spurious volatility in historical unemployment data this paper shows that the stabilization of the unemployment rate between the pre 1930 and post 1948 eras is an artifact of improvements in data collection procedures prewar methods are used to construct postwar unemployment data that are consistent with the historical data the constructed postwar series is nearly as volatile as the pre 1930 unemployment data the constructed postwar data are systematically more volatile than the actual postwar data because the cyclical behavior of the labor force and productivity are misspecified in the construction procedures the relationship between the actual and constructed postwar unemployment series is used to construct new historical data

political economy and contingent protection the growing interest in the political economy of protection and the extensive literature which has already developed around the theme are mainly due to the wide gap between what policy makers practice and what economists preach notwithstanding the interesting nuances brought forth by the new trade theory most economists do not seriously contest the superiority of free trade over protection but policy makers in almost all countries practice some form of trade protection further the context within which such practices occur the extent to which they are resorted or the industries that benefit from them do not often seem to conform to the traditional explanations of protection such as optimal tariffs infant industry protection or the new arguments in favour of international rent shifting in specific strategic sectors this being the case the study of the positive theory of trade policy determination has continued to gain ground with economists borrowing concepts from political science most but not all such analyses have attempted to explain tariff protection particularly inter industry differences in nominal or effective tariff rates but successive multilateral trade negotiations have brought down average tariffs to single digit figures also agreement has been reached through the uruguay round negotiations to reduce the levels of some important types of non tariff barriers such as agricultural subsidies and export restraints although the trend has thus been clearly towards a reduction of the levels of protection the use of certain selective unilateral protectionist measures such as anti dumping and countervailing duty ad cvd measures are very much on the increase this has raised genuine fears that the codes and regulations which were meant for a corrective purpose are now being increasingly used for legitimising selective unilateral protection although the political economy analysis of this type of contingent protection is still in its infancy from the trade policy point of view this is an area of considerable importance

labour supply specification and the evaluation of tax reforms this paper investigates the practical importance of the functional specification of labour supply equations for the analysis of tax benefit reform we consider two labour supply specifications one derived from stone geary preferences and the other from a generalisation that relaxes some of the more critical restrictions in that model we use these equations to contrast the effects of two reforms to the u k income tax system one involves income effects almost exclusively while the other implies a significant number of large increases in marginal tax rates

how reliable are simple single equation specifications of import demand this paper examines nine models of aggregate import demand for each of five countries canada germany japan united kingdom and united states in an attempt to determine which of the frequently used single equation models of import demand are appropriate an appropriate model is defined as one which generates unbiased or at least consistent and efficient elasticity estimates while models without lagged adjustments and almon lag models perform rather poorly according to these criteria models including dynamic behavior through lagged values of the dependent variable are frequently accepted results are reported regarding functional form measures of variables and structural shift economists have devoted considerable attention to the estimation of aggregate import demand elasticities because of their importance in trade theory the simplest procedure for estimating these elasticities which is consistent with economic theory is to assume that the elasticity of supply of imports is infinitely elastic and to estimate

is unemployment really scarring effects of unemployment experiences on wages joblessness leaves permanent scars on individuals they not only lose income during periods of joblessness they are also further scarred by these experiences when they find employment a spell of unemployment is found to carry a wage penalty of about 6 on re entry in britain and after three years they are earning 14 less compared to what they would have received in the absence of unemployment the scars are also carried into their second employment spell the first spell of joblessness is found to cause the most damage redundancy seems to be less stigmatising

black hole tariffs and endogenous policy theory political economy in general equilibrium preface acknowledgments list of results 1 a preview of the results 2 endogenous policy theory a diagrammatic approach part i endogenous policy theory with specific factors the theory of industry tariffs in partial equilibrium 3 the probabilistic voting model of political efficiency and powerless politicians 4 endogenous lobbying theory and the contribution specialization theorem 5 endogenous tariff theory 6 the power function model of endogenous industry lobbying 7 three simple tests of the stolper samuelson theorem 8 the invisible foot and the waste of nations lawyers as negative externalities part ii endogenous policy theory in general equilibrium a long run theory of national tariff levels 9 the 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 model of endogenous redistribution theory 10 a prisoner s dilemma theory of endogenous protection the leontief model 11 the compensation effect and the multiple equilibrium trap 12 increasing returns to politics and factor endowments economic development and brazilian vitality versus the indian disease 13 endogenous protection in the united states 1900 88 14 a cobb douglas model 15 black hole tariffs 16 the endowment effect cross national evidence on endogenous tariffs part ii postscript 17 the senile industry argument for protection 18 optimal obfuscation and the theory of the second worst the politically efficient policy mathematical appendices references author index subject index

