the impact of exports on economic growth it s the market form abstarct this paper unites explanations about the growth effects from various trade characteristics proposing the market form into which a country exports as the main driver exporting into concentrated world markets oligopolies or monopolies leads to higher profit margins similar to fundamental microeconomic logic the paper develops an index measuring the average market form of a country s exports this index produces a positive and statistically significant coefficient in conventional growth regressions a one standard deviation increase is suggested to raise growth by 0 885 percentage points this result holds for numerous extensions and seems particularly important for developing economics

wider share ownership and economic performance in the uk today almost one in every five adults directly own shares on the stock market compared with a figure of 5 as recently as 1983 this has been a remarkable change engineered by the conservative administration the government have argued that the policy is aimed at creating an enterprise culture nothing less than a fundamental change in attitudes to wealth creation in the economy while we would not disagree with this laudible objective it is clearly difficult to assess both in terms of attainment and consequences one would be happier if the justification for the policy could be grounded in more direct economic terms and the purpose of this paper is to attempt to provide an analysis of some economic aspects of wider share ownership as a policy objective we will attempt to provide a general theoretical analysis although this will inevitably be biased towards aspects of relevance to the uk experience

equity returns and integration is europe changing this paper analyses the consequences of the process of financial and economic integration on european equity markets it documents significant changes in fundamentals notably an increased synchronization of macroeconomic activities and a non negligible evolution in pricing with a decrease in the cost of capital and converging equity premiums as to equity returns themselves in the face of what could turn out to be long run upward trends in the correlations among both country and sector returns and a narrowing of the superiority of country factors the benefits to be gained from finding diversification opportunities at a more disaggregated level appear to be higher than ever copyright 2004 oxford university press

the real effects of financial integration abstract this paper shows how correlations in gdp fluctuations rise with financial integration finance serves to increase international correlations in both consumption and gdp fluctuations which explains the persistent gap between the two in the data a quantity puzzle the positive association between financial integration and gdp correlation constitutes a puzzle as theory suggests a negative relation if anything nevertheless it prevails in the data even after the effects of finance on trade and specialization are accounted for

international sourcing and supply chain stability an international supply chain is conceptualized as a complex dynamic system in which disruptions interact with long shipping and lead times to generate costs findings from a case study and simulation model indicate that demand related disruptions created substantial and unexpected costs in terms of expedited shipping high inventories and lower demand fulfillment production related disruptions declined over time but demand related disruptions did not implications for management are discussed

the middle income trap more politics than economics economists have identified the existence of a middle income mi trap but have yet to analyze the politics of this trap the authors argue that countries in the mi trap face two major institutional and political challenges first the policies necessary to upgrade productivity as in human capital and innovation require enormous investment in institutional capacity second these institutional challenges come at a time when political capacity for building these institutions is weak due primarily to the fragmentation of potential support coalitions politics are stalled in particular by fractured social groups especially business and labor and more generally by inequality these conditions result in large measure from previous trajectories of growth the empirical analysis concentrates on nine of the larger mi countries

trade finance specialization and synchronization i investigate the determinants of business cycle synchronization across regions the linkages between trade in goods financial openness specialization and business cycle synchronization are evaluated in the context of a system of simultaneous equations the main results are as follows i specialization patterns have a sizable effect on business cycles most of this effect is independent of trade or financial policy but directly reflects differences in gdp per capita ii a variety of measures of financial integration suggest that economic regions with strong financial links are significantly more synchronized even though they also tend to be more specialized iii the estimated role of trade is closer to that implied by existing models once intra industry trade is held constant the results obtain in a variety of data sets measurement strategies and specifications they relate to a recent strand of international business cycle models with incomplete markets and transport costs and on the empir

incumbent employees resistance to implementing privatization policy abstract the recent anti privatization trend in latin america france and south africa is a reminder that employees resist privatization because pre privatization firms tend to be over manned and to pay excessive wages we study the effect of employees resistance on the successful implementation of privatization in a stylized model in which the government interacts with employees of an unknown type the analysis clarifies some of the difficulties associated with the implementation process furthermore although common sense dictates that the government negotiates with the employees before finding an outside buyer we show that sometimes it is better off contacting an investor first

export product diversification and co2 emissions contextual evidences from developing and developed economies abstract ascertaining cleaner production and sustainability is a major issue in the developed and developing world income and international trade are the predominant factors behind this this article explores the heterogeneous impacts of export product diversification extensive margin and intensive margins on the co2 emissions for developing and developed countries to this end the authors analyze the annual data of variables from 1971 to 2014 and employ unrestricted fixed effects and system gmm to solve the research problem the empirics suggest that all three indicators of export diversification significantly reduce co2 emissions in 63 developed and developing countries as a global sample the fixed effect models reveal that product diversification and intensive margin have a negative and significant impact in developed economies the negative impacts of product diversification show that economic sophistication is an important tool to reduce emissions further the chow test proved the statistical difference between developed and developing economies which contributes to policy recommendations based on the empirical outcomes the study suggests innovative policies for cleaner production and industrial manufacturing purposes making the policies more effective in achieving sustainable development goals sdgs

the case for reindustrialisation in developing countries towards the connection between the macroeconomic regime and the industrial policy in brazil the majority of economic literature tends to discuss economic development issues by analysing the industrial policy and other long term development policies separate from short term macroeconomic policy however development strategies require a close coordination of the macroeconomic regime with the industrial policy in addition to brazil our analytical discussion and normative implications can be addressed to other developing countries also facing premature deindustrialisation we propose an analytical discussion of the phenomena of industrialisation deindustrialisation and reindustrialisation including a discussion on the connection between the macroeconomic regime and industrial policy both oriented to reindustrialisation and catching up the main point is that both policy regimes must be closely coordinated with each other concerning the macroeconomic regime we argue that consistent monetary fiscal wage and exchange rate policies are those which are able to not only keep price stabilisation but also provide average real interest rates below the average real return rates on capital a competitive real exchange rate and real wage rates increasing in accordance with labour productivity growth as for industrial policy theoretical and empirical evidence suggest strategies aimed at the diversification of production processes and products especially within the manufacturing sector and within tradable segments of the service sector

