Suchergebnisse

In this article, I investigate whether the euro is set to eclipse the dollar as the world currency. Although the euro has gained in importance at the expense of the dollar in all key currency functions, I argue that it is not about to replace the dollar as the unique currency of global importance. Notwithstanding America's current weakness, I argue that different preferences for monetary and fiscal policy inside the euro-zone, and the need to coordinate these, will make it difficult to accommodate and correct large-scale imports over the long term. I also find that taking on the role of the world's preferred import destination is bound to exacerbate internal differences and complicate decision-making.

The federal role in higher education has grown over the past two decades, and now a new administration has the opportunity to strengthen policies that support students and their colleges and universities. To help inform these decisions, the Urban Institute convened a bipartisan group of scholars and policy advisers to write a series of memos highlighting some of the most critical issues in higher education and recommending policy solutions. This report argues that the system of federally guaranteed private students loans was seriously flawed and should not be revived, but that more private financing would be an improvement, particularly for lending to parents and graduate students. ; Urban Institute

Competition policy is a dynamic process in which two questions arise: the configuration of the institutional framework and, on the other hand, the potential negative effects of the reforms processes. Based on surveys to employers (International Institute for Management Development, IMD), this paper evaluates the evolution of the effectiveness of competition policy at international level and how some countries' competition policy (or authority) reforms change this perceived effectiveness: United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Finland and Spain. Results show that the last Spanish competition policy reform (creation of the CNMC), was non-positive, despite some improvements in recent years.

Deregulation and managerial compensation are two important topics on the political and academic agenda. The former has been a significant policy recommendation in light of the negative effects associated with overly restrictive regulation on markets and the economy. The latter relates to the sharp increase in top executives' pay and the nature of the link between pay and performance. To the extent that product-market competition can affect the incentive schemes offered by firms to their executives, the analysis of the effects of competition on the structure of compensation can be informative for policy purposes. ...

The implications of standardization cannot be overstated: today, the global economy relies heavily on technical standards because they foster technology diffusion and economic growth. Yet little is known about their implications for global competition policy, innovation and trade. This absence in legal analysis is particularly critical in the context of disruptive technological advancements featured in information and communication technology and other innovation-intensive sectors, characterized by strong network effects, inter-operability and compatibility of consumer products and processes. In this respect, standards are constitutive of development and pivotal market enablers, as they represent a decisive instrument for gauging and capitalizing on technological advances. Nevertheless, technical standards can also serve the strategic interests of incumbents, which derive notable benefits from having their patented technologies selected as part of the standard. The concern is mainly due to the need to ensure that market power exerted by holding patents which are deemed essential to the implementation of technical standards – i.e. standard-essential patents – is not abused, hampering effective competition. However, the competition law outlook is only one side of the problem. To the extent that dissimilarities in laws and public policies concerning standardization pose significant hindrances for cross-border trade, this has pressed latecomers in the international economy to call for more penetrating government intervention, supporting the development and adoption of competing homegrown complementary standards as a source of economic catch-up, which, in return, could gain ground as a novel type of substantial, protectionist, non-tariff barrier to trade. My study adopts the following methodological approach: it addresses the international dimension of tension between IP rights in standards and competition law, investigating the role of international trade law – and the WTO in particular – (a) in enabling a status quo advantageous to incumbent IP holders in deterring new entrants and reaping monopoly rents, and (b) in addressing latecomers' efforts to create new technical barriers to trade. An enlightening example is China's standardization policy: Beijing's authorities are inclined to rely on standards as a public policy regulatory tool for a variety of purposes, including promoting indigenous' industries. My purpose is to develop a conceptual framework for addressing international competition and trade issues raised by standardization in innovation markets, with an emphasis on practical, policy-oriented research. Building on comparative, science and technology literature and theories of government regulation, I am interested in how diverging regulatory philosophies – especially in late-comer economies such as China – affect innovation. Drawing from different models of government intervention, my study investigates the advisability of establishing a coherent global competition framework integrated within international economic law so as to prevent global market distortions and foster welfare-enhancing trading policies to be deployed in the consumer – and public – interest.

