on the welfare effects of a duty free zone abstract the analysis extends and corrects the results of an earlier paper by hamada two problems are analyzed 1 how is location of production affected by opening up of a free zone taking into account different kinds of trade barriers and zones implications for production consumption and welfare in a number of different cases are analyzed 2 what are the effects of capital inflow either into the zone or into the host country our results show that both types of capital inflow diminish welfare and welfare diminishes comparatively more when imported into the zone repatriated income as well as its composition is explicitly incorporated

is an enclave sector a cure for unemployment in ldcs abstract in the framework of a simple general equilibrium model this paper demonstrates that the establishment of an enclave sector through foreign capital inflow does not always reduce employment in a labor surplus developing economy we point out a case where such capital inflows paradoxically accentuate the problem of unemployment in the host economy

the gains from duty free zones abstract duty free zones have been established in many countries and duty free shops can be found in every major international airport this paper investigates their welfare effect in the tradition of the pareto gains from trade literature using the dual approach developed in dixit and norman 1980 we show that the introduction of a duty free zone leads to pareto gains over autarky compared to free trade its welfare impact depends on the redistribution mechanism accompanying free trade we show that with a dixit norman tax scheme free trade is pareto inferior to a duty free zone regime the opposite holds true for lump sum redistribution

caught in the housing bubble immigrants housing outcomes in traditional gateways and newly emerging destinations research has documented that immigrants have moved in large numbers to almost every metropolitan area and select rural areas in the us in the midst of these demographic shifts the country has experienced a profound recession to date there has been little research on the impact of the recession on immigrants across the us using 2006 and 2009 american community survey microdata the paper assesses how the recent economic crisis has affected latino and asian immigrants with respect to two housing outcomes homeownership and headship over two important time points in the recent economic cycle immigrants have worse housing outcomes and significantly lower mobility rates after the recession regression results suggest that the negative impacts from the recession are strongest in the gateway metropolitan areas and that after controlling for residence in the hardest hit areas increases in metropolitan level unemployment and mortgage delinquency rates have a negative impact on homeownership rates the results also suggest that even though the recession has disrupted immigrants upward trajectory in the housing markets the effect has not been as severe on immigrants as one might expect in particular the places where immigrant populations are newest have not experienced as large a reduction in homeownership as those in the large immigrant gateways even in the established gateways the decline in homeownership has been smaller for immigrants than for us born households

a setar model for canadian gdp non linearities and forecast comparisons this paper investigates the forecasting performance of the non linear time series setar model by using canadian gdp data from 1965 to 2000 besides the within sample fit the forecasting performance of a standard linear arima model for the same sample has also been generated for comparative purposes two forecasting methods one step ahead and multi step ahead forecasting are compared for each type of model

an econometric model of housing price permanent income tenure choice and housing demand abstract this paper addresses the determination of housing price permanent income tenure choice and housing demand full housing demand elasticities incorporate the interactive effects among the four stages of the model price and income have major effects in the tenure choice equation sociodemographic variables such as age have complex effects that may be lost in simpler forms of estimation

the locational choice for free trade zones rural versus urban options abstract urban and rural areas are compared as appropriate locations for a free trade zone within a developing country suffering from urban unemployment if domestic capital is mobile between the two regions then the rural area is shown to be preferable to the urban area and sufficient conditions for this conclusion are presented this conclusion may be reversed however if capital is sector specific the condition for this reversal is also discussed

free trade zones with harris todaro unemployment a note on young miyagiwa abstract this paper attempts to generalise the young miyagiwa results for an economy with a free trade zone and harris todaro unemployment by incorporating intersectoral mobility of domestic capital and an upward sloping supply function of foreign capital our analysis reveals that under reasonable assumptions creating a free trade zone may lead to a loss in national welfare further there may arise a conflict between the twin objectives of increasing employment and increasing national welfare

intermediate goods and the formation of duty free zones abstract if a country forms a duty free zone by lowering tariffs on intermediate goods and taxes on foreign capital used in the zone then resources are attracted from the surrounding domestic zone this can worsen the effects of the distortions due to the tariffs remaining in the domestic zone and can lower the host country s national income and welfare this tends to occur if 1 there is less substitutability between the intermediate and labor than between these factors and capital 2 there is currently a small foreign owned sector in which the share of labor in total costs is large relative to the share of the imported intermediate in the foreign sector and relative to the share of labor in total costs in the domestic zone ironically under the latter circumstances the host country is likely to regard a duty free zone as an attractive option

unemployment and the formation of duty free zones abstract a number of authors have suggested that the formation of a duty free zone may reduce the welfare of the host country their analyses assumed full employment for a country suffering unwemployment of the harris todaro type we show that the value of national output at world prices increases with the formation of a duty free zone which involves the reduction of tariffs on intermediate imports into the zone

