the political economy of trade institutions of protection d omestic support for a liberal commercial policy in the u s rests on a commonly accepted set of rules and norms these rules and norms best characterized as a defense of free and fair trade arise from two different traditions the first originated as a political reaction to high trade barriers preceding the great depression central decision makers took as a lesson from the depression period that short term political forces should not determine the level of state intervention into the market the second to protect against unfair trade emanates from a long history of state support for industries that claim foreign producers are pursuing unfair predatory practices established in statute before the depression these rules did not fundamentally change in the postwar period together these decision rules are used to interpret american trade protectionism

economics and the international trade commission negotiated during the 1980s and the u s semiconductor agreement with japan because the u s antidumping and antisubsidy laws are now one of the most important means used to restrict imports the administration of these laws has come under considerable scrutiny many observers are concerned that these laws are being administered in a way which favors u s industries in this paper i attempt to address some of these concerns by determining the extent to which the administration of the u s unfair trade laws is based on the economic criteria specified in the unfair trade legislation in particular this study examines the importance of economic criteria in the antidumping and antisubsidy decisions of the international trade commission itc the itc is one of the most important agencies responsible for administering the u s unfair trade laws and its role extends beyond these laws into other areas including the escape clause the administrative role of the itc in unfair trade cases is to determine whether unfairly traded imports are a cause of material injury to a domestic industry many other authors have examined the basis for itc decisions the results of baldwin 3 and goldstein and lenway 8 provide support for the hypothesis that the itc uses at least some of the legislated economic criteria appropriately both studies examine the escape clause decisions of the itc and find that industries with declining profitability are more likely to receive favorable itc decisions goldstein and lenway 8 also find that the itc is immune to congressional pressures for protection both studies however focus solely on escape clause decisions which represent only a small fraction of itc decisions and do not involve allegations of unfair trade escape clause actions are also different from other itc decisions in that the president must ultimately decide whether relief is warranted

sequential auctions with informational externalities and aversion to price risk decreasing and increasing price sequences a large body of empirical research has shown that prices of identical goods sold sequentially sometimes increase and often decline across rounds this article introduces a tractable form of risk aversion called aversion to price risk and shows that declining prices arise naturally when bidders are averse to price risk when there are informational externalities there is a countervailing effect which pushes prices to raise along the path of a sequential auction even if bidder s signals are independent the article shows how to decompose the effect of aversion to price risk from the effect of informational externalities

competing models of international lending activity abstract four competing models of the world bank s lending to developing countries are constructed and econometrically estimated by pooled time series and cross section data the analysis suggests that a model combining economic and political determinants performs best besides per capita income inflation balance of payment and budget deficit external debt and past growth political determinants such as the capitalist climate or political instability are also important as well as a recipient country s former status as a colony or dominion this politico economic model is successfully used to forecast the distribution of ibrd loans and ida credits among the developing countries

credit market constraints consumption smoothing and the accumulation of durable production assets in low income countries investments in bullocks in india in this paper we formulate and estimate a finite horizon structural dynamic model of agricultural investment behavior that incorporates the major features of low income agricultural environments income uncertainty constraints on borrowing and rental markets and the use of investment assets to generate income and smooth consumption the model is fit to longitudinal indian household data on farm profits bullock stocks and pump sets the estimated structural parameters are used to assess the effects on the life cycle accumulation of bullocks agricultural profits and welfare associated with complete markets and bullock liquidity and with second best policies that provide assured sources of income to farmers and weather insurance

positive feedback the impact of trade liberalization on industry demands for protection contrary to widely accepted theories of interest group demand for protection industries that experience high and rising import competition after a reduction in trade barriers often become less rather than more protectionist in the long term to unravel this paradox i propose and test a theory that explains variation in domestic producer groups demand for protection over time this model of industry behavior suggests that trade liberalization has a positive feedback effect on the policy preferences and political strategies of domestic industries compelling them to adjust to more competitive market conditions and thereby reducing their future demand for protection

emigration and wages in source countries evidence from mexico abstract this paper examines empirically the effect of mexican emigration to the united states on wages in mexico using data from the mexican and us censuses from 1970 to 2000 the main result in the paper is that emigration has a strong and positive effect on mexican wages there is also evidence for increasing wage inequality in mexico due to emigration simple welfare calculations based on a labor demand supply framework suggest that the aggregate welfare loss to mexico due to emigration is small however there is a significant distributional impact between labor and other factors

exchange rates and unfair trade an examination of the changing country pattern of dumping and subsidy complaints by u s companies over time suggests that exchange rate fluctuations are a significant factor in determining case filings especially against japanese companies the inverse relationship observed between filings and the real external value of the u s dollar is consistent both with the traditional or technical interpretation of dumping and subsidy cases and with the view that they are promoted by rent seeking activities of lawyers and economists representing petitioners while this result says nothing about the merits of any particular case it cautions that the prevalence of unfair trade is not exogenous with respect to broader macroeconomic considerations copyright 1989 by mit press

