Analysis of the primary information sectors of Korea and Japan using computable general equilibrium models

Short-run computable general equilibrium models for Korea and Japan in 1980 are used to probe the relative attractiveness of primary information sector (henceforth, PRIS) expansion from both an inter- and intra-country perspective. Five scenarios are modelled: increases in PRIS and ‘other’ exports, domestic demand and PRIS protection, and a shift from export to domestic demand based development. The models do not reflect the ‘real’ behaviour of the two economies but are aimed at assessing the effects of differences in economic structures. The results reinforce and extend those obtained in previous input-output studies. The comparison of sectoral impacts suggests that PRIS expansion is more attractive the ‘rest of economy’ expansion, in both economies. Moreover, a general domestic demand increase produces relatively stronger growth in PRIS than in ‘other’ output. The results also indicate that Korea has a ‘structural advantage’ for PRIS expansion compared to Japan. Lastly, the Japanese economy seems much better suited than the Korean economy for a shift in development strategy.     

The First and Second Stage Pass‐through of Exchange Rates: A Developing Country Perspective

This paper investigates the validity of the conventional wisdom that, unlike in developed countries, exchange rate pass‐through (ERPT) should be ‘complete’ for developing economies. To test this hypothesis, we construct new variables as well as original data sets, which are not readily available in the literature, and employ an alternative error correction model technique for a typical small open developing economy—Bangladesh. The transmission of exchange rate movements to import prices is found to be ‘complete’; however, the ‘second stage pass‐through’ is ‘partial’ both in the short and long run. The response of traded goods prices to exchange rate shocks is found to be significant and larger in the long run compared with the short run. Trade liberalization is also a significant phenomenon for ERPT. The analysis has wider applicability to other small open economies.     

Institutional economic theory: the old versus the new

The object of this paper is to make some limited comparisons between the ‘new’ institutionalism of Williamson, Schotter, Hayek and others and the ‘old’ institutionalism, particularly of Veblen. It is argued that a fundamental feature of the ‘new’ institutionalism in which it contrasts with the ‘old’ is its close attachment to the idea of the abstract individual of classic liberal ideology. This attachment is found even in those minority subsets of ‘new’ institutionalists who are hostile to promarket policies, or non-neoclassical in matters of theory. Consequently, ‘old’ institutionalist warnings against proceeding on such individualistic assumptions should not be ignored, despite the value of much ‘new’ institutionalist analysis.     

Estimating the effect of the EMU on current account balances: A synthetic control approach

The European sovereign debt crisis wrought major political and economic damage on the European Monetary Union (EMU). This led to a reassessment of the pre-crisis period of economic growth and stability in the EMU, shifting attention to the macroeconomic imbalances that emerged between member states, especially those in current account balances. This paper uses macroeconomic data on OECD economies and a new statistical approach for causal inference in observational studies—the synthetic control method—to estimate the effect of the EMU on the current account balances of individual member states. This ‘counterfactuals’ approach provides strong evidence that the introduction of the EMU was responsible for the divergence in current account balances among member states in the run-up to the euro crisis. The results suggest that the EMU effect operated through multiple channels and that fundamental changes to the institutional framework of the EMU may be required to safeguard the currency union against a reemergence of dangerous external imbalances in the future.     

Optimal incentives to reduce transboundary emissions: Theory and empirical illustration to sulphur emissions in Austria and (former) Czechoslovakia

The observation that only one out of 14 tons of sulphur compounds immissions in Austria originates from Austrian sources highlights the contribution of transboundary pollution (predominantly from Eastern Europe). Therefore, further abatement in Austria has only a marginal impact but is very costly given the already high Austrian abatement standards. Thus, scientists and politicians conclude that it is in the rich countries' (e.g., Austria, Germany and the Scandinavian countries) own interest to support environmental protection in the former centrally planned economies that are apparently less concerned about environmental harms and risks. However, the proposed policies lead to a crowding out of the recipient country's own abatement investments. In order to mitigate such strategic behaviour, which is possible due to asymmetric information, we apply the principal-agent theory to derive optimal incentives. These incentives are in stark contrast to actual policy proposals, in particular, no subsidy should be paid if the neighbouring and polluting country does not care sufficiently about environment. Indeed, the empirical application shows that only sufficient environmental concern in Czechoslovakia warrants subsidies from Austria.We acknowledge discussions with Markus Amann and Gary Brennand and in particular, the very constructive comments from three anonymous referees.     

