producer services comparative advantage and international trade patterns we unite the theories of factor abundance and monopolistic competition to explore the general equilibrium relations between trade in producer services economies of scale and factor markets in our model two final goods are produced using capital labor and a variety of differentiated producer services that are produced under increasing returns to scale we analyze the implications for comparative advantage and trade in goods between two countries that differ in factor endowments and in technology of service provision moreover we use the concept of the integrated world equilibrium to investigate trade in goods and services also when services require foreign direct investments

the g20 at the cancun ministerial developing countries and their evolving coalitions in the wto in large measure the voice that developing countries were able to exercise in cancun was a result of their effective coalition formation in this paper we present a brief overview of the various coalitions that played an important role at cancun the greater part of this paper focuses on one among these various coalitions the g20 on agriculture the g20 presents an especially fascinating case of a coalition that combined a great diversity of members and apparently incompatible interests all theoretical reasoning and historical precedent predicted that the group would collapse in the endgame and yet the group survived we investigate the sources of the unity of this group and trace them to a process of learning that allowed the group to acquire certain structural features and develop strategies that helped to cement it further while our central dependent variable is the cohesion of the g20 we also address the derivative question of the costs and benefits of maintaining such coalitions the cancun coalitions give us an excellent case of coalitions that managed to retain their cohesion but also ended up with a situation of no agreement rather than a fulfilment of even some of their demands we examine some of the causes behind the impasse in the negotiation process and suggest ways in which future outcomes could be improved

identifying the efficiency status in network dea abstract data envelopment analysis dea is commonly employed to evaluate the efficiency performance of a decision making unit dmu that transforms exogenous inputs into final outputs in such a black box dea approach details of an internal production process of the dmu are typically ignored and hence the locations of inefficiency are not adequately provided in view of this dea researchers have recently developed various network approaches by looking into the black box where the inputs that enter the box and the outputs that come out of it are only considered however most of these network approaches evaluate divisional efficiency by using an optimal solution of their respective optimization problem if such an optimal solution is used in the case when there are multiple optima then managerial guidance based on this solution alone may be inappropriate because more appropriate targets from the viewpoint of management may be ignored taking this fact into account therefore we propose a network approach for identifying the efficiency status of each dmu and its divisions this approach provides a practical computational procedure

intra industry trade and protectionism the case of the buy national policy this article examines the factors that lead governments to open up their public procurement markets to international competition with a particular emphasis on the effect of intra industry trade contrary to the conventional notion that intra industry trade entails less political pressure for protectionism than inter industry trade i argue that such notion does not prevail in the case of discriminatory public procurement firms in a market with a high degree of intra industry trade are more likely to resist the removal of discrimination than would firms in a market with a high degree of inter industry trade empirically i find support for the argument both at sub national and cross national settings

economists capitalists and the making of globalization north american free trade in comparative historical perspective why did globalization happen current explanations point to a variety of conditions under which states have made the free market policy changes driving international economic integration since the 1980s such accounts disagree however about the key actors involved this article provides a reconciliation showing how two different combinations of actors and two different political economic pathways have led to globalization in recent decades in developed countries mobilization by business has been central elsewhere technocrats both constrained and empowered by international finance have pursued globalization more independently of business in both contexts economists technical authority has helped legitimate liberalization despite the limited diffusion of their ideas the article validates and elaborates this model using a comparative historical study of how the united states canada and mexico proposed negotiated and ratified agreements for free trade in north america

openness external risk and volatility implications for the compensation hypothesis a central assumption in the globalization literature is that economic openness generates economic insecurity and volatility based on this assumption schol ars of international political economy have proposed the compensation hypothesis which claims that globalization bolsters rather than undermines the welfare state by increasing public demand for social protection against externally generated eco nomic instability the openness volatility link is dubious however on both theoret ical and empirical grounds in this study i revisit the volatility assumption focusing on a crucial difference between openness and external risk in their effect on volatil ity my statistical analysis of a panel data set from 175 countries 1950 2002 finds a consistent effect of external risk on volatility of the major economic aggregates but a largely insignificant effect of openness these findings suggest that economic volatility may be a mistaken link in explaining the openness spending nexus calling for further research on the causal mechanisms linking the two the general growth of government in the post world war ii era is one of the most important empirical regularities in political science measured by general govern ment consumption or sectoral expenditures government size grew dramatically during most of the postwar period intrigued by this phenomenal government growth political scientists offered numerous accounts some viewing this growth as a corollary of economic phenomena such as modernization industrialization income distribution or fiscal illusion and others attributing government growth to political causes such as bureaucratization interest group politics and electoral competition 1

endogenous trade policy through majority voting an empirical investigation abstract the median voter approach to trade policy determination within a heckscher ohlin framework as in mayer am econ rev 74 5 1984 970 predicts that an increase in inequality holding constant the economy s overall relative endowments raises trade barriers in capital abundant economies and lowers them in capital scarce economies we find support for this prediction using cross country data on inequality capital abundance and diverse measures of protection we perform certain robustness checks that include controlling for the effects of political rights and schooling as well as using alternative datasets on factor endowments

provoking preferences unionization trade policy and the ilwu puzzle if any group of american blue collar workers has benefited from the growth of trade it is the unionized dockworkers along the us west coast nevertheless the international longshore and warehouse union ilwu representing these workers is vocally opposed to trade liberalization we examine several competing explanations for this puzzle and evaluate them by tracing the union s stance on trade over several decades we also use an original survey to compare ilwu affiliates attitudes on trade with those of nonmembers with otherwise similar characteristics consistent with a model of organizational socialization the data support the hypothesis that ilwu membership affects the members revealed political opinions the data are difficult to reconcile with standard theories of international trade our findings indicate that the political support for trade depends not just on voters structural positions in the economy but also on the organizations and networks in which they are embedded

the impact of development on women a specific factors analysis abstract the specific factors model is employed in this paper as a means of explaining how economic development may serve to diminish women s welfare three changes associated with the development process are analyzed for their effect on women s real and relative wage 1 an expansion of trade induced by an improvement in the terms of trade 2 technological change and 3 an increase in female labor force participation

evaluating the environmental efficiency of a two stage system with undesired outputs by a dea approach an interest preference perspective abstract in this study we propose a new dea model to evaluate the environmental efficiency of a two stage system with undesired outputs the two stage system consists of two parts a production subsystem and a pollution treatment subsystem different choices for allocating resources to each subsystem represent different interest preferences of decision makers with the production subsystem corresponding to short term interests and the pollution treatment subsystem corresponding to long term interests based on a proposed new dea model three theorems are established to show the relationships between the interest preference parameter and the change of efficiency scores an empirical analysis was conducted using the data of 30 provinces and municipalities eight regions of china the empirical results show the effectiveness of the proposed model and the usefulness of the theorems for the real world data optimal efficiency rankings of the eight regions are provided and the efficiency rankings truly reflect the current environmental situations of these eight regions to examine the economic impacts and facilitate sustainable development we also analyze the shadow prices for undesired outputs corresponding implications of the empirical analysis are also discussed

the u s patent system in transition policy innovation and the innovation process abstract this paper surveys the major changes in patent policy and practice that have occured in the last two decades in the u s and reviews the existing analyses by the economists that attempt to measure the impacts these changes have had on the processes of technological change it also reviews the broader theoretical and empirical literature that bears on the expected effects of changes in patent policy despite the significance of the policy changes and the wide availability of detailed data relating to patenting robust conclusions regarding the empirical consequences for technological innovation of changes in patent policy are few possible reasons for these limited results are discussed and possible avenues for future research are suggested

the impact of stronger intellectual property rights on science and technology in developing countries abstract this paper identifies some effects of the global trend towards stronger protection of intellectual property rights on developing countries and traces related debates pharmaceutics biodiversity and ethnic knowledge are critical areas of impact trade relating intellectual property might allow developing countries to be compensated but incentive implementation of optimal compensation in the legislatures seems infeasible scientific communities in developing countries are particularly vulnerable to limitations of cooperation and access to information resulting from stronger intellectual property rights protection as their efforts to obtain normal science results must be considerable consequences of the bayh dole act and of the patenting of research tools on international scientific cooperation are analysed in this context

industrial eco efficiency in china a provincial quantification using three stage data envelopment analysis abstract the coordinated development of industrialization and the ecological environment is vital to achieve ecological civilization in china integratively considering the economy energy and resources and environment this study aims to measure the industrial eco efficiency of 30 provinces autonomous regions and municipalities in china between 2005 and 2013 a three stage data envelopment analysis dea modeling approach is adopted to eliminate interference of the external environment and statistical noise with industrial eco efficiency measurement the results show that regional industrial eco efficiency in china is affected by the factors of the environmental regulation technological innovation level of economic development and industrial structure after eliminating the impacts of external environment and statistical noise china s national average industrial eco efficiency declines by 30 between 2005 and 2013 the industrial eco efficiency of the 30 provinces increases but at different rates of growth the variation of overall regional industrial eco efficiency is primarily caused by scale efficiency furthermore all the 30 provinces are classified into four groups to interpret the causes of variation and differences of regional industrial eco efficiency in general the management and technology level and the economy of scale of industries should be improved simultaneously even though specific opportunities for industrial eco efficiency improvement vary across provinces in china

tariffs quotas and terms of trade the case of new zealand abstract this paper reports quantitative information on the effects of tariffs and quotas on prices of individual goods the analyses uses the natural experiment provided by a comprehensive unilateral trade policy reform in new zealand to examine the response of foreign exporters to an incident of liberalisation that is unique in the developed world the price effects of tariffs and quotas are estimated using a multidestination 7 digit longitudinal product level dataset on export values and quantities the effects are found to be by no means equivalent whereas tariffs display no significant effect the impact that quantitative restrictions have on the terms of trade of the country that imposes them are unequivocally detrimental and quantitatively important

resistance to reform status quo bias in the presence of individual specific uncertainty comment why do governments so often fail to adopt policies which economists consider to be efficiency enhancing our answer to this question relies on uncertainty regarding the distribution of gains and losses from reform we show that there is a bias towards the status quo and hence against efficiency enhancing reforms whenever some of the individual gainers and losers from reform cannot be identified beforehand there are reforms which once adopted will receive adequate political support but would have failed to carry the day ex ante the argument does not rely on risk aversion irrationality or hysteresis due to sunk costs jel d72 f13 why do governments so often fail to adopt policies that economists consider to be efficiency enhancing this is one of the fundamental questions of political economy the answer usually relies on what may be

reaping what you sow an empirical analysis of international patent harmonization abstract this paper extends analysis of the gatt uruguay round by quantifying the impact of international patent harmonization as implied by the trips agreement patent harmonization has the capacity to generate large transfers of income between countries the us being the major beneficiary developing countries are major contributors to these transfers but canada the uk and japan also make sizable contributions

decomposition weights and overall efficiency in two stage additive network dea abstract data envelopment analysis dea is a technique for performance evaluation of peer decision making units dmus the network dea models study the internal structures of dmus using two stage network structures as an example the current paper examines additive efficiency decomposition where the overall efficiency is defined as a weighted average of stage efficiencies and the weights are used to reflect relative importance of individual stages we show that weights may not affect the calculation of stage efficiency scores and that variation in the overall efficiency resulting from using different weights can be associated with constant stage efficiencies we demonstrate the need to isolate the impact of weights on the overall efficiency we propose to use a new overall efficiency index to address some pitfalls in weighted additive efficiency decomposition our findings are illustrated using two empirical data sets representing two types of two stage network structures

efficiency analysis of major cruise lines three major cruise lines account for 82 of the total market share their financial statements show different results between the operating incomes and net incomes over time to examine the major causes of the differences this study measured the efficiency of the top three cruise lines to develop a network dea model to analyze the cruise operations at two stages namely operating and non operating stages in addition the determinants of the efficiencies were examined using a bootstrapped truncated regression model overall cruise lines were efficient at the operating stage but varied widely in the efficiency of the non operating stage cruise lines attempting high capacity expansion were relatively inefficient because of the heavy interest payments arising from the high debt to capital ratio moreover the neglected hedging policy regarding the financial risks also contributed to the inefficiency

productivity and customer satisfaction in swedish pharmacies a dea network model this paper presents a data envelopment analysis dea network model that allows inclusion of customer satisfaction in efficiency and productivity measures the network consists of a production node and a consumption node and offers flexibility in modelling the production and consumption process where a firm specific allocation of input resources to production and customer oriented activities is allowed the proposed model is applied on a sample of swedish pharmacies with organizational objectives that necessitates a monitoring of efficiency and productivity as well as customer satisfaction estimation results from the network model and a direct productivity model without customer satisfaction are compared and indicate that the technical efficiency is lower under the network model the productivity results indicate productivity progress under both models albeit with a slower rate of change under the network model

dea like models for efficiency evaluations of specialized and interdependent units abstract the problem of evaluating the efficiency of a set of specialized and interdependent decision making subunits dmsus that make up a larger decision making unit dmu is considered the dmsus are interdependent in the sense that part of the output produced by each of them may be used as an input by the other ones they are also specialized hence non homogeneous as they may have not the same inputs and outputs for this problem some efficiency indexes are introduced and they are shown to satisfy some basic properties

world economic expansion and national security in pre world war i europe profound and rapid changes in the costs and risks of international trade are now widely acknowledged to be a potent source of domestic political conflict by altering the relative prices of goods available from world markets these changes alter the rewards that flow to different factors of production from different economic activities these distributional consequences of changing levels of trade in turn alter the configuration of interests in the domestic political economy strain existing political alignments and enable the construction of new political coalitions thus global changes in the economy such as the transportation and telecommunications revolutions in the nineteenth and mid twentieth centuries or the collapse of international trade and finance during the interwar years will have global consequences as they reverberate within and through the domestic politics of all countries that trade on world markets

best performing us mutual fund families from 1993 to 2008 evidence from a novel two stage dea model for efficiency decomposition when analyzing relative performance especially at the institutional level the traditional data envelopment analysis dea models do not recognize vastly different and important activities as separate functions and therefore cannot identify which function may be the main source of inefficiency we propose a novel two stage dea model that decomposes the overall efficiency of a decision making unit into two components and demonstrate its applicability by assessing the relative performance of 66 large mutual fund families in the us over the period 1993 2008 by decomposing the overall efficiency into operational management efficiency and portfolio management efficiency components we reveal the best performers the families that deteriorated in performance and those that improved in their performance over the sample period we also make frontier projections for poorly performing mutual fund families and highlight how the portfolio managers have managed their funds relative to the others during financial crisis periods

sectoral patterns of technical change towards a taxonomy and a theory abstract the purpose of the paper is to describe and explain sectoral patterns of technical change as revealed by data on about 2000 significant innovations in britain since 1945 most technological knowledge turns out not to be information that is generally applicable and easily reproducible but specific to firms and applications cumulative in development and varied amongst sectors in source and direction innovating firms principally in electronics and chemicals are relatively big and they develop innovations over a wide range of specific product groups within their principal sector but relatively few outside firms principally in mechanical and instrument engineering are relatively small and specialised and they exist in symbiosis with large firms in scale intensive sectors like metal manufacture and vehicles who make a significant contribution to their own process technology in textile firms on the other hand most process innovations come from suppliers these characteristics and variations can be classified in a three part taxonomy based on firms 1 supplier dominated 2 production intensive 3 science based they can be explained by sources of technology requirements of users and possibilities for appropriation this explanation has implications for our understanding of the sources and directions of technical change firms diversification behaviour the dynamic relationship between technology and industrial structure and the formation of technological skills and advantages at the level of the firm the region and the country

determinants of patent rights a cross national study abstract this paper presents an index of patent rights for 110 countries for the period 1960 1990 the index is used to examine what factors or characteristics of economies determine how strongly patent rights will be protected the evidence does indicate that more developed economies tend to provide stronger protection but the underlying factors which influence patent protection levels are the country s level of research and development r d activity market environment and international integration which are correlated with its level of development the results qualify however that r d activity influences patent protection levels after a nation s research sector reaches a critical size an implication of this is that to raise patent protection levels in weakly protecting countries it is important to foster a significant research base in those countries and thereby create incentives for protecting patent rights

international trade and domestic politics improving on rogowski s model of political alignments ronald rogowski s work offers valuable insight into the impact of changing trade exposure on domestic politics exploring the political implications of the well known factor endowments model of international trade theory rogowski argues that owners of relatively abundant productive factors will form a free trading coalition against owners of relatively scarce productive factors who will align in favor of protection rogowski s parsimonious three factor version of the factor endowments theory although offering valuable insight into the politics of less developed economies including today s developed economies in earlier centuries produces significant anomalies when applied to advanced economies intuitive logic and empirical research especially the leontief paradox suggest that the highly complex division of labor found in developed countries will confound the simplicity of the three factor model edward learner s multifactor model suggests solutions to the anomalies that afflict rogowski s simpler model when applied to recent politics in the united states and europe

why free trade losers support free trade industrialists and the surprising politics of trade reform in brazil the rush to free trade that began in latin america in the 1980s remains inadequately explained among several puzzles connected with this shift the degree of support for free trade among industrialists especially stands out this article argues that the inability to account for industrialists behavior lies in political economy s tendency to derive preferences from market position instead the author argues that contextual factors shape preferences and behavior he makes the argument by examining brazilian industrialists a least likely group to endorse the policy shift the author provides evidence that brazilian industrialists supported commercial liberalization despite real distributive consequences factors that help explain support include the effects of economic crisis bundling of free trade with other desirable policies the prevalence of adjustment options and the absence of a distinct class of losers the author relies on survey evidence business rankings and documentary evidence to mak

on the form of transfers to special interests an important question in political economy concerns the form of transfers to special interests the chicago view is that political competition leads politicians to make such transfers efficiently the virginia position is that lack of information on the part of voters leads politicians to favor inefficient sneaky methods of redistribution this paper analyzes the form of transfers in a model of political competition in which politicians have incentives to make transfers to special interests it shows that when voters have imperfect information about both the effects of policy and the predispositions of politicians inefficient methods of redistribution may be employed

societal preferences partisan agents and monetary policy outcomes if different producer groups have divergent interests concerning macroeconomic policies how do societal preferences translate into state policy outcomes i develop and test a party as agent framework for understanding the importance of societal preferences with regard to monetary policy under capital mobility following the principal agent model political parties function as agents for different societal principals rightist parties tend to represent internationally oriented business groups with preferences for monetary convergence while leftist parties do the same for domestically oriented groups preferring monetary autonomy under capital mobility i present statistical evidence showing that oecd leftist governments have been associated with more monetary autonomy and currency variability than their rightist counterparts even after controlling for basic economic indicators such as inflation the statistical evidence also shows that societal group size tends not to explain either autonomous monetary policy choices or exchangerate stability thus even large and wealthy societal groups may be unable to obtain their preferred policy outcome when their respective partisan agents do not hold government power

integration of the sales force an empirical examination this article develops and tests a model of integration of a marketing function personal selling the model derived from transaction cost analysis as developed principally by williamson is formulated as a logistic function which is estimated with data from the electronic components industry as expected integration is associated with increasing levels of asset specificity difficulty of performance evaluation and the combination of these two factors contrary to the transaction cost model neither frequency of transactions nor interaction of specificity and environmental uncertainty is significantly related to integration the transaction cost model improves significantly upon the fit of a simple model relating integration to company size alone these results suggest that for studying transactions of this kind it is fruitful to view the firm as a governance structure

what determines individual trade policy preferences abstract this article provides new evidence on the determinants of individual trade policy preferences using individual level survey data for the united states there are two main empirical results first we find that factor type dominates industry of employment in explaining support for trade barriers second we find that home ownership also matters for individuals trade policy preferences independent of factor type home ownership in counties with a manufacturing mix concentrated in comparative disadvantage industries is correlated with support for trade barriers this finding suggests that in addition to current factor incomes driving preferences as in standard trade models preferences also depend on asset values

measuring the national competitiveness of southeast asian countries national competitiveness is a measure of the relative ability of a nation to create and maintain an environment in which enterprises can compete so that the level of prosperity can be improved this paper proposes a methodology for measuring the national competitiveness and uses the 10 southeast asian countries for illustration the basic idea is to deconstruct the complicated concept of national competitiveness to measurable criteria the observations data on the criteria are then aggregated according to their importance to obtain an index of national competitiveness for data collected from questionnaire surveys a calibration technique has been devised to alleviate bias due to personal prejudice in data aggregation the importance is expressed by both a priori weights and a posteriori weights these two types of weights consistently show that singapore malaysia and thailand have the highest national competitiveness while myanmar cambodia and laos are the least competitive countries the performance of each country in every criteria measured also provides directions for these countries to make improvements and for investors to allocate resources

on the methodology of the world competitiveness report abstract a nation with its natural resources human capabilities research and educational institutions government organizations financial systems and cultural and social values provides an environment in which firms are created organized and managed the competitive environment a nation provides influences the performance of its firms at home and abroad therefore it is of prime importance for both governments and firms to study the competitive environment of a country in comparison with those of the others the world competitiveness report wcr a report annually produced by the institute for management development imd and the world economic forum wef both based in switzerland is a study that rates and ranks the competitiveness of a certain group of countries oecd plus 15 newly industrialized countries and is a widely quoted study in the international media although some essence of its methodology is given for a general understanding details are not provided perhaps for proprietary reasons since the report is a commercial enterprise itself the objective of this paper is to uncover the methodology used by the wcr for this purpose the methodological information provided in the wcr is used to the fullest extent however for the steps where the information is missing or when different interpretations are possible an approach based on mathematical programming is employed to guess the methodology

trade related intellectual property rights north south trade and biological diversity in the trade related intellectual property rights trips agreement of gatt 1 january 1995 it was agreed to harmonise intellectual property rights ipr on an international level and to include the option for patent protection for all life forms such as plants and animals article 27 3 b patenting however leads to considerable conflicts between international trade and protection of biological diversity which can be illustrated by the example of seed production we make use of a three stage game to show the strategic incentives for implementation of two different property rights regimes patents and farmers rights on competition and biodiversity we show that the southern government has no incentive to acknowledge international patents even if farmers rights do exist the northern producer will always dominate in the output market if patents are applied but without farmers rights biodiversity will not be maintained by the southern government thus total payoff of the northern firm is maximized if both ipr regimes are implemented however if only farmers rights are valid biodiversity will be maximal

organizing interests and coalitions in the politics of market reform in latin america a recent wave of deep empirical research provides a solid basis for a comparative reassessment of the role of coalitions in the politics of market reform in latin america in the 1990s this research confirms earlier findings that interest groups and distributional coalitions were not major protagonists in either antireform or proreform coalitions the new research goes further empirically into analyzing the origins of interests especially business interests and finds them to be much more ambiguous and dynamic than assumed in earlier studies consequently other factors especially organizations and the evolving macroeconomic context were stronger influences on preferences regarding reform given the relative weakness of interest group coalitions the article provides a typology and preliminary analysis of other kinds of coalitions electoral legislative and policy that have become more central to reform politics these other types of coalitions still require further theoretical elaboration and empirical investigation in order to determine how they can best be deployed to illuminate reform politics

economic interests and regional trading arrangements the case of nafta this article examines lobbying in the united states on the north american free trade agreement nafta i argue that economies of scale and production sharing across borders create incentives for firms to seek regional trade liberalization statistical analysis demonstrates that sectors with these characteristics were more likely to lobby for free trade in north america these sectors were also exposed to free trade more rapidly under the tariff phasing schedule in the nafta treaty however corporate restructuring to rescale production for the regional market and to increase offshore assembly presented adjustment costs for u s workers which created divisions between labor unions and their employers i conclude that regional arrangements are an attractive mechanism to liberalize trade for firms in need of larger than national markets to take advantage of economies of scale or to develop production sharing networks

welfare effects of global patent protection this paper uses a simple model of invention and patent protection to examine the welfare effects of extending patent protection from the country where invention takes place to another country that is only a consumer of invented products it is shown that while the welfare of the inventing country certainly rises with the extension of patent protection that of the other country probably falls and may well fall by more than the increase in welfare of the inventing country in particular as patent protection is extended to a larger and larger portion of the world the effect on the welfare of the world as a whole of extending it to the rest of the world becomes negative

the politics of public aid to private industry the role of policy networks firms lobby for subsidies along geographic sector or factor lines and as a result receive subsidies with a local sectoral or factorwide scope this article investigates what determines the line of cleavage and thereby the scope of the subsidy the factor mobility hypothesis according to which an economic prior the degree of factor mobility determines the geometry of lobbying coalitions misses the fact that factor mobility is as much the product of policy and policymaking as it is its determinant this article argues instead that politicians maximize their chances of staying in power through the deliberate use of subsidies to structure the political debate and embed factor owners into stable policy networks individual factor owners in turn join these policy networks to lobby for monopoly rents capable of insuring them against adverse economic competition the model yields two testable hypotheses first right governments favor subsidies to capital whereas left governments favor subsidies to lab

doctors with borders occupational licensing as an implicit barrier to high skill migration research on the political economy of immigration overlooks the specificity of human capital in skilled occupations and its implications for immigration preferences and policymaking conclusions that skilled americans are unconcerned about labor market competition from skilled migrants build on a simple dichotomy between high and low skill migrants in this article we show that natives turn to occupational licensing regulations as occupation specific protectionist barriers to skilled migrant labor competition in practice high skill natives face labor market competition only from those high skill migrants who share their occupation specific skills licensure regulations ostensibly serve the public interest by certifying competence but they can simultaneously be formidable barriers to entry by skilled migrants from a collective action perspective skilled natives can more easily secure sub national occupation specific policies than influence national immigration policy we exploit the unique structure of the american medical profession that allows us to distinguish between public interest and protectionist motives for migrant physician licensure regulations we show that over the 1973 2010 period states with greater physician control over licensure requirements imposed more stringent requirements for migrant physician licensure and as a consequence received fewer new migrant physicians by our estimates over a third of all us states could reduce their physician shortages by at least 10 percent within 5 years just by equalizing migrant and native licensure requirements this article advances research on the political economy of immigration and highlights an overlooked dimension of international economic integration regulatory rent seeking as a barrier to the cross national mobility of human capital and the public policy implications of such barriers

influencing factors on hydrogen energy r d projects an ex post performance evaluation abstract to enhance its energy security korea made a significant r d investment in developing hydrogen energy technology over a period of 10 years the hydrogen energy r d center was established in 2003 with a 100 billion korean won krw government investment that would fund the initiative through 2012 this paper is a meaningful attempt to evaluate the ex post performance of completed hydrogen energy r d projects using data envelopment analysis dea through empirical analysis we focus mainly on measuring ex post performance and uncovering the influencing factors on that performance the results of our empirical analysis reveal several interesting findings first overall the ex post performance of completed projects is relatively low however there are major performance gaps among projects second r d type technology type and private sector investment are factors influencing project performance more specifically projects identified as basic research storage technology or without private sector investment had the highest performance with an acceptable level of statistical significance third dea can provide unique information such as results of returns to scale and slack analysis which cannot be gleaned from parametric methods as time went on the decreasing returns to scale drs ratio increased and the increasing returns to scale irs ratio decreased this means that the r d budget was used less and less effectively as time passed moreover among the three year project period the second year s r d budget was used most efficiently in each r d project this study can provide meaningful information to policy makers to enhance the performance of future r d projects and to promote hydrogen r d projects as well as advance the hydrogen economy

union organization in advanced industrial democracies i suggest a new explanation of cross national differences in unionization rates the size of the labor force size matters because the gains unions are able to achieve in collective bargaining depend on the proportion of substitutable workers who are organized while the costs of organizing depend in part on the absolute number to be recruited the comparison of the costs and benefits of organizing new workers yields the conclusion that unions in larger labor markets will accept lower levels of unionization statistical analysis of cross national differences in unionization rates among advanced industrial societies in the late 1970s indicates that the size of the labor force and the cumulative participation of leftist parties in government explain most of the variance

productivity and intermediate products a frontier approach abstract in recent years it has become popular to measure productivity using non parametric approaches however this has been done while ignoring intermediate products here we develop a non parametric productivity measure that explicitly incorporates such products

competitiveness of nations a knowledge discovery examination this paper presents the insights gained from the use of data mining and multivariate statistical techniques to identify important factors associated with a country s competitiveness and the development of knowledge discovery in databases kdd models to predict it in addition to stepwise regression and weighted non linear programming techniques intelligent learning techniques artificial neural networks and inferential techniques classification and regression trees were applied to a dataset of 43 countries from the world competitiveness yearbook wcy the dataset included 55 variables on economic internationalization governmental financial infrastructure management science and technology as well as demographic and cultural characteristics exploratory data analysis and parameter calibration of the intelligent method architectures preceded the development and evaluation of reasonably accurate models mean absolute error 5 5 and subsequent out of sample validations the strengths and weaknesses of each of the kdd techniques were assessed along with their relative performance and the primary input variables influencing a country s competitiveness our analysis reveals that the primary drivers of competitiveness are lower country risk rating and higher computer usage in entrepreneurial urbanized societies with less male dominance and basic infrastructure with higher gross domestic investment savings and private consumption more imports of goods and services than exports increased purchase power parity gdp larger and more productive but not less expensive labor force and higher r d expenditures without diminishing the role and importance of wcy reports our approach can be useful to estimate the competitiveness of many countries not included in wcy while our findings may benefit policy makers and international agencies to expand their own abilities insights and establish priorities for improving country competitiveness

the narrow moving band the dutch disease and the competitive consequences of mrs thatcher notes on trade in the presence of dynamic scale economies abstract this paper presents a model of trade in which comparative advantage instead of being determined by underlying attributes of countries evolves over time through learning by doing in this model arbitrary patterns of specialization once established tend to become entrenched over time the model sheds light on three widely held views that do not make sense in more conventional models first is the view that temporary protection of selected sectors can permanently alter the pattern of comparative advantage in the protecting country s favor second is the view that seemingly favorable developments such as the discovery of exportable natural resources may lead to a permanent loss of other sectors and reduce welfare in the long run third is the possibility that a temporary overvaluation of a currency due to tight money can lead to a permanent loss of competitiveness in some sectors

vertical trade specialization and the formation of north south ptas during the last two decades the number of preferential trade agreements pta s grew almost exponentially to over 270 by 2010 a majority of these are agreements between developed and developing countries existing models provide little economic rationale for these agreements but the existing literature lumps north south pta s together with other types of trade pacts this article offers an explanation focused on the movement of less capital intensive manufacturing from north to south which in turn stimulates the exchange of similar goods differentiated by unit value also referred to as vertical intra industry trade the north exports more capital intensive goods while more labor intensive goods are produced and traded by the south this kind of specialization creates incentives for governments to support pta s the author tests this model using a new measure of vertical trade specialization and finds strong evidence that such specialization promotes pta formation north south pta s should therefore be seen as part of a broader shift of manufacturing from high to middle income countries

alliances preferential trading arrangements and international trade c oncerns about the stability of the international trading system have become widespread in recent years many observers feel that the relatively liberal system forged after world war ii is being undermined by the proliferation of preferential trading arrangements these concerns have spawned a great deal of empirical research much of which has found that such arrangements exert a substantial effect on trade flows yet these studies have neglected the role political military alliances play in shaping patterns of commerce this omission is important because there is ample reason to expect that alliances guide trade flows and preferential trading arrangements often are comprised of allies as a result extant analyses risk confusing the effects of alliances and preferential trading arrangements on commerce and systematically overstating the effects of the latter in this study we analyze the effects of alliances and preferential trading arrangements on bilateral trade flows both factors are likely to promote trade among members but we argue that the interaction between them is central to explaining patterns of commerce the combination of an alliance which creates political incentives for participants to engage in trade and a commercial institution which liberalizes trade among members is expected to provide a considerable impetus to commerce among parties to both 1

domestic patents and developing countries arguments for their study and data from brazil 1980 1995 abstract this paper presents data from brazilian patent office instituto nacional de propriedade industrial inpi and compares them with data from the united states patent office uspto developing countries have technological activities that are important locally but not significant at international level imitation local learning adaptation of foreign innovations these activities might be patentable only at national level therefore the study of domestic patents of developing countries provides a broader picture than uspto patents this paper compares 8309 inpi patents with 475 uspto patents between 1980 and 1995 domestic patent data show peculiarities in the brazilian case possibly shared with other countries in similar technological level a high share of individual patents b foreign owned firms with important activities c low firm involvement in rd b according to firm size there is a u shaped distribution of patents c evidences of multi technology large firms d a relatively small share of firms have more than one patent in the whole period the contrast between uspto and national patenting statistics shows different rankings according to ownership structure leading firms industrial sectors and international patent classification these differences highlight sources of international competitiveness and point to weaknesses in brazilian innovative activities this paper concludes evaluating the contributions and weaknesses of this database for the evaluation of the brazilian national system of innovation

deriving the dea frontier for two stage processes data envelopment analysis dea is a method for measuring the efficiency of peer decision making units dmus recently dea has been extended to examine the efficiency of two stage processes where all the outputs from the first stage are intermediate measures that make up the inputs to the second stage the resulting two stage dea model provides not only an overall efficiency score for the entire process but as well yields an efficiency score for each of the individual stages due to the existence of intermediate measures the usual procedure of adjusting the inputs or outputs by the efficiency scores as in the standard dea approach does not necessarily yield a frontier projection the current paper develops an approach for determining the frontier points for inefficient dmus within the framework of two stage dea

trade and the variety of democratic institutions students of comparative politics have long acknowledged the importance of such institutional factors as electoral systems parliamentary versus presidential rule and the strength of parties but they have either regarded the institutions as given or have explained them entirely in domestic terms associating proportional representation for example with the intensity of social cleavages in economically advanced democracies however these institutional aspects can be plausibly linked to dependence on trade proportional representation the parliamentary system strong parties and large electoral districts have survival value for developed democracies exposed to trade that the recently revived agitation for proportional representation in the united kingdom has been cast explicitly in terms of economic necessity and dependence on trade adds force to this argument and suggests the need for further historical research on other cases of institutional adaptation and change

veto points veto players and international trade policy much of the literature on foreign economic policy focuses on the preferences of societal groups to explain policy decisions here however the author emphasizes the effects of domestic political i

north south knowledge spillovers and competition convergence versus divergence abstract technology spillovers from high productivity countries in the north allow low productivity countries in the south to improve productivity in high tech sectors relatively easy however the south s share in world goods markets for high tech products is relatively low which reduces opportunities for learning by doing our simple ricardian endogenous growth model shows how the balance between toughness of competition in trade and the strength of north south spillovers determines whether productivity levels diverge partially converge or fully converge in the long run if convergence prevails the north is confronted with declining employment in high tech sectors temporary trade policy measures can turn a diverging economy into a converging one

intellectual property rights and the world trade organization retrospect and prospects this paper analyzes the main economic issues of intellectual property rights iprs protection in the context of the world trade organization wto a retrospective view on the establishment of the trips trade related aspects of intellectual property rights agreement a still controversial accomplishment of the uruguay round of trade liberalization is provided the paper reviews the economic rationale for the harmonization of iprs drawing both on economic theory considerations as well as emerging empirical evidence the logic of linking ipr protection and trade in the context of the wto is also re examined some specific attention is devoted to the implications of trips for agricultural and biotechnology innovations the impact that ipr protection can have in promoting growth and development and the relation of iprs with other economic policies is discussed the paper concludes with an analysis of the prospects for more or less iprs related consensus in the current round of wto negotiations

the impact of special interests on preferential tariff concessions by the united states this paper provides empirical evidence on the rela tive impact of the generalized system of preferences gsp adopted in 1975 and the caribbean basin initiative cbi adopted in 1983 on the pattern of u s imports of manufac tured goods from the target areas at the four digit level in 1984 imports from brazil mexico south america the carib bean basin and from all eligible countries are each analyzed we provide evidence that existing preferential agreements have failed to offset the bias in u s protection against competitive exports from developing countries we also explain why one might have predicted such an outcome

assessment of china transit and economic efficiencies in a modified value chains dea model abstract this study incorporates the concepts of undesirable intermediate intermediate input uncontrollable input and undesirable output to the value chains model chen and zhu 2004 thereby creating a modified value chains model to compute transit and economic efficiencies in 30 regions of china the modified value chains model forms a more general formulation to the value added chains in the utilization of the above concepts it also provides an optimal intermediate measure which differs from the independent two stage measure empirical evaluations indicate that large scale transit development in china s coastal area does not necessarily represent higher transit efficiency because in the coastal area there is a lack of significant positive relationships between transit and economic efficiency high economic efficiency does not contribute to greater transit efficiency the finding also suggests that by simultaneously decreasing the quantity in passenger and freight transport transit and economic efficiencies have greatly improved in most regions of china

cost and learning efficiency drivers in australian schools a two stage network dea approach this article explore performance issues in australian public schools using a two stage dea network model which accounts simultaneously for both cost and learning efficiency levels in the cost efficiency stage different types of expenses and investments are employed to support a given number of students teachers and administrative staff in the learning efficiency stage these groups of individuals help to produce important outputs related to performance in student tests and school rankings results indicate that australian public schools are heterogeneous policy implications are also discussed

capital mobility and the origins of stock markets i illustrate the accepted though hardly researched idea that political institutions play a role in locking in factor specificity across sectors space and borders i use the emergence of modern capital markets in the nineteenth century a process that threatened to redeploy financial resources away from land and traditional sectors to heavy industry as a test case to ascertain the degree of domestic financial capital mobility in nine advanced industrialized countries the main finding is that cross national variations in financial capital mobility holding constant the level of economic development reflect the degree of state centralization

how trade related are intellectual property rights abstract there is little empirical evidence about whether differing international levels of patent protection influence trade flows if a nation strengthens its patent laws it could experience higher or lower imports we specify an empirical model in which deviations of bilateral sectoral imports from anticipated levels are related to income trade barriers and patent laws patent regulations in the importing country are corrected for endogeneity through the use of instrumental variables the results of the final equations indicate that increasing patent protection has a positive impact on bilateral manufacturing imports into both small and large developing economies

the political economy of international trade enduring puzzles and an agenda for inquiry a similar set of concepts has been central to the literatures on the formation of trade policy coalitions and the new economics of institutions the political and economic consequences of the degree to which assets are specific to a particular economic activity in this survey the authors take the necessary first step of summarizing the main findings of these two literatures and then suggest ways in which the issue might be joined in addition to providing a more coherent understanding of the findings of these two literatures and some new directions for them the authors show that many puzzles remain in the field of trade politics puzzles for which there are no appealing answers or where there are answers no strong evidence in support of them this essay then in addition to being a theoretical review of the literature puts forward an agenda for future study of international trade politics

interprovincial two stage water resource utilization efficiency under environmental constraint and spatial spillover effects in china although existing studies have paid much attention to the measurement model of water resource utilization efficiency they have failed to consider the spatial spillover effect of some influencing factors of water resource utilization efficiency causing biased results this study measures the water resource utilization efficiency of 31 provincial administrative regions in china from 2001 to 2014 and the efficiency of each stage by adopting a slack based efficiency evaluation model based on the relaxation of two stages to consider undesirable output then this study employs a spatial durbin econometric model by considering spatial effect to analyze the influencing factors of the overall efficiency of water resource utilization by per capita water resources industrial water living water consumption per capita gross domestic product degree of opening to the outside world industrial structure technological progress and other aspects by comparison existing studies do not consider the spatial spillover effect this study estimates the direct and indirect effects of the influencing factors of water resource utilization efficiency to distinguish local and neighbors impacts of influencing factors of water resource utilization efficiency the results are as follows 1 first stage overall efficiency is significantly higher than second stage water resource utilization efficiency overall efficiency is close to second stage efficiency and second stage efficiency determines the overall effectiveness of water resource utilization 2 the spatial autocorrelation intensity of water resource utilization overall efficiency is significantly greater than zero and water resource utilization overall efficiency presents concentration distribution in the space for which the eastern coastal regions are high high type and the central and western regions are low low type 3 the overall efficiency of water resource utilization has spatial spillover effects and the region s overall efficiency is influenced by both region and neighborhood region 4 the direct and indirect effects of domestic water consumption degree of opening up and industrial structure are the primary significant influencing factors of overall efficiency of water resources in china the spatial spillover effects of domestic water consumption and industrial structure have a significant impact to improve water resource utilization efficiency the government and citizens should focus on such solutions as pollution reduction domestic water savings and transforming the industrial structure moreover china should consider the spatial effects of these influencing factors when government policies are designed

why is trade reform so popular in latin america a consumption based theory of trade policy preferences despite wavy national economies and a perception among observers that economic globalization is growing increasingly unpopular aggregate support for free trade remains quite high across latin america this finding is robust to the wording of survey questions and has been quite resilient through time even in the face of economic stagnation current theories of trade preferences including the widely applied heckscher ohlin model do not explain this trend instead the author proposes a theory of trade preferences based not on what citizens produce but on what they consume statistical analyses of different surveys including one conducted in fourteen latin american countries demonstrate that a consumption based approach best accounts for trade preferences across individuals and countries moreover the theory provides an explanation for the overall popularity of free trade in latin america citizens recognize and appreciate the lower price increased variety and higher quality of goods that have come in the wake of trade liberalization

national competitive advantage and the roles of economic and political freedom evidence from hong kong the equivocal interrelationships between economic performance and the institu tions of respectively economic and political freedom are examined using data from firms op erating in hong kong an economy where both an erstwhile paramount international business reputation for competitiveness and the institutional basis on which it was predicated have come into question in recent years it is hypothesized that i both economic and political freedom declines will be associated with a proxy for future economic performance competitiveness decline but that ii the correlation of economic freedom declines with competitiveness de cline will be mediated by political freedom declines hierarchical regression analyses tend to support these hypotheses although results vary by firm origin

development and application of the hicks moorsteen productivity index for the total factor productivity assessment of wastewater treatment plants abstract the assessment of the productivity change in wastewater treatment plants is essential to improve performance and reduce operational costs several indices are available to compute unit productivity however some assessments are more reliable than others in the absence of price data the malmquist productivity index is the most commonly applied but it does not maintain total factor productivity properties under variable returns to scale technology hence malmquist productivity index is not a suitable index to compute total factor productivity change in wastewater treatment plants the present study served to overcome such limitations by calculating for the first time total factor productivity changes in a sample of 204 spanish wastewater treatment plants using the hicks moorsteen productivity index it is a multiplicatively complete index which can be decomposed as several sub indices representing technical and efficiency changes therefore this study also investigated the drivers of total factor productivity change in wastewater treatment plants results showed a 5 4 total factor productivity decline per year from 2003 to 2008 in the plants analysed the primary driver in the reduction was efficiency change alternatively technical change improved during the five years of study the results of this study provide support for policymakers and managers in decision making processes and contribute to the improvement of technical and economic wastewater treatment plants performance in addition it is evidenced that wastewater treatment plants current dependence on external energy sources should be reduced to improve productivity and reduce costs to citizens who pay for wastewater treatment services

asset specificity and the political behavior of firms lobbying for subsidies in norway previous research into endogenous trade policy has described extensively the political incentives of firms with specific assets but no studies have shown directly that firms behave as predicted we adopt insights from transaction costs economics to develop measures of asset specificity and to investigate how variation in these measures affects the political behavior of firms in particular we examine the lobbying choices of norwegian firms in the 1980s given available subsidy funds from norway s oil boom and some government decisions in the 1970s firms with more specific assets faced potentially greater losses from adjusting to new activities in the face of competitive pressures and thus had greater incentives to lobby for subsidies to protect themselves joint contacting of parliament and government on behalf of firm interests by representatives of both management and labor should be particularly likely where firms had specific assets data analysis shows that asset specificity as indicated by r d intensity and job immobility predicts joint contacting independently of plausible alternative explanatory variables like firm size and export orientation