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

presidential and congressional vote share equations three vote share equations are estimated and analyzed in this paper one for presidential elections one for on term house elections and one for mid term house elections the sample period is 1916 2006 considering the three equations together allows one to test whether the same economic variables affect each and to examine various serial correlation and coattail possibilities the resulting three equation model can then be analyzed dynamically which is done in section 4 the main conclusions are briefly 1 there is strong evidence that the economy affects all three vote shares and in remarkably similar ways 2 there is no evidence of any presidential coattail effects on the on term house elections the presidential vote share and the on term house vote share are highly positively correlated but this is because they are affected by some of the same variables 3 there is positive serial correlation in the house vote in that the previous mid term house vote share positively affects the on term house vote share and the previous on term house vote share positively affects the mid term house vote share 4 the presidential vote share has a negative effect on the next mid term house vote share the most likely explanation for this is a balance argument where voters are reluctant to let one party become too dominant ruled out as possible explanations for this fourth result is any reversal of a coattail effect since there is no evidence of an effect in the first place and a regression to the mean since the positive serial correlation in the house vote implies no such regression also it is not simply voting against the party in the white house because the presidential variable is a vote share variable not a 0 1 incumbency variable

the economic effects of withdrawn antidumping investigations is there evidence of collusive settlements abstract this paper analyzes the effects of antidumping cases initiated from 1990 to 1997 that ended in withdrawn petitions without a suspension agreement or voluntary restraint agreement monthly import data are used to estimate the price and quantity effects of the withdrawn cases the estimated effects of the petition being withdrawn do not support the accepted wisdom that withdrawn petitions are a signal of collusion this is an important issue since out of court settlements of unfair trade cases which restrict quantities or increase prices are not only welfare reducing but are also actionable under the antitrust laws they are not exempt under the noerr pennington doctrine

ec trade protection law produmping or antidumping this paper argues that the anticipation of protection can have astimulating effect on exports instead of the commonly claimed effect of harassment if protection serves market cartelization by fixing export quantities or prices exporters may have an incentive to increase their sales abroad in order to secure a large share of the expected rent which is brought about by the anticipated import restriction this may even result in sales below marginal costs or dumping the effect of the protectionist threat may then be the reverse of what is intended it can raise the speed of import penetration and it can provoke dumping a formal model and a supportive institutional analysis of ec trade protection is supplemented by preliminary empirical evidence

what is the probability your vote will make a difference i introduction what is the probability that one vote will make a difference this is of interest in the utility theory of voting and also for campaign strategists who must assess the costs and benefits of attempting to persuade or turn out voters in particular states 1 in a presidential election the probability that your vote is decisive is equal to the probability that your state is necessary for an electoral college win times the probability the vote in your state is tied conditional on your state being necessary broadly speaking there are three ways of estimating the probability of a decisive vote the first approach and the oldest in the literature 2 is to set up a theoretical model for the joint distribution of the popular vote margin in the separate jurisdictions in this case the 50 states plus the district of columbia and then analytically compute the probability of each state being nationally decisive and locally tied such models offer important insights but are not directly useful for presidential elections given that our interest is in the particularities of individual states in 2008 rather than on general properties of an electoral system the second approach is purely empirical an estimate of the form y n where n is the number of elections in some large historical sample and y is the number that were tied elections are very rarely tied so one can instead use an estimate such as y 2 000 n where y is now the number of elections decided by less than 1 000 votes such an empirical analysis can be embedded into a regression of vote differential on election level predictors mulligan and hunter 2003 use such a model for estimating the average probability of a decisive vote in legislative elections and gelman katz and bafumi 2004 use the distribution of aggregate vote margins to study the dependence of the probability of a tie on the number of voters 3 unfortunately the complex structure and the small number of presidential elections rule out a purely empirical approach in this case the third method which we use here is to set up a forecasting model for the current election the uncertainties for the 50 statewide elections in such a model should be correlated or equivalently the model should have a national error term and possibly regional error terms in addition to any independent state errors given a forecast that is a joint probability distribution one can calculate the probability of decisive vote using simulation or in a setting such as a national election in which the probability of a tied election is tiny one can use a mix of simulation and analytic calculations as was done by gelman king and boscardin 1998 4 ii method we use a state by state election forecast computed on october 24 2008 based on the latest opinion polls silver 2008 earlier in the campaign polls are not particularly informative and it is better to use regression based forecasts at least to account for possible national swings see lock and gelman 2008 and for further discussion wlezien and erikson 2004 and the references therein by late october however polls are close to the actual election outcome and so it is reasonable to construct a forecast distribution using poll aggregation 5 the result of our forecasts is a 10 000 x 51 matrix representing 10 000 computer simulations of the election with each simulation including the vote margin for obama e g a margin of 0 208 in alabama corresponds to obama and mccain receiving 60 4 and 39 6 respectively of the two party vote in the state we convert this percentage to a numerical vote margin by multiplying by the voter turnout in the state which we estimate by taking the two party turnout from 2004 and adding 4 corresponding to population increase and another 4 to account for an anticipated increase in turnout this year 6 as discussed earlier the simulations for the states are correlated the joint probability distribution of the 51 election outcomes includes uncertainty about the national swing as well as state by state fluctuations