stages of diversification in africa abstract this paper investigates the relationship between manufacturing diversification and level of economic development for 29 african countries three diversification stages are identified considerable differences in diversification are found over the first stage at the low end of the per capita income scale diversification alone will not encourage development in poorer countries until obstacles such as weak institutions poor governance and a lack of infrastructure are addressed diversification slows down over the remaining stages as countries develop results show countries further along the african economic development path successfully diversified manufacturing

linking economic complexity institutions and income inequality summary a country s mix of products predicts its subsequent pattern of diversification and economic growth but does this product mix also predict income inequality here we combine methods from econometrics network science and economic complexity to show that countries exporting complex products as measured by the economic complexity index have lower levels of income inequality than countries exporting simpler products using multivariate regression analysis we show that economic complexity is a significant and negative predictor of income inequality and that this relationship is robust to controlling for aggregate measures of income institutions export concentration and human capital moreover we introduce a measure that associates a product to a level of income inequality equal to the average gini of the countries exporting that product weighted by the share the product represents in that country s export basket we use this measure together with the network of related products or product space to illustrate how the development of new products is associated with changes in income inequality these findings show that economic complexity captures information about an economy s level of development that is relevant to the ways an economy generates and distributes its income moreover these findings suggest that a country s productive structure may limit its range of income inequality finally we make our results available through an online resource that allows for its users to visualize the structural transformation of over 150 countries and their associated changes in income inequality during 1963 2008

oil windfalls and export diversification in oil producing countries evidence from oil booms abstract this paper examines the factors behind export diversification in oil countries specifically we investigate the impact of oil booms on export diversification through an empirical framework the paper finds that economy s export structure before the oil boom determines whether oil windfalls might affect the diversification process thus an oil boom negatively affects export diversification only if countries initially exhibit low levels of diversification in countries with a high level of diversification before the boom an oil boom has no impact on diversification these results are based on a large sample of 134 countries and are robust to various sensitivity analyses they are corroborated with data from the manufacturing sector which show that oil booms only reduce diversification in countries with a small manufacturing sector prior to the boom

autonomy and procedural justice a framework for evaluating subsidiary strategy using the well supported dimensions of autonomy and procedural justice a four quadrant model of subsidiary strategy is proposed and a four part typology hypothesized partner collaborator militant and vassal subsidiaries a clustering process is used to develop a four group taxonomy that corresponds with the induced model the four groups of subsidiaries are analysed across seven alternative strategic dimensions integration responsiveness coordination configuration market scope product scope and value added scope the external and internal validity of the framework is confirmed and its utility discussed in terms of subsidiary s movement from one strategy state to another

a satisfactory benefit cost indicator from contingent valuation abstract standard economic concepts are used to develop a model of individual behavior when subject to the constraints of the contingent valuation choice context the model yields refutable consequences that are consistent with previously reported empirical findings including some that have been thought to be anomalous the model is used to show that different contingent valuation formats have predictably different performance characteristics notably the hicksian compensating measures are satisfactory benefit cost indicators when elicited using any one of several formats identified in the text of the formats examined one form of a policy referendum appears to have the most satisfactory characteristics overall we conclude that contingent valuation is a progressing research program

disentangling market access effects of preferential trading arrangements with an application for asean members under an asean eu fta the paper develops two synthetic measures at the hs 10 level to depict effective market access for a country receiving preferential access and applies these to the market access asean members would receive following the implementation of an fta with the eu first the measures show that current effective market access for asean eba members is cut in half by the preferences granted by the eu to countries that compete with these countries in the eu markets second the measures show that about one quarter of the preferential margin under the proposed fta for eba members would be lost as a result of preferential access granted to asean gsp members third disaggregated estimates of the restrictiveness of rules of origin confirm that rules are more restrictive for products with higher preferential margins and that asean countries usually face tougher rules of origin in the eu because of the composition of their exports

stock market development and cross country differences in relative prices abstract we document a positive correlation between stock market capitalization and price levels wages within the group of countries with poorly developed stock markets and a negative correlation between these two variables within the group of countries with more developed stock markets this paper argues that there is a causal relationship behind these correlations stock markets initially stimulate growth pushing the demand for nontradables and increasing prices and wages stock markets also promote a shift toward more capital intensive technologies in the tradable sector increasing the migration of workers to services and eventually putting downward pressure on wages and prices

valuing family household production a contingent evaluation approach the time of family members is often refgarded as an important input used in family household production unlike existing methods used in the valuation of the time spent in home production namely the opportunity cost of time and the replacement cost method a contingent evaluation approach is proposed here consistent with the way non market goods an services are valued the method essentially elicits people s willingness to pay for household production whilst taking into account opportunity costs particular attention is also paid to the objective of valuation whether it is for gnp accounting matrimonial property settlements or for welfare and compensation issues and the appropriate measures to be used marginal total and net valuation using a model of home production these different meaures of economic value are distinguished both conceptually and in their uses the results from a modest study of household production using the methods described here are presented these results are then compare

the advantages of contingent valuation methods for benefit cost analysis the preceding is a taxonomic discussion of some reasons why contingent market methods may often be a superior means of generating data with which to value non market commodities we have argued that economists have erred in viewing the situations these methods posit as necessarily fictional that the data generated by the methods may for non marketed goods and the activities with which they are associated accord more closely with the conditions of received economic theory that the methods can make it easier to remove the difficulties of estimation and interpretation introduced by confounding variables and that they often permit one to deal more readily with phenomena that have not been in the range of historical experience nevertheless whatever the advantages a major disadvantage remains until detailed analytical knowledge is acquired of the manner in which expectations are formed there exists no way to refute empirical propositions established from contingent markets nevertheless the previously mentioned south coast air basin experiment where the bids obtained for clean air conformed fairly closely to the values implied in a residential property value study suggest that contingent valuations have a basis in the real decision processes of consumers

demand and defective growth patterns the role of the tradable and non tradable sectors in an open economy developing countries in the post war period provide a wide range of case studies on successful and unsuccessful or defective growth patterns there are two classes of defective growth patterns the first class fail to generate strong growth at their start a country isolated by policy from the global economy may grow very slowly but high growth is unattainable without the enabling features of the global economy inbound technology transfer and sizeable external demand the second class of defec

the impact of foreign direct investment on horizontal export diversification empirical evidence using data on stocks of foreign direct investment fdi from 131 countries spanning the years 1984 to 2004 and the number of products exported by each country we examine the effect of fdi on horizontal export diversification to quantify the effects we utilize parametric quantile and semi parametric econometric methods results from both approaches indicate that in general an increase in the stock of fdi enhances the horizontal diversification of exports the actual magnitude of the effect however varies greatly across countries depending on the existing stock of fdi and stage of diversification giving rise to an almost inverted u shaped relationship a further look at our results provides useful insights on the circumstances under which fdi may aid or inhibit the horizontal expansion of exports

