how do migrants from latin america and the caribbean fare in the us labour market this paper discusses the causes of mass migration from latin america and the caribbean lac to the united states in recent decades and how these migrants have fared in us labour markets the evidence shows that lac migrants have higher unemployment rates and substantially lower wages than other immigrants and natives furthermore the relative wages of lac migrants have been declining sharply over the last 25 years the most significant factor explaining the latter is the lower and declining educational attainment of lac migrants relative to other immigrants and natives compounded by the rising rates of return to education in the us

purchasing power parity based on effective exchange rate and cointegration 25 ldcs experience with its absolute formulation abstract with the development of cointegration technique the purchasing power parity ppp theory has received renewed attention most studies have tested the theory by using data from developed countries dcs and some high inflation less developed countries ldcs they have mostly rejected its empirical validity in this paper we use the concept of effective exchange rate and quarterly data over 1973 1988 to examine the experience of 25 ldcs for most countries we found little empirical support for the ppp

1992 its impact on us trade a var approach european economic integration is a landmark event of the last decade of this century its impact on the international scene in general and on international trade in particular will be substantial doubtss about europe s intention to continue towards full monetary and political integration as envisaged in the maastricht treaty should not obscure achievements of the community to this date while the impact of integration on output and prices of ec members has been the subject of a number of reports there has been little in the way of estimating the effects of integration on bilateral trade with the united states to fill this gap in the literature we specify and estimate a number of vector autoregression var models of bilateral trade for the usa with a select number of ec members after testing the outside sample forecasting ability of our models we forecast trade flows between the usa and four ecc countries france germany italy and the united kingtom the forecasts are made once assuming no chan

devaluation and the j curve some evidence from ldcs within the international trade literature it is not uncommon to find arguments about whether devaluation will improve the trade balance it is argued that the flows of goods respond only with time lags to changes in the exchange rate the j curve terrn is used to describe the movement over time of the trade balance it may deteriorate at first and improvement may come later this paper presents a method by which one could detect the existence of the j curve the method is applied to four developing countries the empirical evidence supports the pattern of movemnent described by the j curve a major policy option for a country facing a persistent balance of payments deficit is said to be devaluation of its currency within the international trade literature it is not uncommon to find arguments about whether devaluation will improve the trade balance or the balance of payments for example proponents of the elasticities approach describe the necessary and sufficient conditions for an improvement in the trade balance in terms of elasticities of demand and supply referred to as the marshall lerner condition while there is abundant empirical evidence to suggest that these conditions are indeed met at least for industrial countries there have been circumstances under which 2 devaluation has not been successful for example one might wonder why the u s trade balance deteriorated so much in 1972 despite the devaluation of the dollar in 1971 this unfavorable effect of devaluation on the trade balance is termed the j curve phenomenon received for publication august 23 1984 revision accepted for publication november 26 1984 the university of wisconsin milwaukee i would like to thank two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on the initial draft of this paper 1 proponents of the absorption approach e g alexander 1952 describe how devaluation may change the terms of trade increase production and switch expenditures from foreign to domestic goods thus improving the trade balance international monetarists argue that devaluation reduces the real value of cash balances and or changes the relative price of traded and nontraded goods thus improving both the trade balance and the balance of payments 2 for an cstimate of the elasticities see houthakker and magee 1969 and warner and kreinin 1983 the former study provides the elasticities estimates under fixed exchange rates and the latter under floating rates this content downloaded from 157 55 39 17 on wed 31 aug 2016 04 39 37 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms

empirical investigation of one opec country s successful non oil export performance abstract this study examines indonesian non oil export success between 1975 and 1994 with a focus on the role of exchange rate management and trade policy in export performance across sectors to examine the link between export quantity and changes in policy i estimate structural export supply functions that are derived from utility and profit maximization behavior the results indicate that non oil exporters respond positively to improved price incentives including exchange rate devaluation with the strongest impact in textiles garments and sawnwood the study offers a richer description than previous work of the relationship between price incentives and export performance