Shortage and currency substitution in transition economies: Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Romania

This paper examines currency substitution in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Romania during the end of central planning and transition to market economies. Before liberalization, central European economies faced increasing shortage and repressed inflation in the official sector. Households held substantial wealth in real assets and foreign currency. Furthermore, part of their savings was held as hunting money against potential opportunities to buy in bulk at bargain prices in official stores or pay a premium price on the black market. The shift from centrally-planned to market economies is modeled with a shortage variable. Foreign currency demand and consumption functions are estimated by the Johansen procedure. Environmental constraints play a key role in interpreting estimates. The official sector shortage is an important determinant of foreign currency demand in each country.     

Money,Investment and Consumption: Keynes's Macroeconomics Rethought

The dominant supply-side foundation for explanations of the growth potential of an economy is losing its persuasive power in the face of persistent losses in output and employment experienced by mature economies in the aftermath of the financial crisis. There is now an opening for eclectic approaches that consider the interaction between supply-side and demand-side factors in shaping macroeconomic outcomes. In this paper, we develop a model that reflects such an approach to interpreting differential productivity growth over the long run, and then present empirical results for several countries. On the supply-side, the model considers the linkage between the intensity and efficacy of the accumulation process and the gains of productivity in terms of a Kaldorian Technical Progress Function. Then, drawing on the Evsey Domar's Keynesian notion of dynamic equilibrium as the growth rate that reconciles additions to capacity with the absorption of aggregate output by demand, we derive a locus for a ‘Domar equilibrium path’. Imbalances caused by excess aggregate supply or demand, and by the effects of ‘shocks’ are presented and discussed using a simple graphical framework. In the empirical analysis, an error-correction model is applied to the fundamental relationship between the rate of growth of product per work-hour and the rate of capital accumulation. The results suggest that the differences in productivity growth among countries are can be explained in terms of the efficiency of their ‘accumulation paths’.     

The impact from changes in stock market valuations on investment: new economy versus old economy

This paper investigates whether there is a different impact from changes in ‘new’ and ‘old’ economy stock valuations on private investment for seven OECD economies. A vector autoregressive model is estimated for each individual country, using quarterly data over the period 1990–2000. It is found that the impact from changes in valuations of new economy stocks to investment is roughly the same in North America and in the United Kingdom as in continental Europe. By contrast, the impact from changes in old economy stock valuations on investment is, in general, larger in North America and in the United Kingdom than in continental Europe. Finally, the results suggest that in continental Europe the impact on investment from changes in the valuation of new economy stocks is bigger than for old economy stocks, whereas for North America and the United Kingdom, the impact is more similar.     

Some indicators of multinational domination of national economies: analysis for the UK and other developed countries

The paper starts by giving an overview of the foreign direct investment position, relative to the size of the domestic economy, for major developed western economies. It then develops the view that, in assessing the full impact of foreign direct investment on national economies, a global approach should be considered: such approach stresses the relevance of multinational spread of activities and the need to consider the cumulative effect of both outward and inward direct investment. This leads to the introduction of a ‘multinational domination ratio’ for national economies and to estimates of it for some main industrialized western economies over a 20-year period. A first attempt to use this global approach in order to assess the possible impact of UK foreign direct investment (both inward and outward) on trade leads to the computation of elasticities of trade with respect to foreign direct investment.     

The Stability of Monetary Unions: Lessons from the Breakup of Czechoslovakia

In 1993, Czechoslovakia experienced a two-step breakup. On January 1, the country disintegrated as a political union, while preserving an economic and monetary union. Then, the Czech–Slovak monetary union collapsed on February 8. This paper analyzes the economic background of the two breakups from the perspective of the optimum currency area literature. The main finding is that the Czech and Slovak economies were vulnerable to asymmetric economic shocks, such as those induced by the economic transition. In particular, the stability of Czechoslovakia was undermined by the low correlation of permanent output shocks, low labor mobility, and higher concentration of heavy and military industries in Slovakia. J. Comp. Econom., December 1999, 27(4), pp. 753–781. Center for European Integration Studies (ZEI), University of Bonn, Walter-Flex-Strasse 3, 53113 Bonn, Germany, and Center for Economic Research, Tilburg University, Netherlands; Academia Istropolitana Nova, Bratislava, Slovakia, Central European University, Nador u. 9, 1051 Budapest, Hungary, and Center for European Integration Studies (ZEI), University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany; Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS), Stumpergasse 56, 1060 Vienna, Austria.     