the dynamism of mexican exports lost in chinese translation summary this paper analyzes the extent to which mexican exports have penetrated us markets in recent years and juxtaposes such an analysis with the performance of china we find that mexico s main non oil exports are losing dynamism and their relative share in the us market is either declining or growing slower than china s this trend is a new one and begins after china s entry into the wto a number of factors could explain these findings these include i the real appreciation of the real exchange rate of the peso relative to the us dollar combined with the trend toward undervaluation of the chinese currency ii the decline of public investment in mexico especially in infrastructure iii limited access to bank credit in mexico and iv the absence of government policy in mexico to help spur technological innovation and to strengthening its domestic backward and forward linkages

the great diversification and its undoing we investigate the hypothesis that macroeconomic fluctuations are primitively the results of many microeconomic shocks we define fundamental volatility as the volatility that would arise from an economy made entirely of idiosyncratic sectoral or firm level shocks fundamental volatility accounts for the swings in macroeconomic volatility in the major world economies in the past half century it accounts for the great moderation and its undoing the initial great moderation is due to a decreasing share of manufacturing between 1975 and 1985 the recent rise of macroeconomic volatility is chiefly due to the growth of the financial sector jel e23 e32 e44 this article explores the hypothesis that changes in the microeconomic composition of the economy during the postwar period can account for the great moderation and its unraveling both in the united states and in the other major world economies we call fundamental volatility the volatility that would be derived only from microeconomic shocks if aggregate shocks come in large part from microeconomic shocks augmented by amplification mechanisms then aggregate volatility should track fundamental volatility to operationalize this idea the key quantity we consider which constitutes one departure from other studies is the following definition of fundamental volatility

the made in effect and leapfrogging a model of leadership change for products with country of origin bias abstract change in industrial leadership is often explained in terms of technological and costs advantages however firms in emerging economies not only have to produce high quality cost competitive goods but also win the resistance of consumers in the world market who are often adverse to purchasing products from countries that yet have to build a reputation we argue that this country of origin bias significantly influences the chances of leadership change a model that aims at capturing the endogenous dynamics of demand building and leapfrogging is proposed we show that in sectors with high monopoly power acquiring a superior technology is not sufficient for a latecomer country to become leader unless a significant share of consumers is aware of the quality of its products an extension of the model to multiple sectors shows that a latecomer country remains specialized into low value undifferentiated goods even after overtaking the technology of the leading country

structural change and financing constraints abstract in a multi industry growth model firms need external funds for productivity enhancing r d and face financing constraints the cost of research differs across industries so financing constraints hinder industry productivity growth unevenly equilibrium industry dynamics map into a differences in differences regression specification where industry growth depends on the interaction between country financial development and industry r d intensity the paper provides a framework for interpreting several empirical results that rely on industry growth data in terms of r d induced technology transfer and identifies a new channel for finance to encourage aggregate growth the reallocation of resources towards sectors with rapidly expanding technological frontiers

crop diversity household welfare and consumption smoothing under risk evidence from rural uganda abstract in the wake of climate change there is now a resurgence of interest in the promotion of crop diversification as a climate smart agricultural practice in sub saharan africa the development economics literature suggests that increasing crop diversity is an effective risk management and consumption smoothing strategy in a context characterized by repeated exposure to shocks but weak institutional innovations using panel survey data from rural uganda merged with historical weather data this paper sheds light on the household welfare and consumption smoothing effects of crop diversity we employ instrumental variables methods to control for unobserved heterogeneity and potential reverse causality our study finds that crop diversification is a welfare enhancing strategy that increases consumption and aggregate household diets instrumental variables quantile regression results show that crop diversification generates higher consumption benefits for poorest households in the lower quantile of the consumption distribution than for relatively richer households crop diversification also improves consumption smoothing through reducing households reliance on less effective strategies such as informal insurance and involuntary diet changes as risk coping mechanisms overall the findings suggest that transforming agriculture towards a more diversified cropping system is a viable pathway for improving diets welfare risk management and the resilience of rural households

if diversification is good why don t countries diversify more the political economy of diversification in resource rich countries abstract for resource rich countries diversification is claimed to represent a strategy for reducing resource curse problems this however depends on whether diversification has a positive effect on the country s institutions while there is a lot of evidence that exports of oil have a negative impact on institutions we know much less about the extent to which diversification leads to better institutions this article applies recent political economy theory to the phenomenon of diversification theoretical arguments suggest that it is the pattern of industrial activity rather than diversification per se which affects institutions like democracy in other words not all forms of diversification lead to better institutions furthermore where diversification has a positive impact on institutions diversification may be difficult to attain when it threatens the power base of the ruling elite a possible implication of these arguments is that policies for diversification should focus on international regulation affecting elite incentives rather than domestic industrial policy

economic growth and sector dynamics abstract this paper analyzes the endogenous determination of sectors in a growing economy it assumes that there are traditional sectors and modern sectors and economic growth is driven by rising productivity of the modern sectors it also assumes that individuals are heterogeneous which leads to increasing marginal opportunity costs in creating new modern sectors we show that under these main assumptions economic growth first increases diversification to sectors and then reduces it we also show that for the equilibrium to be stable and well behaved it is required that the modern and traditional sectors should be substitutes and not complements

the surprising instability of export specializations abstract we study the instability of hyper specialization of exports at the 4 digit level in 1998 2010 1 specializations are surprisingly un stable export ranks are not persistent and new top products and destinations replace old ones measurement error is unlikely to be the main or only determinant of this pattern 2 source country factors are not the main explanation of this instability only 16 20 of variation in export growth is accounted for by source country plus source country product factors that do not vary across destinations the high share of idiosyncratic variance source product destination residual of 41 55 indicates the difficulty to predict export success using source country characteristics while we are cautious in interpreting factors that are jointly determined in global general equilibrium our results suggest that destination and product specific factors importantly matter at least as much as source country factors

