Trade policy in developing countries

Development institutions are currently revising their traditional positions on the question of adequate trade policies for developing countries. Against this background the following article takes stock of the degree to which developing countries have become integrated into the world economy and considers the opportunities and risks which the integration process presents. Problems confronting national policies in less successful developing countries are then outlined which make further, efficient integration of these countries into the world economy more difficult. Finally, policies are identified which could ease further integration.     

The employment of foreigners in Western European industrial countries

Not least due to the change in overall economic conditions, the employment of foreign workers in Western Europe has in recent years become increasingly controversial. The following two articles deal with different aspects of labour migration. Heinz Werner presents a survey of policies towards foreign workers and their families in the various countries of Western Europe and discusses possible future developments. Thomas Straubhaar examines the significance of northward migration for the economies of the Southern European countries of origin.     

Trade and inequality in developing countries: a general equilibrium analysis

Developing and newly industrialized countries that have experienced the sharpest increases in wage inequality are those whose export shares have shifted towards more skill-intensive goods. We argue that this can be explained by technological catch-up. We develop this insight using a model that features both Ricardian and endowments-based comparative advantage. In this model, Southern catch-up causes production of the least skill-intensive Northern goods to migrate South (where they become the most skill-intensive Southern goods). This raises wage inequality in both the South and the North. We provide empirical evidence that strongly supports this causal mechanism: Southern catch-up exacerbates Southern inequality by redirecting Southern export shares towards more skill-intensive goods.     

Trade liberalization,production organization and informal sector of the developing countries

The paper provides an explanation of recent empirical evidence on fragmentation and the expansion of the informal sector in India. We argue that as the prospect of getting a better price in the international market increases, the producers in the formal sector act more like merchants and subcontract production activities to the producers in the informal sectors. Expanding production in the informal sector allows the firm to take advantage of a growing export market. Our theoretical model explains such organizational change in terms of allocation of monitoring effort between marketing and production. The existence of a low-wage informal sector facilitates division of labor and specialization in the formal segment.     

中国与发展中国家贸易摩擦特点与原因分析

发展中国家对我国贸易摩擦迅速增多已经成为中国近年来对外经济贸易遏到的一个突出问题。本文较为全面地剖析了发展中国家对华贸易摩擦的特点与原因,并针对性地提出了我国应对发展中国家贸易摩擦的具体对策。     

Trade relations with the Communist countries

After the Federal Republic of Germany, Japan is the second largest trade partner of the Communist countries as a whole and of the Soviet Union and the largest partner of the People’s Republic of China. It has only been in recent years that Japan gained this formidable position in the trade with the East.     

Comparing employment interviews in Latin America with other countries

This study compares job interviews (n = 11,667) in Mexico with those in the following countries: Belgium, Russia, Taiwan, and the U.S. The findings support our hypotheses, which are based on a meta-cultural framework. The results reveal that in Mexico and Taiwan women are less likely to conduct interviews. In addition, interviewers asked different questions. Outside the U.S., interviewers asked applicants about their family, marital status, and children. In Russia and Taiwan, they asked about applicants' reasons for quitting their last job. In Belgium, Russia, and Taiwan, they asked about applicants' wage and salary expectations. In Belgium and Russia, they less often asked about applicants' values, opinions, and beliefs. This study suggests that in some countries employment interviews are more than a test of job-related knowledge, skills, and abilities. This report provides a taxonomy that is useful for comparing interview questions in Latin American and other countries as well as directions for future research.     

Trade intensity and business cycle synchronization: Are developing countries any different?

Trade intensity increases the business cycle co-movement among industrial countries. Using annual information for 147 countries for the period 1960-99 we find that the impact of trade intensity on business cycle correlation among developing countries is positive and significant, but substantially smaller than that among industrial countries. Our findings suggest that differences in the responsiveness of cycle synchronization to trade integration between industrial and developing countries are explained by differences in the patterns of specialization and bilateral trade.     

Oil prices and the developing countries

Many of the present difficulties of the world economy have been blamed on the two oil-price explosions of the 1970s. Professor Chichilnisky shows that, at least in the case of the oil-importing developing countries, the negative effects have been overestimated. In fact, in some respects the oil exporters among the developing countries fared worse than the oil importers.     

Antitrust and Liberalization in developing countries

A number of developing countries around the world have recently liberalized once highly protected regimes through privatization programs and by reducing impediments to market trade. Many of these countries have adopted an antitrust policy as an integral component of their market reforms. Recent assessments of trade liberalization programs show disappointing results. Such outcomes contradict long-held beliefs that free trade is sufficient to generate competitive outcomes in small economies. Antitrust advocates view these underwhelming achievements as further justification for extensive antitrust enforcement. We argue instead that the failure of liberalization suggests not the correctness but the inappropriateness of the enactment of antitrust policies. The continuance of market power after liberalization is due primarily to lobbying activities by producer interest groups to establish nontariff barriers rather than to collusive practices among producers. Interest groups find cartelization and rent seeking as substitutes in raising prices above competitive levels. Accordingly, the establishment of antitrust serves to improve the relative attractiveness of seeking nontariff barriers. Antitrust policies are ineffective in challenging the emergence of nontariff barriers and thus may have the unintended consequence of promoting anticompetitive activities.     

Tourism promotion in developing countries

When announcing its ideas on development policy in the Second Development Decade which began in 1971, the Federal Government said that it “wishes to promote tourism in sultable less developed countries (LDCs) through improvement of the infrastructure, especially transport, provision of accommodation and training of the required personnel, making use of development banks in suitable cases”.     

State enterprises in developing countries

The role of state-owned enterprises in the development process in the Third World is the subject of serious controversy. This article attempts to test empirically whether there is a relationship between the importance of public production in developing countries and their overall economic performance.     

Agricultural policy in developing countries

Development failures are less the result of “natural” short-comings, but are caused instead by false conceptions and by the misapplication of experience from highly-developed economic systems to countries in the initial development stage. The following article points out the pit-falls and discusses some alternative strategies.