Five papers make up this issue. The first one, titled Money-Price Relationship in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Countries by Bedri Kamil Onur Tas investigates the money-price relationship in GCC countries and contributes to the literature by empirically examining the contemporaneous short-run relationship as indicated by economic theory. The empirical results indicate that the short-run relationship is identical in all countries but the long-run relationship is significantly different. These results have many policy implications for the monetary union of GCC countries. The central bank of the union should take into account the differences in the dynamic long-run relationship and the monetary dynamics are suitable for the union since the contemporaneous relationship is identical in all countries.
The second paper, titled Does Trade Openness Reduce Inflation? Empirical Evidence from Pakistan by Tahir Mukhtar inspects the Romer’s hypothesis in Pakistan. For this purpose multivariate cointegration and Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) techniques have been applied. The study covers the time period from 1960 to 2007. The empirical findings under cointegration test have shown that there is a significant negative long run relationship between inflation and trade openness, which confirms the existence of Romer’s Hypothesis in Pakistan.
The third paper, titled Training and Innovation among Knowledge-Based Companies in Malaysia by Izyani Zulkifli (1) examines the innovative efforts undertaken by knowledge-based companies in Malaysia and (2) investigates whether or not training has any impact on those innovative efforts using data from an online survey. It was found that innovation was evident among the vast majority of the knowledge-based companies, namely, in the “development of a major new product”, an “upgrade of an existing product”, “patents or copyrights for a product” and the “introduction of a new technology that improved production process”. A simple crosstab analysis suggests that when a training policy is in place, it not only positively influences innovation but innovation seems to be more important to the growth of the companies. Additionally, the regression result shows that training has a significant and positive impact on the company’s propensity to innovate.
The fourth paper, titled Malaysia-OIC Trade: Static and Dynamic Gravity Model Approaches by Mohd Adib Ismail and Murni Yunus Mawar examines the impact of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) membership on Malaysian exports. Using the static and dynamic gravity model approaches to analyse the relationship using annual data from 1980 to 2010. The empirical results reveal that the GDP of OIC member countries, FDI of Malaysia, local population size, exchange rate, price ratios, distance and border are the main determinants of Malaysian exports. The evidence also suggests that there is also considerable room for improvement trade between Malaysia and OIC membership countries.
The last and final paper, titled Macro and Socioeconomic Determinants of Turkish Private Savings by Kivilcim Metin Ozcan, Asli Gunay investigates the effects on private saving rates of a number of macroeconomic and socio economic variables, by estimating an empirical private savings model for Turkey over the period 1975-2008. The following variables are found to increase savings: inflation, income level, terms of trade, real interest rates, credits, young dependency ratio, urbanization rate, economic crisis and political instability and the following variables are found to decrease it: financial depth, income growth, current account deficit, old dependency ratio and life expectations. Last but not least, we find that the private savings have strong inertia, and government savings tends to partially crowd out them. On the other hand, we also find that the female labor participation rate, the rate of self-employed employment and the rate of employment having university education decrease savings in Turkey after 1988.
Abstract articles of the Journal of Economic Cooperation and Development, Vol.33 No.2 (2012)
