Economic sanctions and trade diversions in Sudan

The latest episode of the armed conflict between Northern and Southern Sudan erupted in 1983 and ended with the signing of the ＂Comprehensive Peace Agreement （CPA）＂ in 2005. The CPA allows for a referendum on independence for South Sudan in 2011. A similar scenario is possible for Darfur, where an armed conflict broke out in 2003 over demands for greater decentralization and development in the region. The peace agreement between the central government and the Eastern Sudan region continues to be fragile, and the risk of escalation of across the border spillovers of conflicts with Uganda and Chad persists. The U.S., EU, among other global players, is putting pressure on the Khartoum government to change its policies. Economic sanctions are among the tools used by the U.S. government while encouraging others follow suit. This paper investigates the response of the Sudanese economy to eliminating trade flows with the EU in the first phase and with East-Asian countries in the second. It discusses the changes in the macro-indicators, trade variables and welfare measures that would result. Moreover, it assesses the potential trade diversion and resource reallocation due to sanctions in each phase. To simulate these scenarios, detailed economic databases for Sudan, EU, East-Asian region, MENA, COMESA and the rest of the world are needed. For this purpose, GTAP Africa database and the standard GTAP model are employed. The 57 sectors of Africa database are aggregated to ten sectors including： grains and crops, livestock and meat products, mining and extraction, processed food, textiles and clothing, light manufacturing, heavy manufacturing, utilities and construction, transport and communication and other services. Moreover, the database regions are aggregated to six including Sudan, the EU, East Asia, MENA, COMESA and the Rest of the world. Results show that Sudanese trade reallocates to Asia in the first phase and to COMESA and MENA regions in the second. Sanctions exact a devastating toll on the Sudanese economy： GDP declines, trade shrinks and welfare deteriorates. The deterioration in the country＇s trade is mainly in the imports side, which justifies an improvement of the country＇s balance of trade, while welfare losses are derived by a deteriorated terms of trade and allocative efficiency.     

Efficiency Gains from Liberalizing Labor Mobility

In this paper, we quantify the effect of a complete liberalization of cross‐border migration on the world GDP and its distribution across regions. We build a general equilibrium model, endogenizing bilateral migration and income disparities between and within countries. Our calibration strategy uses data on effective and potential migration to identify total migration costs and visa costs by education level. Data on potential migration reveal that the number of people in the world who have a desire to migrate is around 400 million. This number is much smaller than that predicted in previous studies, and reflects the existence of high “incompressible” migration costs. In our benchmark framework, liberalizing migration increases the world GDP by 11.5–12.5 percent in the medium term. Our robustness analysis reveals that the gains are always limited, in the range of 7.0 percent (with schooling externalities) to 17.9 percent (if network effects are accounted for).     

Dynamic linkages between tourism transportation expenditures,carbon dioxide emission,energy consumption and growth factors: evidence from the transition economies

Tourism transport profoundly affects economic growth, energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. This study is an attempt to examine the impact of international tourism transportation expenditures, energy demand, foreign direct investment inflows, trade openness and urban population on carbon dioxide emission and per capita income for the panel of 11 transition Economies, over the period of 1995–2013. The results show that per capita income escalates the carbon dioxide emission (CO₂), which deteriorates the natural environment. International tourism receipts and international tourism expenditures for travel items are associated with the intensifying CO₂ emission and per capita income in the region. The study confirmed the energy-led emissions, FDI-led emissions, FDI-led growth, income-led emissions, income-led energy demand, trade-led growth and trade-led energy demand. The causality results further substantiate the the tourism-led growth and FDI hypothesis in the region. Finally, the variance decomposition analysis confirmed the following results, that is, (i) per capita income is the contributor that least influences CO₂ emissions, (ii) urban population influences per capita income and (iii) international tourism transportation expenditures will influence CO₂ emissions and per capita income for the next 10-year period.     

Work-Family conflict and turnover intentions: A study comparing China and U.S. hotel employees

Employee turnover continues to be a major problem within the hotel industry. This survey-based study examined the relationship between work-family conflict and turnover intentions among hotel employees in both China and the U.S., with an additional emphasis on female employees. While the results do confirm that work-family conflict is positively related with turnover intentions, work-family conflict is more strongly related to turnover intentions among males than females. The relationship is also stronger in Chinese hotel female employees than their U.S. counterparts. Results demonstrated that neither marital status nor parenthood influences the relationship between work-family conflict and turnover intentions among hotel female employees. Management implications and future research directions are provided.     

