Economic Review

ISSN No: 1608-6627

Editorial Board

Articles in this volume
[Nimesh Salike, Jingyi Wang & Paulo Regis]
Abstract

This paper examines the impact of remittance on poverty and income inequality in the context of Nepal using cross-sectional national survey- Nepal Living Standard Survey, third edition (NLSS3) of 2010-11. We employ a Heckman two-step estimation model with instrumental variables and constructed counterfactual income to investigate the real impact of remittances. We find that remittance has helped in the reduction of poverty ratio by 5.3% but deepened the poverty gap by 7.37% and severity by 9.25%. In terms of inequality, remittance has helped to reduce inequality within the remittance receiving group, however, it also contributed to rising income inequality when compared to non- remittance receiving group.

[Yam Lal Bhoosal & Rohan Byanjankar]
Abstract

This paper aims to examine the determinants of government revenue in Nepal. The macroeconomic variables, namely, GDP per capita, imports, consumer price index, exchange rate, and foreign aid from 1975 to 2021 have been included to assess their effect on government revenue. We have performed descriptive and econometric analyses. Government revenue increased by about 15 percent on average from 1976 to 2021 and the revenue-to-GDP ratio stood at around 22 percent in 2021. The empirical results reveal that GDP per capita and imports are the major determinants of government revenue in the short run. Likewise, GDP per capita, imports, and exchange rate are the major determinants of government revenue in the long-run. The error correction term suggests that the short-run disequilibrium in the system takes about 3 years to converge to equilibrium.

[Ajaya Dhungana & Tej Prasad Devkota]
Abstract

Dividend policy of firm in theoretical finance is one of the most controversial issue, various theories of dividend policy try to explain the dividend behaviour of the firm. The dividend distributed by a firm to its shareholder is very different when it is viewed from the perspective of the company’s life cycle. If no regulation forces, then firms at initial stage have higher investment opportunities, so they retain all their earning and pay no dividend. The firms at maturity stage have less investment opportunities, slow pace of growth rate and lower cost of raising external capital, hence, mature firms retain less and pays higher dividend. Life cycle hypothesis suggests that firm increases their dividend with their maturity. This study investigates the dividend behaviour of Nepalese commercial banks, by using the ten years panel data for the period from 2010 to 2019. Using conventional proxies of life cycle, the result of the study consistently shows that Nepalese listed commercial bank follow dividend life cycle theory. The result also shows that larger firms pay higher dividend and dividend history has positive relation with next period dividend payment. The result is robust and such robustness check has been conducted by altering some of the proxies of the variables. The result of the study suggest that the regulators should not impose same dividend policy to the entire banking industry.