want export diversification educate the kids first this paper uses bayesian model averaging to uncover the true determinants of export diversification among 36 potential factors and thus 236 potential models using data from 2001 to 2010 our results reveal two strong predictors primary school enrollment 99 7 posterior inclusion probability in the true model raises export diversification whereas the share of natural resources in gross domestic product 98 6 lowers diversification levels the importance of basic education coverage offers policymakers an opening toward diversifying exports at least in the long run this result is robust to accounting for the endogeneity of income levels by applying an instrumental variable bma method jel c11 f1 f34 o1 o2 o11

democracy diversification and growth reversals there exists convincing evidence that democratic countries are less volatile this conclusion is usually reached with respect to volatility as measured by the standard deviation of annual growth rates of per capita gdp which includes both low and high frequency fluctuations however recently several studies have documented that significant changes in trend growth such as growth accelerations that last a decade or similar periods of negative growth are quite common in this paper we ask whether democracy also has a stabilizing effect on trend volatility i e whether more democratic countries experience fewer and milder swings of trend growth we find a common phenomenon medium term reversals of growth that is periods of exceptionally high growth are on average followed by periods of exceptionally low growth and vice versa the propensity to experience large swings of trend growth is not uniform across countries less democratic countries are more susceptible to it when compared with factors commonly associated with volatility such as measures of quality of institutions macroeconomic policies and financial development we find that democracy is the most robust predictor of a country s propensity for growth reversals we construct a model in which non democracies have high barriers of entry for new firms this leads to less sectoral diversification fewer sectors are operated but more resources are channeled to each in an uncertain environment this leads to infrequent but large growth accelerations when one of the few sectors operated is successful however these accelerations are followed by large declines when fortunes change in favor of the missing sectors we present empirical evidence that confirms the positive relationship between democracy and industrial diversification

recursos naturales diversificacion y crecimiento regional en el peru based upon the export product space this paper shows the main features of the export product composition of peru and its regions with respect to export baskets these include a high con centration in few commodities a relatively low degree of similarity between products relatively high levels of productivity at the international level and enormous undiscovered or untapped export potential in addition this paper analyzes the hypothesis that the natural resource curse affects regional growth employment and export diversification subject to the limitations of the data and the heterogeneous panel methods employed estimation results indicate that the share of natural capital out of the total tangible wealth and natural capital per capita seems on average and in a relatively statistically robust way to spur growth primary employment and export concentration in a few products consequently the natural resource curse for the peruvian regions is not about growth but about low regional development since such resources do not have a significant impact on secondary and tertiary employment or on export product diversification

global business cycles convergence or decoupling we analyze the evolution of the degree of global cyclical interdependence over the period 1960 2008 using a dynamic factor model we decompose macroeconomic fluctuations in output consumption and investment into a global factor factors specific to country groups and country specific factors we find that during 1985 2008 there is some convergence of business cycle fluctuations among industrial economies and among emerging market economies surprisingly there is a concomitant decline in the relative importance of the global factor we conclude that there is evidence of business cycle convergence within each of these two groups of countries but divergence or decoupling between them

comovement in gdp trends and cycles among trading partners abstract it has long been recognized that business cycle comovement is greater between countries that trade more intensively with one another however nations face shocks to both the cyclical and trend components of their gdp series contrary to the result for cyclical fluctuations we find comovement of shocks to the trend component of real gdp is weaker among countries that trade more intensively with one another we simulate changes in ten year output growth correlations corresponding to the estimated effects of trade and show that the impact of trade on trend comovement is quantitatively more important than its effect on cyclical comovement

the application of laboratory experimental economics to the contingent valuation of public goods we have implicitly argued in the last section that a dynamic iterative survey mechanism may well need to be employed in the design of contingent valuation survey instruments in order to improve the accuracy of responses furthermore due to the current inaccuracy of hedonic and travel cost approaches for valuing public goods the least cost method in our view for establishing anchor or true individual values for testing alternative survey instruments is to use laboratory experiments the objective of these experiments should be the development of the most simple survey design which gives accurate responses subject to the budget of the investigator is a complex iterative voting procedure required how fast will such a procedure converge to true values what is the effect on incentives of relaxing the unanimity voting feature for large groups all of these operational questions can at least qualitatively be answered in an experimental laboratory setting

privatization technology choice and aggregate outcomes abstract we analyze the macroeconomic consequences of privatization policies in transition economies due to the particular market structure in those economies strategic completnentarities in restructuring of privatized firms occur giving rise to multiple macroeconomic equilibria restructuring and the resulting macroeconomic outcomes crucially depend on how property rights are distributed and which method of privatization is chesen firm sales to single or core investors may easily lead to bad equilibria without restructuring if employees are given profit claims this is so even if the workers give up parts of their wages as a compensation for stocks wage equity swaps contrary to conventional wisdom mass privatization can have favourable influence on micro economic efficiency and may therefore lead to a good aggregate outcome as an additional feature favouring mass privatization we argue that a big bang approach to privatization might lead to a favourable equilibrium

managing foreign subsidiaries agents of headquarters or an interdependent network in this study two different theoretical perspectives are used to develop sets of hypotheses regarding the mechanisms used to manage foreign subsidiaries of multinational corporations first agency theory serves as the basis for a model that predicts the use of monitoring mechanisms and incentive compensation then it is argued that these mechanisms are insufficient for managing subsidiaries characterized by high levels of intra firm international interdependence the management of which is critical to many of today s complex global firms a second set of hypotheses is argued linking international interdependence to several social control mechanisms primary and secondary data from u s based multinational corporations were used to test both sets of hypotheses the results indicate that agency theory although a useful foundation for studies of control within mncs is limited in its ability to explain fully the phenomenon of foreign subsidiary control however the model based on intra firm interdependence had much greater predictive ability copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

market simulation and the provision of public goods a non paternalistic response to anomalies in environmental evaluation most normative economics assumes that individuals have coherent preferences this paper responds to growing evidence of failures of this assumption particularly in the context of stated preference methods widely used in environmental policy analysis it proposes a non paternalistic concept of consumer sovereignty that does not assume preference coherence is satisfied by competitive markets and can be applied to the provision of public goods a key implication is that decisions should reflect valuations revealed at the point of consumption such valuations which can be inferred from hedonic prices may be less susceptible to willingness to accept wta willingness to pay wtp disparities than those elicited by stated preference methods