善用大数据“资产”

正成功的关键因素是首先要把数据看作是资产——作为建立价值主张和商业模式的基础;其次,努力培养利用大数据潜能的各种能力,或许最重要的是要用创新的方式打破现有的商业模式"创新,究其本质,意味着迈出一大步,做出重大变革……实际上,创新之前最佳的‘做事方式’在创新之后就不再是最佳方式了。"20世纪著名经济学家约瑟夫·熊彼德的话,反映出大数据的潜能,它可以创造性地破坏现有的商业模式。世界数据总量的90%是在过去两年产生的,预计全球商业数据量每1.2年就翻1倍,2020年产生的数据量将是2009年的44倍。     

Cost-efficiency and financial and geographical characteristics of banking sectors in the MENA countries

We utilize the translog stochastic frontier model to estimate the cost-efficiency levels for conventional and Islamic, Cooperation Council (GCC) and non-GCC banks in the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries. The estimated cost-efficiency averages around 77% for those MENA banks, but with slight changes in this score for the individual countries. The results also show that the banks in the GCC countries are the most efficient in the region and the efficiency scores for the conventional and Islamic banks are similar. Finally, the recent financial crisis seems to have a slight impact on the observed efficiency scores of those banks.     

Do channels of financial integration matter for FDI’s impact on growth? Empirical evidence using a panel

This paper adds to the debate on the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic growth which suggest that the link between FDI and economic growth is rather the consequence of both FDI and growth responding endogenously to economic integration. We investigate if the impact of FDI on growth is dependent on the channel of integration used to attract FDI. We use four different indexes of economic integration including Trade Openness, Chinn-Ito, and KOF and our newly constructed index of financial integration. We employ these four indexes to investigate the role played by economic integration in linking FDI and growth. We use a panel consisting of 134 developing countries and data spanning the period 1989-2017 estimated using the generalized method of moments (GMM) technique. The results show that FDI is an important determinant of growth. The results also suggest that at least some of the integration variables do matter and work as channels to attract FDI leading to growth. However, after stratifying countries by income level, we also find that integration matters mainly for high income countries. Integration variables for other income groups do not show much significance. These are interesting results and may have important policy implications.     

Entry,growth, and survival: The new learning on firm selection and industry evolution

This paper tries to shed some light on the seeming paradox posed by the findings in the industrial organization literature that (1) the bulk of firms in an industry are not only very small, but also sufficiently small so that they are operating at a sub-optimal scale of output, and (2) entrepreneurs are apparently not deterred from starting new firms even in industries where scale economies play an important role. A dynamic view of the process of firm selection and industry evolution is that new firms typically start at a very smal scale of output. Because this level of output may be sub-optimal, the firm must grow in order to survive. The empirical evidence supports such a dynamic view of the evolutionary nature of industries. Viewed through a dynamic lens, the often-observed asymmetric size distribution of firms becomes more understandable. The persistence of an asymmetric firm-size distribution skewed towards small enterprises presumably reflects a continuing process of entry into industries and not necessarily the survival of such small and suboptimal enterprises over a long period of time.     

Survival of Newly Founded Businesses: A Log-Logistic Model Approach

Based on a longitudinal database we test the "liability of adolescence" hypothesis which states that new firm hazard rates follow an inverted U-shaped pattern. That is, the hazard rate is low for the initial period; the end of adolescence is marked by a hazard maximum, from which the rate declines monotonically. We use a log-logistic model which shows that the "liability of adolescence" argument describes the hazard rates of new establishments for all two and three-digit industries fairly well. Further, the rate shows that the desegregation of industries matters, and considerable differences are found within and across two and three-digit low-, moderate- and high-tech industries. In assessing the effect of market environment conditions on risk we find that risk to be elevated in a relatively large number of two-digit low- and high-tech industries in the presence of scale economies, but it is substantially reduced in moderate-tech industries. By contrast, the hazard rate tends to be reduced for quite a large number of three-digit low-, moderate- and high-tech industries in comparison with the two-digit industries, indicating a longer adolescence. The influence of start-up size in reducing the hazard rate is apparently similar between two and three digit low-, moderate- and high-tech industries. The impact of market growth on the risk of failure is not much different for both two and three-digit low-, moderate- and high-tech industries.