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

theoretical and empirical foundations of hipc debt sustainability targets this article traces the origins of hipc heavily indebted poor country debt sustainability targets these targets are interpreted as switching values below which countries are expected to avoid debt service problems but as such they do not take into account that countries encounter debt problems for a variety of reasons and at different levels of debt it is likely that the true switching value of the debt to export ratio of many hipcs lie below the present target regarding the fiscal window of the hipc initiative the lack of analytical basis for a 250 per cent target for the debt torevenue ratio is noted and the problems raised by the joint openness revenue condition are discussed the article concludes that the sustainability targets as presently applied are not well supported in analytical terms

footprints in the cotton fields the industrial revolution as time space appropriation and environmental load displacement this paper offers a method for quantifying the global exchange of natural space and labor time underlying the economic success of the british textile industry in the late 18th and early 19th century using historical statistics on inputs of land and labor embodied in cotton and wool production respectively estimates are made of the amount of british land and labor that were saved by displacing fibre production to north america by comparing inputs of land and labor in the textile exports of england with those in some commodities imported from its colonial periphery and juxtaposing these data with exchange rates estimates are also made of unequal exchange using such methods it is possible to bring together the marxist concern with unequal exchanges of labor time on one hand with the more recent concern with ecological footprints on the other

grain price stabilization in india evaluation of policy alternatives abstract stabilization of prices is an important element of food policy in india as in most other countries both developing and developed however since the magnitude of grain stocks held for this purpose as well as the costs of physical storage have become prohibitively high there is now a need for finding cost effective alternatives including non interventionist and market oriented methods for price stabilization in this paper we consider the case of rice and wheat which are staple foodgrains in india we make a comparison between alternative price stabilization policies including that of holding buffer stocks in terms of their impact on domestic price stability producer and consumer welfare and government costs a multi market equilibrium framework is used where private storage consumption supply and prices of rice and wheat are determined simultaneously indian exports and imports are assumed to affect world prices the alternative price stabilizing mechanisms are ranked according to both the criteria welfare and price stability achieved the main findings are as follows the ranking of alternatives varies with the criterion used greater price stability need not necessarily imply greater welfare the option of variable levies on private external trade turns out to be the most inexpensive and that of domestic buffer stocks the costliest in achieving price stability further the efficacy of buffer stocks and subsidy to private storage in stabilizing prices is lower under free trade as compared to the case where the economy is closed to private external trade

aid and resource mobilisation in sub saharan africa the role of reverse flows abstract this article seeks to ascertain the role of reverse flows in explaining the observed limited impact of aid on resource mobilisation in sub saharan africa it departs from the previous empirical literature on aid and resource mobilisation by abandoning the pervasive but untenable assumption that aid either displaces domestic saving increases consumption or increases investment some aid is in fact used to finance reverse flows debt servicing capital flight and reserve accumulation the evidence suggests that for the period covering 1980 to 2006 nearly 50 per cent of aid to sub saharan african countries was used to finance reverse flows

global effects of national biomass production and consumption austria s embodied hanpp related to agricultural biomass in the year 2000 global trade of biomass related products is growing exponentially resulting in increasing teleconnections between producing and consuming regions sustainable management of the earth s lands requires indicators to monitor these connections across regions and scales the embodied human appropriation of npp ehanpp allows one to consistently attribute the hanpp resulting from production chains to consumers hanpp is the sum of land use induced npp changes and biomass harvest we present the first national level assessment of embodied hanpp related to agriculture based on a calculation using bilateral trade matrices the dataset allows 1 the tracing of the biomass based products consumed in austria in the year 2000 to their countries of origin and quantifying the hanpp caused in production and 2 the assigning of the national level hanpp on austria s territory to the consumers of the products on the national level the dataset is constructed along a consistent system boundary between society and ecosystems and can be used to assess austria s physical trade balance in terms of ehanpp austria s ehanpp trade balance is slightly negative imports are larger than exports import and export flows are large in relation to national hanpp our findings show how the ehanpp approach can be used for quantifying and mapping the teleconnections related to a nation s biomass metabolism

foreign aid taxes and public investment a further comment abstract the paper in this journal by gang and khan 1991 employed heller s 1975 fiscal response model to demonstrate that aid to india has all been used to finance government investment this conclusion is shown to be a misinterpretation of the model s results which actually suggest that aid has had no impact on government investment at all however the reported parameters are determined by the estimation procedure adopted by gang and khan and not by the indian government s fiscal behaviour

