liberalizing trade in financial services the uruguay round and the arab countries summary as a result of the uruguay round members of the world trade organization wto are committed to initiating gradual liberalization in their service sectors i e to opening their markets to foreign service suppliers the purpose of this paper is to examine the prospects and problems of trade liberalization in financial services in the arab countries the paper draws on the theoretical contributions outlining the case for financial liberalization in developing countries it reviews the recent performance structure and regulation of the banking systems in some arab countries the main conclusion is that arab countries do not meet the prerequisites for successful financial liberalization there is a clear need for internal reform of the financial systems first before opening up to external competition

the rise and fall of the washington consensus as a paradigm for developing countries abstract the introduction of the washington consensus involved not simply a swing from state led to market oriented policies but also a shift in the ways in which development problems were framed and in the types of explanation through which policies were justified key changes were the partial globalization of development policy analysis and a shift from historicism to ahistorical performance assessment the main challenge to this approach is a latent southern consensus which is apparent in the convergence between east asian developmentalism and latin american neostructuralism the demise of the washington consensus is inevitable because its methodology and ideology are in contradiction

labor unemployment risk and corporate financing decisions this paper examines the impact of labor unemployment risk on corporate financing decisions theory suggests that firms choose conservative financial policies partly as a means of mitigating worker exposure to unemployment risk using changes in state unemployment insurance benefit laws as a source of variation in the costs borne by workers during layoff spells we explore the connection between unemployment risk and the corporate financing decisions of public firms in the united states we find that increases in legally mandated unemployment benefits lead to increases in corporate leverage the impact of reduced unemployment risk on financial policy is especially strong for firms that have greater layoff separation rates labor intensity and financing constraints the estimated premium required to compensate workers for unemployment risk due to financial distress is about 57 basis points of firm value for a bbb rated firm these findings suggest that labor market frictions have a significant impact on corporate financing decisions

efficient resource allocation on the basis of priorities many institutions allocate resources by non market mechanisms based on priorities in this paper we introduce a model of resource allocation on the basis of priorities and address the following questions is it possible to allocate resources on the basis of any priority structure if yes when can we do this pareto efficiently without creating incentives for manipulation and consistently across different groups of agents and resource levels we adopt a basic indivisible objects model with a finite number of object types and a finite quota of goods of each type some interesting examples are the determination of access to education allocation of graduate houses offices or tasks agents are assumed to have strict preferences over object types and remaining unassigned an assignment is an allocation of the objects to the agents such that every agent receives at most one object a rule associates an assignment to each preference profile we formalize a priority structure to be a collection of strict priority rankings of individuals indexed by the object types where i a j would be read as i has higher priority for object a than j we assume that the priority structure is exogenously fixed and allow the preferences of the agents to vary a rule is said to violate a priority of i for a if there is a preference profile under which i envies j who is assigned a and publication information econometrica 70 6 november 2002 2489 2497 the copyright to this article is held by the econometric society http www econometricsociety org it may be downloaded printed and reproduced only for personal or classroom use absolutely no downloading or copying may be done for or on behalf of any for profit commercial firm or other commercial purpose without the explicit permission of the econometric society for this purpose contact julie p gordon executive director of the society at jpg northwestern edu i would like to thank faruk gul wolfgang pesendorfer the co editor the four anonymous referees and the participants of the micro theory lunch seminar in princeton university for their comments and suggestions

war and rivalry among great powers we combine analysis of rivalry with consideration of a possible selection bias we discover that what makes great powers more likely to be rivals is statistically related to their propensity to experience war a censored probit allows simultaneous estimation of the influence of six covariates on the probability great powers experience rivalry and war while controlling for statistical linkage between the two dependent variables consequently we recast some past research for example contiguity and parity actually reduce the probability of war between great power rivals once we control for their influence on the probability great powers are rivals in the first place our results compliment other research highlighting various problems of selection bias in world politics and suggest a new direction for future research on rivalry e draw together two literatures about processes in international politics a growing literature concerned with various selectionrelated inferential threats recommends we pay as much attention to how cases get into our datasets as we do to what occurs in those cases a large literature on rivalry analyzes pairs of states repeatedly experiencing conflict both literatures highlight the importance of process in international conflict by process we mean linked instances sequentially and cumulatively resulting in outcomes although many conflict processes likely exist we investigate linkages across a process of the occurrence of rivalry and the onset of war we believe the existence of rivalry and the onset of war are linked expressions of one underlying process and argue that treating them in this way may teach us much the literature on selection effects within international politics helps us produce more valid estimates of what makes rivals escalate their relations to war while interstate rivalry provides a powerful example of where methodological concerns about selection can inform the development of theory in international politics

on two competing mechanisms for priority based allocation problems we consider the priority based allocation problem there is a set of indivisible objects with multiple supplies e g schools with seats and a set of agents e g students with priorities over objects e g proximity of residence area we study two well known and competing mechanisms the agentoptimal stable mechanism aosm allots objects via the deferred acceptance algorithm the top trading cycles mechanism ttcm allots objects via gale s top trading cycles algorithm we show that the two mechanisms are equivalent or ttcm is fair i e respects agents priorities or resource monotonic o rpopulation monotonic if and only if the priority structure is acyclic furthermore if aosm fails to be efficient consistent for a problem ttcm also fails to be fair consistent for it however the converse is not necessarily true

