Suchergebnisse

During the past two decades, international trade in telecommunication services has significantly intensified. What is more, an increasing number of telecommunications operators have begun to expand their activities beyond national borders through FDIs, joint ventures, and cooperation agreements. In this paper it is argued, however, that in spite of the rather successful efforts of late to liberalize the telecommunications sector (networks and services) at the regional (EU) and the global (WTO) level, much remains to be done to create and preserve a truly open and competitive worldwide telecommunications market. ; In den vergangenen beiden Jahrzehnten hat sich der internationale Handel mit Telekommunikationsdienstleistungen wesentlich intensiviert. Parallel dazu begannen immer mehr Telefongesellschaften, sich durch Direktinvestitionen, Joint ventures und Kooperationen auch auf ausländischen Märkten zu engagieren. Wie in dem vorliegenden Papier gezeigt wird, kann allen bisherigen Liberalisierungserfolgen der jüngeren Vergangenheit auf regionaler (EU) und globaler Ebene (WTO) zum Trotz von einem offenen globalen Markt für Telekommunikationsdienste und damit auch von einem freien, unverfälschten Wettbewerb zwischen alternativen Netz- und Diensteanbietern noch immer nicht die Rede sein.

Why have governments found reciprocal trade agreements such as GATT to be a more effective means of facilitating trade liberalization than unilateral initiatives? We provide in this paper an analytic framework for the study of reciprocal trade agreements. We use this framework to establish three main results. First, we argue that political-economy factors are important for explaining the range of trade policies observed, but that these factors can not explain why governments seek reciprocal trade agreements as an institutional form for implementing their preferred policies. Rather, whether or not governments are politically motivated, Johnson (1953-54) was right: The central purpose of a reciprocal trade agreement is to eliminate the terms-of-trade driven policies that arise in the absence of such an agreement. Second, we establish an economic interpretation of the principles of reciprocity and nondiscrimination that represent the foundation of postwar reciprocal trade agreements. Finally, we offer new insights regarding the treatment of export subsidies in reciprocal trade agreements.

This paper studies empirically the effects of and the interactions amongst economic and political liberalizations. Economic liberalizations are measured by a widely used indicator that captures the scope of the market in the economy, and in particular of policies towards freer international trade (cf. Sachs and Werner 1995, Wacziarg and Welch 2003). Political liberalizations correspond to the event of becoming a democracy. Using a difference-indifference estimation, we ask what are the effects of liberalizations on economic performance, on macroeconomic policy and on structural policies. The main results concern the quantitative relevance of the feedback and interaction effects between the two kinds of reforms. First, we find positive feedback effects between economic and political reforms. The timing of events indicates that causality is more likely to run from political to economic liberalizations, rather than viceversa, but we cannot rule out feedback effects in both directions. Second, the sequence of reforms matters. Countries that first liberalize and then become democracies do much better than countries that pursue the opposite sequence, in almost all dimensions.

Der Autor untersucht den Zeitraum von 1962-1967, als auf den Philippinen Importzölle eingeführt wurden, welche die bis dahin geltenden Mengenkontingentierungen für Importe ablösten. Diese Maßnahme hat sich nach Ansicht des Autors positiv auf den Außenhandel, die Zahlungsbilanz und die Entwicklung der Währungsreserven ausgewirkt. Eine, damals befürchtetete, inflationäre Wirkung einer solchen Importliberalisierung oder eine Zunahme der Schmuggeltätigkeit sei nicht zu verzeichnen gewesen. (DÜI-Bsn)