voter turnout in us presidential elections does carville s law explain the time series we estimate a time series model of voter turnout for 34 us presidential elections 1880 2012 employing a variety of econometric techniques our major results are as follows 1 a negative and significant structural shift in voter turnout occurs in 1972 and is too large to be explained by the lowering of the voting age 2 the 1972 shift is the only statistically significant structural shift to occur since the first decade of the twentieth century 3 short term macroeconomic conditions significantly impact turnout with unemployment having a positive effect 4 turnout in recent presidential elections has not deviated significantly from the post 1972 norm 5 turnout is positively related to the expected closeness of the election outcome but contrary to some theoretical predictions closeness exhibits no trend over time

closeness expenditures and turnout in the 1982 u s house elections students of elections have repeatedly found that the closeness of an election is modestly correlated with turnout this may be due to a direct response of instrumentally motivated voters but recent theoretical work casts doubt on the adequacy of this explanation another possibility is that elite actors respond to closeness with greater effort at mobilization we explore the latter possibility by using fec and state data on campaign expenditures in house senate and gubernatorial races our results indicate that closeness has an effect at both the mass and elite levels we also provide quantitative estimates of the effect of senate and gubernatorial expenditure on house turnout

the labour supply unemployment and participation of lone mothers in in work transfer programmes in work transfer schemes have recently been suggested as a device for encouraging labour force participation and reducing the severity of the disincentives associated with out of work income support schemes here we estimate a discrete choice labour supply model which allows for endogenous in work welfare programme participation we also allow for involuntary unemployment so as to distinguish between programme non participation and an inability to obtain work and thereby generate an eligibility to the programme

unemployment and female labour supply the definition of labour force participation in the standard labour supply model stands in sharp contrast to that used in compiling the labour force statistics in the labour supply models only those supplying positive hours of work are considered to be labour force participants on the other hand participation in the labour force statistics is often defined to include not only those supplying positive hours but also those actively searching for work this paper is an attempt to reconcile these concepts by allowing unemployed workers to enter a generalisation of the standard labour supply model this turns out to be a convenient way to enter demand side factors directly into the determination of an individual s labour market position the model is applied with some success to the working behaviour of married women in the uk family expenditure survey

trade restraints and japanese direct investment flows abstract this paper analyses the factors determining the scale and location of japanese foreign direct investment fdi over the 1980s we use a pooled cross section time series annual data set covering investment in the individual ec countries and the united states our results suggest that controlling for market size and relative labour costs investment was significantly influenced by trade protection measures and in particular by the level of anti dumping actions initiated in the last decade an additional effect from the cost of finance in japan is found suggesting that the tightening of monetary policy in japan in 1989 90 contributed significantly to the observed slowdown in fdi in the early 1990s

estimating labour supply responses using tax reforms the 1980 s tax reforms and the changing dispersion of wages offer one of the best opportunities yet to estimate labor supply effects nevertheless changing sample composition aggregate shocks the changing composition of the tax paying population and discontinuities in the tax system create serious identification and estimation problems we develop grouping estimators that address these issues our results reveal positive and moderately sized wage elasticities we also find negative income effects for women with children