remittances investment and rural asset accumulation in pakistan internal and external migration can have a profound impact on rural asset accumulation in most third world countries in many african asian and latin american countries the bulk of the labor force still lives in the countryside in these countries the large difference between expected rural and urban or foreign incomes coupled with the risk reducing functions of migration causes workers to migrate either to urban centers or abroad the remittances defined as the money or goods sent home by migrant workers can have a large effect on the accumulation of assets in these rural areas for example an inflow of external remittances to rural households at the upper end of the income distribution could increase land accumulation by the rich in general terms the effect of remittances on asset accumulation in a rural third world economy depends on answers to three questions a who migrates b how much net income do migrants remit and c what are the marginal effects of these remittances on household consumption and investment because of data limitations in this article i propose to examine only the first and the third questions other researchers have addressed the second issue in the past surprisingly little attention has been focused on the question of the marginal effects of remittances on household consumption and investment in the rural third world this inattention has been due to three considerable methodological problems the first is fungibility because remittances are like any other form of cash income it is difficult to associate this income source with any particular changes in household expenditure behavior the second problem relates to the multiple round effects of remittances on the local economy for example an inflow of remittances into a rural area may lead to a surge in expenditures in housing which may in turn create new income and employment opportunities for the poor and unskilled unfortunately however few studies have

one lump or two unitary versus bifurcated measures of injury at the usitc i introduction firms that face competition frequently have a number of legal avenues to limit such competition when such competition comes from overseas competitors they might avail themselves of laws to limit imports in the major industrialized countries laws to limit competition from imports fall into two broad categories safeguards and laws against unfairly traded imports safeguards also known as escape clause procedures allow a world trade organization wto member state to temporarily restrict imports when a product is imported to its territory in such increased quantities as to cause or threaten serious injury to competing domestic producers these temporary restrictions quotas or tariffs can either allow the domestic industry to become more competitive or allow an orderly transfer of resources from the industry unfairly traded imports are imports that are subsidized and or dumped that is sold at less than fair value fair value can be the price that the imports are sold for in their home market the price that the imports are sold for in a third country or the estimated cost of production including a profit in accordance with international agreements u s law requires that remedial duties antidumping duties or countervailing duties can only be imposed on unfairly traded imports if these imports have caused or threaten to cause material injury to competing domestic producers the u s international trade commission usitc is responsible for investigating and determining whether unfairly traded imports have caused material injury to a domestic industry the usitc is also responsible for investigating and determining whether a domestic industry that petitions for relief in a safeguard proceeding has suffered serious injury because of increased imports usitc commissioners have adopted a variety of approaches to determining whether dumped or subsidized imports have caused material injury to competing domestic producers an important one that has been used by several commissioners is the unitary approach this approach uses production and prices for the unfairly traded imports the domestic industry and fairly traded imports if any estimates of demand and supply elasticities and dumping or subsidy margins to calculate what the performance of the domestic industry would have been had it not had to compete with unfairly traded imports an alternative approach that has been adopted by more commissioners is the bifurcated approach this approach first asks if the domestic industry has suffered material injury and then asks whether unfairly traded imports contributed to this injury by separating the injury determination into two separate questions the presence of injury and the causation of injury the bifurcated approach is similar to the sort of inquiry that the usitc conducts in its safeguards investigations commissioners who used the unitary approach relied on an explicit economic model to compare actual domestic industry performance with what the performance would have been absent competition from unfairly traded imports in contrast commissioners who used the bifurcated approach rejected formal economic analysis in fact many of them were openly hostile to the use of economic analysis because of these different attitudes toward quantitative economics the unitary approach has also been called the economic approach we adapt an economic model developed to measure the causes of injury in usitc safeguard investigations to measure the effect of unfairly traded imports to domestic industry performance that is the second question under the bifurcated approach we apply this methodology to all usitc unfairly traded import investigations for a time period between two major changes in the law during this period there were commissioners who used the unitary approach and commissioners who used the bifurcated approach

the economics of poverty traps and persistent poverty an asset based approach abstract longitudinal data on household living standards open the way to a deeper analysis of the nature and extent of poverty while a number of studies have exploited this type of data to distinguish transitory from more chronic forms of income or expenditure poverty this paper develops an asset based approach to poverty analysis that makes it possible to distinguish deep rooted persistent structural poverty from poverty that passes naturally with time due to systemic growth processes drawing on the economic theory of poverty traps and bifurcated accumulation strategies this paper briefly discusses some feasible estimation strategies for empirically identifying poverty traps and long term persistent structural poverty as well as relevant extensions of the popular foster greer thorbecke class of poverty measures the paper closes with reflections on how asset based poverty can be used to underwrite the design of persistent poverty reduction strategies

price trends at livestock auctions auction bidders may pursue a large number of reasonable bidding strategies including those that are risk neutral and risk averse risk averse bidders are especially tempted by the auction process to discriminate against themselves that is to offer prices close to their reservation prices or target prices self discrimination in turn usually implies that quality corrected prices of individual lots trend downward as the sale proceeds the empirical evidence for downtrending prices at selected yearling steer sales is examined implications are then drawn for auction pricing efficiency and equity