An appraisal of Piero Sraffa's 'The Laws of Returns under Competitive Conditions'

The paper proposes a new interpretation of Sraffa's 1926 Economic Journal article, ‘The Laws of Returns under Competitive Conditions’, according to which the latter derives from the same strategy of research which underlies its 1925 Italian precursor, ‘Sulle relazioni fra costo e quantità prodotta’. Sraffa tested the explanatory power of a Marshallian monopolistic partial equilibrium model and concluded that that model is able to treat one source of variable returns (firm-internal economies); but this articulation of Marshall‘s theory does not substantially improve on the trade-off between logical consistency and empirical relevance which afflicted the theory in its whole.     

Policy assessment and simulation of actor orientation for sustainable development

Understanding, assessing, and simulating behavior requires knowledge of the precepts that are explicitly or implicitly orienting behavior. Human actors can be viewed as (conscious) self-organizing systems attempting to remain viable in a diverse environment containing other self-organizing systems (other human actors, organisms, ecosystems, etc.), all driven by their own viability (sustainability) interests. These fundamental system interests, or basic orientors, have emerged in response to general environmental properties and are therefore identical across self-organizing systems: existence, effectiveness, freedom of action, security, adaptability, coexistence. Even in simulated actors learning to ‘survive’ in a difficult environment, the basic orientors emerge in the (simulated) evolutionary process — but different actors may evolve into different ‘cultural types’ with different orientor emphasis. Since balanced attention to all basic orientors is crucial for viability, the set of orientors can be used to derive indicators that facilitate comprehensive viability and sustainability assessments. The paper outlines the theoretical approach of ‘orientation theory’ and its application to the assessment and simulation of sustainable development issues. The formal approach of mapping indicators on basic orientors and assessing sustainability dynamics is illustrated using Worldwatch indicator time series. In an actor simulation this approach is used to successfully guide a small global model onto a sustainable path with high ‘quality of life’.     

Monetary Expressions of Labour Time and Market Prices: Theory and Evidence from China,Japan and Korea

This article presents estimates of labour values and prices of production following two approaches: the first is based on the classical and Marxian theory of value and distribution; the second on the so-called ‘new solution’ to the ‘transformation problem’ and its variant, the Temporary Single-System Interpretation (TSSI). The major advantage of the latter approach is its simplicity, along with the relatively low data requirements. Our empirical findings from the economies of China, Japan and South Korea suggest that both approaches give estimates of labour values and prices of production which are extremely close to each other as well as to actual market prices. On further examination, however, we conclude that our empirical findings are absolutely consistent with the theoretical requirements of the classical approach and contradict those of the TSSI.     

Automation,markets, and scale: can flexible niching modernize US manufacturing

The nimble use of programmable automation to permit small- and medium-sized manufacturing firms, individually and in concert, to create and respond to growing ‘niche’ markets has been held up as a key to the revitaization of mature industrial regions and, by extension, developed national market economies. Are formerly mass markets indeed becoming more fragmented, more ‘nichified’? If so, is the trend a structural, fundamental one, reflecting changing consumer tastes and/or the eclipse of scale economies as determinants of industrial structure? Or is the apparent success of niche-focused producers a corollary of growing income inequality and its impact on the structure of consumption? As for the supply side of the phenomenon, are small- and medium-sized firms closing their productivity gap with large, mass producers? Or is ‘nimble niching’ instead part of a US productivity problem rooted in excessive industrial dualism? Can one imagine a progressive type of dualism, in which specialization rather than wage differentials drives the division of tasks among different kinds of firms? If so, can and should public policy help such a regime to emerge?     

