measuring trade strategy in the presence of non tradeables theory and some evidence for the caribbean this article models trade policies in the presence of non tradeables and investigates trade strategy interventions and outcomes where the price of non tradeables endogenously adjusts to trade interventions trade regime bias and neutrality issues are examined within a three sector open economy model the theoretical framework is operationalised using empirical evidence for trinidad and barbados the robustness of partial equilibrium measures of protection for classifying trade strategies is challenged and evidence on alternative general equilibrium or true measures of protection is reported true or revealed trade strategies are shown to differ from those apparently intended by policy makers

india trade policy review the review of india s trade policy by the wto the third of its kind is in three parts the report by the wto secretariat a statement by the government of india and minutes of the discussion of the report by the trade policy review board the review provides detailed information not only on india s trade and foreign investment policies but also an analytical review of india s export and economic performance the review notes that india has made considerable progress with the liberalisation of its trade and investment regime but it has a long way to go if it were to achieve a growth rate of eight to nine per cent the stated objective of the policy makers this paper drawing upon the material in the report analyses india s growth prospects and endorses the broad conclusions of the report

who bears the incidence of import protection evidence from sri lanka abstract a simple general equilibrium model is employed to measure the incidence of protection this model focuses on the internal relative price effects of protection through the equilibrium conditions of the nontraded goods market the incidence of protection is measured via the concepts of incidence parameter true protection rates and income transfers resulting from protection the model is applied to sri lankan data the results indicate that a high proportion of all trade interventions operate as an implicit export tax that true protection rates to both import competing and exporting sectors are far below the nominal rates of assistance being provided to them and that income loss to exporters is about 4 of gdp we conclude that the incidence of protection falls mostly on the sri lankan exporters

strategic trade policy learning by doing effects and economic development abstract this paper examines the general equilibrium consequences of temporary and permanent trade policy interventions in circumstances where the price of non tradeables endogenously adjusts to trade policy changes and where there may be learning by doing externality effects in the tradeables goods sector using a simple multisector dynamic model the paper demonstrates the difficulties of designing mixed and selective interventions such that the ex post real exchange rate and welfare outcomes are in line with the ex ante intent

the effect of macroeconomic news on stock returns new evidence from newspaper coverage abstract previous literature has produced weak evidence to support the hypothesis that real economic news affects stock returns this is in part attributed to the difficulty of measuring how investors interpret macroeconomic announcements in different economic environments in this paper we choose a different approach of measuring macroeconomic news to better estimate its effect on stock returns since newspaper stories provide an interpretation of the statistical releases we choose newspaper stories as our measure of news our findings indicate that news about gdp and unemployment does affect stock returns

bias in economic news the reporting of nominal exchange rate behavior in colombia proquest denotes formulae omitted the behavior of the nominal exchange rate ner is regularly reported and commented on in colombian newspapers editorials and op eds however the number and flavor of the news and commentary seem to increase disproportionately during revaluation in contrast to periods of devaluation 1 during the course of a revaluation it is common to read claims not facts in the press of firms and entire industries in distress owing to revaluation and arguments about the benefits of outdated policies such as fixed and multiple exchange rates implemented after 1967 with the enactment of law 444 congreso de colombia 1967 if not a dollarization of the economy 2on one hand many news articles and op ed pieces often maintain that revaluation is devastating for the macroeconomic performance of the country owing to the reduced income for exporters and holders of foreign debt and the subsequent effects on the employment and wages of workers in related industries on the other hand when devaluation occurs little attention is paid in news editorials or op eds there are no complaints addressing the plausible effects of a devaluation such as inflation from higher prices of foreign capital machinery and equipment or imported raw materials this asymmetry in media reporting is hard to understand why would revaluation be more important to report and discuss than devaluation why are there claims of the benefits of a fixed exchange rate when the country has already gone through the crippling effects of an exchange rate black market premium easterly 2002 p 222 describes a high black market premium as a punitive tax on exporters not a good incentive for growth finally why after almost twenty years of experience with a market determined nominal exchange rate is revaluation still reported as harmful for the economy even though there have been more devaluation episodes than revaluation ones 3 one answer to these questions lies in media bias in reporting the behavior of the ner the existence of an interest group supplying media outlets with news to increase the awareness of readers and government officials of the catastrophic consequences of revaluation is considered when this is the case the media benefit from a larger audience and subsequent higher income from advertising revenues the interest group s goal is further satisfied when the fiscal authority offers subsidies or the monetary authority intervenes in the exchange rate market when a government related institution steps in to tame the expressions of discomfort it fulfills the goal of increasing political affection and public acceptance there is a growing literature on the economics of media bias and media slant gentzkow and shapiro 2008 and larcinese puglisi and snyder 2011 offer a review of the theoretical and empirical approaches to this topic the literature describes both supply and demand side models on the supply side the distortions of the news its relationship with the private sector and the government capture of media are the core subjects on the demand side the distortion comes from the public and its preference for news with a certain bias or slant and the media competition for their attention the empirical evidence of media bias shown in this paper fits into the supply side models and the idea of media capture not by the government but by an interest group specifically the work of corneo 2006 is an appropriate analytic framework for the alleged sources of media bias and slant in this paper corneo 2006 builds a voting model of media capture at the hands of special interests to begin with the interest group looking for a policy that will favor its current status seeks to form a coalition with the media the media can accept or refuse the formation of a coalition when they do refuse media demonstrate their independence and commitment to honest reporting

