Suchergebnisse

Literature on the investment treaty regime has shown little interest in diplomatic interests and agendas as drivers of treaty negotiations. This contrasts with other work on international economic relations, such as the negotiation of preferential trade agreements. Our paper fills this gap through a multi-method approach. In line with other areas of economic diplomacy we show that strategic foreign policy considerations have driven some investment treaty negotiations. Secondly, we show that some diplomats have been successful in promoting investment treaties to further their own individual interests. Rooted in public choice theory, this second causal mechanism is often overlooked in literature on economic diplomacy.

We develop a microfounded model, where agents have the possibility to trade money for government bonds in an over-the-counter market. It allows us to address important open questions about the effects of central bank purchases of government bonds, these being: under what conditions these purchases can be welfare-improving, what incentive problems they mitigate, and how large these effects are. Our main finding is that this policy measure can be welfare-improving, by correcting a pecuniary externality. Concretely, the value of money is increased as central bank's purchases of government bonds induce agents to increase their demand for money, which is welfare-improving.

Following the plane crashes into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, Ulrich Beck claimed that the West would need to pursue 'border-transcending new beginnings' towards a more cosmopolitan world. Rather than any radical transformation along cosmopolitan lines, however, this paper maps a process of incremental reform and policy bricolage, where the post-cold war politics of intervention, and the securitisation of development, have been extended to encompass international terrorism in three overlapping phases. Although these overlapping phases – intervention, prevention and extension – are reflexive moments, they constitute a strengthening of the prevailing rationalities and technologies of risk rather than a radical rupture.

Abstract
The objective of this paper is to outline the main macroeconomic trends in the new member countries of the European Union before the Euro Area debt crisis. In order to achieve this objective, the developments in a wide range of macroeconomic indicators (exchange rates, foreign trade, monetary policy, inflation, price levels, and fiscal balances, sovereign debt, GDP, labour productivity, composition of output and current account balances) have been analyzed. The analysis results in recommendations on the macroeconomic policies the new member countries should have implemented under global crisis condition in accordance with the peculiarities of their economies and their specific national priorities.

AbstractIn Grossman‐Helpman's (1994) canonical "Protection for Sale" (PFS) model, political competition among industry lobbies is driven purely by their interests as consumers. This paper introduces demand linkages and oligopolistic competition into the PFS framework to address the rivalry among lobbies stemming from product substitutability. It shows that increased substitutability weakens the interest groups' incentives to lobby and reduces tariff distortions. This may explain why empirical tests of PFS find surprisingly little impact of lobbies on the government's trade policy decision. The paper also analyzes endogenous lobby formation, suggesting that demand linkages may adversely affect the industry decision to organize.

Trade unions provide a voice in the way firms are run, an input into reward systems and increased security of employment. But these vary with national context. Using transnational survey evidence, this article explores the relative impact of setting, and of unions and collective bargaining, on these issues. It is found that, irrespective of context, organizations are significantly more likely to make use of compulsory redundancies in the absence of unions and collective bargaining. However, in other areas, the impact of unions appeared less pronounced than that of the wider context. The article explores the reasons behind this, and the broader policy implications thereof.

Abstract.Empirical studies on the unemployment effects of labour market institutions show contradictory results. One explanation is that these institutions affect unemployment differently depending on the regime in which they operate. Because of good labour relations, institutional complementarities and a trade‐off between external and internal flexibility, they produce distinctive effects in corporatist regimes. Based on empirical evidence from 20 OECD countries over the period 1985–2008, the author finds that, in corporatist labour markets, strict employment protection legislation reduces unemployment, and unemployment benefits have no negative effect. He also shows that high real interest rates, low capital accumulation and restrictive fiscal policy during recessions increase unemployment.

We model purchaser-provider contracts when providers can inflate reimbursable activity through manipulation. Providers are audited and fined upon detected fraud. We characterise the optimal price and audit policy both in the presence and absence of commitment to an audit intensity. Under 'non-commitment' the audit intensity increases in reported activity, allowing the provider to soften it by reducing activity together with the underlying service quality and manipulation. The purchaser then faces a trade-off between offsetting this tendency by raising price and committing to a low audit intensity by reducing price. We identify circumstances under which the two forces balance out. [Copyright Elsevier B.V.]

Статья раскрывает вопрос становления художественно-промысловой кооперации в 1917-1927 гг. Автор рассматривает вопрос о влиянии партийно-государственной политики, экономических и политических условий на состояние художественных промыслов; о потребительском, коммерческом подходе государства к кустарно-художественной промышленности; о необходимости кустарей объединяться в артели для создания системы сбыта, финансирования, кредитования. ; The author reveals the question of artistic-trade cooperation formation in 1917-1927, and considers the influence of party-state policy, economic and political conditions on the state of artistic crafts; consumer, commercial approach of the state to artisanal-artistic industry; artisans' need to form artels for creating the system of marketing, financing, crediting.

Abstract This paper sets up a general oligopolistic equilibrium model with multi‐product firms and union wage setting. In this model, we conduct two policy experiments. First, we show that deunionization induces a general decline in firm scale and scope, the respective reduction being more pronounced in non‐unionized industries. Second, we study the consequences of trade liberalization, and show that access to foreign markets lowers firm scope in all industries as well as the scope differential between unionized and non‐unionized firms. Adjustments in firm scale turn out to be less clear‐cut and, inter alia, depend on the degree of product differentiation.

Abstract We show that recent explanations of the consumption‐real exchange rate anomaly that rely on goods and financial market frictions are not robust to introducing just one additional international asset. When portfolios are selected optimally, international trade in two nominal bonds implies a consumption‐real exchange rate correlation that is too high compared with the data even when there are many shocks. Monetary policy specification plays a potentially important role for the degree of risk sharing provided by nominal bonds, both in the benchmark model with only tradable and non‐tradable sector supply shocks and also in the model that allows for news.

This article argues that the ongoing integration of the peasantry in the South into the monopoly-controlled global agro-food system can only produce mass marginalization and pauperization. On the basis of the global competitiveness promoted by the World Trade Organization (WTO), increases in productivity can only imply labour-saving technologies, without the possibility of absorbing the marginalized into other economic activities, or of outmigration, as was practised by the West in the course of its own industrialization. Thus, an alternative policy is necessary to maintain both peasant producers in the countryside and promote technological change at a rate consistent with non-rural, non-agricultural employment.

This paper evaluates the advisability of a monetary union in Latin America applying the theory of optimum currency areas (OCA). The analysis is based on the traditional OCA criteria and it suggests that there is no evidence for any monetary integration in Latin America even at a sub-regional level. Latin American countries have evidenced a low degree of trade integration and asymmetric co-movements among their shocks. Moreover, substantial differences in the speed of adjustment and in the size of shocks are found. Hence, higher policy coordination seems to be necessary before starting any economic integration process in Latin America.

This paper summarizes a two-country model that solves for optimal tax rates to achieve efficiency in an economy with international trade in used consumer electronics. If only the developed nation can tax the disposal of e-waste, then the global Pareto Optimum can be obtained by either imposing an import tariff on used consumer electronics or subsidizing the return of e-waste for disposal in the developed country. The global Pareto Optimum can also be obtained by reducing the disposal tax in the developed country to a level below the external marginal cost of disposal should no other policy option be available.