a cost function analysis of import demand for nigeria the article uses a translog cost function to examine the substitution relations among capital labour and imports the results show that capital has a substitute relation with domestic labour and import however labour and import have complementary relationship the implication of this finding is that liberalization policies if pursued vigorously could impart positively on the demand for labour in addition it suggests that economic growth could be enhanced through trade liberalization

effects of exchange rate risk on exports crosscountry analysis abstract in this paper we investigate the effects of exchange rate uncertainty on the aggregate exports of 19 developed and 67 developing countries using cross sectional data exchange rate uncertainty is found to be detrimental to the exports of both developing and developed countries developed countries exports however are found to be less sensitive to exchange risk than that of developing countries furthermore within the developing countries those who fixed their exchange rates to one major currency were found to be subject to less risk than the other developing countries

tax abatements and rent seeking recent literature has argued that a policy of invariant tax abatement awards is more costly than necessary and has suggested several ways of improving tax abatement policy by allowing officials discretion in granting abatements this paper argues such discretion carries its own dangers and may well create rent seeking costs larger than the other costs it is meant to avert analysis suggests tax abatements should be abandoned as a development policy more generally rent seeking should be recognised as an important concept in the analysis and evaluation of development programmes

determinants of international trade flows this paper models and estimates import demand and demand for export functions for 19 industrial countries although primary emphasis is placed on the period of generalized floating exchange rates 1972 through 1980 estimates are also provided for the fixed exchange rate years 1957 1970 thus making possible a comparison between the two eras aside from the conventional income and price variables the paper assesses the effect of variations in the exchange rate and in the expected exchange rate on real trade flows additionally it estimates an unrestricted lag structure of the effect of price and exchange rate variations on imports

the effects of tax increment financing on economic development abstract local governments attempt to influence business location decisions and economic development through use of the property tax tax increment financing tif earmarks property tax revenues that result from growth in assessed valuation the tif revenues are to be used for economic development projects but may also be diverted for other purposes using data for the chicago metropolitan area that includes information on property value growth before and after tif adoption we find evidence that cities that adopt tif grow more slowly than those that do not we test for and reject sample selection bias as an explanation of this finding

long run price elasticities and the marshall lerner condition revisited abstract in estimating trade elasticities most previous researchers employed nonstationary data and ols or 2sls method with new developments in the literature this paper uses stationary data and johansen s cointegration analysis to provide new trade elasticities for almost 30 countries

brazil us commodity trade and the j curve currency devaluation or depreciation is said to temporarily worsen a country s trade balance and improve it later an effect that is called the j curve previous research that tested the j curve for brazil used the country s aggregate trade flows with the rest of the world and did not find support for the phenomenon in this article we consider the trade flows between brazil and a major trading partner the united states disaggregating their trade flows by commodity we then test the empirical validity of the j curve for each of the 92 industries that trade between the two countries we find support for the phenomenon in 31 industries therefore disaggregation by industry seems to yield some support for the phenomenon

determinants of international trade flows the case of developing countries abstract the question of magnitude and the time path of the trade flows to changes in the exchange rates and to changes in the price level is of emitent practical importance to assess the above proposition a distributed lag structure is imposed on the relative prices and on the effective exchange rate as the determinants of trade flows then import and export demand functions are estimated for a sample of developing countries using the almon procedure the empirical findings appeared to sustain orcutt s early conjecture that trade flows adjust differently to different price stimuli more precisely it was found that imports and exports reactions were quicker and the total response time was shorter when an exchange rate rather than relative prices caused a change in international prices

exchange rate determination and inflation in southeast asian countries abstract we estimate structural open economy models consistent with rational re and theories consistent tce expectations which incorporate cointegration to examine exchange rate determination and inflation in three southeast asian countries the re model is rejected in favor of the tce model our results show that while inflation in all three countries is affected by different external factors malaysia and singapore avoided high inflation despite high levels of economic growth through tight monetary policy in contrast the philippines had high inflation even with a stagnant economy due to loose monetary policy and the monetization of government debt