workers skills product quality and industry equilibrium in this paper we develop a model of a vertically differentiated industry where the production of higher quality goods needs a higher fraction of specialized labour in the first stage firms choose the quality of their products in the second both good prices and skilled workers wages are determined we show that in duopoly though supplying different variants of the product firms tend to cluster either at the bottom or at the top of the quality ladder depending on skilled labour availability this switch in equilibrium qualities creates a discontinuous behaviour for the wage rate of skilled workers when the supply of skilled labour is made endogenous two equilibria are simultaneously possible one with low skill low quality the other with high skill high quality

macroeconomic conditions voter turnout and the working class economically disadvantaged party vote in developing countries working and lower status citizens are more sensitive to macroeconomic fluctuations than their better off counterparts in the developing world due to the higher personal stakes involved this heightened sensitivity affects fluctuations in voter turnout and voter choice across developing democracies macroeconomic downturns result in increased voter participation as more lower status voters express their grievances at the polls this benefits political parties and coalitions with expressly working and lower class appeals this article describes the impact of shifts in voter turnout on party support the impact of macroeconomic shifts on voter turnout and the impact of macroeconomic shifts on support for parties that are working class economically disadvantaged oriented using regression analysis of aggregate pooled time series data from 10 countries in latin america the caribbean africa and asia although increased turnout primarily helps parties that are working class economically disadvantaged orient

a structural model of multiple welfare program participation and labor supply work on estimating the labor supply effects of high marginal tax rates in welfare programs has been hindered by the difficulty of estimating the effects of participation in multiple welfare programs simultaneously the authors solve this problem by applying methods of simulation estimation to a model of labor supply and multiple program participation the results show asymmetric wage and tax rate effects with fairly large wage elasticities of labor supply but very inelastic responses to moderate changes in cumulative marginal tax rates implying that high welfare tax rates do not necessarily induce major reductions in work effort copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

protectionist policies as the regulation of international industry the political feasibility of protectionist policies that regulate international industry derives from the absence of overt collusion among domestic import competing producers the regulation of international industry cannot be explicit since governments would thereby be perceived to be approving or instigating international collusion hence voluntary export restraints have been popularly presented with a focus on the difficulties confronted by domestic import competing producers and a de emphasis on the mutual gains to domestic and foreign producers from monitoring by a foreign government of a restrictive export cartel arrangement similarly trigger price mechanisms have popularly been explained in terms of the need for anti dumping measures to preserve fair competition likewise the involuntary export tax derived in the first instance from an administratively validated but as demonstrated by kalt s econometric analysis contentious complaint of unfair foreign competition voluntary export restraints trigger price mechanisms and involuntary export taxes are however protectionist devices the beneficiaries of which can transcend national jurisdictions and which have in common the characteristic that the gains to domestic industry interests derive from the regulation of foreign competitors

antidumping law as a collusive device in the united states many antidumping petitions are withdrawn before the investigations are completed prusa 1992 argues that petitions are used by domestic industries to induce foreign industries into collusive agreements in his model all antidumping petitions should be withdrawn which is not the case this paper provides a model in which only some petitions are withdrawn withdrawal depends on two key parameters coordination cost and bargaining power of domestic and foreign industries a new data set is constructed to test the model on the u s experience for the period 1980 97 the econometric analysis supports the theoretical conclusions of the model

welfare the earned income tax credit and the labor supply of single mothers during 1984 1996 welfare and tax policy were changed to encourage work by single mothers the earned income tax credit was expanded welfare benets were cut welfare time limits were added and welfare cases were terminated medicaid for the working poor was expanded as were training programs and child care during this same time period there were unprecedented increases in the employment and hours of single mothers we show that a large share of the increase in work by single mothers can be attributed to the eitc and other tax changes with smaller shares for welfare benet cuts welfare waivers training programs and child care programs

domestic politics foreign interests and international trade policy reply this paper incorporates the foreign interest in the determination of a country s international trade policy into a model of political competition between candidates contesting elective office we envisage foreign and domestic producer interests as expressing political support for a candidate via campaign contributions and candidates as making trade policy pronouncements to maximize political support from producer interests tariffs are divisive but vers are consistent with conciliatory policy positions yielding mutual gain to foreign and domestic interests no candidate has an interest in formulating a trade policy position using a tariff if a ver is a policy option protection in the developed countries has in recent years often taken the form of bilaterally negotiated voluntary export restraints vers rather than the more traditional unilaterally imposed import restrictions the use of voluntary export restraints has been paralleled by interest in the theoretical literature the effects of vers have been compared with tariffs and quotas and vers have been examined in a political economy framework with a view to identifying the gainers and losers from this form of restric