patent protection and strategic delays in technology development implications for economic growth we present an endogenous growth model in which both the investment to develop a new technology that upgrades the quality of machines and entry of imitators are determined endogenously according to the model how soon the new technology machine is launched after the patent is granted is influenced by two factors returns to scale in technology development and strategic delays strategic delays in technology development are most likely to occur when earlier dates of success enable imitators to enter an industry i e when imitation is swift and relatively cheap and or patent protection is relatively lengthy we then explore the link between the optimal patent length and economic growth and find that the equilibrium investment in technology development and thus the expected rate of technological progress exhibit an inverted u shape relationship with respect to the legal patent length our results further suggest that in order to minimize the strategic delays in technology development and spur technological progress legal patent lengths should be shorter in industries where barriers to entry are relatively low

gravity and friction in growing east asia abstract without the advantages of low wages or high skills east asian economies are following a new path of regional integration led by china along this path policy makers must manage a migration of 2m people a month to east asia s cities a sharp and unprecedented increase in income inequality and a growing discontent with corruption as governance structures have been decentralized having successfully integrated globally before the financial meltdown of the 1990s and integrating regionally at an even faster pace since then east asia s middle income countries must now accelerate a third integration this time at home growth based on scale economies and specialization requires managing both gravity and friction this article outlines what east asian nations must do to manage these forces even as another financial meltdown is taking place how well they can do this will determine whether they will grow through middle income to join the ranks of

production fragmentation and business cycle comovement abstract international trade increasingly involves trade in goods being produced in fragmentation arrangements across countries with each country specializing in different stages of a production sequence this paper examines empirically whether pairs of countries with more bilateral production fragmentation arrangements tend to have more correlated business cycles using cross country data from 30 countries we find that bilateral production fragmentation has a positive effect while the standard bilateral trade intensity indicator has a negative impact on business cycle comovement we also find that the positive effect of trade in complements captured by bilateral production fragmentation dominates the negative effect of trade in substitutes explained by bilateral trade intensity resulting in an overall positive impact of trade hence bilateral production fragmentation plays a key role underlying the positive response of business cycle comovement to increases in trade

contractual union firm agreements and the theory of the firm under uncertainty abstract this article analyzes the consequence of introducing union firm contractual agreements in the theory of the firm under uncertainty generalizing the works on the labor managed firm it is shown that the risk averse firm produces more than the risk neutral firm or the firm operating under certainty as long as equilibrium employment is negatively related to union wages that is when union power over wages is higher than that over employment

stages of diversification this paper studies the evolution of sectoral concentration in relation to the level of per capita income we show that various measures of sectoral concentration follow a u shaped pattern across a wide variety of data sources countries first diversify in the sense that economic activity is spread more equally across sectors but there exists relatively late in the development process a point at which they start specializing again we discuss this finding in light of existing theories of trade and growth which generally predict a monotonic relationship between income and diversification

export specialisation and local economic growth this paper aims to provide empirical evidence on whether export specialization or diversification is better for local economic growth using export data from 354 magisterial districts of south africa for 1996 and 2001 we estimate spatial growth regressions that include measures of the degree of export specialization and diversification overall exporting regions outperform other less or non exporting regions also we find that export specialisation rather than export diversification has been associated with local economic growth with specialization in mining and agriculture being especially beneficial our results support the view that specialization in a locality s area of comparative advantage is good for local economic development we also find that localities with higher initial levels of human capital and higher subsequent population growth performed better this is consistent with the belief that policies aimed at strengthening human capital and improving agglomeration economies will enhance local economic development

oil price and usd naira exchange rate crash can economic diversification save the naira abstract naira lost half of its foreign exchange value in less than two years following 2014 oil price crash and has not recovered despite numerous government s attempts this study thus evaluated the potential of economic diversification proxied by non oil export performance in saving the naira by analysing a nexus between oil price exchange rate and nonoil export estimation of a rearranged current account equation within autoregressive distributed lag ardl and vector autoregressive var models using monthly data from january 2008 to december 2015 yielded the following results there is a direct relationship between oil price and exchange rate and this affirms that sharp decline in the former induced the latter s deterioration increase in non oil exports led to appreciation of usd naira exchange rate both in the short run and the long run import on the other hand induced depreciation of the exchange rate in the long run diversification by increasing export revenue and reducing import bills therefore has a great potential to improve the value of naira

an empirical inquiry into the role of sectoral diversification in exchange rate regime choice abstract whether sectoral diversification affects the exchange rate regime choice and the mechanisms through which this effect might work are largely unknown this study identifies two mechanisms through which sectoral diversification and exchange rate regime choice may be related namely the external shock absorption and rent seeking mechanisms a direct effect of diversification on regime choice is also hypothesized using a panel dataset covering 91 countries over the period 1985 2006 the paper runs a horse race among these potential channels the results show that diversification is associated with flexible regimes in countries experiencing greater external shocks additionally countries characterized by higher levels of corruption and lower levels of diversification opt for fixed regimes suggesting that a fixed regime may shield the powerful elites from international competition there is also weak evidence of the direct effect of diversification in adopting flexible regimes

choosing electoral rules theory and evidence from us cities this paper studies the choice of electoral rules in particular the question of minority representation majorities tend to disenfranchise minorities through strategic manipulation of electoral rules with the aim of explaining changes in electoral rules adopted by us cities particularly in the south we show why majorities tend to adopt winner take all city wide rules at large elections in response to an increase in the size of the minority when the minority they are facing is relatively small in this case for the majority it is more effective to leverage on its sheer size instead of risking to concede representation to voters from minority elected districts however as the minority becomes larger closer to a fifty fifty split the possibility of losing the whole city induces the majority to prefer minority votes to be confined in minority packed districts single member district rules serve this purpose we show empirical results consistent with these implications of the model

sourcing strategies of european and japanese multinationals a comparison based on a typology of sourcing strategies this study identifies various sourcing patterns adopted by european and japanese multinational manufacturing firms in serving the u s market the study has found that the product s market performance is not at all related to its life cycle stage in world trade or to production location but is positively related to the internal components sourcing and negatively related to the product adaptation the findings strongly support levitt s call for a global product

the division of labor need not imply regional specialization the regional specialization of economic activities is generally deemed desirable for three reasons 1 the law of comparative advantage 2 localized economies of scale and 3 knowledge spillovers taking a methodological individualist perspective we claim that 1 the law of comparative advantage while valid for individuals and firms does not necessarily imply regional specialization when regions are viewed as consisting of heterogeneous individuals 2 localized economies of scale are seldom specific to one industry and external in all but the regional level and 3 the study of knowledge spillovers is inconclusive and would benefit from a more disaggregated perspective