the financial structure and the demand for money in thailand this paper uses recently developed econometric techniques to investigate the demand for money in thailand initial estimates show the absence of any long term unique relationship among a monetary aggregate m1 or m2 an income and a price variable however the introduction of an exchange rate in the above relationship shows the presence of a cointegrating relationship this provides some support to mckinnon s hypothesis of currency substitution it also raises some concern about the closed economy focus of earlier studies on money demand in thailand addition of a foreign interest variable to the above models provide some support to the capital mobility hypothesis the long run elasticity estimates for the m1 equation raise some doubts about the desirability of using this monetary aggregate as an intermediate target by the bank of thailand the null hypothesis of a unit income elasticity and zero foreign interest elasticity are not rejected but the hypothesis of price homogeneity is rejected moreover

is there a j curve abstract if the response of the value of the trade balance to movements in the real exchange rate is described by a j curve then a real depreciation initially worsens a balance of trade deficit only improving it over time this paper investigates whether a j curve can be detected in the last twenty five years of american data no statistically reliable evidence of a stable j curve is detected the model is checked extensively to support this finding

trade liberalisation the peso and mexico s commodity trade flows with the united states abstract we assess the effects of real peso devaluations as well as the effects of gatt and nafta on mexico s in payments and out payments with the united states for 102 industries we find that relatively few trade flows are sensitive to changes in the real exchange rate probably due to production sharing and intra industry trade but devaluations affect mexican imports more than exports trade liberalisation has had a larger impact particularly on imports of intermediate goods and exports of certain manufactures many affected export industries are ones that have previously been shown to have economies of scale

demand and supply factors in the determination of nie exports a simultaneous error correction model for hong kong a comment v a muscatelli t g srinivasan and d vines 1992 purported to refute j riedel s 1988 finding that hong kong is a small price taking country in world markets this comment shows however that muscatelli srinivasan and vines s results are due entirely to an unjustifiable restriction they imposed on the estimated export demand equation and not the result of using a superior estimation technique as they asserted copyright 1994 by royal economic society

chasing a dream the use of tax abatements to spur urban economic development in this paper i develop a systematic framework for assessing the effectiveness of granting tax abatements to encourage urban economic development this approach focuses upon the abatement s effect upon the firm s decision to invest and the impact of the investment upon the community current policy fails to take these considerations into account adequately i use this framework to evaluate the potential revenue gain to the city of detroit of offering variable abatement awards and suggest a set of proposals to improve program performance

estimates of a traditional aggregate import demand model for five countries abstract in this paper we show for five advanced economics that if the variables in the aggregate import demand relationship are best described as non stationary integrated process then the traditional estimates of the income and price elasticity will be subject to substantial upward bias

cross country determinants of economic policy uncertainty spillovers this study explores the determinants of cross country economic policy uncertainty epu spillovers we find that bilateral factors such as trade and common language play a highly significant role i

exchange rate volatility and the role of regional currency linkages the asean case as the economies of the association of southeast asian nations asean have moved towards closer economic ties and trade integration in recent years the establishment of exchange rate stability is becoming an important regional policy concern particularly in the wake of the asian currency crisis of 1997 this paper examines the exchange rate volatility of the currencies of indonesia malaysia philippines singapore and thailand between 1974 and 1999 using variance decomposition vdc methods and impulse response functions which are var related estimation techniques the study also investigates the regional currency linkages which may have played a role in transmitting exchange rate fluctuations the results indicate that in spite of the adoption of the crawling peg exchange regime following the breakup of the bretton woods system all of the five asean currencies experienced volatility with the indonesian rupiah posting the highest volatility level the switch to de facto pegging against the us dol

effects of exchange rate variability on inflation variability abstract previous studies have postulated that there exists a positive relationship between the rate of inflation and its variability they have shown that a high inflation rate contributes to inflation variability in this paper we argue that with the current floating exchange rate system exchange rate variability is another factor contributing to inflation variability after incorporating a measure of exchange rate variability into a simple model used by previous authors we estimate our model using cross country data from 20 developed and 76 less developed countries the cross sectional regression results support our conjecture