on stable and strategy proof rules in matching markets with contracts abstract this paper studies stable and one sided strategy proof rules in many to one matching markets with contracts not assuming any kind of substitutes condition or the law of aggregate demand we obtain the following results first the number of stable and strategy proof rules is at most one second the doctor optimal stable rule whenever it exists is the unique candidate for a stable and strategy proof rule third a stable and strategy proof rule whenever it exists is second best optimal for doctor welfare in that no individually rational and strategy proof rule can dominate it this last result is further generalized to non wasteful and strategy proof rules due to the weak assumptions our analysis covers a broad range of markets including cases where a unique stable and strategy proof rule is not equal to the one induced by the cumulative offer process or the deferred acceptance algorithm

confessions of a malthusian restrictionist abstract the current discussion over the ethical propriety of using environmental degradation arguments to restrict immigration is at an impasse one group argues from a neo liberal globalization perspective and rejects such arguments while the other take a more internationalist approach accepting restrictions i argue that the neo liberal position is seriously flawed since it leads to the elimination of places a morally important category and that from an internationalist view immigration restriction based on environmental degradation is ethically justifiable

structure behavior and voter turnout in the united states electoral participation in the united states is examined to provide a clearer account of the effect of the registration requirement on individual voting behavior pooling nes data from 1980 1984 and 1988 i first model with traditional and selection bias techniques the full electorate to distinguish among three groups nonregistrants registered nonvoters and voters analyses limited to recent movers then reported to understand more fully the forces associated with the actual decision calculi of registering and voting the influences of many factors commonly accepted as important determinants of voting are disentangled and their effect at each stage is ascertained factors yielding inconsistent effects in previ research or believed to be unimportant such as race gender attitudes toward the candidates and trust government are shown to deserve closer scrutiny by electoral scholars

racing to the bottom or climbing to the top economic globalization and collective labor rights this article explores the impact of economic globalization on workers rights in developing countries the authors hypothesize that the impact of globalization on labor rights depends not only on the overall level of economic openness but also on the precise ways in which a country participates in global production networks using a new data set on collective labor rights the authors test these expectations their analysis of the correlates of labor rights in 90 developing nations from 1986 to 2002 highlights globalization s mixed impact on labor rights as climb to the top accounts suggest foreign direct investment inflows are positively and significantly related to the rights of workers but at the same time trade competition generates downward race to the bottom pressures on collective labor rights the authors also find that domestic institutions and labor rights in neighboring countries are important correlates of workers rights

when liberal policies reflect external shocks what do we learn abstract we present a model where policies of free capital mobility can signal governments future policies but the informativeness of the signal depends on the path of world interest rates capital flows to emerging markets reflect investors perception of these markets political risk with low world interest rates emerging markets experience a capital inflow and engage in a widespread policy of free capital mobility with higher rates only sufficiently committed countries allow free capital mobility whereas others impose controls to trap capital onshore thus signaling future policies affecting capital mobility these predictions are consistent with the recent experience of capital flows and policies affecting capital mobility in developing countries

revenue substitution how foreign aid inflows moderate the effect of bilateral trade pressures on labor rights summary this paper investigates how foreign aid inflows moderate bilateral trade based pressures on the exporting countries labor rights because aid provides additional resources to recipient governments it reduces the importance aid recipient governments attach to the preferences of their export partners consequently aid inadvertently moderates the leverage exercised by importing countries on the governments of exporting developing countries our analysis of a panel of 91 aid recipient countries for the period 1985 2002 lends support to the revenue substitution hypothesis when aid levels are low bilateral trade based pressures are associated with improved labor rights as aid levels rise however the effect loses significance

social accountability 8000 standard certification analysis of worldwide diffusion abstract this study analyzes the worldwide diffusion of the social accountability 8000 standard certification in sixty five countries and sixty six activity sectors from 1999 to 2011 the logistic curve model is used to assess the current situation on both a global scale and a local scale additionally instability and concentration indices are used to analyze whether the diffusion process developed in a homogeneous manner across countries and economic sectors the results i increase the understanding of sa8000 s diffusion ii provide an exploratory descriptive analysis of the current sa8000 diffusion worldwide in both macro and microanalyses compared with other standards and iii identify future trends in sa8000 diffusion concluding that currently sa8000 follows a similar pattern than other standards and in consequence a growing trend is expected in next years these findings suggest some challenges and opportunities the standard must be more flexible to accommodate the differing perspectives of cultures increase the dialogue with stakeholders and include more small companies from developing countries

theories of policy diffusion lessons from latin american pension reform what accounts for the waves of policy diffusion that increasingly sweep across regions of the world why do many diverse countries adopt similar changes focusing on the spread of chilean style pension privatization in latin america this article assesses the relative merit of four theoretical explanations that scholars of diffusion have proposed as the principal mechanism driving innovations spread these approaches emphasize external pressures emanating especially from international financial institutions the quest for symbolic or normative legitimacy rational learning and cost benefit calculation and cognitive heuristics respectively the article assesses which one of these frameworks can best account for the three distinctive features of diffusion namely its wavelike temporal pattern its geographical clustering and the spread of similarity amid diversity while several approaches contribute to understanding policy diffusion the analysis suggests that the cognitive psychological framework offers a particularly persuasive account of the spread of pension reform