business power and the minimal state the defeat of industrial policy in chile chile has maintained a limited industrial policy for nearly three decades policy resilience during the 2000s and 2010s is especially puzzling given the political and economic context three social

the intergovernmental network of world trade igo connectedness governance and embeddedness membership in certain intergovernmental organizations igos such as the world trade organization has long been argued to stimulate trade yet evidence linking igos to trade is mixed the authors argue that identifying the influence of igos requires attention not only to the institutions igos enact but also to the network through which they enact them this approach allows them to demonstrate that trade between two countries increases by an average of 58 with every doubling of the strength of igo connection between the countries they also contribute to debates regarding the mechanisms through which structural relationships influence economic behavior by showing that substantial trade benefits occur not only through economic igos but also through igos that were formed for social and cultural purposes and that connections through igos that are organizationally strong have more impact than those through minimalist igos

globalization taxation and burden shifting in latin america most researchers interested in the relationship between global markets and public policy focus on advanced industrial democracies in contrast we examine competing hypotheses as to globalization s effect on governments by expanding the scope of the discussion to include developing nations more specifically we investigate the relationship between international market integration and the evolving burden of taxation on capital as well as the subsequent response of markets to shifts in tax policy in latin america since the late 1970s consistent with our theoretical expectations we find that global market forces are more constraining vis a vis tax policy in latin america than in the world s wealthiest nations despite these market based pressures however national politics continue to influence tax policy in latin america in a manner consistent with findings on advanced industrial democracies as such developing nations continue to have some room to manipulate policy though within the context of a more strictly neoliberal context than their counterparts in advanced industrial democracies

why hang on to losers divestitures and takeovers we study the divestiture decisions of managers who care about their reputations managers divestiture and investment decisions are publicly observable but managers privately observe signals with respect to the future payoff distribution of investments they have initiated we establish that in equilibrium there is too little divestiture these inefficiencies create the opportunity for wealth enhancing divestiture motivated takeovers a key result is that only managers of targets with middle of the road asset specificity should consider the takeover threat credible these findings suggest that uniqueness of assets is an important determinant of both agency costs and takeover activity our analysis leads to several empirical predictions overwhelming empirical evidence has documented large gains in shareholder wealth that arise from takeovers jarrell brickley and netter 1988 and jensen and ruback 1983 the source of these gains has remained elusive however although takeovers are followed by some infusion of new managerial talent we have not witnessed the kind of profound post takeover restructuring of the productive activities of target firms that would readily justify the documented wealth gains a commonly observed post takeover initiative is divestiture of some of the target s lines of business bhide 1989 and bhagat shleifer and vishny 1990 what is puzzling is that if the gains from takeovers stem from the anticipation of such divestitures then why were these divestitures not undertaken by the target firm s management in the first place the purpose of this paper is to provide a possible answer to this question our focus is on the divergence in incentives between managers and shareholders with respect to divestitures of ongoing projects we show that managers might rationally decide to hang on to projects that should be divested in

class versus industry cleavages inter industry factor mobility and the politics of trade domestic political conflict has been a constant companion to international trade but the nature of that conflict has varied greatly in western democracies over the last two centuries political battles over trade policy appear to have sometimes divided societies along broad class lines and at other times split them into narrow industry based coalitions i argue that this diversity stems from historical and cross national variation in inter industry factor mobility class coalitions are more likely where factor mobility is high whereas narrow industry based coalitions are more likely where mobility is low evidence from six western economies for the last two centuries indicates that levels of factor mobility have varied historically and cross nationally in accord with industrialization and regulation this variation corresponds broadly with observable differences in the formation of trade policy coalitions

contracts intellectual property rights and multinational investment in developing countries abstract the policy debate between multinational firms favoring strong contract law and host country governments who often oppose such protection motivates the paper local agents managers learn the multinational s technology and can defect to start a rival firm contract enforcement including binding the multinational itself makes the multinational better off outcomes for the host country are more complex depending on mode switches induced by enforcement if enforcement induces the multinational to switch from exporting to local production welfare improves if local production was occurring anyway enforcement may result in the loss of rents to local agents and lower welfare

measuring the efficiency of china s regional innovation systems application of network data envelopment analysis dea chen k and guan j measuring the efficiency of china s regional innovation systems application of network data envelopment analysis dea regional studies this study applies a relational network data analysis envelopment to the systematic evaluation of the innovation efficiency of china s regional innovation systems by decomposing the innovation process into the two connecting sub processes technological development and subsequent technological commercialization the results show that only one fifth of china s regional innovation systems are operating on the empirical best practice frontier during the whole process from technological development to commercialization furthermore it is found that substantial inconsistencies exist between technological development capacity and commercialization capacity in most regional innovation systems and that downstream commercialization capacity plays a more important role in the innovation performance of regional innovation systems chen k et guan j evaluer

tariffs subsidies and welfare with endogenous policy abstract it is a well established proposition of trade theory that in the absence of directly trade related distortions or policy goals subsidies are superior to tariffs for achieving any economic or non economic objective this paper shows that once the endogeneity of the distortion or non economic objective is allowed for the welfare ranking of various policies can be reversed the particular model analyzed is one where the level of non economic objectives that have to be fulfilled itself depends on the policy tools considered to fulfill them with this arises from the public good nature of tariffs compared to subsidies

invested interests the politics of national economic policies in a world of global finance capital moves more rapidly across national borders now than it has in at least fifty years and perhaps in history this article examines the effects of capital mobility on different groups in national societies and on the politics of economic policymaking it begins by emphasizing that while financial markets are highly integrated within the developed world many investments are still quite specific with respect to firm sector or location it then argues that contemporary levels of international capital mobility have a differential impact on socioeconomic groups over the long run increased capital mobility tends to favor owners of capital over other groups in the shorter run owners and workers in specific sectors in capital exporting countries bear much of the burden of adjusting to increased capital mobility these patterns can be expected to lead to political divisions about whether or not to encourage or increase international capital market integration the article then demonstrates that capital mobility also affects the politics of other economic policies most centrally it shifts debate toward the exchange rate as an intermediate or ultimate policy instrument in this context it tends to pit groups that favor exchange rate stability against groups that are more concerned about national monetary policy autonomy and therefore less concerned about exchange rate stability similarly it tends to drive a wedge between groups that favor an appreciated exchange rate and groups that favor a depreciated one these divisions have important implications for such economic policies as european monetary and currency union the dollar yen exchange rate and international macroeconomic policy coordination