prices activity and machinery exports an analysis based on new pricedata new data for the export prices of the united states germany and japan produced price elasticities for exports of machinery and transport equipment that were highest for the united states and lowest well below 1 for germany the effects of price changes on exports lasted at least two years in all three countries and possibly four years in the united states only in germany would most effects of price changes take place in the year of the change u s export income in foreign currency would not exceed its pre depreciation level until the third year after a depreciation

determinants of bilateral trade flows what factors influence the level of trade flows that occur between nations past studies have answered this question primarily in terms of distance and economic size the present study considers additional variables as potential determinants of trade relations between nations also trade flows are analyzed by the type of products being exported and imported the findings show that several additional variables are significant determinants of the level of bilateral trade relations between nations in addition it is found that models of trade flows are more appropriate for manufactured goods than they are for basic commodities

the racial wage gap the importance of labor force attachment differences across black mexican and white men labor market attachment differs significantly across young black mexican and white men although it has long been agreed that potential experience is a poor proxy for actual experience for women many view it as an acceptable approximation for men using the nlsy this paper documents the substantial difference between potential and actual experience for both black and mexican men we show that the fraction of the black white and mexican white wage gaps that are explained by differences in potential experience are quite different from the fraction of the racial wage gaps that are explained by actual real experience differences

inflationary effects of changes in effective exchange rates ldcs experience the inflationary effects of devaluations in less developed countries is investigated using rate of change of effective exchange rates it is shown that for most countries in the sample devaluations or depreciations are inflationary during the current floating exchange rate system in addition to inflationary effects of depreciations excees money supply imported inflation and expectation are also identified as additional sources of inflation in less developed countries

can local incentives alter a metropolitan city s economic development cities in the us and europe have chosen increasingly to offer incentives designed to attract and retain local economic development the increased use of local incentives has occurred with little or

the j curve revisited an empirical examination for the united states abstract this paper examines empirical evidence for trade prices and quantities for the united states to determine whether j curve effects have occurred in recent history empirical estimates of exchnage rate pass through and trade volume responses to exchange rate changes for the 1967 to 1987 period indicate that the often told tale of trade balance deterioration and then improvement the j shaped adjustment path has not typically been experienced by the united states expenditures on imports have typically increased following dollar depreciations primarily as a result of relatively inelastic import volume responses export earnings have been seen to rise only marginally during these same dollar depreciations due to increases in export prices and the subsequent reductions induced in export volume the long run merchandise trade balance adjustment path is seen to resemble a sine wave rather the a j

the adjustment of canadian import demand to changes in income prices and exchange rates the paper provides estimates of the sensitivity of canadian import demand to changes in income prices and exchange rates the model specification allows for the con sideration of long run elasticities as well as the dynamics of short run adjustment of imports to changes in these variables the estimated long run elasticities obtained are similar to those in previous studies it is also shown that canadian imports react quickly to changes in either foreign or domestic prices but that the reaction to changes in exchange rates is much slower

the effects of trade liberalization on imports in selected developing countries abstract this paper analyses the impact of the reduction of tariff and nontariff barriers on the imports of 22 selected developing countries utilizing dynamic panel data techniques domestic income and relative prices are found to be significant determinants of import growth in addition the results indicate that import duties reduce import growth but the effect varies according to the region and the type of trade policy regime existing in the country the results also show that the elimination of trade policy distortions has a strong positive impact on import growth finally it is found that income and price elasticities are higher as a result of trade policy reform

exchange rate of the us dollar and the j curve the case of oil exporting countries abstract this study examines the effects of changes in the exchange rate of the us dollar on the trade balances of three oil exporting countries namely iran venezuela and saudi arabia an exchange rate pass through model is applied to allow changes in the exchange rate of the dollar to affect prices of traded goods then the impact of changes in prices on the quantities of imports and exports of these economies is estimated the results suggest a partial exchange rate pass through to these countries import and export prices in terms of the us dollar while the three countries raise the price of their primary export namely crude oil in response to a depreciation of the dollar saudi arabia s long run pricing strategy in securing a larger market share stands in contrast to that of the two other opec members the sum of the estimated long run price elasticities of demand for imports and exports is found to exceed unity for iran and venezuela but less than unity for saudi arabia