intra industry trade and the shifting of protection across sectors abstract recent work on commercial policy has focussed on the incidence of protection across sectors this work has focussed on the relative price effects of intervention and has been developed in a setting of inter industry trade this paper focusses on the incidence of protection in a setting of intra industry trade a three sector general equilibrium model is developed and incidence is explored in a variety of settings the analysis suggests that the non tradeable sector may bear the major burden of protection in a setting of intra industry trade

a comment on some features of true protection greenaway and milner 1987 analyse the concept of true protection and reach certain results about the relationship between the change in price of exportables importables and home good this note shows that their results are not necessarily correct because they have overlooked some features of their model in their analysis

distinguished lecture on economics in government exchange rate regimes is the bipolar view correct the choice of appropriate exchange rate regime which for economies with access to international capital markets increasingly means a move away from the middle ground of pegged but adjustable fixed exchange rates towards the two corner regimes of either flexible exchange rates or a fixed exchange rate supported if necessary by a commitment to give up altogether an independent monetary policy lawrence h summers 2000 p 8

trade strategy and revealed trade bias an evaluation for a small industrializing economy abstract the traditional classification of trade strategies into import substitution is and export promotion ep is based on the traditional two sector trade model in the context of a three sector model including nontradeables there is potentially greater analytical richness and apparently greater possibility of a wider range of ex ante trade strategies included among these possibilities is a mixed is ep strategy which generates a protradeable bias this paper investigates the properties of a general equilibrium model and the necessary commercial policy interventions required to bring about particular changes in relative prices detailed evidence on revealed trade regime biases within the tradeables good sectors and between tradeables and nontradeables is provided for barbados the evidence indicates that ex post classification of trade strategy may differ significantly from the ex ante or intended strategy and that use of partial equilibrium estimates of effective protection of tradeables alone is likely to be an inappropriate means of classifying trade strategies

incidence theory and the shifting of protection across sectors the south asian experience using the theoretical framework of a simple general equilibrium model this paper examines whether strategies aimed at protecting or promoting manufacturing industries indirectly taxed the agricultural and service sectors a panel data set consisting of five south asian countries over a 26 year time period is employed in the analysis three different estimation procedures are used to account for factors that are country specific and those that are common to all countries the results indicate that the agricultural sector indirectly felt the brunt of the net protection provided to manufactures due to the shifting of protection across sectors the service sector on the other hand indirectly benefited from the general equilibrium spillover effects

media capture in a democracy the role of wealth concentration abstract since objective news coverage is vital to democracy captured media can seriously distort collective decisions the current paper develops a voting model where citizens are uncertain about the welfare effects induced by alternative policy options and derive information about those effects from the mass media the media might however secretly collude with interest groups in order to influence the public opinion in the case of voting over the level of a productivity enhancing public bad it is shown that an increase in the concentration of firm ownership makes the occurrence of media bias more likely although media bias is not always welfare worsening conditions for it to raise welfare are restrictive

evaluation of the incentive structure a survey and application to cameroon abstract this article uses a simple general equilibrium framework to evaluate the incentive structure of a country pursuing a mixed import substitution export promotion strategy it illustrates how features of general equilibrium analysis can be incorporated into the traditional balassa corden effective protection framework which is supplemented by the evaluation of the incidence of protection on firms importing and exporting households consumers and taxpayers and the government its application to a less developed country ldc cameroon shows that the burden of tariff protection is shifted 25 in the short run and 64 in the long run on to the unprotected sectors especially exports as a result average nominal protection 58 8 is much higher than protection actually provided to the protected sectors the welfare effect of protection is ambiguous households viewed only as final consumers lose when they are viewed as taxpayers protection may become beneficial in the long run taking substitution possibilities into account when measuring protection has an impact on the ranking of firms according to their nominal and effective protection