foreign exchange rationing and the aggregate import demand function abstract this paper develops a theoretically consistent specification of the aggregate import demand function under foreign exchange rationing empirical results for bangladesh using johansen juselius cointegration illustrate the problem of near identity in the standard specification and superiority of the new specification

environmental footprints of agriculture embodied in international trade sensitivity of harvested area footprint of chinese exports abstract consumption based accounting seeks to link a population s lifestyles to their environmental impact input output analysis ioa serves well in this approach as it covers all traded products their full supply chains and explicitly delineates final consumption however using ioa comes at the expense of precision due to aggregation error there has been a recent discussion on the plausibility of ioa results of agricultural pressures we look at the harvested area footprint of chinese exports open the black box of the results of ioa and provide a detailed composition of the footprint this helps to understand whether its size is a result of the poor precision of ioa methods or whether it is based on plausible production patterns of the exported products we hybridize the exiobase database identify the most important exported products apply structural path analysis in order to identify the most important production nodes in their production paths and apply a sensitivity analysis over the model we show that the results of the hybrid mrio method are generally robust to assumptions our results indicate that while the uncertainty of the sign of net trade footprint can be high the uncertainty of national environmental footprint accounts is low

will developing country debt forgiveness increase agricultural trade abstract latin american countries are important customers in international agricultural trade however between 1981 and 1987 u s agricultural exports to these countries declined by almost 50 one explanation for the above decrease is the change in financial conditions facing many countries in this region outstanding debt in the latin american countries continued to rise through the 1980 s reaching over 120 billion for brazil and mexico by 1987 in this paper we develop an import model which considers the effect of the debt crisis on the ability of developing countries to purchase agricultural commodities in world markets we estimate the model for four countries mexico brazil chile and venezuela the estimated results are used in a simulation model to obtain the effects of a 50 debt forgiveness scenario results indicate only a modest improvement in agricultural imports of the four latin american countries considered in this study these four countries would expand agricultural imports by 400 million per annum given the debt reduction

import dependency and structural adjustment in sub saharan africa one of the effects of structural adjustment programs in sub saharan africa has been the reduction of imports in the face of scarce foreign exchange this article takes the analysis of import demand beyond the traditional income and price determinants to account for factors likely to be important to sub saharan african countries in the 1990s first the effect of demand on imports is reflected by the level of absorption rather than the less direct income variable second because adjustment programs may cut government consumption and through increases in interest rates reduce investment these components of absorption are also considered independently to assess their differential effect on imports third import barriers are often set in dollar terms to limit the use of foreign exchange because reliable and complete data for import restrictions are not available the ratio of exports to debt is included as an indicator of foreign exchange availability to reflect its effect on trade barriers and thus imports the findings suggest that this more comprehensive assessment of import demand will be needed if the size and even direction of changes in import demand in response to policy reform is to be understood and anticipated

towards more accurate and policy relevant footprint analyses tracing fine scale socio environmental impacts of production to consumption the consumption of internationally traded goods causes multiple socio environmental impacts current methods linking production impacts to final consumption typically trace the origin of products back to the country level lacking fine scale spatial resolution this hampers accurate calculation of trade and consumption footprints masking and distorting the causal links between consumers choices and their environmental impacts especially in countries with large spatial variability in socio environmental conditions and production impacts here we present the sei pcs model spatially explicit information on production to consumption systems which allows for fine scale sub national assessments of the origin of and socio environmental impacts embedded in traded commodities the method connects detailed production data at sub national scales e g municipalities or provinces information on domestic flows of goods and in international trade the model permits the downscaling of country to country trade analyses based on either physical allocation from bilateral trade matrices or mrio models the importance of producing more spatially explicit trade analyses is illustrated by identifying the municipalities of brazil from which different countries source the brazilian soy they consume applications for improving consumption accounting and policy assessment are discussed including quantification of externalities of consumption consumer labeling trade leakages sustainable resource supply and traceability

domestic price stabilization schemes in developing countries preoccupation with the presumed adverse effects of price instability has led developing countries to establish a wide variety of mechanisms to stabilize domestic prices not only of internationally traded goods but of nontraded goods as well however despite the ubiquity of such schemes and the obvious importance with which price stabilization is regarded the development literature is virtually mute on their characteristics and how they have performed in this article we discuss the topic of domestic price stabilization programs in a comparative cross country context we do not examine here the question of whether instability has adverse or positive economic effects as a burgeoning literature continues to debate this issue rather we take as given that stabilization is a desideratum of virtually all governments in the developing world our goals are to describe some of the characteristics of the different schemes used to stabilize