self enforcing trade agreements evidence from time varying trade policy the bagwell and staiger 1990 theory of cooperative trade agreements predicts new tariffs i increase with imports ii increase with the inverse of the sum of the import demand and export supply elasticities and iii decrease with the variance of imports the authors find us import policy during 1997 2006 to be consistent with this theory a one standard deviation increase in import growth the inverse of the sum of the import demand and export supply elasticity and the standard deviation of import growth changes the probability that the us imposes an antidumping tariff by 35 percent by 88 percent and by 76 percent respectively

measuring the income effects of migrant remittances a methodological approach applied to greece there is an ongoing debate on how the often voluminous migrant remittances are used and to what extent they contribute to the development of the migrant s country of origin there are surveys on how remittance recipients spend their income and discussions on how effective government policies are in attracting remittances in fact there is quite a literature often negative concerning the contribution of remittances to productive investment this literature looks at remittances in a variety of ways concerning the substance of the inquiry some of the writers investigate the impact of remittances as a compensating factor for the losses of the human capital invested in emigrants or in a more general way as a parameter in the overall impact of migration others discuss the impact of remittances alone separated from the impact of migration flows 2 from a methodological point of view some of the theoretical analyses are cast in macroeconomic terms and are based on a tradednontraded goods model in which labor is exchanged for remittances whereas capital is immobile 3 other writers examine the welfare effects of remittances alone or jointly with the effects of migration 4 most of this literature however focuses on the first round of remittance spending and ignores the diffused multiple effects thus producing inconclusive evidence on the impact of remittances on the economy 5 there is in particular little specific research on how aggregate output and employment are affected and very limited sectoral and regional investigation of the issue 6 this article attempts a disaggregated sectoral analysis of the income effects of remittances on consumption production imports em

commercial policy and the domestic carrying trade in this paper the authors examine the economic consequences of existing u s restrictions on trade in domestic water transportation cabotage services they briefly trace the history of u s policy on cabotage the authors also use an applied general equilibrium model of the united states to analyze the effects of the jones act on welfare and on production trade and employment in important upstream and downstream sectors the economic effects of u s maritime policies rank them with u s trade policies like the mfa the automobile and steel quotas of the mid 1980s and agricultural import restraints coauthors are hugh m arce kenneth a reinert and joseph e flynn

resisting the protectionist temptation industry and the making of trade policy in france and the united states during the 1970s why were advanced industrial states able to keep their economies relatively open to foreign trade in the 1970s and the early 1980s despite declining u s hegemony and increasing economic difficulties this article argues that an international level change affected domestic trade politics and contributed to the maintenance of a liberal trading system examining the united states and france the argument proceeds in two steps showing first how domestic trade politics were changed and second how this change affected the policy process initially i argue that aspects of the increased international economic interdependence of the postwar period altered domestic trade politics by creating new anti protectionist preferences among certain firms firms with extensive international ties through exports multinational production and global intra firm trade have come to oppose protectionism since it is very costly for them evidence for these new preferences was apparent among both american and french industries despite different contexts firms in the two countries reacted similarly to the growth of interdependence next i ask whether firms preferences affected trade policy outcomes and show how these preferences were integrated into the policy process in both countries trade policy structures in neither country prevented firms preferences from affecting the policies adopted even in france a so called strong state firms preferences were a key influence on policy in the trade policy area then the french and american states did not appear to differ greatly in their susceptibility to industry influence even though their policy processes were different

remittances financial development and growth abstract despite the increasing importance of remittances in total international capital flows the relationship between remittances and growth has not been adequately studied this paper studies one of the links between remittances and growth in particular how local financial sector development influences a country s capacity to take advantage of remittances using a newly constructed dataset for remittances covering about 100 developing countries we find that remittances boost growth in countries with less developed financial systems by providing an alternative way to finance investment and helping overcome liquidity constraints this finding controls for the endogeneity of remittances and financial development does not depend on the particular measure of financial sector development used and is robust to a number of robustness tests including threshold estimation we also provide evidence that there could be an investment channel trough which remittances can promote growth especially when the financial sector does not meet the credit needs of the population

migration theories and evidence an assessment abstract this paper presents a critical survey of theories of migration their welfare and policy implications and their empirical relevance we also develop some extensions to the theory beginning with the harris and todaro ht model in particular the ht model is extended to examine risk averse behaviour within families where the migration of members of families serves to diversify risk the welfare implications of the individual migration decision and government intervention in the form of employment subsidies are examined recent evidence on international migration is presented it is shown that migration does not flow automatically in response to wage differentials characteristics of migrants and the process of self selection are found to be important determinants of the rate of migration