alliances preferential trading arrangements and international trade c oncerns about the stability of the international trading system have become widespread in recent years many observers feel that the relatively liberal system forged after world war ii is being undermined by the proliferation of preferential trading arrangements these concerns have spawned a great deal of empirical research much of which has found that such arrangements exert a substantial effect on trade flows yet these studies have neglected the role political military alliances play in shaping patterns of commerce this omission is important because there is ample reason to expect that alliances guide trade flows and preferential trading arrangements often are comprised of allies as a result extant analyses risk confusing the effects of alliances and preferential trading arrangements on commerce and systematically overstating the effects of the latter in this study we analyze the effects of alliances and preferential trading arrangements on bilateral trade flows both factors are likely to promote trade among members but we argue that the interaction between them is central to explaining patterns of commerce the combination of an alliance which creates political incentives for participants to engage in trade and a commercial institution which liberalizes trade among members is expected to provide a considerable impetus to commerce among parties to both 1

assimilation changes in cohort quality and the earnings of immigrants this paper reexamines the empirical basis for two facts that seem to be found in most cross section studies of immigrant earnings 1 the earnings of immigrants grow rapidly as they assimilate into the united states and 2 this rapid growth leads to many immigrants overtaking the earnings of the natives within 10 15 years after immigration using the 1970 and 1980 u s censuses this paper studies the earnings growth experienced by specific immigrant cohorts during the period 1970 80 it is found that within cohort growth is significantly smaller than the growth predicted by cross section regressions for most immigrant groups this differential is consistent with the hypothesis that there has been a secular decline in the quality of immigrants admitted to the united states

school quality and returns to education of u s immigrants using the u s labor market as a common point of reference this article investigates the influence of source country school quality on the returns to education of immigrants based on 1980 and 1990 census data we first estimate country of origin specific returns to education results reveal that immigrants from japan and northern europe receive high returns and immigrants from central america receive low returns next we examine the relationship between school quality measures and these returns holding per capita gdp and other factors constant immigrants from countries with lower pupil teacher ratios and greater expenditures per pupil earn higher returns to education

us bilateral trade equations forecasts and structural stability in this paper actual recent us trade values are compared with out of sample forecasts using a standard specification for real bilateral trade value equations though fairly accurate on average there are large bilateral errors a battery of coefficient stability tests indicates significant instability more often for imports over the forecast period and more often for exports over the latter part of the estimation period thus standard bilateral trade equations appear to violate the basic regression assumption of stability and may be of little use for forecasting

does trade still follow the flag t he economic ties between any two nations are frequently affected by a warming or cooling of bilateral diplomatic relations but there is little to be found in modern economics or political science that helps us understand the connections between international politics and commerce the notion that international economics could be studied in isolation from its political underpinnings or consequences would have been quite alien to mercantilist thinkers in the eighteenth century or to the critics or advocates of imperialism in the nineteenth that economics and politics were inextricably intertwined was taken as a matter of course indeed trade follows the flag was central to these people s understanding of world politics and international economics intellectual trends over the past century radically changed this worldview the ascendancy of liberalism in economic thought brought with it a compartmentalization of disciplines that may now be eroding but we are left with theories of international politics and economics that are very weakly bridged the objective of this study is to map one of the many connections between international politics and commercial ties specifically i seek to identify and measure the effect of changes in state to state diplomatic relations on trade flows between those nations theoretical underpinnings of my effort are in the tradition of public choice political economy frey 1984 because i treat importers as rational utility maximizers and their behavior as determined by preferences pursued within a context of specified constraints the model i put forward is wholly consistent with contemporary neoclassical trade theory but i extend the economists notion of welfare and contend that importers take account not only of the price and quantity of goods and services but of the place of origin of these products and the political relationship between the importing and the exporting nation they do so essentially for traditional security reasons that is importers are motivated to manage their trade relations in ways that minimize risks of disruption in supply or the possibility of hurting friends or

