Land use rights,market transitions,and labour policy change in China (1980–84)

This paper provides a systematic analysis of the way shifts in property utilization rights in China induced another sequence of institutional changes that led to the rise of rural–urban labour migration from 1980 to 1984, a critical period in the country’s market transition. The paper shows that the 1980s’ Household Responsibility System (HRS), which brought family farming back from the communal system, endowed rural households not only with land use rights, but also with de facto labour allocation rights. These shifts in property relations promoted a growth in agricultural market size as well as the emergence of intraprovincial non‐hukou rural–urban migration, which may have made labour retention policies such as the small township strategy ineffective, and may have given the government an incentive to deregulate its subsequent labour market policy.     

Cultural globalisation, institutional diversity and the unequal accumulation of intellectual capital

National economies used to be characterised by cultural standardisationand social protection. Globalisation pushes cultural standardisationbeyond the boundaries of national states and induces a globaldilution of the standards of social protection. At the sametime, if national economies specialise according to their comparativeinstitutional advantage, global economic integration may helppromote institutional diversity and variety in welfare policies.However, the institution of a global system of intellectualproperty rights may seriously limit the ‘biodiversity’of capitalism and imply a global revenge of a new internationalform of Taylorism. The overall result may be a very unequalaccumulation of intellectual capital. Paradoxically, the modernglobal economy may end up sharing some aspects of the agrariansocieties that have been displaced by modern nation states.     

Competing at the frontier: The changing role of technology policy in Singapore's economic strategy

For an economy competing at the global frontier, an innovation-based growth strategy requires a well-developed technological infrastructure, a set of capabilities-focused technology policies, as well as an institutional environment that stimulates innovation and entrepreneurship. This paper examines the role played by science and technology policy in an economy's transition to an innovation-based growth strategy. We discuss the challenges governments face as they restructure economic institutions to deepen R&D capabilities and encourage technology creation. We review Singapore's experience in this regard and assess its ongoing efforts to remake itself to compete at the global frontier.     

Regional Challenges to Globalisation: Perspectives from Southern Africa

This article examines the effectiveness of private transnational regulation of labour standards/rights in the clothing industry. It adopts three objectives. First, the study focuses on national states in developing countries, explaining their lack of enforcement of labour law and the suppression of labour rights. Second, the article examines the effectiveness of transnational regulatory networks (TRNs) in raising labour standards/rights in producer countries. We conclude that, in a fragmented and highly competitive global industry, existing TRNs cannot ensure labour decent standards/rights. Third, we investigate the reasons for their limited effectiveness. We empirically investigate the conditions and rights of labour in the clothing industries of China and Turkey. In the case of Turkey, we are able to explain the lack of effectiveness of TRNs by drawing on interviews with a variety of actors in firms and networks.     

Long-term care insurance: a private sector challenge

Powerful demographic and economic forces are fueling the looming crisis related to providing medical and social services for the elderly. However, the American public remains largely oblivious to the devastating implications of the need for institutional or home-based care among senior citizens. Employers have a key role to play in resolving the situation by evaluating competing long-term care policies, endorsing the program of a strong carrier, assisting in offering the policies through payroll deduction and educating employees on the importance of selecting policy riders that best meet their evolving needs.     

Factor mobility and fiscal policy in the EU: policy issues and analytical approaches

Increased integration of labour and capital markets creates significant challenges for the welfare states of modern Europe. Taxation of capital and labour that finances extensive programmes of cash and in-kind redistribution creates incentives for capital owners and workers to locate in regions where they obtain favourable fiscal treatment. Competition among countries for mobile resources constrains their ability to alter the distribution of income and may lead to reductions in the size and scope of redistributive policies. Mobility of labour and capital is imperfect, however. Recent trends indicate that labour and capital are neither perfectly mobile nor perfectly immobile, but rather adjust gradually to market conditions and economic policies. This paper presents an explicitly dynamic analysis showing that governments can achieve some redistribution when it is costly for factors of production to relocate. As the costs of factor mobility fall, however, the effectiveness of redistributive policies is more limited, and governments have weaker incentives to pursue them. Liberalized immigration policies, EU enlargement, and other steps that promote integration of the factors markets of Western Europe with those of surrounding regions thus present a challenge to policy-makers if they also wish to maintain fiscal systems with extensive redistribution.     

Labour markets, social justice and economic efficiency

In conventional economic theory, a trade-off supposedly existsbetween social justice and economic efficiency. In reality,market and other economic institutions are dominated by powerrelations, so that the sponsorship of social justice is a productivefactor. Neo-liberal economic policies, by lifting the constraintson the exercise of unequal power, increased injustice and triggereda downward economic and social spiral. Reversing this requiresa revolution in economic theory and policy focused on full employment,the working of labour markets, the organisation of work, andhousehold organisation, social provision and self-sufficiency.     