industry specific effects of antidumping activities evidence from the us the european union and china this article analyses industry specific effects of antidumping ad activities on trade using the system generalized method of moments gmm in dynamic panel date models in the process of doing so this article selected three frequent ad users such as the us the european union eu and china additionally we chose the metal steel chemical and plastic rubber industries for the us cases chemical metal steel and machinery electronics industries for the eu cases and the chemical industry for the chinese cases based on the analyses conducted herein we detected positive evidence of industry specific impacts of ad measures imposed by the three frequent users

on the incidence of us tariffs this paper provides evidence on the incidence of tariffs on products of export interest to developing countries by investigating the relationship between per capita incomes of us trading partners and tariff rates it constitutes the first attempt to assess the incidence of tariffs imposed by the us on countries that span the entire range of per capita incomes average tariff rates are lower for the poorest and richest countries and higher for countries in the middle of the income distribution this finding is not consistent with the widely held view that tariffs used by industrial nations bear more heavily on products of export interest to poorer developing countries than on imports from industrial nations it is consistent with the tariff escalation pattern reported in earlier studies if advanced countries account for most products at the high end of the fabrication scale results show that poorest countries will find it difficult to escape tariffs by attaining higher levels of economic development

what is antidumping policy really about dumping is whatever you can get the government to act against under the antidumping law j michael finger 1993 p viii antidumping policy has become one of the most important instruments for protection in the international trade system but at the same time it is the subject of an intense though rather chaotic debate this paper provides an overview of the antidumping literature and the current issues first it describes the origins of antidumping policy and provides some basic statistics on its current use drawn from several empirical studies next the paper discusses the economic foundations of antidumping law by examining the traditional and modern theories of dumping as well as the industrial organization literature on price discrimination and predatory pricing it is demonstrated that those economic foundations are weak the paper also considers the fairness rationales for antidumping policy finally it addresses the criticisms of antidumping laws in particular in the context of the current antidumping versus competition policy debate and discusses a variety of proposals for reform that have been made the paper shows that the 1997 cease fire agreement between canada and chile is a promising approach toward reform of antidumping policy

does antidumping use contribute to trade liberalization in developing countries some supporters of antidumping have argued that this procedure serves as a kind of safety valve for protectionist pressure in this paper we investigate whether there is empirical evidence that the use of antidumping actions has contributed to ongoing tariff reductions over the period 1988 to 2004 in a sample of 23 developing countries some of which have become aggressive users of antidumping in recent years the evidence is not supportive of the safety valve argument for these countries instead evidence suggests that past use of antidumping may have led to less rather than more trade liberalization

exploring the regional implications of interstate quarantine policies in western australia abstract as a signatory of the world trade organization agreement australia has a responsibility to ensure the behaviour of its internal markets for food and food related products abide by the same rules and regulations as international trade this has generated a need to demonstrate the validity of any measures that restrict competition to avoid disputes and or retaliatory actions by other signatories this paper explores a spatial economic evaluation technique that can be used to examine the welfare implications of quarantine policies for regionalised industries and demonstrates practical application of this technique using two case studies of interstate trade within australia

macroeconomic factors and antidumping filings evidence from four countries abstract this paper examines the relationship between antidumping filings and macroeconomic factors real exchange rate fluctuations affect the two criteria for dumping in opposite ways making the overall effect on filings ambiguous in theory examining the filing patterns of the four major users of ad law during the 1980 98 period we find that real exchange rates and domestic real gdp growth both have statistically significant impacts on filings bilateral filing data indicate that a one standard deviation real appreciation of the domestic currency increases filings by 33 we also find one standard deviation fall in domestic real gdp increases filings by 23

direct evidence on risk attitudes and migration geographic mobility is important for the functioning of labor markets because it brings labor resources to where they can be most efficiently used it has long been hypothesized that individuals migration propensities depend on their attitudes towards risk but the empirical evidence to the extent that it exists has been indirect in this paper we use newly available data from the german socio economic panel to measure directly the relationship between migration propensities and attitudes towards risk we find that individuals who are more willing to take risks are more likely to migrate between labor markets in germany this result is robust to stratifying by age sex education national origin and a variety of other demographic characteristics as well as to the level of aggregation used to define geographic mobility the effect is substantial relative to the unconditional migration propensity and compared to the conventional determinants of migration we also find that being more willing to take risks is more important for the extensive than for the intensive margin of migration

constituency interests and delegation in european and american trade policy trade policy in the eu and the united states is to a large extent delegated to executive agents existing explanations claim that legislators delegate because they wish to liberalize but are unable to achieve this on their own the authors show that legislators delegate powers to obtain foreign market access for exporters and protection for import competing interests confronted with heterogeneousdemands from both groups principals delegate to two sets of agents to confer concentrated benefits on these constituencies and install control to avoid concentrated losses while maintaining the flow of resources from lobbying the authors derive the empirically observable implication that with the increase in the share of tradables in the overall economy delegation as well as control should steadily increase with time they then test the validity of this proposition for u s trade policy since 1916 and for european trade policy since 1958

