Suchergebnisse

For many economists, the political nightmare of the 1930s was caused by a retreat into protectionism, which worsened the depression through falling trade, leading to massive unemployment and, ultimately, the rise of fascist aggression. Peter Holmes analyzes whether the explosive 1930s mix of protectionism, extremism, and conflict could happen again in today's financial crisis and concludes that protectionism can probably be held off, if (and it is a big if) the macro side of the crisis can be mastered. Figures. Adapted from the source document.

With increasing economic interdependence, policies and regulations that were once thought of as 'domestic' become subject to international trade negotiation and rules. The EU has developed a sophisticated approach to balancing sovereignty and liberalization within the single market, and in recent years has also sought to apply some of the same approaches to the multilateral arena. But the EU is reaching the limits of its own approach internally and has seen great resistance to the explicit extension of the World Trade Organization (WTO) agenda into further regulatory spheres, notably at the WTO at the Cancun meeting. Yet the underlying problems remain. If the WTO cannot negotiate the balance between trade liberalization and regulatory autonomy, whether in food safety or services, there is a risk of excessive reliance being placed on the dispute settlement system, and further challenges to the legitimacy of the WTO.

Der Autor untersucht zunächst die Preispolitik der OPEC und schätzt dann den Bedarf an Erdöl und Erdgas in den 90er Jahren ab. Als wesentlichsten Faktor für eine Erhöhung der Nachfrage sieht er das Bevölkerungswachstum weltweit und die zunehmende Industrialisierung. Dem gegenüber steht ein als hoch eingeschätztes Potential an Einsparungsmöglichkeiten in den entwickelten Industrieländern, so daß im Ergebnis nur eine relativ geringe Steigerung des Bedarfs zu erwarten sein dürfte, was sich entsprechend auf die Preisentwicklung auswirken kann. Abschließend werden die Relationen zwischen Reserven und Verbrauch behandelt. (DGAP-Wtk)