construction corrupts empirical evidence from a panel of 42 countries the construction sector whether privately or publicly financed is characterized by potentially large rents and government intervention making it vulnerable to corruption consistent with this both case study and survey evidence has been provided highlighting the problem of malfeasance in this sector in this article we test the proposition that a bigger construction sector is likely to be inimical to clean government based on a panel of 42 countries over the period 1995 2011 we control for a range of potentially confounding variables and the expectation that corrupt public officials may favor the development of this sector because it increases the volume of rents available to them our empirical evidence shows that a larger construction sector will tend to increase perceptions of the extent to which public power is exercised for private gain

employee share ownership and privatisation some theoretical issues the purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the theoretical issues involved with employee share ownership in the privatization situation the share purchase decision by employ ees is generally a one off decision and there is a sequential aspect to the problem the author concludes that simple theoretical models of the type will generally unambiguously predict that employee share ownership is beneficial in privatizations indeed the results are som ewhat surprising showing that the creation of additional shares for employees actually increases rather than decreases the value of non e mployee shares even though the money paid for the employee shares go es to the government and does not stay in the company copyright 1987 by royal economic society

the optimal choice of privatizing state owned enterprises a political economic model we study the choices of two types of maximizing public servants over how far to carry privatization of industries and in what order to privatize two stylizations of the public servant s objectives are considered a niskanen style bureaucrat who maximizes a surplus budget subject to the constraint of staying in office and a populist who maximizes popularity consumer welfare subject to the constraint of a balanced budget other things being equal the bureaucrat will privatize the sector firms with the least market power and the largest subsidy first the populist will adopt the same policy if the marginal costs of products in the private sectors are not too high with respect to the marginal utilities if the marginal costs are too high however the populist will privatize the sector with the largest market power first we also show that privatization is easier and faster in less democratic societies

the extent of the market and stages of agricultural specialization this paper provides empirical evidence of nonlinearity in the relationship between crop specialization in a village economy and the extent of the market size of the urban market relevant for the village the results suggest that the portfolio of crops in a village economy becomes more diversified initially as the extent of the market increases however after the market size reaches a threshold the production structure becomes specialized again this evidence on the stages of agricultural diversification is consistent with the stages of diversification identified in the recent literature for the economy as a whole and also for the manufacturing sector the evidence highlights the importance of improving farmers access to markets through investment in transport infrastructure and removal of barriers to trading

self discovery in a development strategy for el salvador we study the causes of low growth in el salvador a country with an impressive record of political macroeconomic and structural reform we apply a growth diagnostic methodology and conclude that market failures in the process of self discovering the country s productive potential is a main obstacle to investment and growth we propose a set of policies to tackle this constraint

the social development effects of primary commodity export dependence on the question of whether natural resources are a curse for growth the jury is still out while waiting for a decision we study whether resource intensity has any effect on social development over and above the effect it might have on income or growth we measure social development by a combination of health and education outcomes and resource intensity by the share of primary commodities in total merchandise exports we find that after controlling for per capita income and other macroeconomic and institutional factors a higher dependence on primary commodity exports is negative for social development the transmission mechanism seems to operate via income inequality and macroeconomic volatility

what determines export diversification in the development process empirical assessment this paper assesses the role played by country specific factors as determinants of relative export diversification using a panel data set for 60 countries and 20 years 1985 2004 we confirm that even after clearing out differences in income per capita cross country variability in the degree of export diversification is significant in general apart from per capita income features influencing the size of accessible markets domestic and foreign are the most relevant and robust determinants of the export diversification process diversification opportunities grow if countries are large and not located far from economic core areas and when barriers to trade are restricted

the evolution of comparative advantage measurement and welfare implications using an industry level dataset of production and trade spanning 75 countries and 5 decades and a fully specied multi sector ricardian model we estimate productivities at sector level and examine how they evolve over time in both developed and developing countries we nd that in both country groups comparative advantage has become weaker productivity grew systematically faster in sectors that were initially at the greater comparative disadvantage the global welfare implications of this phenomenon are signicant relative to the counterfactual scenario in which an individual country s comparative advantage remained the same as in the 1960s and technology in all sectors grew at the same country specic average rate welfare today is 1 9 lower at the median the welfare impact varies greatly across countries ranging from 0 5 to 6 among oecd countries and from 9 to 27 among non oecd countries remarkably for the oecd countries nearly all of the welfare impact is driven by changes in technology in oecd countries and for the non oecd countries nearly all of the welfare impact is driven by changes in technology in non oecd countries

trade openness and volatility abstract this paper examines the mechanisms through which output volatility is related to trade openness using an industry level panel data set of manufacturing production and trade the main results are threefold first sectors more open to international trade are more volatile second trade is accompanied by increased specialization these two forces imply increased aggregate volatility third sectors that are more open to trade are less correlated with the rest of the economy an effect that acts to reduce overall volatility the point estimates indicate that each of the three effects has an appreciable impact on aggregate volatility added together they imply that the relationship between trade openness and overall volatility is positive and economically significant

do all sectoral shocks lead to aggregate volatility empirics from a production network perspective abstract productive diversification has long been acknowledged as a volatility reducing strategy yet recent theoretical contributions have shown that in strongly diversified economies idiosyncratic shocks could translate into aggregate volatility via the network of inter industry linkages by exploiting exogenous cross country sector variations in demand shocks during the 2008 great recession we provide empirical evidence that the network properties of a sector affected by an individual shock determine its propensity to transmit volatility to the rest of the economy more precisely shocks to sectors that are located in denser parts of a production network fade out over a large number of alternative paths of propagation due to substitution effects whereas shocks to sectors that are more influential within the network generate aggregate fluctuations through contagion effects we also find that the impact of sectoral shocks on aggregate volatility 1 is not conditional on sector level differences in trade intensity and 2 is larger for developing countries because they tend to have more isolated influential sectors and larger structural holes in their production network our results thus help consolidate the two opposite views in the literature on the impact of productive diversification on aggregate volatility