motivations to remit evidence from botswana in this article a theory of motivations to send remittances is described and tested with data from botswana altruism is one of the motivations tested and found to be an insufficient explanation for remittances among migrants in botswana a refinement of the model stipulates a modified altruism or enlightened self interest in this model the relationship between the migrant and family is tempered by an implicit understanding of mutual benefit the household strategy may be to encourage some members to migrate as a means of spreading risk and sharing gains the household strategy is similar to an insurance policy where migration is to places where market potential is high the risks incurred might be high the example is given of migration during a drought in botswana migrant remittances were greater in households with more cattle or households with more to lose drought alone was not statistically related to remittances increases in remittances were related to increased levels of education it is suggested that repayment was the motive for parents investment in migrants education migrants gains are identified as the potential for an inheritance the security of channeling investments through a trusted family member and security in having a home to return to it is pointed out that the altruism and family remittances from urban migration were strategies that bridged the simple dynamic of either urban development or rural development impacting on family welfare it is suggested that household models of economy adopt some measure to express the relationship of household wealth to remittances from urban migrants

does migration raise agricultural investment an empirical analysis for rural mexico the effect of remittances on capital accumulation remains a contested topic this paper uses a panel data set from rural mexico to investigate the impact of remittances on agriculture and livestock investments after controlling for the endogeneity of migration through an instrumental variable estimation our empirical results show that international migration has a significantly positive effect on the accumulated agricultural assets but not on livestock capital this suggests that households use the capital obtained from international migration only to overcome liquidity constraints for subsistence production whereas migration itself seems to be the superior investment option compared to other productive activities such as livestock husbandry

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

migration remittances and capital accumulation evidence from rural mexico this paper studies the link between migration remittances and productive assets accumulation for a panel of poor rural households in mexico over the period 19972006 in a context of nancial markets imperfections migration may act as a substitute for imperfect credit and insurance provision through remittances from migrants and thus exert a positive eect on investment however it may well be the case that remittances are channelled towards increasing consumption and leisure goods exploiting within family variation and an instrumental variable strategy we show that migration indeed accelerates productive assets accumulation moreover when we look at the eect of migration on consumption of non productive assets durable goods we nd instead a negative eect our results then suggest that

absentee bidders and the declining price anomaly in wine auctions the anomaly is concerned with the observation that in multiple item auctions of identical objects prices tend to decline over time i show that in the case of wine auctions which have been analyzed frequently the anomaly is likely to be caused by the fact that most bids are entered by absentees who use nonoptimal bidding strategies therefore wine auctions can hardly be used to illustrate the standard multiple object auction model

wto tariff commitments and temporary protection complements or substitutes abstract there is a long held notion in the trade policy literature that traditional tariff instruments and temporary protection tp measures are substitutes despite this prediction there is only mixed empirical evidence for a link between tariff reductions and the usage pattern of antidumping safeguard and countervailing duties based on recent theoretical advances i argue in this paper that the relevant trade policy margin for implementing tp measures is instead tariff overhangs the difference between wto bound and applied tariffs lower tariff overhangs constrain countries to raise their mfn applied rates without legal repercussions independent of past tariff changes using detailed sectoral data for a sample of 30 wto member countries during the period 1996 2014 i find strong evidence for an inverse link between tariff overhangs and tp activity this result implies that tariff overhangs and tp measures are substitutes vindicating the importance of existing tariff commitments as a key determinant of alternative protection instruments

migration networks and microenterprises in mexico are migration networks associated with lower capital costs or the alleviation of capital constraints we examine these questions with data measuring access to remittance flows among small scale entrepreneurs in mexico using a survey of more than 6000 self employed workers and small firm owners located in 44 urban areas of mexico we estimate the impact of attachment to migration networks on the level of capital investment the capital output ratio sales and profits of microenterprises the impact is identified from the geographic pattern of migration from mexico driven by the completion of rail lines in the early 1900s for the full sample of firms we find that migration is associated with higher investment levels and higher profits but not higher sales the strongest effects on investment are in the categories of automobiles tools and inventories when the sample is limited to firms in high capital sectors investment sales and profits all increase with attachment to the migration networks suggesting that attachment to the migration network alleviates capital constraints in those sectors

efetividade do instrumento antidumping no brasil entre 1990 e 2007 the aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of anti dumping instrument in brazil two aspects the relationship between antidumping filings and macroeconomic factors and the effects of macroeconomic variables and industry size on the likelihood of petitioner law enforcement antidumping the results showed that macroeconomic variables have no effect on the number of antidumping filings for the brazilian economy from 1990 to 2007 moreover result supports the hypothesis that adverse scenarios in the national economy and the specific characteristics of sectors petitioners for the increased probability of conclude by the application of antidumping law reducing its effectiveness