domino dumping i competitive exporters when exporting firms face the prospect of voluntary export restraints they have an incentive to export more than with no prospect of a voluntary export restraint since greater exports lead to larger license allocations in the event of a voluntary export restraint export country governments incentives differ leading either to export tax or subsidy depending on the circumstances the prospect of one departure from free trade thus leads to another a domino effect antidumping enforcement will ordinarily not eliminate and ironically may increase dumping copyright 1992 by american economic association

macro economic determinants of antidumping a comparative analysis of developed and developing countries abstract this study examines how macro factors influence the use of antidumping in developed and developing countries a panel data analysis of 99 countries over 1980 2000 reinforces the view that the primary jurisdiction for the antidumping law is really more political than economic furthermore it suggests that once the wto is fully enforced the use of antidumping will spread among developing countries not only due to greater liberalization pressures but also as many countries would like to create an antidumping ability so as to counter its use against them this may reverse the trade gains that liberalization may ensure to them this paper thus calls for the granting of the special and differential treatment to developing countries in this provision finally based on its findings the paper argues that future negotiations should be directed toward revising safeguard rules and replacing antidumping by this new clause

the politicisation of ec anti dumping policy member states their votes and the european commission this paper examines one political economy aspect of the european communities ec anti dumping policy that has tended to be overlooked in prior studies namely the role that member states play in deciding whether to impose definitive duties on imports that have been found to be dumped and that are deemed to have injured a european industry we find that in the late 1990s numerous disagreements between member states occurred over the merits of imposing anti dumping duties these disagreements may well have been partly responsible for the strong decline in the number of european anti dumping investigations initiated after 1999

the political economy of administered protection trade restrictions are hardly ever voted directly by congress though the threat of direct congressional action is frequently present pressure for protection is usually applied through the major instruments for the administrative regulation of imports the antidumping and countervailing duty procedures and the escape clause mechanism in this paper we will examine these instruments for the administrative regulation of imports the form of the paper is not novel a theory of how these mechanisms work is developed then operational implications of this theory are deduced and tested over the record of countervailing duty antidumping and escape clause cases decided from 1975 through 1979 this is the period over which the trade act of 1974 was in force because the nature of these mechanisms is relatively unfamiliar a relatively large amount of institutional information is provided

public information and electoral bias abstract we present a theory of voting that predicts that elections are more likely to be close and voter turnout is more likely to be high when citizens possess better public information about the composition of the electorate these findings suggest that providing more information to potential voters about aggregate political preferences e g through pre election polls or expert forecasts may undermine the democratic process our analysis reveals that if the distribution of political preferences is common knowledge then the unique type symmetric equilibrium leads to a stark neutrality result in which each alternative is equally likely to win the election by contrast when citizens are ignorant about the preference distribution the majority is more likely to win the election and expected voter turnout is lower welfare is therefore unambiguously higher when citizens possess less information about the preference distribution

econometrics and presidential elections this paper discusses an econometric equation that explains votes for president as a function of economic events and incumbency information the history of the equation is reviewed the update after the 1992 election is discussed and a prediction for the 1996 election is made conditional on an economic forecast

trade policy and learning by doing the case of semiconductors abstract the study examines the role of learning by doing for production of different types of semiconductors and how this affects the dynamics of market structure for erasable programmable read only memories eproms the learning curve determines aggregate market dynamics whereas for dynamic random access memories drams economies of scale seem to be more important these results are compared with some stylised facts for eproms persistence of leadership in product innovation could be observed whereas for drams there was leap frogging in product innovation moreover scope for vertical product differentiation is more enhanced for eproms and price competition is less intense these findings are then related to the problem of identifying the appropriate trade policies in oligopolistic industries the analysis concerns the antidumping actions undertaken by the european commission it is shown how markets enjoying similar patterns of protection have a completely different evolution of market shares for european producers the conclusion for strategic trade policy is that industry specific features matter crucially