global markets and national politics collision course or virtuous circle increasing exposure to trade foreign direct investment and liquid capital mobility have not prompted a pervasive policy race to the neoliberal bottom among the oecd countries one reason is that there are strong political incentives for governments to cushion the dislocations and risk generated by openness moreover countries with large and expanding public economies when balanced with increased revenues even from capital taxes have not suffered from capital flight or higher interest rates this is because the modern welfare state comprising income transfer programs and publicly provided social services generates economically important collective goods that are undersupplied by markets and that actors are interested in productivity value these range from the accumulation of human and physical capital to social stability under conditions of high market uncertainty to popular support for the market economy itself as a result arguments about the demise of national autonomy in the global economy are considerably overdrawn

globalisation women s economic rights and forced labour economy s penetration by foreign direct investment by and large has no sta tistically significant impact globalisation might weaken the general bargaining position of labour such that outcome related la bour standards might suffer however being more open toward trade is likely to promote rather than hinder the realisation of t wo labour rights considered as core or fundamental by the international labour organisation namely the elimination of economic discrimination and of forced labour

a dynamic school choice model this paper inspires from a real life assignment problem faced by the mexican ministry of public education we introduce a dynamic school choice problem that consists in assigning positions to overlapping generations of teachers from one period to another teachers can either retain their current positions or choose a preferred one in this framework a solution concept that conciliates the fairness criteria with the individual rationality condition is introduced it is then proved that a solution always exists and that it can be reached by a modified version of the deferred acceptance algorithm of gale and shapley we also show that the mechanism is dynamically strategy proof and respects improvements whenever the set of orders is lexicographic by tenure

the impact of stakeholder power on corporate reputation a cross country corporate governance perspective corporate reputation has roots in national beliefs about the role of the business corporation in society these beliefs are constructed in accordance with the preferences of powerful stakeholders building on a stakeholder power approach to corporate governance we investigate whether differences in the legal rights and protections of shareholders creditors and workers across countries affect the general public s reputation assessments of business corporations using a sample of 593 of the largest publicly traded companies in the world from 32 countries during 2007 to 2011 we find that in societies where shareholders enjoy a high degree of legal rights the impact of stock market returns on corporate reputation becomes more positive likewise the negative relationship between earnings volatility and reputation becomes greater when creditor rights are stronger contrary to expectations we found no evidence of an interaction effect between labor rights and corporate social performance on corporate repu

do labor standards affect comparative advantage in developing countries abstract this paper focuses on the question of whether labor standards can affect comparative advantage in unskilled labor intensive goods in developing countries and thereby influence trade flows using a heckscher ohlin framework the effects of low labor standards depend on the type of standard forced and child labor lead to an increase in the endowment of unskilled labor and hence improve comparative advantage in unskilled labor intensive goods the opposite occurs with discrimination against females and with basic trade union rights the outcome is ambiguous the empirical results confirm the theoretical outcome but also show that weaker union rights are associated with a stronger comparative advantage

trade based diffusion of labor rights a panel study 1986 2002 this article investigates the nature of the linkages between trade and labor rights in developing countries specifically we hypothesize that a california effect serves to transmit superior labor standards from importing to exporting countries in a manner similar to the transmission of environmental standards we maintain that all else being equal the labor standards of a given country are influenced not by its overall level of trade openness but by the labor standards of its trading partners we evaluate our hypothesis using a panel of 90 developing countries over the period 1986 2002 and we separately examine the extent to which the labor laws and the actual labor practices of the countries are influenced by those of their export destinations we find that strong legal protections of collective labor rights in a country s export destinations are associated with more stringent labor laws in the exporting country this california effect finding is however weaker in the context of labor rights practices highlighting the importance of distinguishing between formal legislation and actual implementation of labor rights

capital rules the domestic politics of international regulatory harmonization in the past fifteen years financial regulators from the developed world have attempted to create international regulatory standards in a variety of financial issue areas their negotiations are notable for the stark variation in the preferences of regulators toward international regulatory harmonization certain regulators actively resist any attempts at regulatory harmonization while others are vocal in their advocacy for an international agreement when will regulators seek to harmonize their rules with their foreign counterparts i propose a principal agent framework for analyzing regulator behavior that views international harmonization as a means of satisfying domestic political pressures the framework predicts that regulators are more likely to seek international regulatory harmonization when confidence in the stability of financial institutions is declining and when competitive pressures are increasing from foreign firms facing less stringent regulations i explore the consistency of the framework with two important cases in the history of international financial regulation the negotiations among bank regulators leading up to the 1988 basel accord on bank capital adequacy and the negotiations among securities regulators over capital adequacy for securities firms between 1988 and 1992 i thank gabe aguilera david bach ethan bueno de mesquita dan carpenter bill clark mark copelovitch jeff frieden dan gingerich dan ho devesh kapur joseph n r sanberg ross schaap allan stam matt stephenson two anonymous reviewers and the editors of io for helpful comments discussions and feedback i am also indebted to the thirty current and former regulators and financial industry executives who participated in interviews to advance this project finally i thank the weatherhead center for international affairs and the center for european studies for research funding

workers rights in open economies global production and domestic institutions in the developing world previous large n research suggests that globalization could have either positive or negative consequences for labor rights in developing nations this article examines the ways in which domestic political institutions and interests conditions the effects of economic globalization it develops several hypotheses regarding the impact of domestic factors on labor rights outcomes and uses the case of costa rica to assess these hypotheses the result is that although segments of the costa rican economy and labor force have benefited from industrial upgrading in recent years the enclave nature of the export oriented economy and the historical repression of organized labor render difficult the achievement of some internationally recognized core labor rights the article concludes by discussing some of the issues for future research that are highlighted by the costa rican case