is there a long run relation between the trade balance and the real effective exchange rate of ldcs abstract using quarterly data over 1973 1988 period the cointegration analysis is used and it is shown that the trade balance and the real effective exchange rate of some ldcs are cointegrated in the long run this approach is argued to be a close substitute for testing the marshall lerner condition

a model of uk real effective exchange rate behaviour an integrated model of the uk real effective exchange rate is examined which links purchasing power parity with trade flow and asset market mechanisms furthermore time series and econometric analysis using quarterly data from 1972 to 1987 are applied the results obtained are broadly consistent with this model and imply that the uk real effective exchange rate index is constant in the long run

intergenerational progress of mexican origin workers in the u s labor market using unique current population survey data from november 1979 and 1989 this paper compares the wage structure across generations of mexican origin men ifind that the sizable earnings advantage u s born mexican americans enjoy over mexican immigrants arises not just from intergenerational improvements in years of schooling and english proficiency but also from increased returns to human capital for mexicanorigin workers who were born and educated in the united states progress stalls after the second generation however as the modest gains in human capital that occur between the second and third generations fail to raise the average earnings of mexican americans

bilateral trade elasticities this paper estimates income and price elasticities for bilateral world trade in addition to testing the properties of the error terms the dynamic specification and the assumption of parameter constancy the analysis presents the first application of the bank spectrum estimator to bilateral trade flows for all countries the paper finds that bilateral trade elasticities exhibit enough of a dispersion to suggest that the direction of trade is sensitive to changes in income and prices using the bilateral elasticities as raw data the analysis obtains the associated multilateral estimates and finds that they are both consistent with the literature and suitable to addressing questions involving multilateral trade but the evidence also reveals that sole reliance on multilateral elasticities conceals valuable information for both policy applications and empirical analyses of international trade copyright 1990 by mit press

export growth performance of less developed countries abstract this paper has two purposes 1 to estimate own price cross price and income elasticities of export demand for a sample of 41 ldcs and 2 to test whether relative export growth performance of ldcs can be explained in terms of differing values of these elasticities the study finds that in conformance with the theory specified export growth is enhanced by a smaller ownprice elasticity a larger cross price elasticity and a larger income elasticity

labor market discrimination against hispanic and black men h ispanic american men have lower average wage rates than white non hispanics in 1975 the average white non hispanic male wage earner in the united states earned 5 97 an hour mexican men earned 4 31 72 as much as white non hispanics puerto rican men earned 4 52 76 as much and cuban men earned 5 33 89 as much as white non hispanics by way of comparison black men s average wages in 1975 were 4 65 78 of the white male wage several possible reasons for the hispanics lower wages come to mind among them are age and education geographic location immigration language difficulties and discrimination for example as shown in table 1 mexicans and puerto ricans are younger on average than the white non hispanic population and earnings tend to rise with age hispanics have lower average levels of education than white non hispanics and wages are positively associated with education many mexican americans live in the southwest where prices are relatively low moreover hispanics are more likely to be recent immigrants and to lack fluency in english than white non hispanics and so to be at a disadvantage in the labor market in addition there is a widespread belief that hispanics suffer from employment discrimination and cannot obtain the wages that their human capital would command if they were non hispanic whites how much of the wage differentials described above are due to each of these factors and to other inter group differences in wage related characteristics in particular how much impact does labor market discrimination have on the average hispanic man s wage and how does this compare with discrimination against blacks this paper provides answers to these questions a few other efforts have been made to analyze the relative earnings of hispanic and white nonhispanic men using 1960 and 1970 census data fogel 1966 poston and alvirez 1973 poston alvirez and tienda 1976 long 1977 and gwartney and long 1978 we use more recent data from the 1976 survey of income and education this data set enables us to measure wage rates more accurately and to specify the wage function more completely than does the census unlike previous analysts in estimating the wage function we take account of possible selectivity bias due to the distinction between average wage offers and average observed wages thus we hope to obtain a more accurate and up to date measure of labor market discrimination against hispanic men section ii explains the method used to separate the minority white non hispanic wage differential into the portions due to differences in average characteristics and the portion due to differences in unobserved factors and discrimination taking into account the possibility of selectivity bias in the observed wage sample section iii describes the data used in the study and the specification of the wage equation the breakdown of the observed wage differentials into components due to differences in participation in the wage and salary sector local price levels average characteristics and discrimination are presented in section iv section v summarizes our findings and discusses their implications for efforts to improve the economic situation of hispanics in the united states