endogeneity testing in a supply and demand framework the powers of wu hausman endogeneity tests are related to the normalization d ecision in estimating demand equations power is not invariant to the choice bet ween quantity and price as the dependent variable a theoretical result due to n akamura and nakamura 1984 is used to explore the dependence of power on parame ters of the supply and demand system the theoretical result is corroborated wit h a monte carlo experiment the power results are used to analyze the u s deman d for poultry meat wherein price but not quantity is found to be predetermined copyright 1986 by mit press

the inefficiency of interest rate subsidies in commodity price stabilization interest rate subsidies have been used to stimulate commodity stockholding with the intention of stabilizing prices however reductions in price variability can be achieved at less government cost using a direct storage subsidy and it is possible that an interest rate subsidy will increase price variability even though the interest subsidy increases mean stocks held these results are demonstrated using a stochastic dynamic programming model of optimal private storage with parameter values relevant to agricultural commodity markets and with particular reference to the u s soybean market

the macroeconomic impact of development aid a critical survey the early literature explained aid s macroeconomic impact in the context of the dual gap model showing a clear link between aid and growth many now believe that the empirical evidence shows there to be no such relationship this paper critically reviews the different theoretical perspectives the dual gap model the savings debate recipient fiscal response and aid as dutch disease and the empirical debates on aid savings and growth the basis for denying a relationship between aid and growth is shown to be weak though more recent areas of research offer promising directions for future work

medium run adjustment under import compression macroeconomic analysis relevant for sub saharan africa abstract the dynamic small open economy model of kouri 1979 is modified to analyze the role of the foreign exchange constraint in import dependent economies typical for sub saharan africa structural adjustment and investment allocation are related to the sectoral balance between traded and protected goods the import compression policy of the region establishes a linkage between the export performance of the traded sector and the capacity utilization of the protected sector it is shown that the relationship implies possible contractionary effects of demand expansion since exports are crowded out and the import capacity is reduced a destabilizing downward growth spiral may follow policies modifying the excessive demand and the import dependency seem necessary to turn contraction into growth

imports under a foreign exchange constraint the traditional model of import behavior which looks only at the gross domestic product gdp and real import prices as explanatory variables failed to predict or explain the developing countries import slumps in the early 1980 s this paper expands on a more useful model the hemphill which incorporates the traditional variables relative prices and domestic income with the variables introduced by hemphill foreign exchange receipts and international reserves section 2 of this paper discusses the theoretical models in the present study the traditional model used here as a benchmark is presented first and is later extended to include foreign exchange constraints section 3 presents the empirical estimates of the general import models that include foreign constraints and two special cases the hemphill and benchmark models using pooled cross section time series section 4 concludes that policy makers must look at the policies that affect gdp and prices and the availability of foreign exchange when trying to estimate import behavior in developing countries

exchange rate versus credit policy analysis with a monetary model of trade and inflation in india abstract a general equilibrium model of the trade balance and inflation in india is specified and empirically analyzed the model takes into account many important institutional features of india such as foreign exchange rationing and emphasizes the effects of monetary disequilibrium on the trade balance policy simulations compare the dynamic responses to devaluation with the responses to tight credit policy it is shown that the relative price effects of policies are often significantly offset by perverse liquidity effects which serve to raise absorption however the trade balance effects of devaluation are found to be more enduring than those of tight credit policy

tracing distant environmental impacts of agricultural products from a consumer perspective globally trade flows of agricultural products are increasing while value is typically added along the whole production chain certain environmental impacts such as land and water use biomass appropriation and soil degradation are intrinsically linked to where the primary products originate from when taking a consumer oriented approach on environmental problems bilateral trade statistics can help in providing a clearer picture about the location of impacts caused by consumption elsewhere however in today s increasingly globalized world consumer goods are often imported from countries other than where the primary product originated from for instance soybeans are transported from brazil to the netherlands where they are processed into soy oil which is shipped to austria where it is consumed utilizing bilateral trade matrices and matrix algebra we present a method that allows to clearly link consumption patterns to the origin of primary products in this the method can help to provide information about consumption related distant environmental impacts we employ the case of land and water use linked to austria s soy product consumption to demonstrate the approach s relevance finally we outline some possible applications of this method to show its potential in enhancing understanding for informed consumer based environmental decision making