globalization and the right to free association and collective bargaining an empirical analysis summary economies that are more open to trade and foreign direct investment fdi face greater competitive pressure than closed ones globalization critics are concerned that this pressure induces countries to lower labor standards in order to remain competitive and retain or attract foreign investment defenders of globalization counter that countries that are more closely integrated into global markets are likely to have higher rather than lower standards this article tests the effect of globalization on a specific labor right which forms part of what are commonly regarded as core or fundamental labor standards employing a new measure of free association and collective bargaining rights we find that countries that are more open to trade have fewer rights violations than more closed ones this effect holds in a global sample as well as in a developing country sub sample and holds also when potential feedback effects are controlled via instrumental variable regression the extent of an economy s penetration by fdi has no statistically significant impact globalization might not be beneficial for outcome related labor standards but it is likely to promote the process related standard of a right to free association and collective bargaining

does flexibility promote cooperation an application to the global trade regime do flexibility provisions in international agreements clauses allow ing for legal suspension of concessions without abrogating the treaty promote coop eration recent work emphasizes that provisions for relaxing treaty commitments can ironically make states more likely to form agreements and make deeper conces sions when doing so this argument has particularly been applied to the global trade regime the general agreement on tariffs and trade gatt and its successor the world trade organization wto yet the field has not produced much evidence bearing on this claim our article applies this claim to the global trade regime and its chief flexibility provision antidumping in contrast to prior work this article explic itly models the endogeneity and selection processes envisioned by the theory we find that states joining the wto are more likely to adopt domestic antidumping mech anisms likewise corrected for endogeneity states able to take advantage of the regime s principal flexibility provision by having a domestic antidumping mecha nism in place are significantly more likely to 1 join the wto 2 agree to more tightly binding tariff commitments and 3 implement lower applied tariffs as well

the race to the bottom from the bottom the dominant perspective in discussions of labour and environmental standards and globalization is that of north south competition and its impact on northern standards this paper presents an alternative perspective that of south south competition to export to the north and its impact on southern standards it develops a simple model of southern competition and demonstrates that whether a southern race to the bottom is possible depends intricately on the northern demand curve the size of large exporters relative to each other and the relative size of the competitive fringe of small exporters the possibility that northern trade protectionism may undermine southern standards is also examined

right to work laws and the extent of unionization it is a well known fact that the extent of unionization is less in states with right to work rtw laws a framework is developed for determining whether rtw laws actually cause a decrease in the extent of unionization or whether they simply mirror preexisting tastes of workers against unions a set of empirical tests is proposed that can distinguish between these explanations based on differences between rtw and non rtw states in the demand for union representation the supply of union jobs relative to that demand and the observed union nonunion wage differential these tests are implemented using disaggregated data from the quality of employment survey and the current population survey and a pattern is found that is consistent with the hypothesis that rtw laws simply mirror preexisting preferences against union representation

neither miti nor america the political economy of capital liberalization in japan compared with japan no other industrialized country has so adamantly denied foreign investors direct access to its domestic markets japan continued to deny such market access until domestic constituencies finally championed foreign demands and successfully pressured a reluctant state for concessions the initiative for these concessions came neither from japan s principal government negotiators in the ministry of international trade and industry miti nor from public policymakers in america rather it came from american and other multinational corporations mncs seeking to exploit imperfect markets for the technology and related assets which they alone controlled and which a few japanese oligopolists demanded these local oligopolists served as manipulative intermediaries between mncs and the nationstate and in that position determined both the timing and the substance of their country s long march toward capital liberalization between the legislation of capital controls in 1950 and the de jure elimination of those controls in 1980 what began as an extension of limited concessions to individual mncs eventually aided by small regulatory loopholes gradually encompassed all foreigners supplying broad product groups during the intervening thirty years the mncs examined in this article including coca cola ibm texas instruments and the big three u s automakers finally gained limited access to the japanese market for them the formal liberalizations of the late 1960s and early 1970s proved significant but not always decisive as japanese oligopolists moved both to replace public regulations with private restrictions and to mesh their ongoing political influence domestically with their emerging economic power internationally thus de facto liberalization proceeded slowly and unevenly at least through 1980 and foreign direct investment in japan continued to languish what capital liberalization did occur had little to do with the pressures exerted on miti and the japanese state by the u s government and the international organizations that america then controlled rather american diplomacy proved successful in forcing concessions from japan only when it was backed up both by the economic power of american mncs and by the active support of japanese business

strategyproof assignment by hierarchical exchange we give a characterization of the set of group strategyproof pareto optimal and reallocation proof allocation rules for the assignment problem where individuals are assigned at most one indivisible object without any medium of exchange although there are no property rights in the model the rules satisfying the above criteria imitate a trading procedure with individual endowments in which individuals exchange objects from their hierarchically determined endowment sets in an iterative manner in particular these assignment rules generalize gale s top trading cycle procedure the classical rule for the model in which each individual owns an indivisible good

the political economy of financial internationalization in the developing world in the last decade a growing number of developing countries have opened their financial systems by liberalizing capital flows and the rules governing the international operations of financial intermediaries one explanation of this rush toward greater financial internationalization is that increasing interdependence generates domestic and foreign political pressures for capital account liberalization while we find evidence for that hypothesis we find that the proximate cause in developing countries more frequently is found in balance of payments crises politicians perceive that financial openness in the face of crisis can increase capital inflows by indicating to foreign investors that they will be able to liquidate their investments and by signaling government intentions to maintain fiscal and monetary discipline the argument is explored through case studies of chile indonesia mexico and south korea

an explanation of the international variation in the prevalence of child labour it is hypothesized that the institutional acceptability of child labor will be more prevalent when the other members of a society gain from its use therefore the cross country variation in the prevalence of child labor depends on the degree to which child labor affects the welfare of the remaining members of a society it is demonstrated theoretically that the non child labor factors gain from child labor when the economy is closed as an economy becomes more open to international trade those gains diminish and even turn negative as the size of the economy increases child labor will not exist in capital abundant countries since in them child labor makes the non child labor factors worse off it is shown empirically that the cross country prevalence of child labor falls with increases in a nation s per capita income its openness to trade and its economic size it is argued that trade sanctions as a remedy for child labor may be counter productive since an open economy reduces the benefits of child labor to the other members of a society and thereby reduces the society s incentive to allow child labor the model also demonstrates that the economic changes brought on by democracy undermine the practice of child labor

firm self regulation through international certifiable standards determinants of symbolic versus substantive implementation international certifiable management standards that have been advocated as a governance mechanism for firm self regulation of corporate social responsibility issues are effective only if certified firms comply with the requirements of the standards our empirical analysis shows that iso certified firms in china strategically select their level of compliance depending on customer preferences customer monitoring and expected sanctions by customers our findings have implications for the effectiveness of a global system of self regulation based on certifiable standards research on certifiable standards and for practicing managers who require suppliers to obtain standard certifications

union rent seeking intangible capital and market value of the firm abstract this study considers the effect of unions on intangi ble capital investment and profitability within the context of a market value rather than a more traditional accounting based approach theory is provided suggesting unions are able to affect profitability by sharing in the economic returns to firm specific intangible capital in support of this hypothesis we find unionization reduces the returns to r d and produces a corresponding limiting influence on r d investment at the firm level i introduction a n extensive literature in economics has ex amined the determinants of profitability with much of the focus centering on the role of market structure only recently however have the effects of labor unions on profitability been analyzed ths is surprising since labor economists long have emphasized union influences on wages and productivity that in turn may affect profitabil ity in recent studies freeman 1983 and karier 1985 report a significant limiting influence of unions on price cost margins in high concentra tion manufacturing industries using firm level data and the market based tobin s

right to work laws do matter recent economic literature has ascribed a benign influence to right to work rtw laws the apparent consensus is that rtw laws do not reduce union membership because organized labor must have already been weak at the time right to work laws were enacted this time series observation i e union membership is not significantly lower after rtw laws have been enacted than what it was before has been misapplied to argue that right to work laws are not associated with economic differences between right to work states and union shop states a closer look at this nonsequitur is in order this paper contends that right to work laws do matter the consensus to the contrary rests on a shakey econometric foundation proponents of the proposition that rtw laws are harmless have never subjected that hypothesis to empirical scrutiny instead they have tested weak models of the right to work laws do matter hypothesis by rebutting a characterature of a proposition they set out to refute these analysts make their own hypothesis the null hypothesis it is not hard to support a precept which is proved merely by showing that the probability that it is false is less than 95 percent such procedures generate impressive polemics they do not further the interests of positive economics

the globalization of liberalization policy diffusion in the international political economy one of the most important developments over the past three decades has been the spread of liberal economic ideas and policies throughout the world these policies have affected the lives of millions of people yet our most sophisticated political economy models do not adequately capture influences on these policy choices evidence suggests that the adoption of liberal economic practices is highly clustered both temporally and spatially we hypothesize that this clustering might be due to processes of policy diffusion we think of diffusion as resulting from one of two broad sets of forces one in which mounting adoptions of a policy alter the benefits of adopting for others and another in which adoptions provide policy relevant information about the benefits of adopting we develop arguments within these broad classes of mechanisms construct appropriate measures of the relevant concepts and test their effects on liberalization and restriction of the current account the capital account and the exchange rate regime our findings suggest that domestic models of foreign economic policy making are insufficient the evidence shows that policy transitions are influenced by international economic competition as well as the policies of a country s sociocultural peers we interpret the latter influence as a form of channeled learning reflecting governments search for appropriate models for economic policy

on the determinants of core labour standards the case of developing countries abstract the paper empirically analyses the determinants of the level of core labour standards in 71 developing countries the results indicate that income levels openness to trade and human capital levels are important factors explaining variations in the level of labour standards

invested interests the politics of national economic policies in a world of global finance capital moves more rapidly across national borders now than it has in at least fifty years and perhaps in history this article examines the effects of capital mobility on different groups in national societies and on the politics of economic policymaking it begins by emphasizing that while financial markets are highly integrated within the developed world many investments are still quite specific with respect to firm sector or location it then argues that contemporary levels of international capital mobility have a differential impact on socioeconomic groups over the long run increased capital mobility tends to favor owners of capital over other groups in the shorter run owners and workers in specific sectors in capital exporting countries bear much of the burden of adjusting to increased capital mobility these patterns can be expected to lead to political divisions about whether or not to encourage or increase international capital market integration the article then demonstrates that capital mobility also affects the politics of other economic policies most centrally it shifts debate toward the exchange rate as an intermediate or ultimate policy instrument in this context it tends to pit groups that favor exchange rate stability against groups that are more concerned about national monetary policy autonomy and therefore less concerned about exchange rate stability similarly it tends to drive a wedge between groups that favor an appreciated exchange rate and groups that favor a depreciated one these divisions have important implications for such economic policies as european monetary and currency union the dollar yen exchange rate and international macroeconomic policy coordination

