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Begin New Search Topic International Trade and Finance Content Type Working Paper Publication Year within 25 Years

1491. Free Trade and Worker Displacement: The Trade Adjustment Assistance Act and the Case of NAFTA

Author:
Jerry Haar and Antonio Garrastazu
Publication Date:
02-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
Trade liberalization, a fundamental feature of U.S. economic policy since the end of the Second World War, has increasingly become a contentious domestic political issue during the last decade. Proponents and opponents of free trade transcend political party affiliation, industry, occupation, geographical locale, income level, age, and other socioeconomic and demographic factors. In addition, the U.S. public and its leaders for the most part hold qualified, mixed, or inconsistent opinions about trade liberalization and the larger and rapidly increasing phenomenon known as globalization. In a February 9-14, 2000, nationwide poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates, a majority of respondents (64 percent compared to 27 percent) stated that free trade with other countries is good for the United States. On the other hand, an NBC News/ W all Street Journal poll several months later asked interviewees to respond to the following statement: “Foreign trade has been bad for the U.S. economy because cheap imports from abroad have hurt wages and cost jobs here at home.” Forty-eight percent of the respondents answered that it has been “bad” and 34 percent “good.”
Topic:
Industrial Policy and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and Latin America

1492. Lovely but dangerous: The impact of patent citations on patent duration

Author:
Per Botolf Maurseth
Publication Date:
03-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
What is the impact of patent citations on patent renewal behaviour? Patent citations are commonly used as an indicator of technology spillovers. For cited patents therefore, patent citations have a potentially ambiguous impact. On the one hand, patent citations may indicate a scientific breakthrough, a high value of the cited patent and therefore a long survival period. On the other hand, patent citations may indicate competing innovations that render the cited patent obsolete. By discriminating patents by technology field, it is demonstrated that patents that receive citations across technology fields survive longer than other patents. Patents that receive citations within the same technology field lapse earlier.
Topic:
Development, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Europe

1493. Meet Me Halfway but don't Rush—Absorptive capacity and strategic R investment revisited

Author:
Leo A. Grünfeld
Publication Date:
12-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
In this paper, we analyse how R investment decisions are affected by R spillovers between firms, taking into consideration that more R investment improves the ability to learn from competing firms - the so-called absorptive capacity effect of R The model in this paper is an extension of d'Aspremont and Jacquemin (1988), where they show that exogenous R spillovers reduce the incentive to invest in R when firms compete in a Cournot duopoly. Our model treats R spillovers as endogenous, being a function of absorptive capacity effects. Contrary to earlier studies, we show that absorptive capacity effects do not necessarily drive up the incentive to invest in R This only happens when the market size is small or the absorptive capacity effect is weak. Otherwise firms will actually chose to cut down on R Furthermore, absorptive capacity effects also increase the critical rate of spillovers that determines whether participating in research joint ventures leads to lower or higher R investment. Finally, we show that strong learning effects of own R are not necessarily goodfor welfare. Moreover, if the market size is large, welfare will be at its highest when the learning effect is small.
Topic:
Economics, Industrial Policy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe

1494. Firms' export decisions—fixed trade costs and the size of the export market

Author:
Hege Medin
Publication Date:
10-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
This article presents two models of international trade under monopolistic competition. In increasing returns sectors firms face fixed, in addition to variable, trade costs, therefore both exporters and non-exporters may coexist. While nonexporters benefit from access to large domestic markets, exporters benefit from access to large foreign markets. Consequently, a small country has a higher share of exporting firms than a large one. In contrast to standard models, increasing returns sectors turn out more open in small countries than in large ones, and small countries may be net exporters of such commodities, despite the disadvantage of a smaller home market.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe

1495. Should one bargain over two issues simultaneously or separately?

Author:
Bård Harstad
Publication Date:
05-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
International negotiations on trade (e.g. GATT and TRIPS) have typically been of the package-form, and different issues have therefore been linked to each other. Trade issues have not been linked to e.g. environmental agreements in negotiations, however. This paper studies the outcome of linked bargaining, where two issues are simultaneously negotiated over by two countries. We notice that there always exist gains from linkages in bargaining, and that such linking will always occur in equilibrium if there is a pre-stage where the countries are bargaining over the agenda. The outcome under linked bargaining is compared with the outcome under separate negotiations, and the circumstances where a country will gain or lose from linking are characterized. The results help us to understand different countries' preferences for linkages in bargaining.
Topic:
International Relations, Environment, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe

1496. Recent Advances in Growth Theory. A Comparison of Neoclassical and Evolutionary Perspectives

Author:
Per Botolf Maurseth
Publication Date:
05-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
Research on economic growth has experienced remarkable progress the last decade. The neoclassical perspective has benefited from development of new mathematical methods and new approaches to market structure, economics of scale and spillover effects. At the same time evolutionary theories on economic development have appeared, partly competing but also complementary to neoclassical theorising. In this paper, the development of the two perspectives on economic growth is reviewed and they are compared with each other. Despite evident differences there seems to be convergence between the two traditions. The two perspectives therefore do not belong to different paradigms in the Kuhnian sense and they can hardly be categorised as two isolated research programmes in the sense of Imre Lakatos. Evolutionary and neoclassical growth economics draw inspiration from similar sources, they are overlapping and to some extent complementary. The two traditions also interact with each other.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe

1497. Wage Coordination and the Welfare State: Germany and Japan Compared

Author:
Philip Manow
Publication Date:
12-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
Is there a relation between welfare state regimes and national wage setting systems? Peter Swenson in his research on the historical dynamics of the US-American and Swedish welfare state has recently claimed that such a relation does indeed exist. The essay aims to check if this also holds true for the German and Japanese case. In the post-war period both countries have established systems of wage-bargaining that are less centralized than the Swedish system, but in which wages are highly coordinated both within and across sectors, and, subsequently, in which wage compression is relatively high as well. Thus, both countries are confronted with the same problems of wage- and welfare-drift and of firms' exit from the 'solidaristic' or coordinated wage setting that are so typical for Sweden. At the same time the German and Japanese welfare state differ from each other in almost all dimensions. Thus, both cases seem to be ideally suited to provide for a plausibility-check of the Swenson hypothesis. The essay reaches the conclusion that there is indeed ample evidence that both the German and the Japanese welfare state contributed critically to the stability of wage coordination in the era of high growth after World War II. They thus have to be understood as an integral part of the German and Japanese post-war growth model.
Topic:
Economics, Human Welfare, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, America, and Germany

1498. EMU Effects on International Trade and Investment

Author:
Harry Flam and Per Jansson
Publication Date:
04-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The partial effect of nominal exchange rate volatility on exports from each EMU member to the rest of the EMU is estimated on annual data for 1967-97, using modern time-series methods. The long-run relations between exchange rate volatility and exports are mostly negative and in several cases insignificantly different from zero. Thus, these estimates do not provide much support for the hypothesis that the elimination of nominal exchange rate volatility will significantly increase trade within the EMU. However, the EMU will presumably lead to geographical concentration of production and therefore indirectly to increased trade within the EMU and, during a transitional stage, to increased foreign direct investment, both within the EMU and between the EMU and the rest of the world.
Topic:
Economics, Government, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe

1499. A Financial Architecture for Middle-Class-Oriented Development

Author:
Walter Russell Mead and Sherle R. Schwenninger
Publication Date:
10-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The Case For Middle-Class-Oriented Development International financial architecture works best when it serves social goals that command widespread support and legitimacy. Without neglecting the more conventional goal of allowing the greatest possible global flow of capital with the least risk of financial crisis, the primary goal of international financial reform, for both economic and political reasons, ought to be to promote middle-class-oriented development around the world.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

1500. Institutions Structural Unemployment: Do Capital-Market Imperfections Matter?

Author:
Ansgar Belke and Rainer Fehn
Publication Date:
11-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
Abstract:
This paper analyses whether differences in institutional structures on capital markets contribute to explaining why some OECD-countries, in particular the Anglo-Saxon countries, have been much more successful over the last two decades in producing employment growth and in reducing unemployment than most continental-European OECD-countries. It is argued that the often-blamed labour market rigidities alone, while important, do not provide a satisfactory explanation for these differences across countries and over time. Financial constraints are potentially important obstacles against creating new firms and jobs and thus against coping well with structural change and against moving successfully toward the “new economy”. Highly developed venture capital markets should help to alleviate such financial constraints. This view that labour-market institutions should be supplemented by capital market imperfections for explaining differences in employment performances is supported by our panel data analysis, in which venture capital turns out to be a significant institutional variable.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe