the role of fdi exports and spillover effects in the regional development of china the objective of this analysis is to assess the impacts of export expansion inward fdi domestic investment and labour on the growth of china s eastern central and western regions using panel data over the period 1984 to 1998 a major contribution of the study is its tests for the presence of interregional spillover effects the study indicates that both inward fdi and domestic investment stimulate growth in all three regions and for the prc as a whole and that export expansion stimulates the growth of the prc eastern and central china but not the west labour enhances the growth of the more traditional western region but not the more capital intensive eastern seaboard or the prc in its entirety finally output growth spills over from the east to western and central china and from the central area to western china these results are fully explained in the text

count on the growth pole strategy for regional economic growth spread backwash effects in greater central china ke s and feser e count on the growth pole strategy for regional economic growth spread backwash effects in greater central china regional studies this paper investigates spread backwash effects associated with non agricultural gross domestic product and employment growth across 922 cities and counties in central china between 2000 and 2005 simultaneous equation estimates find mixed spread backwash effects from prefecture and higher level cities to comparable or lower level cities and counties spread effects of gross domestic product and employment growths are also indicated between county level cities however county level cities exerted backwash effects on rural counties the paper discusses the implications of these findings in relation to the construction of urban economic growth zones in central china as an important strategy of central rise ke s et feser e devrait on compter sur la strategie de poles de croissance afin d assurer la croissance economique regionale les effets de repartition

technical note a price vector model of demand for consumer durables preliminary developments although considerable research has been conducted on optimal pricing policies for manufacturers relatively little work has been done on how price enters the consumer choice process in this paper a model is developed for durables purchasing which integrates both economic and behavioral research by specifying a vector of five price concepts which affect purchasing behavior of particular interest are variables relating to future price expectations due to data limitations a revised model is estimated and the results provide preliminary support for the general model

financial interdependence and the state international monetary relations at century s end as the twentieth century draws to a close one can find sharply contrasting views among leading scholars on almost every key issue in positive international political economy how strong are international as opposed to domestic influences on policy how important are issues of national security high politics versus economic considerations low politics what role do institutions international and domestic play in influencing and constraining the behavior of governments why is international cooperation rare but not unheard of the list goes on and on

facing the crisis toward a new humanistic synthesis for business the economic slowdown still ongoing in many countries has brought about dramatic consequences these continue to be clearly felt in many countries mass foreclosures and evictions non recoverable debts extreme difficulties for individuals and businesses to obtain credit bankruptcies lack of confidence from investors and downturns in stock markets around the world bailouts from governments to banks and other financial institutions in danger of failing in an attempt to save them from insolvency or to avoid contagion in a globalized world no financial institution has escaped damage and many ordinary people around the world are suffering the painful impact with the dramatic increase in unemployment and substantial financial commitments of states toward the financial system public expenditure has progressively increased to the point at which the financial solvency of entire countries is at risk since 2008 and even before the word crisis has been on everyone s lips many people continue to suffer the consequences of this crisis the causes were complex there is abundant literature which cites exclusively technical reasons the housing bubbles evaluation tied to real estate pricing deficient regulation and so on frequently the remedies proposed are also only technical basically suggesting more regulation and more public control however a deeper reflection on the causes of the current crisis indicates that they include not only techno economic aspects but also behavioral moral and cultural aspects all of which are closely interrelated in fact the current crisis would probably not have occurred without certain political decisions related to monetary and economic policies and deficient regulation and monitoring we should not overlook however the personal decisions related with corporate strategies and business policy including strong incentives associated with short term profits and mortgage backed securities trading involving a manifest lack of transparency nor should we forget the credit rating agencies and a number of different professionals civil servants and politicians involved in some way in the unfolding of the crisis it seems that this morass arose not only through insufficient and inadequate structures but also because of faulty human behavior and moral character as lewis et al 2010 pointed out prudence and ethics were pushed aside as greed overcame good judgment among mortgage lenders nationwide of course we can find large scale failure of regulation and government policy in the origin of the crisis but also negligence and greed on the part of the different actors empowered in the process

incorporating reference price effects into a theory of consumer choice although there has been a good deal of research on incorporating the effects of reference price formation into empirical models of consumer buying behavior little formal theoretical work had been undertaken to date this paper incorporates reference price effects into the traditional economic theory of consumer choice and examines the effects of reference price formation on the results of the traditional theory its marketing implications and the implications for empirical models which examine the effects of reference price formation on actual consumer behavior several implications of the theoretical model are empirically tested using weekly retail egg sales data from southern california this analysis indicates that reference price formation does have significant effects on consumer behavior furthermore these effects are asymmetric with consumers two and a half times more responsive to egg price increases that are in excess of the reference price than they are to comparable egg price decreases