Growth effects of structural reforms in Southern Europe: the case of Greece,Italy, Spain and Portugal

This paper develops a semi-endogenous growth model for analysing the intertemporal effects of structural reforms in Southern European countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece). The model follows the product-variety paradigm in a semi-endogenous setting, and includes a disaggregation of labour into different skill groups. We use a comprehensive set of structural indicators in order to calibrate the model to important macroeconomic ratios and levels of productivity and employment. Our results show that structural reforms yield significant economic gains in the medium and long run. The results point to the importance of product market reforms and labour market related education and tax reforms as the most promising areas of structural policy interventions. This paper also argues for placing more emphasis on education policy which is key in upgrading the labour force, especially in these countries where the share of low skilled labour is among the highest in the euro area.     

Environmental Ramsey Policy and Sustainable Balanced Growth

We study the link among economic growth, renewable natural resources and environmental policy. The context is a general equilibrium model of endogenous growth and environmental policy. We examine the conditions under which sustainable growth is both feasible and optimal, where the latter takes the form of second‐best optimal environmental Ramsey policies. We also investigate the conditions for an inverted U‐shaped relation between environmental policies and sustainable growth. We show that the combination of environmental production externalities and second‐best optimal Ramsey policies can lead to both local and global indeterminacy. The introduction of environmental policy, although well‐intentioned and designed to correct for market inefficiencies, triggers an expectations coordination problem; thereby differences in environmental quality and economic growth can be explained among countries with the same fundamentals.     

A South African Variety of Capitalism?

This paper explores the South African political economy through the lens of a variety of capitalism (VoC) approach. It argues that attempts were made in the early post-apartheid period to forge a more social-democratic and co-ordinated variety of capitalism, but that this floundered as the government adopted neoliberal macroeconomic policies against the wishes of organised labour, and as black economic empowerment policies further undermined an already racially-fraught business sector. Organised labour was able to push for, and maintain, protective labour market policies – but this came at the cost of growing policy inconsistency notably with regard to trade liberalisation which, in the presence of growing labour-market protection, has exacerbated South Africa's unemployment crisis. Unemployment remains intractable (and with it inequality) and corruption/patrimonialism appears to be a growing problem.     

Expectations,information, and migration: the case of the West Bank and Gaza

"This study evaluates the determinants of Palestinian migration from the West Bank and Gaza. Data are employed for the post-1967 period of Israeli rule to specify and test competing models as well as the strucure of expectations in the migration decision. Results of the analysis support a simple static expectation formulation, as is consistent with much of the short-term, low mobility cost migration between the West Bank and Jordan. Findings further point to the importance of various Israeli-Palestinian economic and political economic interactions in the determination of this controversial movement of population, including those associated with employment opportunity for Palestinian labour in Israel, elements of Israeli West Bank settlement policy and changes in local standard of living. Various policy implications of the research are indicated."     

Liquidity traps, learning and stagnation

We examine global economic dynamics under learning in a New Keynesian model in which the interest-rate rule is subject to the zero lower bound. Under normal monetary and fiscal policy, the intended steady state is locally but not globally stable. Large pessimistic shocks to expectations can lead to deflationary spirals with falling prices and falling output. To avoid this outcome we recommend augmenting normal policies with aggressive monetary and fiscal policy that guarantee a lower bound on inflation. In contrast, policies geared toward ensuring an output lower bound are insufficient for avoiding deflationary spirals.     

Agricultural subsidy policies fail to deal with child labour under agricultural dualism: What could be the alternative policies?

We provide a theoretical explanation why agricultural subsidy policies are likely to fail to ensure simultaneous eradication of the incidence of child labour and improvement in the well-being of the poor working families in terms of a three-sector general equilibrium model with child labour and agricultural dualism. We identify both demand and supply side effects of any policy intervention on child labour. We also suggest two alternative policies, a scheme of direct cash transfer to poor people and economic growth through foreign direct investment (FDI), both of which would be effective in achieving these twin objectives of a welfare government.     

后经济危机时期我国经济政策的选择:基于历史经验与现实的思考

本文基于上世纪30年代以来几次经济危机后美国所采取的不同的经济政策,研究了后经济危机时期的政策选择对国家经济结构、经济增长及综合实力的影响.认为在后危机时代美国的政策选择对其综合实力的提升具有重要作用.同时,基于对各国次贷危机时采取的经济政策的现实思考,本文提出中国后经济危机时代应采用的经济政策,主要包括调整升级产业结构和转变经济发展方式、及时退出扩张性的财政和货币政策、提高城乡居民收入与构建福利国家等.     