strategies of legitimation mnes and the adoption of csr in response to host country institutions drawing on institutional theory this study examines the question of how host country institutions affect corporate social responsibility csr adoption by multinational enterprises mnes i propose that csr encompasses a set of practices that mnes draw on to signal legitimacy in different kinds of institutional contexts contexts that vary in how they shape issue salience and stakeholder power in a given issue field building on ideas related to field opacity and the managerial implications of csr i study why mnes adopt two distinct types of csr policies standards based csr in response to contexts marked by issue salience and rights based csr in response to contexts marked by stakeholder power to test these hypotheses i use subsidiary and firm level data from a sample of 540 western european mnes in the issue field of labor rights results show that mnes strategically adopt these csr policies related to their presence in distinct institutional contexts the study offers implications for how mnes manage the legitimacy of their global operations and how csr as a form of private governance can emerge as both a substitute and complement to regulatory institutions

the regulation of labor author s botero juan djankov simeon la porta rafael lopez de silanes florencio shleifer andrei abstract we investigate the regulation of labor markets through employment collective relations and social security laws in 85 countries we find that the political power of the left is associated with more stringent labor regulations and more generous social security systems and that socialist french and scandinavian legal origin countries have sharply higher levels of labor regulation than do common law countries however the effects of legal origins are larger and explain more of the variation in regulations than those of politics heavier regulation of labor is associated with lower labor force participation and higher unemployment especially of the young these results are most naturally consistent with legal theories according to which countries have pervasive regulaory styles inherited from the transplantation of legal systems

boon or bane reassessing the productivity of foreign direct investment we assess the effects of foreign and domestic capital on economic growth using the latest data and better models of economic growth than those previously used we explicitly consider the role of human capital in the process of economic development we find no evidence that foreign direct investment harms the economic prospects of developing countries the flow of foreign capital from 1980 to 1991 spurred growth in gross domestic product per capita while the level of foreign stock or foreign penetration had no discernible effect indeed new foreign investment was more productive dollar for dollar than was capital from domestic sources previous suggestions that foreign investment flows are less beneficial than domestic ones were based on a misinterpretation moreover foreign direct investment stimulates investment from domestic sources consequently developing countries have no reason to eschew foreign capital as dependency theorists urge

do unions affect innovation we examine the effect of unionization on firm innovation using a regression discontinuity design that relies on locally exogenous variation generated by elections that pass or fail by a small margin of votes passing a union election results in an 8 7 12 5 decline in patent quantity quality three years after the election a reduction in r d expenditures reduced productivity of inventors and departures of innovative inventors appear to be plausible underlying mechanisms through which unionization impedes firm innovation in response to unionization firms move their innovation activities away from states where union elections win our paper provides new insights into the real effects of unionization this paper was accepted by gustavo manso finance

could international labour rights play a role in us trade during its last complete business cycle from 2001 to 2007 the usa experienced unsustainably high trade deficits policymakers are considering a number of measures to avoid a recurrence of such large external imbalances one such measure is the promotion of better labour rights around the world proponents argue that higher labour standards would boost us exports by increasing income growth abroad and reduce us imports by shrinking international price differences opponents of such a policy move argue that it is disguised protectionism that will impede trade and harm living standards in the usa and abroad in this paper i combine us trade data with data on international labour standards and other relevant economic variables to study any links between labour rights abroad and us trade the results suggest that the usa would have benefited from more exports if there had been better worker rights around the world but that labour rights would not have had any measurable impact on us imports that is the promotion of better worker rights around the world could contribute to smaller external imbalances without impeding international trade flows

trade openness foreign direct investment and child labor summary the skeptics of globalization argue that increased trade openness and foreign direct investment induce developing countries to keep labor costs low for example by letting children work this article argues that there are good theoretical reasons why globalization might actually have the opposite effect we test this with various measures of child labor and provide the first analysis of foreign investment in addition to trade we present evidence that countries that are more open to trade and or have a higher stock of foreign direct investment also have a lower incidence of child labor this holds for the labor force participation rate of 10 14 year old children the secondary school nonattendance rate and a count measure of economic sectors with child labor incidence as the dependent variables globalization is associated with less not more child labor

voting by committees under constraints we consider social choice problems where a society must choose a subset from a set of objects specifically we characterize the families of strategy proof voting procedures when not all possible subsets of objects are feasible and voters preferences are separable or additively representable

on the operation of multiple matching markets abstract we provide a new perspective on how to operate matching markets when there are many types of markets our finding is that the market wise adaptation of strategy proof and non wasteful rules yields a strategy proof rule with the following efficiency property no strategy proof rule pareto dominates the rule such rules are abundant as they include the market wise use of the well known priority based rules of the top trading cycles and the deferred acceptance this result gives theoretical support to the independent operation of markets observed in real life markets as well as our practice in market design that separately treats each market for its design

analysing the effects of labour standards on us export performance a time series approach with structural change the empirical effects of different measures of labour standards on the export performance of the united states are analysed using annual data for the period 1950 1998 applying a time series approach based on the structural change literature hence a model with endogenous breaks is estimated following the methodology proposed by bai and perron econometrica 66 47 78 1998 the results show that the labour standards represented by the number of hours worked the rate of occupational injuries and the unionization rate are all very important to explain the behaviour of exports for the united states in particular it is found that low labour standards may both improve or lead to a deterioration in export performance