systemic conflict and regional monetary integration the case of europe existing explanations of european monetary integration emphasizing economic interdependence issue linkage institutions and domestic politics take a predominantly regional approach in the international monetary thesis developed here i argue that u s policy disturbances transmitted through the international monetary system created compelling incentives for european states to cooperate on exchange rate and monetary policy i develop a general theory of macroeconomic power based on open economy macroeconomics and show how the exercise of such influence can drive regional monetary integration this article then tests the international thesis with reference to monetary integration within the european union by examining four periods in which the united states acted to stabilize the international monetary system and seven episodes in which it disrupted the system european governments and central banks reduced regional monetary cooperation when the united states supported system stability and strengthened it after each episode of disruption the evidence thus strongly supports the inference that the link is causal

empirical generalizations from reference price research considerable theoretical justification for consumers use of psychological reference points exists from the research literature from a managerial perspective one of the most important applications of this concept is reference price an internal standard against which observed prices are compared in this paper we propose three empirical generalizations that are well supported in the marketing literature first there is ample evidence that consumers use reference prices in making brand choices second the empirical results on reference pricing also support the generalization that consumers rely on past prices as part of the reference price formation process third consistent with other research on loss aversion consumers have been found to be more sensitive to losses i e observed prices higher than reference prices than gains we also propose topics for further research on reference prices

competitive market structures a subset selection analysis market structure models are used to identify submarkets or to test for the presence of submarkets where within group competition is much stronger than across group competition the implicit assumption in such models is that the brands in a submarket compete on the basis of their shared product features however if significant variety seeking effect exist in the market such an assumption may not be valid we present a model based on a subset selection procedure for analyzing competitive market structures and develop tests of significance for variety seeking effects present in the market for each brand in the market the subset selection procedure identifies sets submarkets of brands that are in close competition the competitive market structure is defined by the possibly overlapping submarkets that are identified for each brand and the model provides insights on whether the brands in a submarket are of a reinforcing or a variety seeking kind the application of our model to two different consumer packaged goods markets highlights its contribution relative to extant methods

nuclear learning and u s soviet security regimes the concepts of regimes and learning have been developed in the liberal theory of international relations but their application has been mostly in the area of international political economy u s soviet relations are generally explained solely in terms of realist theory the dichotomy is unfortunate because both strands of theory have something to contribute although the injunctions of an overall regime do not govern the u s soviet security relationship it is possible to identify the injunctions and constraining effects of regimes in subissues of the security relationship in five areas of the nuclear relationship destructive power control problems proliferation arms race stability and deterrent force structure it is possible to identify different degrees of learning and to see how such learning affects and is affected by the development of regimes looking at the u s soviet security relationship in terms of learning and regimes raises new questions and opens a research agenda which helps us to think more broadly about the processes of political change in this area

the impact of goods and capital market integration on european monetary politics members of the european union eu have long attempted to unify their monetary policies whether by fixing exchange rates or moving toward a single currency the success of these attempts has varied over time and among eu member states this article argues that the degree to which a country is integrated into eu trade and finance has a major impact on its willingness to make the sacrifices necessary to pursue monetary integration especially stability against europe s anchor currency the deutsche mark dm higher levels of intra european trade and investment increase the desirability of stabilizing exchange rates between european countries statistical evidence indicates that greater integration of goods and capital markets is associated with greater success in fixing national exchange rates against the dm this implies that pressures for monetary integration will continue but will vary among countries along with the degree to which they are economically linked to european trade and investment

the advantage of tying one s hands ems discipline and central bank credibility abstract it is often argued that the ems is an effective disciplinary device for inflation prone countries in europe since it forces the respective policy makers to pursue more restrictive monetary policies than they would otherwise it is not clear however why these countries should submit themselves to such discipline this paper argues that to answer this question appropriately one must consider that ems membership brings potentially large credibility gains policy makers in inflation prone countries the reason is that not only it attaches an extra penalty to inflation in terms of real appreciation but makes the public aware that the policy maker is faced with such penalty and thus helps to overcome the inefficiency stemming from the public s mistrust of the authorities

eu china collaboration in the reform of the international monetary system much ado about nothing he global nancial crisis which began in the united states in 2008 has raised doubtsabout the ef ciency of the current dollar led international monetary system ims twomain structural theories have been put forward to explain the crisis each with their respectivereform solutions on the one hand there is the savings glut theory bernanke 2005 2011 favoured by policymakers in washington and a signi cant part of the economics literature which says that the unsustainable overleveraging in the united states was induced by therecycling of dollar denominated savings of surplus economies especially the east asiancountries including china this constant in ow of large volumes of savings suppressed inter est rates on us debt and thus fostered over consumption and over indebtedness to avoid arepeat the proposed solution is to encourage countries like china to let its currency oat sothat the appropriate market equilibrium can be found and a rebalancing of the global economycan be achieved on the other hand there is the trif n dilemma theory zhou 2009 padoa schioppa 2010 bini smaghi 2011 favoured by policymakers in beijing and a number of high pro leeuropean of cials this argues that the crisis is a product of the structural contradiction asso ciated in any international regime dominated by a national currency as trif n 1960 explained in the era of the bretton woods system when the dollar was still linked to gold there is an inherent aw in the dollar standard to provide the necessary liquidity for the glo bal economy the united states needs to run current account de cits the increase in this de cit however undermines the credibility of the reserve currency while for some timeeconomists thought the trif n dilemma was history because it was only valid for a systemlinked to gold the recent crisis suggests otherwise even in a system where the issuer of themain international currency in this case the united states adopts a exible exchange rate there is a limit to its liquidity provision as current events have shown by increasing its scalde cits and expanding substantially its monetary base the united states risks underminingthe credibility of the dollar as the global reserve currency the solution thus is to nd a mech anism that can restrain us pro igacy in uenced by this second theory policymakers of the brics brazil russia india chinaand south africa and eurozone have openly called for the end to the dollar dominated ims chinese and french of cials have been particularly active in this debate the former presidentof china hu jintao the governor of the people s bank of china pboc zhou xiaochuan and

u s budget deficits and the european economies resolving the political economy puzzle this paper prepared for the annual meetings of the american economic association discusses how the increases in the u s budget deficits since 1980 have affected the economies of western europe the analysis emphasizes that u s deficits have not only affected these economies directly but have also induced them to adopt more restrictive monetary and fiscal policies than they would otherwise have chosen this induced shift in domestic policies is the primary reason why european governments have pressed for a reduction in the u s budget deficits despite the favorable impact of those deficits on european trade surpluses this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the economic consequences of president mitterrand france under mitterrand jeffrey sachs and charles wyplosz while french economic performance has not conformed to the enthusiastic promises of early 1981 this paper argues that the widely held view that it has been an unmitigated failure is unwarranted first the general deterioration can largely be dated back to the early seventies second the early and unfortunate attempt at a demand led expansion was both moderate in size and quickly reversed finally the post 1983 anti inflationary policies have been successful so that overall the disappointing french performance has been on a par with and in some ways better than the rest of europe but the main theme of the paper is the emphasis on the supply side the analysis is organized around the nairu the threshold rate of unemployment below which inflation rises in an attempt to explain the factors which have led to a continuous rise of the nairu since 1973 the paper focuses on labour costs particularly on the wedge between the costs borne by employers and net take home pay to achieve and sustain a significantly lower level of unemployment labour taxes must be cut thus reducing the wedge and the nairu and there must be a corresponding demand stimulus so that actual unemployment can fall to this level

an empirical analysis of internal and external reference prices using scanner data single source yogurt data are used to examine whether both internal and external reference prices affect purchase decisions internal reference prices are memory resident prices based on actual fair or other price concepts external reference prices are observed stimuli such as regular prices that stores may display along with a sale price for comparability discrete choice models with variables representing the two types of reference prices are estimated and both types of variables are found to have significant effects on purchase probabilities this suggests that consumers may use multiple reference points in evaluating price in purchase decisions in addition a model using an indicator of a sale price discount explains purchase probabilities as well as one that models the actual discount which suggests that consumers may be reacting to the indication of savings rather than to the amount of the discount

pricing and promotions in asymmetric duopolies this paper develops a modeling framework for making promotions decisions in contrast to some of the prior research the framework explicitly models promotions its central feature is the view of promotions competition as a multistage game in which regular prices are chosen first followed by the choice of promotion depths and frequencies it is used to illustrate the nature of competition between a national brand and private label in equilibrium the national brand promotes to ensure that the private label does not try to attract consumers away from the national brand moreover the private label does not promote this equilibrium is also contrasted with varian s framework used by other researchers in which mixed strategy equilibrium prices are interpreted as promotions

asymmetric reference price effects and dynamic pricing policies we consider a group of frequently purchased consumer brands which are partial substitutes and examine two situations the first where the group of brands is managed by a retailer and second where the brands compete in an oligopoly we assume that demand is a function of actual prices and reference prices and develop optimal dynamic pricing policies for each situation in addition to researchers studying pricing strategy our results may interest retailers choosing between hi lo pricing and an everyday low price and manufacturers assessing whether to follow procter gamble s lead and replace a policy of funding consumer price reductions through trade deals with a constant wholesale price a reference price is an anchoring level formed by customers based on the pricing environment the literature suggests that demand for a brand depends not only on the brand price but also whether the brand price is greater than the reference price a perceived loss or is less than it a perceived gain the responses to gains and losses are asymmetric broadly speaking we find that when enough consumers weigh gains more than losses the optimal pricing policy is cyclical likewise when they weigh losses more than gains a constant price is optimal thus we provide a rationale for dynamic pricing which is quite distinct from the three explanations previously offered 1 decreasing unit variable costs due to learning effects 2 the transfer of inventory to consumers who face lower inventory holding costs than do retailers and 3 competitive effects our explanations apply even when the other explanations do not i e in mature product categories where learning effects are minimal when retailer inventories are minimized through the use of just in time policies and when competitive effects do not exist as in a monopoly greenleaf 1995 has shown numerically that in the presence of reference price effects the optimal pricing policy for a monopolist can be cyclical we first analytically extend greenleaf s result to a monopolist with a constant cost of goods facing a homogeneous market where all customers either weigh gains more than losses or vice versa using this building block we examine a monopolist retailer managing multiple brands we assume that demand is a linear function of prices of multiple brands and together with an expression which reflects the reference price effect further we assume that the retailer maximizes average profit per period next we analyze a duopoly and extend the results to an oligopoly we assume that the manufacturers are able to set the retail prices as in an integrated channel here we retain the same demand function as for the retailer and derive markov perfect nash equilibria we use two alternative processes of reference price formation the exponential smoothed es past price process which is frequently used in the literature and for the multi brand situations the recently proposed reference brand rb process hardie johnson and fader 1993 in the latter the reference price is the current price of the last brand bought the reference brand we adapt the individual level rb formulation in hardie et al to an aggregate demand specification for the es process we obtain most results analytically for the rb process we use simulation finally we extend our results to a population with two customer segments segment 1 which weighs gains more than losses and segment 2 which does the opposite i e is loss averse when the market consists exclusively of segment 1 customers and es is the reference price process we find that prices are cyclical in all cases analyzed i e for a monopoly a monopolist retailer managing multiple brands a duopoly and an oligopoly if the rb formulation is the underlying process a monopolist retailer managing two brands uses cyclical prices but in a duopoly the equilibrium solution is for the brands to maintain constant prices when all customers belong to segment 2 i e they are loss averse constant prices are optimal in all cases for both reference price formulations when the population consists of both segment 1 and segment 2 and the es process applies we develop a sufficient condition for cyclical pricing policies to be optimal the condition is expressed in terms of the proportion of the two segment sizes the absolute difference between the gain and loss parameters of each segment and their respective exponential smoothing constants interestingly for reasonable values of the latter two factors cyclical policies are optimal even when the proportion of segment 1 is quite small similar magnitudes are obtained numerically for the rb case

ideas institutions and american trade policy nowhere is america s hegemonic decline more evident than in changing trade patterns the united states trade balance a measure of the international demand for american goods is suffering historic deficits lowered demand for american goods has led to the under utilization of both labor and capital in a growing number of traditionally competitive american industries conversely americans taste for foreign goods has never been so great japanese cars european steel third world textiles to name a few are as well produced as their american counterparts and arrive on the u s market at a lower cost

are workers close to cities paid higher nonagricultural wages in rural china in the present study we investigate whether workers close to cities are paid higher non agricultural wages than workers in outlying rural areas we find that workers close to urban areas not only benefit from more opportunities to engage in non agricultural activities but also from better paid jobs in addition distance exhibits a strongly nonlinear impact distance always has a negative impact on wages but the effect is more detrimental the closer the village is to the urban center we also find evidence of urban hierarchy effects workers living close to bigger cities are paid higher wages finally we provide evidence on the transmission channels at work

monopolist pricing with dynamic demand and production cost this paper deals with pricing of a new product over time by a monopolist who maximizes the discounted profit stream the interdependency of cost and demand on cumulative production makes the problem inherently dynamic cost is assumed to be declining with cumulative production learning curve effect while demand is a function of price and cumulative sales representing word of mouth and saturation effects the paper addresses this problem in a general framework that includes several previous results as special cases and provides new insights in other situations while the learning curve and word of mouth effect cause prices to be lower than the price that maximizes immediate revenues the saturation factor has the opposite effect the price path over time is affected by these factors and the interest rate we characterize the price path under several different situations and interpret the results for policy guidelines