Disability in Italian households: income,poverty and labour market participation

This article studies the economic effects of disabled members on Italian households, with the aim of identifying a suitable target group for welfare policies. Survey of Households Income and Wealth data for the year 2000 is used. Preliminary results show significant differences in levels of income and poverty diffusion to the detriment of households with disabled members. We propose an exogenous explanation: the replacement ratio between disability benefits and expected labour income shows that disability benefits do not compensate the potential incomes of the disabled person and of the possible carer, except in households with severe socioeconomic disadvantages. We also propose an endogenous explanation: applying a logit model we show that the labour market participation of the possible carer is reduced in households with disabled persons. In order to increase the income of the households with disabled members, policy recommendations include the provision of care services and structural policies to improve employment, income and educational opportunities for households at greatest disadvantage.     

Fiscal expansion, monetary policy, interest rate risk premia, and wage reactions

We examine the macroeconomic implications of fiscal policy in a small open economy, with emphasis on the interactions between fiscal, monetary and labour market policies. The paper uses the NBNZ-DEMONZ macroeconometric model. Novel features of the model are that it includes an endogenous interest rate risk premium (IRRP), and forward-looking monetary and fiscal policy reaction functions which capture the essence of New Zealand's Reserve Bank and Fiscal Responsibility Acts. The most important empirical result is that the postulated IRRP, proxying financial market mechanisms, can contribute at least as much as the monetary policy reaction function to maintaining price stability. Also of significance are that an income tax cuts package shows more damped real GDP and underlying inflation paths than does an expenditure increases equivalent; and that the inflationary and real sector impacts of a personal income tax cut package depend heavily on how the cut is `shared' between firms and workers. The nature and interdependence of monetary and fiscal policies and labour market conditions are therefore crucial to the macroeconomic outcomes.     

Geographically explicit global modeling of land-use change, carbon sequestration, and biomass supply

This study aims to determine whether carbon sequestration policies could present a significant contribution to the global portfolio of climate change mitigation options. The objective is to model the effects of policies designed to induce landowners to change land use and management patterns with a view to sequester carbon or to reduce deforestation. The approach uses the spatially explicit Dynamic Integrated Model of Forestry and Alternative Land Use (DIMA) to quantify the economic potential of global forests. The model chooses which of the land-use processes (afforestation, reforestation, deforestation, or conservation and management options) would be applied in a specific location, based on land prices, cost of forest production and harvesting, site productivity, population density, and estimates of economic growth. The approach is relevant in that it (1) couples a revised and updated version of the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios with the dynamic development of climate policy implications through integration with the Model for Energy Supply Strategy Alternatives and their General Environmental Impact (MESSAGE); (2) is spatially explicit on a 0.5° grid; and (3) is constrained by guaranteeing food security and land for urban development. As outputs, DIMA produces 100-year forecasts of land-use change, carbon sequestration, impacts of carbon incentives (e.g., avoided deforestation), biomass for bioenergy, and climate policy impacts. The modeling results indicate that carbon sequestration policies could contribute to a significant part of the global portfolio of efficient climate mitigation policies, dependent upon carbon prices.     

A cost function analysis of import demand for Nigeria

The article uses a translog cost function to examine the substitution relations among capital, labour and imports. The results show that capital has a substitute relation with domestic labour and import. However, labour and import have complementary relationship. The implication of this finding is that liberalization policies, if pursued vigorously, could impart positively on the demand for labour. In addition, it suggests that economic growth could be enhanced through trade liberalization.     

美日欧发展高新技术产业的比较研究

在全球竞争目益激烈的背景下,美日欧不断调整完善科技创新战略,加强重点领域研发,大力发展高新技术产业,培育新的经济增长点,以便在竞争中占据有利地位。通过从九大方面,包括产业发展战略模式、产业发展重点领域、法律保障、科技管理体制、科技投入、产学研合作模式、政府在科技成果转化和商业化中的作用、技术创新财税支持政策、科技人才政策等,对美日欧发展高新技术产业进行分析和比较．以期了解美日欧在发展高新技术产业中的做法和特点,使我国在发展高新技术产业中有所借鉴。     

The Climate Policy Hold‐Up: Green Technologies,Intellectual Property Rights,and the Abatement Incentives of International Agreements

The success of global climate policies over the coming decades depends on the diffusion of “green” technologies. Using a simple model, we highlight a conflict between international environmental agreements (IEAs) on emissions reductions and international systems of intellectual property rights (IPRs) on abatement technologies. When IPRs are strong and global, IEA signatories anticipate rent extraction by innovators. This hold‐up effect reduces abatement, potentially to levels below those of non‐signatories, and it reduces the number of signatories to self‐enforcing IEAs. We explore policy options that respect existing property rights, but avoid the strategic interaction between signatories to an IEA and innovators.