in work benefits in the united states the earned income tax credit the earned income tax credit eitc is or soon will be the largest cash or nearcash benefit provided to low income households in the united states the eitc is a credit on the federal income tax available to working poor families with children in i994 the credit equals 26 3 of earned income wages salaries self employment income and farm income for taxpayers with one child up to an earned income of 7 750 hence the maximum benefit is 2 038 for families with one child because benefits increase with earned income up to a certain point the eitc seems to encourage work and therefore is a popular antipoverty programme taxpayers with one child and incomes above 7 750 but below i i ooo receive the maximum benefit taxpayers with one child whose incomes exceed i i ooo are in the phase out range of the credit their 2 038 credit is reduced by i5 98 cents for every dollar of income earned over and above i i ooo taxpayers with two or more children are entitled to a slightly larger credit 2 528 or 30o0 0 of 8 425 which is phased out at a i 7p68 0 rate a small credit of at most 306 was available to childless taxpayers betnween the ages of 25 and 64 for the first time in i 994 unlike most credits and deductions in the federal individual income tax system the eitc is refundable that is if the amount of the credit exceeds what the taxpayer owes he or she receives a payment from the us treasury for the difference the eitc was adopted in i975 and was originally promoted as a way to relieve the burden of the social security payroll tax on low wage working parents 2 the original eitc equaled io 0 of earnings up to a maximum credit of 400 for taxpayers with children and was phased out at a rate of io cents per dollar of earnings or adjusted gross income whichever was higher for incomes between 4 ooo and 8 ooo the eitc has been increased many times since i975 though the largest changes occurred in i990 and i993 in i996 when the i993 legislative changes are fully phased in the credit rate will be 40 0 of earnings for families with two or more children and 34 0 for families

welfare costs of the u s antidumping and countervailing duty laws abstract the antidumping ad and countervailing duty cvd laws in the united states have become the most pervasive form of import relief sought by domestic producers this paper estimates the collective economic effect of the hundreds of active u s ad cvd orders using a computable general equilibrium model we estimate that the collective net economic welfare cost in 1993 of these orders to be 4 billion this welfare estimate is sensitive to various modeling assumptions which are explored in the paper with the implementation of the uruguay round agreements the ad cvd laws remain one of the costliest programs restraining u s trade

market responses to antidumping laws some evidence from the u s chemical industry in this paper the authors provide empirical evidence of the effects of the u s antidumping law using monthly product specific macroeconomic data from the u s chemical industry over the 1976 88 period they analyze import responses highlighting the differences between allegedly dumped and nondumped import behavior at the various stages of an antidumping investigation the authors find a wide range of behavioral responses that do not necessarily appear to be dependent upon the final outcome of the investigations and in some cases contradict the accepted wisdom of the impacts these cases have upon import behavior

the signaling power of trade protection this paper proposes an empirical analysis to provide new insight into the trade diversion effects of antidumping ad policy trade diversion is the shift in trade from named countries in an ad investigation to non named countries previous studies have concluded that ad action causes a considerable drop in exports from named countries however the extent to which trade is diverted to non named countries is still an open debate this paper examines to see whether ad action on named countries can have signaling effects on non named countries to examine the trade effects on non named countries a time series data at an 8 digit product level is constructed for all cases initiated between 1997 and 2003 in the european union the paper provides evidence that antidumping policy has signaling effects on non named imports

domestic uncertainty and foreign dumping this paper investigates the links between uncertainty in a firm s home market and below cost dumping in foreign markets the form that uncertainty takes is shown to determine the likelihood and expected magnitude of dumping a number of forms of uncertainty are indicated to impart a pro dumping bias to firms output decisions a consequence is that risk neutral firms may plan to sell some output abroad even though firms know with certainty that exports can never cover marginal cost

credible regulatory threats abstract as competition emerges in parts of utility industries and utility regulation policy is reviewed it is useful to examine alternative forms of regulation that may be implemented when hit and run entry is believed to be a non credible threat potential entry may not constrain incumbent firms pricing and production decisions this paper proposes that the credible threat of intervention by a regulator may impact upon incumbent firms decisions empirical evidence from the english and welsh electricity pool market is investigated to discover whether the threat of regulator intervention may have influenced the pricing strategies of the dominant firms in this market

economic adversity and voter turnout does economic adversity affect whether people vote data from the november 1974 current population survey are used to estimate the effect that unemployment poverty and a decline in financial well being have on voter turnout each economic problem suppresses participation these individual level findings are corroborated with aggregate time series data from presidential and midterm elections since 1896 when a person suffers economic adversity his scarce resources are spent holding body and soul together not on remote concerns like politics economic problems both increase the opportunity costs of political participation and reduce a person s capacity to attend to politics

