Suchergebnisse

Defence date: 22 October 1993 ; Supervisor: Antonio Cassese ; The final publication is available on http://link.springer.com

This volume provides an introduction to the basic theory behind international trade policy. The author analyses current policy issues within a theoretical framework. The book adopts a thematic approach, with each chapter examining a different issue - each of which is of central importance to contemporary trade policy. The book will be essential for all those who want to understand what governments do, in terms of trade policy and how they do it.

Characterizing Hong Kong's international status can be a hazardous endeavour.As a British colony and not a sovereign state, the territory has not been seen asan independent actor on the international stage. Attempts to identify theterritory's status have been further complicated by the 1984 Sino-British agreementto transfer Hong Kong's sovereignty from Britain to China in 1997. WhenHong Kong becomes a Special Administrative Region (SAR) with a 'highdegree of autonomy' under Chinese sovereignty after 1997, it will continue to bea non-sovereign territorial entity in international terms. Nonetheless, under the'one country; two systems' formula it has been granted extensive authority andpower in its internal governance, and the scope of autonomy in its externalrelations as agreed upon between the British and Chinese governments isextensive.

The development of larger technical systems relies on the coordination of autonomous action of a multitude of individuals and organizations. Institutional settings, often neglected in the analysis of technical development, help to achieve such coordination. Our analysis of international technical standardization in telecommunications highlights an institutionalized process aiming at the creation of compatibility standards as the means for coordination. Formal procedural, membership, and decision rules combined with informal sets of expectations constitute the normative basis of the CCITT, the most prominent international standardization organization in telecommunications. Although scientific, political and economic aspects can be equally important for standards, the CCITT selectively legitimizes a technical perspective. Political and scientific reasoning is restricted, an open economic perspective even completely banned, unless they can be translated into a technical perspective. This increases the capacity to proceed on a consensusal basis and often facilitates reaching a con-sensus in a controversy. Standardization of Videotex and Telefax empirically examplifies this, and at the same time demonstrates the limits of pure technical reasoning to resolve genuine political or economic conflicts. ; Die Entwicklung großer technischer Systeme hängt von der Koordination autonomer Handlungen einer Vielzahl von Individuen und Organisationen ab. Institutionelle Arrangements, oft vernachlässigt in Analysen technischer Entwicklung, erleichtern dies. Unsere Analyse internationaler technischer Standardisierung in der Telekommunikation behandelt den Prozeß der Vereinbarung von Kompatibilitätsstandards, die Koordination ermöglichen. Formale Mitgliedschafts-, Entscheidungs- und Verfahrensregeln sowie informelle Erwartungsmuster bilden die normative Grundlage der Arbeit des CCITT, der wichtigsten internationalen Standardisierungsorganisation in der Telekommunikation. Obwohl wissenschaftliche, politische und ökonomische Aspekte gleich wichtig sein können für Standards, begünstigt der CCITT selektiv eine technische Perspektive. Politische und wissenschaftliche Argumentation ist nur eingeschränkt zulässig, eine offensichtlich ökonomische Sichtweise sogar völlig unzulässig, es sei denn eine Übersetzung in eine technische Perspektive gelingt. Dies verbessert die Möglichkeit, auf Konsensbasis zu arbeiten, und erleichtert oft die Einigung in Kontroversen. Die Standardisierung von Bildschirmtext und Telefax liefert hierfür empirische Beispiele und zeigt gleichzeitig die Grenzen rein technischer Argumentation auf, um politische oder ökonomische Konflikte zu lösen.

With rapidly rising government debt and ageing populations implying high contingent liabilities in public pension systems, the issue of longer-term fiscal developments is gaining importance. The question arises whether, and to what extent, future generations will be burdened by current policies. Generational accounting is a new approach to examining such issues and it is used more and more in the policy debate.

"First attempt to compile in a manual all existing Memoranda of Understanding, Exchange of Letters and other similar agreements, whether formal or informal, where FDA was a signatory"--p. i. ; "November 1996." ; Shipping list no.: 97-0118-P. ; "MaryLynn Datoc"--P. ii. ; Includes bibliographical references and index. ; Mode of access: Internet.