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

revisiting the threshold effect of remittances on total factor productivity growth in south asia a study of bangladesh and india abstractboth bangladesh and india are among the top recipient of remittances in absolute terms however in relative terms remittances as a per cent of gdp the two countries stand at 6 1 and 2

international migration remittances and household investment evidence from philippine migrants exchange rate shocks how do households respond to overseas members economic shocks overseas filipinos in dozens of countries experienced sudden heterogeneous changes in exchange rates during the 1997 asian financial crisis appreciation of a migrant s currency against the philippine peso leads to increases in household remittances from overseas the estimated elasticity of philippine peso remittances with respect to the exchange rate is 0 60 positive migrant shocks lead to enhanced human capital accumulation and entrepreneurship in origin households child schooling and educational expenditure rise while child labour falls households also work more hours in self employment and become more likely to start relatively capital intensive household enterprises

enterprise inequality and economic development we characterize an equilibrium development process driven by the interaction of the distribution of wealth with credit constraints and the distribution of entrepreneurial skills when efficient entrepreneurs are relatively abundant a traditional development process emerges in which the evolution of macroeconomic variables accord with empirical regularities and income inequality traces out a kuznets curve if instead efficient entrepreneurs are relatively scarce the model generates long run distributional cycles driven by the endogenous interaction between credit constraints entrepreneurial efficiency and equilibrium wages

auctions and the price of art the value of most important works of art is established by public auction either directly by an actual sale or indirectly by reference to other sales how the auction system works is thus a critical determinant of how the public s preferences are translated into the evaluation of artistic work the auction system is central in the determination of the incentives for artistic work and the efficiency of the auction system is a key determinant of the cost of creating and distributing works of art this paper contains a review of the burgeoning new research of the last decade that has been designed to shed light on how the art auction system actually works what it indicates about price formation and how well it performs we begin our discussion in section 2 with a short description of the mechanics of the auction system and then organize the remainder of our discussion around two major topics the first topic concerns how auction prices can be used to determine and compare overall price movements within the art market and other markets and the second topic concerns how the auction mechanism influences prices we

self selection and the earnings of immigrants this paper analyzes the way in which the earnings of the immigrant population may be expected to differ from the earnings of the native population because of the endogeneity of the decision to migrate the empirical study shows that differences in the u s earnings of immigrants with the same measured skills but from different home countries are attributable to variations in political and economic conditions in the countries of origin at the time of migration excerpt

on migration and risk in ldcs the authors develop the hypothesis that aversion to risk rather than expectations of higher income is the primary motivation for rural urban migration in developing countries this hypothesis maintains that an optimizing risk averse small farmer family will try to place a family member in the urban sector in order to diversify its income portfolio an additional hypothesis related to risk is also considered at the individual rather than the family level annotation

cumulation and itc decision making the sum of the parts is greater than the whole in 1984 congress amended the antidumping and countervailing duty laws man dating that the international trade commission itc cumulate imports across countries when determining injury we estimate that cumulation increases the probability of an affirmative injury determination by 20 to 30 percent and has changed the itc s decision from negative to affirmative for about one third of cumulated cases we also show that the protective effect of cumulation increases as the number of countries involved increases holding import market share constant that is cumulated imports have a super additive effect on itc decision making

migration and incomes in source communities a new economics of migration perspective from china the objective of this paper is to understand the effects of china s migration on source communities and to discuss their policy implications we draw from new economics of labor migration nelm theory to understand how migration and migrant remittances can relax or tighten market constraints in china s rural economy using simultaneous equation econometric techniques and household survey data from china we estimate net sectorspecific effects of migration on rural household income focusing on farm production and self employment our econometric findings indicate that the loss of labor to migration has a negative effect on household cropping income in source areas however we provide evidence that remittances sent home by migrants positively compensate for this lost labor effect contributing to household incomes directly and indirectly by stimulating crop and possibly self employment production this finding offers evidence in support of the nelm hypothesis that remittances loosen constraints on production in the imperfect market environments characterizing rural areas in less developed countries taking into account both the multiple effects of migration and the change in household size participating in migration increases household per capita income between 14 and 30 percent migration and incomes in source communities a new economics of migration perspective from china china is experiencing the largest peacetime flow of labor out of agriculture ever witnessed in world history solinger 1999 rozelle et al 1999 despite the rapid expansion of labor migration china s work force is still disproportionately employed in agriculture compared to other countries at similar levels of per capita gdp taylor and martin 2001 hence as china s economy continues to expand the flow of labor to urban areas will continue and even accelerate johnson 1999 the massive flow of labor away from farms has intensified research interest in china s migration in recent years however as in the broader literature on migration in less developed countries most recent studies on china s migration have focused on determining the size and composition of the labor flow macroeconomic implications of increased migration and the effects of migration on urban areas zhao 1999 yang 1999 1997 less emphasis has been placed on researching the effects of migration on the rural communities that migrants leave even though evidence shows that the rural household in the village of origin is typically the central concern of all those involved in migration both those who leave and those who stay behind exceptions include wang and zuo 1999 bai 2001 moreover the recent increase in migration has left policy makers particularly concerned regarding the way source communities will be affected moa 1999 they are concerned that as labor flows away from farms food production and crop income will decline potentially threatening china s food security furthermore policy makers are concerned about the increasing gap between urban and rural household incomes if migration exacerbates this gap some fear that as it grows rural residents eventually will flood cities ill equipped to absorb them others fear that discontent over a rising urban rural income gap could even spill over into political unrest yang 1999 because china s markets and other modern economic institutions are still relatively undeveloped migration may play a pivotal role in creating or overcoming constraints caused by the lack of well functioning markets and or institutions knight and song 1999 benjamin and brandt 2000 the new economics of labor migration nelm literature analyzes migration as a household decision rather than as an individual decision stark 1991 the nelm hypothesizes that rural households facing imperfect market environments decide