cropland area embodied in international trade contradictory results from different approaches with rapidly increasing trade volumes resource use and environmental pressures related to traded products are high on research and policy agendas robust accounts of biophysical resources used in the production processes of traded goods are required to support sustainable consumption and to expose problem shifting related to environmental policies in this context multi region input output analysis mrio is becoming a widely applied tool to establish consumption based accounts and to analyse production consumption links along complex international supply chains using the example of china s trade in cropland products and embodied cropland we make the case for a re evaluation of its application to land and other resources while analyses based on physical trade matrices show that china is a major net importer of cropland products and embodied cropland mrio based results suggest exactly the opposite we do not find convincing arguments that could explain these large differences based on our knowledge of land systems and biomass metabolism and on the results from physical accounting we question the plausibility of mrio derived results we conclude by outlining next steps in research that are required to improve assessments of trade related resource use in order to produce more robust results a prerequisite for the formulation of policy recommendations

quo vadis mrio methodological data and institutional requirements for multi region input output analysis abstract in order to understand wider sustainability impacts of consumption and to successfully promote and implement sustainable consumption and production policies there is a need to capture the whole life cycle impact of products and services across international supply chains multi region input output mrio databases are a well described and suitable foundation for global sustainability analyses addressing a wide range of policy and research questions in this paper we reflect on the reasons for the recent boom in mrio compilation summarise the current state of development and discuss future options for mrio analysis we list in detail the requirements for efficient and effective mrio research and propose systemic and institutional changes we deliberately try to go beyond existing ambitions for mrio compilation and thus intend to stimulate discussion and to lay out the options for the future of mrio research

tele connecting urban food consumption to land use at multiple spatial scales a case study of beef in taiwan abstract this study takes the first step to tele connect urban food consumption to land use at multiple spatial scales by taking beef consumption of taiwan during 1990 2016 as a test case the novelty of this study is to make a quantitative effort in advancing the methodological approach in urban studies and facilitates future research in the subject area our numerical results support the hypothesis of ult associated with beef consumption and suggest that the phenomena of beef related land teleconnection are more significant in urban areas from the time dynamic perspective moreover trade liberalization extends the spatial spectrum of implied land use associated with beef consumption it allows imports towards relative land saving origins and alleviates beef related ult finally income growth plays a key role in driving up the implied land use of beef consumption at earlier stage of urban development in contrast at the later stage the increase in expenditure intensity of beef accounts for surging beef consumption in cities

real interest rates home goods and optimal external borrowing the paper investigates the optimal time path of consumption and external borrowing in the dependent economy model the small country faces given world prices and a given world real interest rate the presence of a home goods sector implies that the relevant real interest rate appropriate to consumption decisions depends on the rate of change of the real price of home goods the paper shows how transitory disturbances in output or in the world real interest rate affect the time profile of consumption and the trade balance in particular it is shown that the presence of a home goods sector dampens the consumption effects of changes in the world interest rate

foreign exchange reserves and import demand evidence from latin america this paper investigates the impact of foreign reserves domestic real income and relative import prices on import demand for seven latin american countries we differentiate empirically between the short run and long run impact of reserves income and prices on imports the paper has three main results first we show that there exists a unique long run relationship among real imports real income relative import prices and real foreign exchange reserves for all seven countries second we find that increases in foreign exchange reserves exert a significant positive effect on import demand in both the long run and the short run in all countries however the economic impact of foreign exchange reserves is rather small finally we find that the long and short run impact of real domestic income on import demand is positive as well while the effect of relative prices is negative

meat imports in sierra leone analysis constraints and policy implications abstract this article examines the factors contributing to the shortages of meat and other livestock products in sierra leone and analyses the import market for meat in sierra leone a two stage least squares procedure is used to determine the import demand responses for meat in sierra leone the empirical estimates suggest that real exchange rates income trade restrictions domestic production and prices of meat and competing products are the key determinants of import demand responses for meat in sierra leone the relative sizes of the estimates reveal that policies targeted at domestic meat production income trade and real exchange rate adjustments have more significant effects than pricing policies

exchange rate variability and imports in wamu countries is this relationship relevant abstract in a recent contribution to this journal medhora 1990 showed that for 1976 1982 exchange rate variability has had little impact on the west african monetary union s wamu imports we argue that medhora s findings are largely due to wamu s trade structure indeed by treating wamu s trading environment as a likely buffer sufficient to dampen possible exchange rate risk on trading opportunities we show that exchange rate variability will not matter in wamu countries imports decisions