Environmental issues and questions of global change are now firmly established on the international political agenda. This book provides a wide-ranging survey of the current treatment of environmental issues in international relations. This book begins by looking at the relevance of the different theoretical approaches current in international relations to the study of the environment. It analyzses a wide range of approaches from the debate between neo-realism and liberal institutionalism to the significant connections between gender and global environmental change. The book goes on to consider a range of key international processes, discussing the monitoring and implementation of environmental agreements, the place of ideology in negotiations and the role of international organisations.

International nature conservation programs were originally driven by field biologists. As environment has assumed increasing prominence on the international political agenda, the role of biologists has been marginalised. International programs now have ambitious targets set by politicians and aspire to save the world.There is a need to balance these global environmental initiatives with a set of shorter-term practical actions to maximise biodiversity conservation. Biological scientists can cooperate with other natural resource specialists and social scientists in defining more targeted cost-effective nature conservation programs. A case is made for the Prince Bernhard Chair at the University of UTRECHT to focus on this interface between science and conservation practices.

With the completion of the Uruguay Round of international trade negotiations, attention turns to plausible next steps. One question on the agenda of possibilities is the adoption of competition policies that complement or substitute for the remedies traditionally used to deal with international trade distortions. This paper examines three cases

The consequences of free trade in an international spatial duopoly are investigated, under different market regimes. The optimal setting for both countries appears to be a private duopoly in which both firms operate under the same fiscal regime and a side payment from the larger to the smaller country occurs.

This paper discusses environmental policies which aim at a sustainable use of domestic resources which are mobile. It assumes that one country introduces such a policy but the other country does not. If a resource is mobile, strict domestic environmental policies may increase the resource imports from other countries. This paper shows that a unilateral environmental policy may even imply an increased resource use. In this case, a large part of the sustainability objective is met by substituting domestic resource extraction by imports. When sustainability is modelled in an inter temporal, competitive framework, the paper shows that the sustainability rule will not lead to a slower rate of extraction of the resource.

Governments' desire to ameliorate environmental problems may conflict with other goals. Policy levels which balance different objectives can be altered by policy changes in other countries. A decrease in the importance of the pollution problem, or an increase in its global extent, increase the likelihood that tighter environmental regulations in one region induce laxer policies elsewhere. The transboundary character and the importance of environmental externalities also affect the amount of cooperation needed to improve members' welfare in a coalition. More global pollution problems require a larger coalition. However, the critical coalition size may be larger or smaller for more severe problems.

This paper addresses the question of whether trade interdependencies are significant in explaining the international synchronization of business cycles, or "international business cycles". Using an econometric framework that combines the concept of separate cointegration (Granger an Konishi, 1992) with that of common feature analysis (Engle and Kozicki, 1993; Vahid and Engle, 1993), we are able to formulate meaningful ways of characterizing the links between trade flow dynamics and international output dynamics. We conclude that trade interdependencies do have an effect in explaining the international business cycle.

During the past half century many nations have adopted policies whose function is to discourage cartels and other restrictive practices. Industrialized nations led the movement toward pro-competition policies, but more recently, developing nations have begun to join the parade. Initial steps have also been taken toward the implementation of competition policies spanning national borders, and proposals for their extension have been made. This paper analyzes the consequences national and international competition policies would have for developing nations. Topics covered include the dependence of LDCs on cartelized commodity exports, the terms on which intermediate goods and technology are imported by LDCs, access to the markets of industrialized nations, the consequences of substituting predatory pricing standards for the criteria traditionally used to combat dumping in international trade, and the links between domestic and international market structure and the absorption of advanced technology.

This paper analyzes wage competition between national trade unions caused by the international mobility of capital. Perfect capital mobility leads to a Bertrand result for the outcome of wage competition: A pure strategy equilibrium implies full employment in all countries. It is shown that such an equilibrium exists for a sufficiently large number of countries. As extensions of the basic model, decreasing returns to scale and capital adjustment costs are introduced.