This paper studies the relevance of political stability on foreign direct investment (FDI) and the relevance of FDI on economic growth, in three panels. The first panel contains 11 very small economies; the second contains five well-developed and politically stable economies with highly positive FDI net inflows, while the third is a panel with economies that are prone to political violence or targeted by the terrorist attacks. We employ a Granger causality test and implement a vector autoregressive (VAR) framework within the panel setting. In order to test the sensitivity of the results and avoid robust errors, we employ an ARDL model for each of the countries within every panel. Based upon our results, we conclude that there is a long-term relationship between political stability and FDI for the panel of small economies, while we find no empiric evidence of such a relationship for both panels of larger and more developed economies. Similarly to the original hypothesis of Lucas (1990), we find that FDI outflows tend to go towards politically less stable countries. On the other hand, the empiric methodology employed did not find such conclusive evidence in the panels of politically more developed countries or in the small economies that this paper observes.

Abstract:The BRIC countries -Brazil, Russia, India, and China -are being considered as potential powerhouses of the world economy. These countries have formalized their cooperation, and later, with the joining of South Africa, became the BRICS. They are often perceived as proponents of a multipolar world, choosing multipolarity over unipolarity, and supporting political institutions and organizations, at the same time creating alternative financial institutions to the hegemonic ones (the IMF and the World Bank), still dominated by the developed economies of the Western countries. So, what about a different group of countries, called the MINT countries or simply the MINTs that are emerging, growing economies, are heterogeneous as BRICS, but not nearly as large and powerful, and are located on four different continents, with no formal cooperation between themselves such as the BRICS? This article analyses the basic economic trends in the MINT countries by analyzing the linear relationship between GDP as the dependent variable and household consumption, foreign direct investment and government consumption as the independent variables. The general model is as follows: Δ log GDP t = α 0 + α 1 Δ log FDI t + α 2 Δ log PC t + α 3 Δ log GC t +ε t . The analysis was conducted using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. By conducting this analysis, it is possible to conclude that the MINT countries have significant differences in regards to the statistical relevance of the chosen independent variables. One of the rare common traits of these four economies is that FDI does not seem to have a statistically significant impact on their development. This article concludes that the MINT countries may have a significant role in international relations as regional powers, but they do not have the economic or political traits necessary to challenge the BRICS countries significantly.

The paper studies the impact of political turbulence in the United Kingdom in 2016 and 2017 on selected relevant stock indexes. The empirical analysis consists of unit breakpoint tests. The potential points of structural break are determined based on an overview of occurrences of political instability from the Brexit referendum to the snap Parliamentary election of 2017. The paper concludes that the outcome of the referendum on Brexit caused a structural break that was visible in every stock index studied. On the other hand, the paper fails to find any evidence of a structural break caused by subsequent events, namely the decision to call the snap election or the outcome of the election itself. This implies that investors have accepted the UK decision to leave the EU and there was no further destabilization of the stock markets. It can be further concluded that the United Kingdom and the European Union need to address a deep political divide and find a way to coexist and mutually benefit in the period of negotiations and after the Brexit takes place

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Abstract:The problem of the relevance of human and natural capital, as well as the potential adverse effect of natural capital on economic growth, has gained increased attention in development economics. The aim of this paper is to assess, theoretically and empirically, the relevance of several forms of capital on economic growth in certain small economies that are dependent upon tourism or natural resources. The empirical framework is based on Impulse Response Functions obtained from Vector Autoregressive models in which we focus on the model where economic growth is the dependent variable for ten small economies that are dependent upon either tourism or natural resources. We find that there is evidence of the "natural resource curse", especially in the economies that have a strong dependence on resources that are easily substitutable and whose prices constantly fluctuate. We further find that in the majority of observed cases, the type of capital these small economies are most dependent on for their economic growth causes negative impulses in the majority of the observed periods. Therefore, the main policy recommendation should be to assure that even these small economies should strive towards further diversification and avoid dependence on only one segment of their economy.