exploring poverty traps and social exclusion in south africa using qualitative and quantitative data abstract recent theoretical work hypothesises that a polarised society like south africa will suffer a legacy of ineffective social capital and blocked pathways of upward mobility that leaves large numbers of people trapped in poverty to explore these ideas this paper employs a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods novel econometric analysis of asset dynamics over the 1993 98 period identifies a dynamic asset poverty threshold that signals that large numbers of south africans are indeed trapped without a pathway out of poverty qualitative analysis of this period and the period 1998 2001 more deeply examines patterns of mobility and confirms the continuation of this pattern of limited upward mobility and a low level poverty trap in addition the qualitative data permit a closer look at the specific role played by social relationships while finding ample evidence of active social capital and networks these are more helpful for non poor households for the poor social capital at best helps sta

adverse selection and entrepreneurship in a model of development this paper presents a theory in which talented entrepreneurs are identified as the key agents driving the process of development and modernisation entrepreneurial skills are private information which prevents full risk sharing development into a modern industrial economy might fail to take place since potentially talented entrepreneurs may refrain from taking on the entrepreneurial risks as a way to avoid income shocks an interesting feature of the model is the fact that the informational asymmetries are endogenous to the process of development as they are related to the heterogeneity in entrepreneurial skills required in the manufacturing activities

an analysis of factors influencing the anti dumping behaviour in india the use of anti dumping measures as a trade protection tool has increased phenomenally during the last decade one significant aspect of this new trend is the increasing involvement of developing countries india is one such country which has emerged as a very frequent user of anti dumping measures surpassing even the traditional users it had initiated more than 300 anti dumping cases by the end of 2002 03 many of these cases are against developing countries most of the cases are concentrated in narrow range product groups like chemicals and petrochemicals iron and steel pharmaceuticals and textiles this study examines india s experience with anti dumping measures the main objective of the study is to identify the factors which might have influenced the anti dumping behaviour in india discussion of these factors shows that imports have increased considerably this is particularly true for a number of developing countries facing dumping charges in india at the same time many of the domestic producers of the like products have performed poorly during the last decade such trends may instigate the import competing industries to seek anti dumping protection and may also influence the authority to provide that however the results of our statistical exercise show that although imports and performance of the domestic industry might have influenced the initiation of anti dumping cases these factors did not seem to significantly influence the final decision of the authority the results rather indicated a tendency on the part of the authority to provide anti dumping protection to industries which are characterised by a large number of firms

migration remittances and agricultural productivity in china in our paper we have used the new economics of labor migration framework to trace the complex linkages that exist among migration remittances and agricultural productivity in china constraints in the operation of on farm labor and capital or insurance markets or institutions provide households with a motivation to migrate and distort on farm operations when labor leaves in our household sample the net impact of migration and remittances on maize production is negative excerpt

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

antidumping and retaliation threats abstract we propose and test two ways in which retaliation threats may dampen the antidumping ad activity we observe first the threat of retaliatory ad actions may make a domestic industry less likely to name a foreign import source in an ad petition second the prospect of a gatt wto trade dispute may make government agencies less likely to rule positive in their ad decision using a nested logit framework we find evidence that both retaliation threats substantially affect us ad activity from 1980 through 1998

from senators to the president solve the lumber problem or else we use key events associated in the two decade long u s canada softwood lumber trade dispute to present the dynamic relationship between u s congress and the administration in the formation of international trade policy we find that the executive branch of the u s government responded quickly to several letters from a group of u s senators demanding a solution to the lumber problem a roll call analysis is used to identify factors influencing senators willingness to sign these letters and pressure the president on behalf of the u s lumber industry the results show that the economic importance of the lumber industry in a senator s home state is positively correlated with signatory on these letters and that the presence of a large housing industry in a state makes a senator less likely to sign these letters

information the dual economy and development we examine the interactions between different institutional arrangements in a general equilibrium model of a modernizing economy there is a modern sector where productivity is high but information asymmetries are large and a traditional sector where productivity is low but information asymmetries are small consequently agency costs in the modern sector make consumption lending difficult while such lending is readily done in the traditional sector the resulting trade off between credit availability and productivity implies that not everyone will move to the modern sector in fact the laissez faire level of modernization may fail to maximize net social surplus this situation may also hold in the long run in a dynamic version of the model a trickle down effect links the process of modernization with reduction in modern sector agency costs this effect may be too weak and the economy may get stuck in a trap and never fully modernize the two sector structure also yields a natural theoretical testing ground for the kuznets inverted u hypothesis we show that even within the sectoral shifting class of models this phenomenon is not robust to small changes in model specification