matching with branch of choice contracts at the united states military academy branch selection is a key decision in a cadet s military career cadets at usma can increase their branch priorities at a fraction of slots by extending their service agreement this real life matching problem lls an important gap in market design literature although priorities fail a key substitutes condition the agent optimal stable mechanism is well dened and in contrast to the current usma mechanism it is fair stable and strategy proof adoption of this mechanism benets cadets and the army this new

strategy proof stochastic assignment abstract i study strategy proof assignment mechanisms where the agents reveal their preference rankings over the available objects a stochastic mechanism returns lotteries over deterministic assignments and mechanisms are compared according to first order stochastic dominance i show that non wasteful strategy proof mechanisms are not dominated by strategy proof mechanisms however non wastefulness is highly restrictive when the mechanism involves randomization in fact the random priority mechanism i e the random serial dictatorship and a recently adopted school choice mechanism deferred acceptance with random tie breaking are wasteful i find that both these mechanisms are dominated by strategy proof mechanisms in general strategy proof improvement cannot be due to merely reshuffling objects and therefore must involve assigning more objects

democracy and the washington consensus abstract this paper argues that there is a substantial body of economic advice roughly summarized in the washington consensus that deserves to be endorsed across the political spectrum such endorsement would still leave a series of major economic issues most notably the tradeoff between efficiency and equity to be determined by the outcome of the political process it is argued that the left interpreted as those who give relatively more weight to equity will advance its cause by embracing the mainstream economics summarized by the consensus

a race to the bottom in labor standards an empirical investigation abstract one of the concerns over globalization is that as nations compete for investment they relax labor standards to attract firms using spatial estimation on panel data for 135 countries over 17 years we find that the labor standards in one country are positively correlated with those elsewhere i e a cut in labor standards in other countries reduces labor standards in the country in question this interdependence is more evident in labor practices i e enforcement than in labor laws further while we find evidence of competition in both developed and developing countries it is strongest among developing countries with weak standards

labor protection and leverage this paper exploits inter temporal variations in employment protection across countries and finds that rigidities in labor markets are an important determinant of firms capital structure decisions over the 1985 2007 period we find that reforms increasing employment protection are associated with a 187 basis point reduction in leverage we interpret this finding to suggest that employment protection increases operating leverage crowding out financial leverage this result is robust across measures of employment protection and leverage and does not appear to be due to pre treatment differences between treated and control firms omitted variables unobserved changes in regional economic conditions and reverse causality heterogeneous treatment effects are consistent with our economic intuition we find that the negative effect is more pronounced in firms that are subject to frequent hiring and firing

unionization incomplete contracting and capital investment this article examines empirically the hypothesis that incomplete contracts and resulting opportunistic behavior over the return to sunk assets reduces investment union firm contracts are incomplete because they 1 do not prevent all actions aimed at changing the existing contract 2 cover a relatively short time period and 3 do not extend to union members yet to be hired the primary response of firms is to reduce investment in specific durable assets and also to reduce employment growth and increase debt the authors find fairly strong evidence of these effects in a sample of large publicly traded firms using firm specific measures of unionization copyright 1993 by university of chicago press

exchange market mayhem the antecedents and aftermath of speculative attacks exchange market mayhem the antecedents and aftermath of speculative attacks this paper evaluates the causes and consequences of episodes of turbulence in foreign exchange markets using data from 1959 through 1993 for twenty oecd countries we consider the antecedents and aftermath of devaluations and revaluations flotations fixings and speculative attacks which may not be successful we find that realignments of fixed exchange rates are alike devaluations are preceded by political instability budget and current account deficits and fast growth of money and prices revaluations are mirror images of devaluations speculative attacks resemble devaluations but money growth and inflation are more endemic and there is no last minute attempt to tighten monetary policy in contrast few consistent correlations link regime transitions like flotations or fixings to macroeconomic or political variables transitions between exchange rate regimes are largely idiosyncratic and are neither consistently provoked ex ante by systematic imbalances nor typically justified ex post by subsequent changes in policy we conclude that there are no clear early warning signals of many speculative attacks and no easy solutions for policy makers barry eichengreen andrew k rose and charles wyplosz

exchange controls capital controls and international financial markets this paper examines the effects of restrictions on international financial m arkets in a general equilibrium rational expectations model of a two country world state contingent financial markets allow households t o allocate wealth optimally across states so that the imposition of e xchange and capital controls has roughly speaking only substitution effects but no wealth effect taxes or quantitative controls on purc hases of foreign currency and on the income from foreign assets reduc e international trade in goods lower ex post welfare in the country in which they are imposed and affect nominal prices and the exchange rate copyright 1988 by american economic association

the origins of financial openness a study of current and capital account liberalization theory we assess the determinants of the national regulation of international finance or the comparative degree of national financial openness or closure hypotheses partisanship interacts with a nation s factor endowments to account in part for different international financial policies by governments of the same partisan hue methods we offer a quantitative measure of international financial openness or current and capital account regulation for 21 member countries of the organization for economic cooperation and development for 1950 88 we use regression analysis employing panel corrected standard errors to discover the determinants of financial openness results our main finding is that political partisanship substantially explains openness but does so in complex ways differences in both political institutional arrangements and types of political economy also account for part of the differences in international financial regulation