prices parents and young people s household formation an economic theory of young people s decision to live apart from parents is presented and used to structure econometric analyses of the processes of leaving the parental home and returning to it which employ data from the british household panel survey for the first half of the 1990s the econometric estimates support the predictions of the theory in particular tighter housing markets as indicated by higher regional relative house prices significantly retard home leaving especially the formation of partnerships and encourage returns to the parental home young people with larger current income are more likely to leave but less likely to return to the parental home

a reconsideration of the welfare economics of a free trade zone abstract this paper presents a model of a free trade zone which incorporates the fact that such zones are often established by government subsidies designed to promote non traditional exports in our model the condition is derived under which the establishment of a free trade zone can increase welfare regardless of the relative factor intensity of a zone based industry however the relative factor intensity of a free trade zone plays a crucial role in determining the change in welfare following economic growth and foreign investment

the impact of real rents and wages on household formation although the economic literature has analyzed some components of the headship decision study of household formation has been primarily in the realm of demography the authors expand the demographic model to include economic determinants of the decision to remain with parents or not and to live with a group or separately they focus on measuring the effect of spatial variations in rental costs on the probability of forming a household the authors results based on a sample of 2 573 youths in their twenties indicate that the cost of housing and potential labor earnings are important variables in explaining this probability copyright 1993 by mit press

misleading comparisons of homeownership rates when the variable effect of household formation is ignored explaining rising homeownership and the homeownership gap between blacks and asians in the us despite ominous signs of housing market stress in the us the homeownership rate reached an all time high in 2006 the conventional definition of homeownership which is based on the share of households and ignores the effects of variable household formation confounds the measurement of success in achieving homeownership it is found that from 1990 to 2006 declining household formation led to an elevated homeownership rate in the us and that this effect varies substantially between racial ethnic groups asians who achieve high homeownership rates have the lowest propensity to form independent households in sharp contrast to african americans asians do not have better access per capita to owner occupied housing than do blacks the conventional measure of homeownership is an incomplete measure of homeownership opportunity because it fails to account for variable household formation the changing population mix in the us includes groups with different propensities for household formation thus confusing future assessments of homeownership and the housing market

what happens to household formation in a recession abstract while many studies have investigated the determinants of housing demand very few studies have focused on how economic conditions affect the formation of potential households directly potential households may choose to delay entry into the housing market by remaining with one s parents during times of economic hardship or by combining with other persons to share housing costs using a variety of modeling approaches we find that both the increase in the unemployment rate and the presence of recessions reduce the rate of household formation simulations suggest that these declines are substantively important for example in a recession the likelihood that a young adult will form an independent household falls by 1 9 points depending on the age of the person by way of comparison if an individual is unemployed the likelihood of leaving the parental home is up to 11 points lower

export processing zones in madagascar a success story under threat summary the success of export processing zones or the zone franche in madagascar since 1990 is with the exception of mauritius an isolated and unknown case in africa this paper based on first hand data explains that the zone franche has had a highly significant macroeconomic impact in terms of exports and jobs we show that average wages in the zone franche are equivalent to the other formal activity sectors other things being equal and that labor standards there are higher than average the zone franche quickly recovered from the 2002 crisis and has benefited a great deal from agoa the final phase out of the multi fibre arrangement in 2005 is expected to have a negative impact on the zone franche

the economic determinants of young people s household formation the paper derives predictions about the impact of the price of housing young adults income and parental income on the probability that a young adult in the united kingdom lives apart from his her parents it shows that the predicted effect of the price of housing is intimately related to the price elasticity of housing demand it uses longitudinal data on a cohort of britons born in 1958 surveyed in the national child development study to estimate dynamic models of first departure from the parental home and particularly to estimate the impact of housing price on the timing and destination of first departure excerpt

unemployment and the optimal export processing zone abstract in a country with harris todaro unemployment the formation of an urban export processing zone reduces national income unless it raises rural wages in that case increases in zone wages increase national income by less than dollar for dollar if foreign capital is taxed optimally then intermediate imports into the zone should be subsidized while the wage should be at the minimum feasible level for a given tax policy either the wage should be at the minimum or the ad valorem tariff on the intermediate should exceed the inverse of the elasticity of supply of labor from the countryside existing zone policies depart from these prescriptions

why special economic zones using trade policy to discriminate across importers tariffs are generally assumed to depend on the product not the identity of the importer however special economic zones are a common economically important policy used worldwide to lower tariffs on selected goods for selected manufacturers i show this is motivated by policymakers desire to discriminate across buyers when a tax is intended to raise prices for sellers through a mechanism distinct from existing theories of optimal taxation using a new dataset compiled from public records and exogenous changes in imports of intermediate goods i find the form composition and size of us zones are consistent with the theory