the effects of union owned shares on the outcome of wage bargaining abstract the paper investigates the consequences of employee stock ownership in firms where the local union determines the purchase of shares who wins and who loses depends on the type of conflict threat that is used by the union however no employee share arrangement can simultaneously benefit all union members and external owners on the contrary there may be a total loss to be shared due to overmanning egalitarian employee stock ownership may therefore not be viable inegalitarian employee ownership may be viable paradoxically all union members are better off the more weight the union gives to the members with no shares

does aid for trade diversify the export structure of recipient countries the importance of aid for trade as a tool for facilitating trade economic growth and social development has received attention since the concept was introduced in 2005 while one of the main targets of aid for trade is export diversification reflecting the fact that the exports of many developing countries are concentrated in a small range of items there have not been many efforts to measure the effect of aid for trade on export structure this study therefore attempts to trace the relationship between aid for trade and 133 aid recipients export structure between 1996 and 2013 using the herfindahl hirschman index to measure the degree of export concentration the findings suggest that total aid for trade has reduced the concentration level in the short run in the long run on the other hand aid for trade has had no significant effect on export structure of recipient countries only aid for building productive capacity which is one of the three categories of aid for trade contributes to lower concentration yet this change is not caused by an increase in export diversity but by the redistribution of shares of existing products of a similar sophistication level

revealed preference for public goods the most serious problem for the modern theory of optimal public expenditure is that although it has to be based on some social welfare function individual preferences for public goods which constitute the elements of any individualistic social welfare function are hard to assess it is argued that since every individual can freely participate in the consumption of a public good there is an incentive for him to either underreport or overreport his preferences depending on how the reported preferences are used in the financing process of the public good i this argument will be correct if an individual s preferences for public goods can be expressed only directly in many cases however the consumption of a public good has some technical or objective relationship with the consumption of some private goods thus the benefit an individual derives from free highways depends on how much he spends on a car and gasoline even the benefit an individual derives from the judicial system depends on how much he spends to hire the services of lawyers also an individual can enjoy the same security police provide by hiring private guards and installing locks and so on in these cases if we know the technical relationships between the consumption of private goods and the consumption of public goods then from the market data relating the amounts of private goods bought to prices and the data on the existing amounts of public goods we might be able to infer i the amounts of final goods consumed say the number of trips from one point to another the degree of justice the security from robbery etc and ii their opportunity costs which the individual was willing to pay but if we succeed in this inference then all that remains to be done in order to find the individual s utility function will be to integrate back the relationship between the amounts of final goods consumed and their opportunity costs a trivial example can be provided by assuming that each public good is perfectly substitutable with a private good let yi be the quantity of the ith public good and xi be the quantity of a private good which is a perfect substitute for the ith public good then the benefit derived from the ith public good and its perfect substitute can be measured by xi yi suppose we have ascertained an individual consumer s demand functions for private good when all the yi are zero we know from the revealed preference theory that if these demand functions satisfy a certain condition namely the symmetry of the slutsky matrix then there exists a utility function unique up to a monotone transformation

caribbean diversification and development small island developing states generally adopt diversification as their primary development strategy often with little success nevertheless there is no empirical study specifically focusing on the pattern of diversification of these countries in relation to their development the objective of this paper was to study the export diversification pattern by the intensive a more equally spread export basket and extensive an increase in new export lines product margin of 21 caribbean countries in relation to their level of development using panel data the results show that despite their limited ability to diversify caribbean countries as has been found for other parts of the world first diversify and subsequently respecialise though at a substantially lower level of income than other countries and that the intensive margin plays a greater role in this process

does product complexity matter for firms output volatility abstract with this paper we provide the first micro level evidence on the linkage between firm complexity and volatility by defining product complexity a la hausmann and hidalgo 2009 we find that a higher complexity level of a firm s product basket is associated to a reduction of its output fluctuations this evidence is robust to the control for omitted variables sample selection and to the use of alternative volatility and complexity indicators across similar firms active in different sectors and regions both technological factors and product market conditions explain the effect of complexity on volatility however within narrowly defined sectors and locations the complexity volatility nexus fully reflects the role of the human capital content of firms product baskets

roadways input sourcing and patterns of specialization abstract we propose a model where the internal transport network facilitates the sourcing of intermediate goods from geographically diffuse locations a denser internal transport network promotes thus the growth of industries that rely on a large variety of inputs the model shows that heterogeneities in internal transport infrastructures can become a key factor in shaping comparative advantage and specialization evidence based on industry level trade data grants support to the main prediction of the model countries with denser road networks export relatively more in industries that exhibit broader input bases we show that this correlation is robust to several possible confounding effects proposed by the literature such as the impact of institutions on specialization in complex goods furthermore we show that a similar correlation arises as well when the density of the local transport network is measured by the density of their internal waterways and also when road density is instrumented with measures of terrain roughness

willingness to pay for publicly provided goods a possible measure of benefit abstract the results presented in this paper arise from a u k based study aimed at determining people willingness to pay for two publicly provided goods namely continuing care for elderly people in either hospital or national health service nhs nursing homes seventy one per cent of respondents provided valuations which could contribute to the analysis which showed that the group which preferred nhs nursing home care could potentially compensate the group which preferred hospital care and still remain better off thus rendering nhs nursing home care the efficient option to undertake no variable could be found which discriminated between those who could place a value on both types of care and those who could not the willingness to pay methodology is very experimental in this context and should be investigated thoroughly before its widespread adoption in the evaluation of health care techniques

valuing changes in health risks a comparison of alternative measures essential to efficient provision of health safety and the environment is correct valuation of risks to human health in a world of scarcity difficult decisions concerning tradeoffs between health and other desirables are unavoidable in this paper we develop a model of health investment under uncertainty which yields a general expression for values of changes in risks to human health the preference based values of morbidity risks and mortality risks are ex ante dollar equivalents of changes in expected utility associated with risk changes the preference based values are related to two alternative measures costs of illness and preventive expenditures which are thought to be lower bounds on the value of risk reductions we demonstrate that these alternative measures are not even special cases of the more general measure and that the size relationships among the three measures are complex also we derive the relationship between the willingness to pay for risk changes and the consumer surpluses associated with health changes which occur with certainty the next section contains a brief review of the approaches to valuing changes in health

