Suchergebnisse

The article considers the proportions of mutual deliveries of goods in the triangle USA – Western Europe – East Asia in the recent decade. It is shown that the USA remained to be a net importer of industrial products while West European and East Asian countries were the net providers. The US deficit in goods' trade with China and Germany exceeded the pre-crisis level. Still, the integral trade deficit of the USA remained lower than before the crisis, in particular because of lesser deficit in trade with oil producing countries and Japan. Reduction of China's and Eurozone countries' surplus in comparison to 2007-2008 can be explained by the dynamics of their trade with third countries (in particular, with the suppliers of energy resources which the prices turned back to high levels in post-crisis period). The same relate to a lesser extent to Japan which the surplus in trade with the USA did not reach the pre-crisis level. The author concludes that even during crisis and post-crisis periods the changes in balance of payments of the leading suppliers of mechanical engineering goods were mostly determined by their trade with the suppliers of raw materials rather than by the mutual trade.

Since contending methodological perspectives & different types of research products are founded on irreconcilable philosophical assumptions, the sharp, recurrent debates over social science research methods are likely to be fruitless & counterproductive. This article begins by exposing some of the philosophical assumptions underlying the most recent calls for a unified social science methodology & seeks to help develop a common appreciation of how different kinds of methods & research products advance our understanding of different aspects of social life at different levels of abstraction. Such commonly posited dichotomies as deductivist/inductivist logic, quantitative/quantitative analysis, & nomothetic/idiographic research products are shown to obscure significant differences along a continuum of strategies through which context-bound information & analytic constructs are combined to produce interpretations of varying degrees of complexity or generality. Durkheim's conception of "organic solidarity" in a social "division of labor" serves as a useful metaphor here to capture the complementary roles performed by various research products as well as the trade-offs arising from the strengths & weaknesses of various methodological approaches (ranging from formal & statistical approaches to various case-based & interpretive approaches). Thus, sharp claims regarding the strengths & limitations of particular methods are transformed into elements of an overarching agnostic understanding of the trade-offs & complementarities among these methods. Finally, a distinctive role is identified for an ideal-typical "middle-range" comparative-historical approach in fostering greater communication among a more inclusively defined community of methodologically diverse social scientists. 2 Figures. Adapted from the source document.