Browsing by Author "Attafuah, Samuel"

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    Do international remittances contribute to achieving the first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG1) in development economies? Empirical evidence from Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimator.
    (2019-07-11) Attafuah, Samuel; Ljungvall, Carl; University of Gothenburg/Department of Economics; Göteborgs universitet/Institutionen för nationalekonomi med statistik
    Eradicating extreme poverty is a fundamental objective and concern for every economy in today’s modernization epoch. Developed countries channel significant amount of financial support annually to poor economies with the core intention of improving their welfare and standard of living. Extreme poverty is also one of the most imperative target of the United Nations (UN’s) Sustainable Development Goals for Agenda 2030. What role can international remittances play in helping countries accomplish the first goal of Sustainable Development (SDG1)? Many empirical literatures have researched this phenomenon arriving at results in favor of the optimistic developmental view of remittances on poverty mitigation. However, most studies have merely investigated either the direct or indirect impacts of remittances on poverty separately. We aim to expand on this notion by exploring both the direct and indirect empirical nexus between international remittances and poverty using the Poverty-Growth-Inequality (PGI) framework suggested by Bourguignon (2014) and the Keynesian Harrod-Domar growth model (HDM). We test for the potential relationship between international remittances and SDG1 by running a panel econometric data analysis comprising of 14 selected developing countries between the fiscal period 2000-2017. Specifically, an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model with Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimator was used to capture both long-run and short-run relationships concurrently. Major findings from the PMG estimator confirmed our hypotheses. The empirical research found evidence for both direct and indirect (via economic growth) significant nexus between international remittances and the level of poverty in the long-run. Based on the empirical findings, the conclusion reached was that, international remittances can undeniably help developing economies accomplish SDG1.
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    House Price and Fertility Decisions: Evidence from Taiwan
    (2022-06-23) Attafuah, Samuel; Chang, Ko-Cheng; University of Gothenburg/Graduate School; Göteborgs universitet/Graduate School
    Given the concurrent incidence of falling birth rates and increasing house prices experienced in Taiwan over the past two decades, the current thesis examines the role of house prices on fertility-related behaviors and outcomes among Taiwanese households. Acknowledging that housing is a major cost associated with childrearing and the theoretical assumption that children are normal goods, we hypothesize that house price inflation will adversely impact fertility and that current non-homeowners are the most affected due to the “resource exhaustion effect”. Exploiting micro-level data and different econometric techniques, we capture the effect of house prices on fertility by three distinct models, namely a realized fertility (RF) model, a fertility intentions (LF) model, and a fertility gap (FG) model. The prevailing results showed a robust and statistically significant effect of house price inflation on the fertility gap, specifically, a one standard deviation increase in relative house price is associated with a 0.1 increase in the gap between desired fertility and actual fertility i.e., approximately 0.1 “missing babies” for every standard deviation increase in house prices. Additionally, we found that the fertility gap of current homeowners is less adversely impacted due to house price inflation compared to non-homeowners.