sourcing patterns of foreign owned multinational subsidiaries in europe tavares a t and young s 2006 sourcing patterns of foreign owned multinational subsidiaries in europe regional studies 40 583 599 this paper investigates the determinants of the international sourcing propensities of foreign owned multinational mne subsidiaries in four european union host countries major findings concern the impact of subsidiary roles and economic integration on international sourcing patterns regional and global integration are leading to a greater import orientation among mne subsidiaries including product mandate firms that are assumed to be strongly embedded within host economies the results cast doubts on existing criteria for inward foreign direct investment fdi attraction policy implications are developed relating to the attraction of inward fdi and to corporate development policies tavares a t et young s 2006 la distribution des sources d approvisionnement des filiales multinationales a capital etranger en europe regional studies 40 583 599 cet article che

variety complexity and economic development abstract we propose a combinatorial model of economic development an economy develops by acquiring new capabilities allowing for the production of an ever greater variety of products with an increasing complexity taking into account that economies abandon the least complex products as they develop over time we show that variety first increases and then decreases in the course of economic development this is consistent with the empirical pattern known as the hump our results question the common association of variety with complexity we further discuss the implications of our model for future research

import diversification along the growth path abstract we provide evidence showing that the degree of diversification of import sources of finely disaggregated commodities rises monotonically along the growth path this result is robust to different measures of import diversification and the inclusion of a large set of additional control variables in addition we show the process of rising import diversification takes place as countries gradually increase their spending shares in imports originating from relatively distant exporters

export diversification what s behind the hump hy should export diversification be taken as a policy objective per se there are two reasons that it should not first according to ricardo countries should specialize not diversify second the heckscher ohlin model implies that export patterns are largely determined by endowments so if anything we should worry about factor accumulation not diversification yet export diversification is a constant preoccupation of policymakers in developing countries as de ferranti et al 2002 note a recurrent preoccupation of latin american policymakers is that their natural riches produce a highly concentrated structure of export revenues which then leads to economic volatility and lower growth p 38 the notion that export patterns are fully determined by endowments is of course naive the relationship of endowments trade and growth is a complex and imperfectly understood one intra industry trade models showed long ago that many factors other than endowments including market failures and policies can affect trade patterns more recently hausmann hwang and rodrik 2007 argued that export patterns can display path dependence in the presence of externalities

output volatility and openness to trade a reassessment many economists believe that while openness to trade increases average gdp growth rates it also raises output volatility by exposing countries to terms oftrade shocks this view does not take into account that commercial trade might also reduce financially related volatility once this is taken into account the relationship between exposure to trade and output volatility is still an open question this paper presents new empirical evidence that suggests that the net effect of trade openness on output volatility is stabilizing the results confirm that exposure to trade raises output volatility through the terms of trade channel as previously documented in the literature but also show that this is counteracted by a quantitatively larger stabilizing effect additional evidence is presented showing that the latter effect comes at least in part through the financial channel the methodology employed seeks to correct for the likely endogeneity of trade in this setting using gravity estimates as instrumental variables

diversification effects of energy subsidy reform in oil exporters illustrations from kuwait abstract for oil exporters energy subsidy reform and economic diversification are critical policy responses to recent fundamental changes in the global oil market and oil price declines yet the relationship between them is little understood this article investigates linkages between energy subsidy reform and accelerating economic diversification away from hydrocarbons in a low oil price environment using illustrations from kuwait it employs an economy wide general equilibrium model with oligopolistic industrial structure the first of its kind for an economy in the middle east and north africa that embodies unique elements of the country s economic structure oil dependence public sector dominance subsidies sovereign wealth funds industrial collusive pricing behaviour and guest workers the article argues that contrary to common popular discourse kuwait s economy has a diversified economic base but this base fails to diversify export or government revenue needed for economic sustainability results show that weak economic diversification in oil exporters with a similar economic structure is not primarily due to dutch disease as dominant in the literature but to economic constraints and distortions that impair structural change and exacerbate overdependence on hydrocarbons labour and competition reforms relax some constraints achieving large efficiency gains that extend economy wide and can expand non energy tradable sectors the analysis has important policy implications first the potential role of pricing regulation in small economies in moderating economic impacts of negative oil shocks second in oil economies characterized by pervasive oligopolies microeconomic reform can be a channel to achieve efficiency and better diversification effects of subsidy reform

volatility and development why is gdp growth so much more volatile in poor countries than in rich ones we identify four possible reasons i poor countries specialize in more volatile sectors ii poor countries specialize in fewer sectors iii poor countries experience more frequent and more severe aggregate shocks e g from macroeconomic policy and iv poor countries macroeconomic fluctuations are more highly correlated with the shocks of the sectors they specialize in we show how to decompose volatility into these four sources quantify their contribution to aggregate volatility and study how they relate to the stage of development we document the following regularities first as countries develop their productive structure moves from more volatile to less volatile sectors second the level of specialization declines with development at early stages and slowly increases at later stages of development third the volatility of country specific macroeconomic shocks falls with development fourth the covariance between sector specific and country specific shocks does not vary systematically with the level of development we argue that many theories linking volatility and development are not consistent with these findings and suggest new directions for future theoretical work

currency unions and international integration this paper characterizes the integration patterns of international currency unions such as the cfa franc zone we empirically explore different features of currency unions and compare them to countries with sovereign monies by examining the criteria for mundellos concept of an optimum currency area we find that members of currency unions are more integrated than countries with their own currencies for instance we find that currency union members have more trade and less volatile real exchange rates than countries with their own monies business cycles are more highly synchronized across currency union countries than across countries with sovereign monies

risk sharing and industrial specialization regional and international evidence the authors provide empirical evidence that risk sharing enhances specialization in production to the best of their knowledge this well established and important theoretical proposition has not been tested before the empirical procedure is summarized as follows first the authors construct a measure of specialization in production and calculate an index of specialization for each of the european community ec and non ec oecd countries u s states canadian provinces japanese prefectures latin american countries and regions of italy spain and the united kingdom then they estimate the degree of capital market integration a measure of risk sharing within each of these groups of regions the ec countries the non ec oecd countries the united states canada japan italy spain and the united kingdom and rely on another author s estimate for latin america finally they perform a regression of the specialization index on the degree of risk sharing controlling for relevant economic variables they find a positive and significant relation between the degree of specialization of individual members of a group of countries provinces states or prefectures and the amount of risk that is shared within the group the authors perform regressions using variables such as shareholder rights and the size of the financial sector relative to gdp as instruments for the amount of inter regional risk sharing these regressions confirm that risk sharing facilitated by a favorable legal environment and a developed financial system is a direct causal determinant of industrial specialization this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item