Market failure and the existence of the state: a restatement and critique

In this article the ‘market failure’ approach to the existence of the state in market economies is restated and generalized in terms of transaction costs economizing. This approach is then criticized in that it asserts the pre-existence of societal consensus regarding efficiency versus distribution. In the presence of ex-ante distributional inequalities I suggest that distribution is a more plausible determinant of the existence and functions of the capitalist state, both theoretically and empirically. The possibility has implications on the notion of state neutrality, and on viewing the market as the ‘natural’ means of allocating resources. It also questions the very need for the existence of the market.     

The New Economics of Labor Migration: Beware of Neoclassicals Bearing Gifts

Abstract

Until the emergence of the New Economics of Labor Migration (NELM) in the 1980s, migration scholars were largely divided into two main theoretical camps, viz. the neoclassical and historical-structural approaches to migration. Against this background, the NELM presented itself as a theoretical ‘third way’ between the two latter approaches, and purported to reconcile agency and structure in a way previously unachieved by either of them. While those pretensions gained a fair amount of acceptance and popularity, this paper argues that they are fundamentally misleading, and that the NELM is little more than a slightly more sophisticated avatar of the neoclassical approach to migration, whose fundamental weaknesses it has not, and cannot, shed. This paper further argues that, in so doing, the NELM effectively constitutes migration theory's own instance of economics imperialism, i.e. the attempt to advance the fundamental tenets of neoclassical economics (methodological individualism and the assumption of optimizing rationality) within the context of the study and interpretation of various social phenomena. In order to put forth these arguments, this paper provides a summary presentation of the standard neoclassical theory of migration, the historical-structural heterodoxy and the NELM; highlights why it is that the NELM should be regarded as a ‘reworked’ version of the neoclassical theoretical framework and discusses its inception in the context of the ‘information-theoretic revolution’ in economics; and argues for a new and improved ‘historical-structural synthesis’ as a more satisfactory alternative to both the NELM and the standard neoclassical theory.     

Minutes of Spring Council Meeting, 1966, of the Catholic Economic Association

Alongside neo-classical supply-side analysis, there was the emergence in the 1980s of a new strand of anlysis seeking to develop a social-institutional perspective on the supply-side of modern industrial economies. This paper contrasts the views of labor market ‘flexibility’ provided by neo-classical analysts and supporters of deregulation with those of the Flexible Specialization and Diversified Quality Production theorists and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Flexible Specialization in comparison to its main ‘institutionalist’ rival. It concludes that the anlysis of ‘supply-side institutionalism’ and the evidence provided by important empirically based studies, suggests that public policy directed towards: optimizing job training, promoting employee participation and inter-firm co-operation, and restricting the ability of firms to indulge in short-termism will be most productive in promoting the cause of socially progressive industrial production and ‘goodwork’.     

新古典经济学在中国转型实验中的作用有限

“华盛顿共识”和“休克疗法”是新古典宏观经济学派反凯恩斯革命的新浪潮。他们否认大萧条的基本教训,无视历史的多样性和经济的复杂性。他们自上而下设计的自由化与私有化政策,导致苏东(前苏联和东欧)经济在过去十余年间的大幅下跌。中国和苏东转型实验的比较研究,促使我们重新检验经济学的基本问题,例如均衡学派与非均衡演化学派关于经济波动本质的争论。转型萧条的惨重代价,使我们加深理解新古典经济学的误区,例如价格的线性供求理论、预算软约束理论、宏观经济的微观基础理论,以及新制度经济学的趋同理论。中国基于学习、创新和分散试验的新经验,将使经济学超越均衡优化的古典规范,去探索非均衡演化的复杂经济学。     

Industrial structure and jobless growth in transition economies

When does employment growth mirror aggregate growth? Applying a two sector model, where productivity growth differs across sectors of production, this article is concerned with a feature characterising a number of transition economies: a divergence between production and employment growth. In our framework the industrial structure that allows employment growth to mirror output growth is endogenous, and related to a number of industry- and economy-wide characteristics. The article shows how the critical industrial structure necessary for avoiding ‘jobless growth’ is context-specific, questioning a ‘one size fits all’ policy approach when aiming to fulfil the Europe 2020 Strategy.     

An empirical analysis of rural-urban migration in less developed economies

This paper presents maximum likelihood estimates on the impact of ‘Green Revolution’ technology, farm mechanization and tenurial change on rural-urban migration in less developed economies. Its principal substantive contribution lies in its emphasis on ‘push factors’ as formulated by ‘village-end’ variables.