u s bilateral trade balances and the dollar abstract u s bilateral export and import values with seven large trading partners are tested for real exchange rate effects over 1975 1985 the results suggest that dollar devaluation would have the most favorable impact on the u s trade balance in the case of japan and the least favorable in the case of canada

does devaluation improve the current account this paper incorporates the link between devaluation foreign interest payments and the current acccount into a fairly general macroeconomic model in which exchange rate changes influence aggregate demand through exports imports and expenditures as well as aggregate supply via the cost of imported factors of production on the basis of avaliable statistical estimates of the behavioral and structural parameters of the model an attempt is mafe to assess the empirical importance of this link among others in a group of highly indebted industrial and developing countries by and large the empirical results indicate that high foreign debt and interest payments tend to reduce the short to medium run effect of devaluation on national income expecially in the ldcs but make little difference to its generally positive effect on the current account

some international evidence on the stability of aggregate import demand function this paper empirically analyses the stability of the aggregate import demand function for g7 countries the standard cointegration test and a test developed by gregory and hansen are performed the results of standard cointegration tests suggest that there is no stable cointegrating relation between real import real gdp and relative import price for all g7 countries the cointegrating relation is empirically supported for france and germany if structural change for cointegrating vector is explicitly taken into consideration the cointegrating relation is empirically rejected for canada italy japan the uk and the usa thus the stimulation of domestic business conditions will not necessarily link the quantity of imports for these five countries

exchange rate volatility and pakistan s exports to the developed world 1974 85 abstract the paper attempts to estimate the impact of exchange rate uncertainty on pakistan s exports to the developed world for 1974 85 discovering strong evidence to suggest that exports were adversely affected by the increased variability of its bilateral exchange rates unlike much of the recent evidence on developed countries however it is the variability in nominal rather than real exchange rates that is significant the computations also suggest the presence of strong third country effects

property tax abatement and the simultaneous determination of local fiscal variables in a metropolitan area a model is given for the behavior of communities and firms in regards to the granting of local firm property tax abatements in a metropolitan area the model yields a system of simultaneous equations that are estimated using a 1977 87 panel data set from the detroit metropolitan area results indicate that firm property tax abatements are offered by a community to offset noncapitalized profit reducing characteristics property tax abatements are effective at increasing nonresidential property bases but at costs decreased home values increased local property tax rates and increased state subsidies to local governments that should not be ignored by policy makers

new evidence on the economic progress of foreign born men in the 1970s and 1980s this study examines the economic progress of foreign born men in the united states europeans entered the united states with relatively high wages and earned wages comparable to natives over their life course japanese korean and chinese men entered with lower wages but quickly caught up with u s born workers mexicans and central americans entered with low wages and the wage gap between themselves and u s born workers has not shrunk disparities in completed years of education and whether education was received in the united states can explain a large share of the differences in the level of wages for immigrants from some countries it is found that more highly educated men assimilate more quickly the rate of economic progress has not improved for more recent arrivals from any country but this is most problematic among mexicans and central americans because of their relatively low rates of wage growth excerpt

the relative earnings of young mexican black and white women this analysis of data from the national longitudinal survey of youth indicates that young mexican women and young black women earned respectively 9 5 and 13 2 less than young white women in 1994 differences in education appear to be the most important explanation for the mexican white wage gap whereas differences in labor force attachment are the most important determinant of the black white wage gap the authors show that accounting for actual labor market experience rather than simply imputing experience based on years since leaving school is crucially important in such analyses recent research has renewed interest in the relatively poor labor market performance of mexican men trejo 1997 1998 reimers 1994 chavez 1991 chapa 1990 trejo 1997 found that lower levels of education english deficiencies and the relative youth of mexican men explain 75 of the gap between mexican and white wages in contrast these factors explain less than 30 of the wage gap between black and white men despite the flurry of recent research exploring the poor performance of mexican men we are aware of