workers of the less developed world unite a multilevel analysis of unionization in less developed countries past scholars of unionization have offered exemplary cross national studies of affluent democracies and case studies of less developed countries ldcs what has been lacking is cross national research on unionization across ldcs we conduct a multilevel analysis of the likelihood that a worker is unionized with the late 1990s world values surveys of 39 ldcs we propose that unionization in ldcs can be explained by the individual characteristics of workers as well as the country level factors of institutions industrialization and globalization our analyses yield several conclusions first owing to the legacy of state socialism ex communist countries have much higher unionization second our analyses show that class very effectively explains union membership across ldcs although skilled manual workers are more unionized than most educated professionals stand out for their distinctively high unionization third the debt crisis significantly undermined unionization through the institutional influence of international monetary fund imf agreements and the globalization pressure of debt service despite being the focus of much research industrialization democratization the size of the state international labour organization conventions and international trade and investment are surprisingly insignificant decomposing the sample by communist legacy signing an imf agreement is significant in ex communist countries and debt service is significant in countries without a communist legacy overall we conclude that the debt crisis has undermined unionization and class remains a powerful basis of mobilization across ldcs

the modern history of exchange rate arrangements a reinterpretation we develop a novel system of reclassifying historical exchange rate regimes one key difference between our study and previous classifications is that we employ monthly data on market determined parallel exchange rates going back to 1946 for 153 countries our approach differs from the imf official classification which we show to be only a little better than random it also differs radically from all previous attempts at historical reclassification our classification points to a rethinking of economic performance under alternative exchange rate regimes indeed the breakup of bretton woods had less impact on exchange rate regimes than is popularly believed

industry migration and growth in the south for at least the last two decades the south and southwest have been the fastest growing regions in the united states during this period we have witnessed considerable shifts in the location of economic activity and overall the movement has been decidedly toward the south since the early sixties when this southern migration began to accelerate an increasing amount of public attention has been directed to this topic so much so that it is now popularly referred to as the sunbelt phenomenon numerous explanations have been advanced to account for this rapid growth in the south but three explanations have persistently evoked an impressive level of debate first many have argued that a significant portion of this regional redistribution can be attributed to differentials in state and local taxing policies in particular the state corporate income tax these rates vary considerably across states but even more important is the observation that there have been significant changes in the structure of corporate taxes over the last few decades beginning in the early 1950s the relative tax rate for several southern states particularly those in the east south central and west south central divisions began to decline sharply on the other hand relative tax rates for three divisions new england the east north central and the midatlantic rose in the early sixties by 1970 the relative tax rate ranged from 0 60 in the west south central down from 1 20 in 1950 to 1 37 in the mid atlantic up from 1 15 in 1950 notwithstanding these stylized facts the consensus from previous empirical work on industry location suggests that state taxes have not influenced the direction or magnitude of industry migration however there are reasons to believe that acceptance of this conclusion may be premature for example in the early body of work results were based on simple correlations of tax levels and changes in either value added or employment 2 more recent attempts to empirically model corporate tax effects have arrived at somewhat ambiguous results carlton 1977 examining three 4 digit industries found that corporate tax differentials failed to explain any of the variation in new births of firms across smsas hodge 1979 while confirming carlton s results for the same industries discovered that taxes have significantly affected regional investment patterns in another industry not covered in carlton s study 3 why taxes mattered in one industry and not in the other three remained a matter of ad hoc speculation a second explanation alleges that states in the south have begun to exhibit a more favorable business climate although it is difficult to measure directly a state s business climate one important manifestation of that climate is its position with respect to the division of power between union and management in the collective bargaining process legal obstacles to union organization and bargaining power will be viewed by firms as a positive signal of a pro business environment the creation of legislative obstareceived for publication october 29 1981 revision accepted for publication april 16 1982 miami university the author is especially indebted to michael ward at the rand corporation for numerouls helpful discussions throughout the preparation of this study also the author benefited from the advice and comments of john antel robert cotterman lee lillard john lunn william j moore james smith finis welch and two referees of this review financial suppoi t was provided by the foundation for research in economics and education at ucla and the university of british columbia humanities and social sciences committee i the relative tax is defined as a state s tax rate divided by the average for all states as in most economic discussions it is relative price that matters 2 for a review of earlier work see due 1961 some of the studies reviewed include bloom 1955 campbell 1958 floyd 1952 and larson 1957 see also garwood 1952 3 most of the other empirical work focused exclusively on intt urban location decisions and hence had no reason to examine state corporate taxes however they found local tax differentials inter zonal were unimportant in determining intra urban movement for example see moses and williamson 1967 and schmenner 1978

capital account liberalization as a signal the authors present a model in which a government s current capital control policy signals future policies controls on capital outflows evolve in response to news on technology conditional on government attitudes toward taxation of capital when there is uncertainty over governmental types a policy of liberal capital outflows sends a favorable signal that may trigger a capital inflow this prediction is consistent with the experience of several countries that have liberalized their capital accounts copyright 1997 by american economic association

the economic impact of right to work laws evidence from collective bargaining agreements and corporate policies abstract we analyze the economic and financial impact of right to work rtw laws in the us using data from collective bargaining agreements we show that there is a decrease in wages for unionized workers after rtw laws firms increase investment and employment but reduce financial leverage labor intensive firms experience higher profits and labor to asset ratios dividends and executive compensation also increase post rtw our results are consistent with a canonical theory of the firm augmented with an exogenous bargaining power of labor and suggest that rtw laws impact corporate policies by decreasing that bargaining power