impact of market demand mis specification on a two level supply chain this paper investigates the impact of mis specifying the market demand process on a serially linked two level supply chain box jenkins models are used to represent both the true and a mis specified market demand processes it is shown that the impact of mis specification on cost is minor if the supply chain tries to minimise the market demand forecast errors furthermore our analysis suggests that mis specification does not always result in additional costs a managerial insight is revealed poor forecast accuracy is not always bad for the total supply chain costs in other words employing more accurate forecasting methods may actually result in higher total supply chain costs

beyond import substitution and export promotion a new typology of trade strategies there is considerable confusion in the literature as to what exactly is meant by export promotion or outward orientation this article identifies five mutually exclusive trade strategies and defines the underlying sectoral and market orientations of each it then measures empirically the strategies of six developing countries the empirical findings indicate that some of the successful east asian countries actually pursued an infant industry based exporter oriented protected export promotion strategy not the commonly perceived static comparative advantage based export promotion strategy their protectionist policies are not mere exceptions but integral elements of their export oriented strategy

effective protection policy appraisal and trade policy reform when the effective protection concept was rst developed it was widely regarded as a key widely used especially in the context of policy reform and policy appraisal in developing countries this paper re appraises tmeasure of the structure of protection and became widely deployed it was however subject to a he concept reviews the extent of its application and discusses the factors behind its longevity as an investigative tool the theoretical critique on the grounds that it was essentially a partial equilibrium measure which could not be easily embedded ipaper concludes that the measure still has a role to play in evaluating the structure of protection n a general equilibrium framework notwithstanding this critique the concept has continued to be

true protection concepts and their role in evaluating trade policies in ldcs in many ldcs it is not uncommon to find incentives designed to encourage import substitution activities coexisting alongside incentives aimed at encouraging export activities this article evaluates a recent approach to evaluating commercial policy which among other things highlights some of the implications of simultaneously pursuing import substitution and export promotion the study develops a model which emphasises the incidence of protection and identifies the concept of true protection empirical results for a number of ldcs are discussed and the implications of these results evaluated in addition the article contrasts this approach with the effective protection approach to evaluating commercial policy

who owns the media the authors examine patterns of media ownership in 97 countries around the world they find that almost universally the largest media firms are controlled by the government or by private families government ownership is more pervasive in broadcasting than in the printed media government ownership is generally associated with less press freedom fewer political and economic rights inferior governance and most conspicuously inferior social outcomes in education and health the adverse effects of government ownership on political and economic freedom are stronger for newspapers than for television the adverse effects of government ownership of the media do not appear to be restricted solely to instances of government monopoly the authors present a range of evidence on the adverse consequences of state ownership of the media state ownership of the media is often argued to be justified on behalf of the social needs of the disadvantaged but if their findings are correct increasing private ownership of the media through privatization or by encouraging the entry of privately owned media can advance a variety of political and economic goals especially those of meeting the social needs of the poor

a life s work on trade and development this paper reflects on the career contributions of professor chris milner to the literature on international trade and economic development as such it not only provides an overview of a life s work but also sets the context for the nine papers which follow all of these were specially written for this special issue of the world economy and all relate to different areas that professor milner worked in

the true protection concept a comment on greenaway and milner empirical studies estimating shift parameters to evaluate the true protection especially for developing countries often reach the result that those parameters have very high values this study is to show that it is not substitutional relationships but much more the very inflationary monetary policy of many developing countries which forces the shift parameters towards one moreover it is shown that it makes little sense to distinguish between traditional and non traditional exports and that shift parameters are not necessarily stable over time

true protection and the real exchange rate in a capital rich developing country some evidence for saudi arabia this paper investigates how alternative measures of the real exchange rate respond to trade policy and terms of trade changes it employs a modelling framework which endogenises the price of non tradeable goods and applies the model to price and real exchange rate data for saudi arabia for the period 1982 92 the results show that the popular propositions about the response of the real exchange rate to terms of trade or trade policy changes do not necessary hold this is a consequence of the measure of the real exchange rate utilized rather than a product of saudi arabia s capital richness

on firm and product specific true protection efforts at providing relevant indices of incentive structure comparative advantage and international competitiveness have led to the concept of true protection such a framework can be used to analyse the incidence of protection across sectors analysis has so far been carried out under the assumption of a uniform tariff and calculations limited to average rates nothing could then be said with respect to the incidence at the firm or product level this article expands on an existing model by 1 presenting firm and product specific true protection indices 2 generalising previous conclusions on true protection to encompass firm and product specific analysis it is shown that failure to take into consideration substitution possibilities may yield incorrect evaluation of the structure and level of protection