the economic effects of state and local business incentives dies they have proliferated to the point that a 652 page overview of and state by state guide to business incentives was recently published national association of state development agencies et al 1983 a major area of this controversy concerns the effects of local subsidies on local and national economic welfare 2 moes 1961 1962a and 1962b buchanan and moes 1960 laird and rinehart 1967 and 1972 and gray 1964 argued that situations exist where local subsidies can increase both local and national economic welfare but goffman 1962 and thompson 1962 argued that local subsidies are unlikely to increase local economic welfare and are likely to decrease national economic welfare to address this issue a series

exchange rate sensitivity of the demand for money in developing countries there is consensus among researches that under the present floating exchange rate system although developing countries peg their exchange rate to a major currency they cannot avoid fluctuation in their effective exchange rates as long as major currencies fluctuate against one another few authors have investigated the effects of changes in effective exchange rates of developing countries on their imports exports trade balance demand for international reserves inflation etc in this paper we try to inestigate the effects of effective exchange rates of developing countries on their demand for money previous authors who have estimated a money demand function inclusive of an exchange rate variable bilateral or effective have restricted themselves to industrial countries only by using quarterly data over the 1973 85 period it is shown that in most developing countries while the short run effcts of depreciation could be in either direction its long run effects are negative indicating that deprecia

nominal and real effective exchange rates of middle eastern countries and their trade performance indexes of real and nominal effective exchange rates that are published by the imf are mostly for industrial countries none of the middle eastern countries have received any attention on this regard this paper tries to close the gap by constructing such indexes for 11 middle eastern countries over 1971 i 1994 iv period as an application long run response of their trade balance to devaluation is also investigated

a political economic model of u s bilateral trade a bstract interrelationships between economics and politics have long been recognized by scholars in the field of international relations this paper attempts to identify and quantify the factors aflecting bilateral trade flows between the united states and other countries by developing a gravity type model the model includes economic and political variables and is tested using data for sixty six u s trading partners results indicate that pure economic variables which reflect market forces are not the only factors affecting u s bilateral trade semi cconomic and international political factors are also important

international spillovers of policy uncertainty using the baker et al 2013 index of policy uncertainty for six developed countries this paper estimates spillovers of policy uncertainty we find that spillovers account for slightly more than one fourth of the dynamics of policy uncertainty in these countries with this share rising to one half during the financial crisis the us and uk are responsible for a large fraction of the spillovers since the financial crisis while the remaining countries are all net receivers of policy uncertainty shocks during and after this period

intraurban manufacturing location decisions and local tax differentials abstract this study examines the role that fiscal factors play in the intrametropolitan location decisions of manufacturing firms emphasis is placed on analyzing location choices of relocating firms rather than existing patterns of economic activity or estimating changes in net employment the results indicate that the property tax rate is a significant location factor to relocating firms selecting sites within an urban area and that income tax differentials have a negative but weak influence on those decisions the location disincentives of property taxes are strongest for large firms and tend to decrease with firm size

exchange rate and foreign gdp elasticities of swiss exports across sectors and destination countries abstractthis article uses a detailed breakdown of swiss trade flows to identify how the impact of the two main determinants of switzerland s exports foreign demand and the real exchange rate varies across sectors and export destinations our main findings are that i both foreign demand and exchange rate elasticities vary substantially across both export sectors and export destinations ii foreign demand trends are more important for structural considerations than the exchange rate this is due to the fact that exports of the two largest export sectors are relatively sensitive to long run foreign demand developments while they are relatively insensitive to changes in the exchange rate iii the sectoral structure of switzerland s exports has shifted towards goods that have a lower short run demand elasticity and a higher long run demand elasticity goods exports are thus less influenced by business cycle fluctuations while they benefit more from long term growth trends iv the export share of se