antidumping and countervailing duty decisions in the e c and in the u s an experiment in comparative political economy abstract in recent years there has been a growing concern about the recourse to antidumping measures by the gatt member countries such measures can become a substitute for selective protection in the present article the dumping and injury determinations of the e c are subjected to econometric analysis using the finger hall nelson fhn model which makes a distinction between the political determinants and the technical determinants the results show that the technical variables dominate the dumping decisions while the political variables are more important in the injury determinations of the e c a comparison with the results obtained by the fhn study confirm the broad similarity between the e c and the u s patterns although the e c injury decisions are somewhat more susceptible to the influence of political variables the results of the study suggest that those who are interested in restraining the misuse of the antidumping provisions should concentrate their attention on the injury determination mechanism

estimating the impact of anti dumping and anti cartel actions using intervention analysis intervention analysis is proposed as a method for estimating the effects of anti dumping actions in the presence of a domestic cartel data requirements and modelling effort compare favourably with traditional structural model approaches the method is applied to an antidumping action brought to the european commission and in which the european producers of the product were fined after an anti cartel action by the commission covering an overlapping period intervention analysis is applied to distinguish the effects of the anti dumping action from those of changes in cartel behaviour it has been argued that in the post uruguay round world anti dumping ad actions as with other contingent protection measures may become an instrument of choice in place of tariffs to restrict international trade messerlin and reed 1995 some reasons for this may be found in the political economy literature tharakan 1991 1995 where it is argued that such measures which are typically non transparent quasijudicial gatt legal and capable of being targeted at the level of an individual supplier may prove very tempting to both policymakers and those lobbying for protection if economists are to have an effective input to the debate on such measures then it is essential to be able to estimate the consequences of such protection preferably in a way that provides reasonable estimates without the need of onerous data or logistical requirements in this paper we propose a tractable time series based method that requires minimal data the unit value and volume of imports data series we illustrate the technique by reporting estimates of the costs to the united kingdom of the price undertaking that resulted from the successful ad action brought to the european commission in 1982 and directed at four japanese suppliers of polypropylene pp film the illustration is also of interest because a subset of those european pp producers bringing the ad action were the subject of an anti trust ruling that resulted in fines for collusive behaviour messerlin 1990 the anti cartel judgement covered the period during which the industry lodged the complaint of dumping and secured minimum price undertakings from thejapanese producers anti dumping actions in the european union may be resolved in favour of the complainants by the imposition of ad duties adds or more commonly by the foreign suppliers targeted in the actions voluntarily giving an under

the welfare state turnout and the economy a comparative analysis while the economic voting literature is voluminous comparatively little attention has been paid to the question of how or whether the economy affects turnout i address this issue by examining national elections in 29 countries using time series data the initial findings are replicated by a case study of american presidential and midterm elections since 1896 it is argued that the effect of economic adversity depends upon the degree of welfare state development this relationship is argued to be nonlinear so that mobilization occurs at either extreme while withdrawal obtains in the middle range the importance to democratic theory the study of elections and the politics of welfare policy are discussed

work incentives and in work benefit reforms a review in work benefit reforms seek to reduce poverty and promote employment among low income families using evidence from similar policies in the usa and canada this paper reviews the likely impact of recent uk reforms the focus is on employment and hours in particular the paper examines the effectiveness of the new working families tax credit in the uk in increasing employment among low income families it presents evidence suggesting modest increases in employment for single parents and workerless married couples with children but with some offsetting reductions in employment in two earner couples with young children

the political economy of anti dumping undertakings in the european communities abstract logit regression analysis is used to test the validity of hypothesized determinants of the european communities choice between the acceptance of undertakings and the imposition of definitive duties in terminating antidumping cases the results of the study confirm that certain variables based on the theory of the political economy of trade policy supplemented by those suggested by knowledgeable practitioners go a long way in explaining such choice the findings and the approach used have important practical implications particularly for the defendants and the lawyers involved in antidumping cases

the extent of nontariff barriers to industrial countries imports this paper examines the extent of non tariff barriers to sixteen industrial countries visible imports using three alternative measures it shows that governmental commodity specific border measures affect over 27 of all imports and over 34 of imports from developing countries it also shows that during the period 1981 83 ntbs became significantly more extensive detailed statistics reveal considerable variations in ntb coverage by commodity type of barrier importer and exporter the data on which these conclusions are based are compiled from official information at the finest level of disaggregation they are described in the paper