This study shows how interest group-party relations, parties' cross-cutting policy preferences, and competition with challenger parties shape the structure of issue competition on climate policy. It uses the 'most similar' cases of the UK and Ireland to show how differences in party systems influence the structure of issue competition. Theoretically, the study takes up the challenge of integrating salience and position in the conceptualisation of climate policy preferences. Empirically, it provides new evidence on factors influencing climate policy preferences and the party politics of climate change, focusing on interest groups, party ideology, and challenger parties. Further, it identifies similarities between the general literature on interest group influence on party preferences and the literature on interest groups in climate politics, and seeks to make connections between them.

This book contributes to broadening the interdisciplinary knowledge basis for the description, analysis and assessment of land use practices. It presents conceptual advances grounded in empirical case studies on four main themes: distal drivers, competing demands on different scales, changing food regimes and land-water competition. Competition over land ownership and use is one of the key contexts in which the effects of global change on social-ecological systems unfold. As such, understanding these rapidly changing dynamics is one of the most pressing challenges of global change research in the 21st century. This book contributes to a deeper understanding of the manifold interactions between land systems, the economics of resource production, distribution and use, as well as the logics of local livelihoods and cultural contexts. It addresses a broad readership in the geosciences, land and environmental sciences, offering them an essential reference guide to land use competition

AbstractThis paper investigates the causal relationship between competition and firm innovation and the impact of competition on firm productivity in the Mexican manufacturing sector. We use the analytical framework proposed by Aghion et al. (2005) and evaluate their central hypothesis. We use firm‐level data from the Mexican manufacturing survey over the period 2009–2017. Our results show a negative linear relationship between competition and the intensity of firm innovation investment. These results are primarily due to the substantial technological disparity that exists across firms within sectors, where most firms compete very far from the leaders.

This paper uses the Hotelling-Downs spatial model of electoral competition between candidates to explore competition between political parties. Two parties choose platforms in a unidimensional policy space, and then in a continuum of constituencies with different median voters candidates from the two parties compete in first-past-the-post elections. Departing from party platform is costly enough that candidates do not take the median voters preferred position in each constituency. In equilibrium, parties acting in their candidates best interests differentiate when one party locates right of center, the other prefers to locate strictly left of center to carve out a home turf, consituencies that can be won with little to no deviation from party platform. Hence, Downsian competition that pulls candidates together pushes parties apart. Decreasing campaign costs increases party differentiation as the leftist party must move further from the rightist party to carve out its home turf. For a range of costs, parties take more extreme positions than their most extreme candidates. For small costs, parties are too extreme to maximize voter welfare, whereas for large costs they are not extreme enough.

AbstractWhether participation in active labour market programmes (ALMPs) pushes individuals back into employment depends on the programme's characteristics. On the basis of encompassing registry data that allow us to control for usually unobserved employability, we find evidence of a systematic access bias whereby jobcentre caseworkers in Switzerland assign unemployed persons to activation measures based on a competition logic that is mainly driven by an economic rationale and the jobcentre's performance evaluation. This practice seems problematic because it results in an overrepresentation of immigrants in measures with little efficacy rather than in measures that could compensate for employability disadvantages. Conversely, Swiss citizens are more likely to enter beneficial human‐capital‐intensive measures. It is plausible that this discrepancy in programme participation amplifies the general labour market disadvantages of immigrants.

Is technology competition between commercial rivals an impediment to international co-operation? Or could it instead help states collaborate? Our game-theoretic model suggests that technology competition impedes international co-operation when states hold 'techno-nationalist' preferences but have starkly asymmetric abilities to capture new markets. States that expect to lose refuse to co-operate, so treaty formation fails. However, technology competition may also facilitate co-operation. While states invest in new technologies out of self-interest, doing so also reduces consumer prices for other states. Comparative case studies of environmental co-operation demonstrate the model's utility. For example, European co-operation on climate policy was easier to achieve because forerunner countries, such as Denmark and Germany, implemented industrial policies that enhanced the competitiveness of their renewable energy industries. This technology competition reduced the cost of renewable energy for other European countries, and thus lowered the economic costs of their emissions reductions. Adapted from the source document.