiva del análisis crítico inmanente de la teoría crítica. Los resultados presentan la forma en que el pensamiento autoritario se manifiesta en la racionalización de la sociedad contemporánea y en prácticas discursivas en redes sociales en línea, arraigada en el ámbito sociopolítico brasileño, que amenazan el proceso democrático y la construcción de una sociedad plural y liberada.(AU)

Financial sector development, external debt, and Turkey's renewable energy consumption.

The primary aim of this paper is to provide fresh evidence by testing the linkage between renewable energy consumption, financial development, and external debts in Turkey, using the Bootstrap ARDL test (McNown et al. 2018). The Bootstrap ARDL test is desired over traditional co-integration tests due to its ability to predict when resolving power and size limitation issues, and its corresponding features, which have not been addressed by traditional co-integration tests. The ARDL testing model is employed to investigate the coefficients amongst the selected variables. The findings from the ARDL test illustrate that there is a positive linkage between renewable consumption and Turkey's financial development. Furthermore, the outcomes illustrate that the coefficient of external debt is negative and significant. The results indicate that policymakers in Turkey must use the growth of the financial sector to minimize environmental degradation by promoting investment in energy and production through renewable energy sources. Furthermore, the research suggested that Turkey's policy-makers should reformulate the external debt policy to reduce the negative influence of external debt on sustainable energy development. This could potentially be achieved by removing any restrictions on international capital flow or barriers on foreign capital and foreign investment. Hence, the findings of this paper provide valuable conclusions and recommendations for Turkey heading to sustainable and green financial sector.

External debt and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: Does governance matter?

This study empirically examined the impact of external debt on economic growth. Also, the interactions of governance, external debt and external debt volatility were further investigated with emphasize on the interective effect of governance as proxied by Kaufmann, D., (2007) quality governance measures such as; government effectiveness, political stability, voice and accountability, regulatory quality and corruption control on economic growth. The study utilized annual time series data, focusing on thirty selected Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries for the period 1997 to 2020. The Dynamic System Generalised Method of Moments estimation technique was adopted while controlling for conventional sources of economic growth. Empirical findings from the study reveal that external debt and external debt volatility have a negative and significant impact on economic growth in SSA. Furthermore, the interaction of governance indicators, external debt and its volatility, had a positive impact on economic growth in SSA. This study recommends that SSA government should endeavor to avoid excessive external debt to promote the regions' capacity to invest in her financial prospects, and to circumvent the danger of repayment of loans using her small income. The SSA governments should also improve the quality of governance by ensuring political stability, minimising corruption, implementing sound policies and regulations that can permit and promote economic growth through the development of the private sector. The governments must ensure that every borrowed debt is properly supervised and utilised for its purposes to spur economic growth. More so, the Guidotti-Greenspan rule of Reserve adequacy should be applied to keep excess borrowings in check.

Analysis of the Impact of External Debt on Health in an Emerging Asian Economy: Does FDI Matter?

In this study, our main objective is to find the impact of FDI and external debt on health outcomes in emerging Asian economies from 1991 to 2019. To that end, we have collected data for seven economies: Bangladesh, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka, China, and India. We have relied on the panel ARDL (PARDL) method for empirical analysis. The study's findings confirmed that the debt has increased infant mortality and decreased life expectancy in emerging Asian economies in the long run. On the other side, the FDI causes infant mortality to fall and life expectancy to rise in the long run in emerging Asian economies. Similarly, the health expenditures also reduced the infant mortality rate, though the impact is insignificant, and improved the life expectancy in emerging Asian economies. The causal analysis confirmed the two-way causality between health expenditure, infant mortality, and health expenditure and debt.

Do hostile takeover threats matter? Evidence from credit ratings.

Exploiting a novel measure of takeover vulnerability mainly based on state legislations, we explore the effect of hostile takeover threats on credit ratings. Our results reveal that companies with more takeover exposure are assigned significantly better credit ratings. In particular, a rise in takeover vulnerability by one standard deviation results in an improvement in credit ratings by 7.89%. Our findings are consistent with the view that the disciplinary mechanism associated with the takeover market mitigates agency problems and ultimately raises firm value. Further analysis corroborates our conclusion, including propensity score matching, entropy balancing, and an instrumental-variable analysis. As our proxy for takeover susceptibility is plausibly exogenous, our results are more likely to show a causal effect.

The relationship between external debt and ecological footprint in SANE countries: insights from Kónya panel causality approach.

There are many studies on the relationship between energy consumption and various environmental indicators in Africa, and SANE countries in particular. However, there is a dearth of studies that relate external debt to CO2 emissions, and even the ecological footprint, which is a more comprehensive environmental indicator. As such, this paper applies advanced estimation techniques to explore the role of external debt in the famous energy-growth-environmental nexus in SANE countries from 1970 to 2018. The findings from the Augmented Mean Group estimator indicate that economic growth and energy consumption increase environmental pressure in the SANE countries. On country-level results, the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis, monotonic increase, and monotonic decrease for ecological footprint holds in South Africa, Algeria, and Nigeria, respectively. Also, the results reveal that external debt increases the ecological footprint in South Africa and Algeria. Furthermore, the Kónya (2006) bootstrap country-level Granger causality test shows that ecological footprint is sensitive to economic growth and energy consumption in South Africa and Nigeria, while economic growth is sensitive to the ecological footprint in both Algeria and Nigeria. This study argues that stringent policy suggestions should be centred on reducing the overdependence on non-renewable energy sources since it underscores the major deteriorating state of environmental quality across SANE countries.