what explains the proliferation of antidumping laws a recent phenomenon is the rapid spread of antidumping ad laws mainly amongst developing countries i e china india mexico between 1980 and 2003 the number of countries in the world with an ad law more than doubled going from 36 to 97 countries this proliferation of trade protection laws amongst developing countries is likely to have substantial implications for trade as recently shown by vandenbussche and zanardi 2007 the purpose of this paper is to use a duration analysis to investigate the determinants leading a country to adopt an ad law we also analyze the related question of what explains the heterogeneity between countries that can be observed in terms of the time between adoption and their first use of the ad law we find strong evidence that retaliatory motives are at the heart of the proliferation decision as countries that were targeted by ad actions of traditioal users in the past i e us eu are much more likely to adopt an ad law also our evidence suggests that past trade liberalization substantially increases the probability of a country to adopt an ad law in addition we find that the size of the chemicals sector and the extent of steel imports are positively correlated with the probability to adopt the amount of inward fdi on the other hand has a clear negative effect on the probability to adopt while short term macroeconomic factors like gdp growth and exchange rate volatility seem to matter less for adoption asymmetric regional shocks and the development level of a country seem to raise the probability of starting to use an ad law our results are robust to several specifications of duration models

the value of administered protection a capital market approach the focus of this paper i s on the escape clause petitions filed under the trade act of 1974 section 201 first the capital marketevent study method is used to analyze the effects of protection decisions then cross section regressions are performed to examine the influence of key variables on the observed market reaction the authors conc lude that while protection is beneficial to beleaguered industries the extent o f such benefits is quite narrowly circumscribed and is conditional on internal v ariables for each firm protection is thus not the panacea that its advocates cl aim copyright 1986 by mit press

evaluating the german mini job reform using a natural experiment increasing work incentives for people with low income is a common topic in the policy debate across european countries the mini job reform in germany had a similar motivation we carry out an ex post evaluation to identify the short run effects of this reform our identification strategy uses an exogenous variation in the interview months in the socio economic panel study soep which allows us to distinguish groups that are affected by the reform from those who are not to account for seasonal effects we additionally use a difference in differences did strategy descriptives show that there is a post reform increase in the number of mini jobs however we show that this increase cannot be causally related to the reform since the short run effects are very limited only single men seem to react immediately and increase secondary job holding

withdrawals of anti dumping complaints in the eu a sign of collusion the study looks at a possible relation between the withdrawals of anti dumping ad complaints and the price increases and quantity decreases in the eu imports such a positive relationship is a sign of a tacit collusion terminated cases without withdrawals are taken as a benchmark in the second part of the analysis the dataset covered the ordinary new investigations only to eliminate the impact of different ad protection measures and different types of investigations the coefficients were estimated with cross case time series feasible gls regressions with heteroscedastic case time series and case specific autocorrelation ar 1 current and lagged nominal exchange rates were used as control variables the collusive impact both on prices proxied by unit values and quantities volumes was detected

voluntary export restraints antidumping procedure and domestic politics a voluntary export restraint ver is preferred to a tariff by a government concerned about electoral returns when the influence of industry profits is large relative to the losses to consumers from higher prices if the foreign firm is uncertain of these pressures the antidumping code facilitates the complete transfer of the relevant information and generates a ver rather than a tariff in equilibrium the choice across instruments is determined by the political attributes domestic and foreign profits rise with the antidumping generated ver and the ver lowers the volume of trade by more than the expected duty copyright 1996 by american economic association

antidumping duties undertakings and foreign direct investment in the eu we study the effects of eu antidumping policy when foreign firms can jump antidumping duties through foreign direct investment fdi in the eu we show that duty jumping or duty pre empting fdi occurs if the eu administration has broader objectives than protecting eu industry s profitability and if cost advantages of foreign firms are transferable abroad the expectation of price undertakings reduces the incentives to engage in fdi and may even discourage fdi as long as products are not too differentiated the results are consistent with recent empirical findings on antidumping jumping fdi

car notches strategic automaker responses to fuel economy policy notches where small changes in behavior lead to large changes in a tax or subsidy gure prominently in many policies but have been rarely examined by economists in this paper we analyze a class of notches associated with policies aimed at improving vehicle fuel economy we provide several pieces of evidence showing that automakers respond to notches in fuel economy policy by precisely manipulating fuel economy ratings so as to just qualify for more favorable treatment we then describe the welfare consequences of this behavior and derive a welfare summary statistic applicable to many contexts