networks in the modern economy mexican migrants in the u s labor market this paper attempts to identify job networks among mexican migrants in the u s labor market the empirical analysis uses data on migration patterns and labor market outcomes based on a sample of individuals belonging to multiple origin communities in mexico over a long period of time each community s network is measured by the proportion of the sampled individuals who are located at the destination the united states in any year we verify that the same individual is more likely to be employed and to hold a higher paying nonagricultural job when his network is exogenously larger by including individual fixed effects in the employment and occupation regressions and by using rainfall in the origin community as an instrument for the size of the network at the destination

do remittances diminish social violence abstractthis paper represents the first attempt to formalise the relationship between remittances and social violence by developing a model that predicts that migrants remittances lead to the reduction of social violence in the recipient economy under the condition that remittances increase the average product of labour using homicide data as an indicator of social violence we tested our model s prediction controlling for the endogeneity problem with appropriate instruments we found that remittances tend to reduce social violence we performed sensitivity analysis on remittances in the empirical specification and found it robust with an unchanged negative sign

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

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

anti dumping protection in a liberalising country mexico s anti dumping policy and practice the use of anti dumping policy has been steadily growing in recent decades and so has the theoretical and empirical literature on anti dumping however while developing countries as a whole have become at least as active as the traditional anti dumping regimes the usa the eu canada and australia the literature is almost exclusively concerned with the latter group this article gives an overview of anti dumping policy and practice in mexico one of the leading new anti dumping regimes it assesses how anti dumping has expanded since the country began liberalising trade in the mid 1980s and discusses how the policy has been applied in a protectionist way that is not dissimilar to policy practice in the traditional user countries

trade liberalization and economic stabilization in mexico lessons of experience abstract this article reviews the mexican trade liberalization of the past decade special attention is paid to the circumstances by which it was triggered to the macroeconomic environment and to the design of the process particularly the speed and extent of the trade reforms it is argued that although far reaching liberalization measures were carried out in a relatively short period of time the exposure of domestic industry to foreign competition was delayed considerably as a result of the exchange rate management during the process

habitual and occasional lobbyers in the u s steel industry an em algorithm pooling approach bernard yeung using u s steel firm data we find that lobbying for import protection appears to be habit forming to identify heterogeneity in lobbying behavior among firms we use an expectation maximization algorithm to sort our firms into groups with different propensities to lobby and estimate the determinants of lobbying in each group a two pool model emerges occasional lobbyers lobbying depends on their market performance and habitual lobbyers lobbying only depends on past lobbying the latter tends to be larger steel firms whose business is more focused in steel our evidence is consistent with dynamic economies of scale in protection seeking breeding protection dependent firms jel f13 1 introduction rent seeking activities plausibly have dynamic economies to scale past rent seeking experience should reduce the cost of further rent seeking and increase its return thus rent seekers may over time become more prone to further rent seeking and even become dependent on it given the large welfare losses theoretically associated with rent seeking e g bhagwati 1982 1988 and magee et al 1989 a better understanding of actual rent seeking behavior is required in particular empirical verification of the self sustaining nature of rent seeking is of fundamental importance lobbying for protection from import competition is a form of rent seeking this article uses data on lobbying for protection by firms in the steel industry in the 1970s and 1980s to show that a habit forming effect does exist in a preliminary investigation we pool all firm level data and find that past lobbying increases the current tendency to lobby however not all firms have the same propensity to lobby to allow heterogeneity among firms dependence on past lobbying we apply an expectation maximization em algorithm approach dempster et al 1977 to a lagged dummy model heckman 1982a 1982b this lets our firms sort themselves into groups according to the determinants of their lobbying activity our statistical results suggest that an acceptable division of our data is a division into two groups occasional lobbyers whose lobbying depends on the firm s market performance and habitual lobbyers whose lobbying is essentially unrelated to the firm s business situation and depends mainly on past lobbying firms that never lobby for protection end up in the first group greater firm size and greater focus in steel production are associated with increased lobbying in both groups but the influence is stronger for occasional lobbyers past sales growth and spending on modern equipment are associated with curtailed lobbying by occasional rent seekers but are unrelated to lobbying by habitual rent seekers changes in cash flow have no influence in either generally habitual lobbyers are larger firms whose business is more concentrated on steel they are naturally more inclined than occasional lobbyers to initiate lobbying however their lobbying appears to have become a habit divorced from their market pe rformance these results are consistent with the presence of economies of scale in rent seeking and with rent seeking being habit forming e g magee et al 1989 in the next section we describe the intensive lobbying for protection in the u s steel industry in the 1970s and 1980s we justify our contentions that lobbying for protection by steel firms in the sample period may be habit forming and that different groups of firms should have dissimilar propensities to lobby for protection in section iii we explain the em algorithm approach we explain the data in the fourth section and report our results in section v section vi concludes ii habitual and occasional lobbying in the u s steel industry in the united states domestic firms under import competition pressure often complain to the government about unfair foreign practice