Linking external debt and renewable energy to environmental sustainability in heavily indebted poor countries: new insights from advanced panel estimators.

There are numerous studies on the linkage between renewable energy and environmental sustainability. These studies have tried to show how renewable energy is relevant in curbing the environmental difficulties associated with climate change. However, the role of external debt is seldom considered in the nexus. As such, this study applies advanced estimation techniques compatible with two core panel data issues (cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity) to investigate the role of external debt in the growth-energy-emissions relationship in thirty-three heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC) from 1990 to 2015. The findings of the study reveal that economic growth increases emissions thereby degrading the environment, while renewable energy ensures environmental sustainability by abating CO2 emissions. Further findings from the study suggest that external debt increases CO2 emissions in HIPC across the three estimators. The country-wise results reveal that economic growth deteriorates the environment in all the countries except in Burkina Faso, Congo, Mali, Mauritania, Nicaragua, and The Gambia. Also, the result reveals a bidirectional causal relationship between external debt and economic growth, CO2 emissions and economic growth, external debt and CO2 emissions, and renewable energy and economic growth. This study argues that the consumption of clean energy sources and strong institutional quality could help mitigate the trade-offs between economic growth and environmental quality and also curtail the negative effects of external debt on the environment. The limitations of the study and directions for future research are discussed.

Achieving HIV targets by 2030: the possibility of using debt relief funds for sustainable HIV treatment in sub-Saharan Africa.

This paper assesses the possibility of using debt relief funds to sustain HIV treatment in sub-Saharan Africa, suppress transmission, and reach global goals to quell the epidemic by 2030. The cost of providing antiretroviral treatment is a huge burden on African countries. Concerns for Africa's capacity to keep pace with global advances are well founded. By analysing levels of 'debt distress', health expenditure per capita, and HIV antiretroviral therapy requirements in sub-Saharan African countries, the need for innovative finance with international cooperation emerges clearly. In addition to the HIV epidemic, African countries may become more vulnerable to disasters and other public health diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, Ebola and COVID-19, especially without alternatives to current means of financing. Relief from debt service payments could release funds for sub-Saharan African countries to support universal HIV antiretroviral treatment with sustainable results.

Testing the role of external debt in environmental degradation: empirical evidence from Turkey.

This study investigates the role of external debt stock in Turkey, which has suffered from heavy (external and domestic) debt stock for many years. Annual data from 1960 to 2013 was analyzed using time series analysis in order to study this. The results confirm the validity of the conventional environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) in the case of Turkey. However, this study also found that Turkey's external debt stock did not influence the Turkish economy's long-term EKC behavior. Fortunately, the results suggest that there are important interactions among external debt stock, CO2 emissions, energy consumption, and real income; that is, changes in external debt volume precede changes in these aggregates' volumes.

The impact of debt relief on under five mortality rate in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This paper examines the impact of the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative on under five mortality rate (U5MR) in Sub-Saharan Africa. The HIPC Initiative involves debt forgiveness and the redirection of funds that were meant to service external debt towards the provision of social services and poverty reduction in eligible countries. The Initiative is akin to a natural experiment since some countries benefited while some did not, and the timing of debt forgiveness varied across countries. We exploit these variations to identify the impact of HIPC Initiative on child mortality using a dynamic panel data estimator. We find that participation in HIPC Initiative is associated with statistically significant decreases in U5MR. On the other hand, the impact of actual debt cancelled is statistically insignificant.

El museo de la deuda externa / The museum of external debt

El propósito de este museo consiste en difundir y fortalecer lo que considera uno de los pilares de la universidad, la extensión universitaria, como también la acción mancomunada con su Facultad de Ciencias Económicas.

Capital-labor struggle: the unspoken causes of the crises.

The literature on the causes of the current financial and economic crises often fails to consider both the causal role of the conflict between capital and labor, and this conflict's continued effect. This article analyzes the evolution of the conflict and its implications for the distribution of income during the post-World War II period. Especially emphasizing the relationship between the U.S. and European economies, it examines the genesis and development of the governing structures of the Eurozone as determining factors in the increasing gap between capital and labor. The history of the European economic trajectory and the current German financial leadership provide important context for the analysis. Evidence is provided that this conflict between capital and labor is at the roots of the current financial and economic crisis, a thesis has been dramatically underexposed in the current scientific literature.

Reforms in the Greek pharmaceutical market during the financial crisis.

INTRODUCTION: Following the financial crisis of 2008, Greece has been facing severe fiscal problems associated with high public debt and deficit. Given their significant contribution to public sector expenditure, part of the effort to reduce public expenditure has involved a focus on pharmaceutical markets. METHODS: Our aim is to provide an overview of recent policy changes in the Greek pharmaceutical market as a response to the crisis. We also discuss other potential measures that can be implemented. The recommendations are relevant to European countries facing debt crises, but also to any other country, as improving efficiency makes funds available to be used on other interventions. RESULTS: In 2010 and 2011, following the debt crisis and the agreement with the IMF, EU and ECB, the Greek government introduced several policy measures aimed at cost-containment. These changes included (a) price cuts, (b) the re-introduction of a positive list, (c) changes in the profit margins of pharmacies and wholesalers, and (d) tenders for hospital drugs. As a result, public drug expenditure decreased from €5.09 billion in 2009 to €4.25 billion in 2010 and €4.10 billion in 2011. CONCLUSION: As the need to cut expenditure becomes more urgent, seeking efficiency is possibly the only option for countries that do not wish to compromise quality of healthcare and public health. However, efficiency and cost containment are not only about introducing new policies, but also about the enforcement of existing laws and fighting corruption.