Similarity and Competition in the Agri-Food Trade among European Mediterranean Countries

ABSTRACT

Using Eurostat and OECD data on agri-food exports, this article provides a picture of the evolution in the similarity between Italian and other European Mediterranean countries’ exports, before and after the recent financial crisis. Considering different indexes, the similarity is somewhat moderate and does not vary noticeably among the indexes when considering the EU-25 market. By contrast, a strong qualitative dissimilarity is recorded in the North American market. Overall, France and Spain appear more similar to Italy and likely to compete in the same agri-food market segments. The crisis seems associated to a slight modification of the exports structure.     

Entrepreneurship,economic development,and institutional environment: evidence from OECD countries

The purpose of this article is to establish a typology of entrepreneurship for OECD countries over the 1999–2012 period. Our aim is to draw a distinction between managerial and entrepreneurial economies, to identify groups of countries with similar economic and entrepreneurial activity variables, and to determine the economic and institutional drivers of entrepreneurial activities in each group. We show that the level of development, sectoral specialization, and institutional variables related to entrepreneurship, functioning of the labor market, and openness of the country are decisive to understand differences in entrepreneurship activity across countries. Results show that the pre-crisis period, from 1999 to 2008, is a period of growth favorable to entrepreneurship. The financial crisis involved a break in entrepreneurial dynamism, with agricultural economies withstanding the financial crisis better. The 2010–2012 period of recovery is a period of a sharp slowdown in entrepreneurial activity, during which the countries that are less dependent on the financial sector proved to be the most resilient in terms of entrepreneurial activity. Nevertheless, it is the advanced knowledge economies with developed financial markets, fewer institutional regulatory constraints, and greater scope for qualitative entrepreneurship that show lower unemployment rates. These findings have important implications for the implementation of public policy in order to promote entrepreneurial activity and reduce unemployment.     

主权财富基金的总体投资趋势研究

从总体投资趋势看,近年来主权财富基金对外投资呈加速增长态势.其投资领域多元化,但对金融服务业和房地产业尤为重视,投资风格由低调沉稳趋向于风险激进;它们在国内外市场均有投资,但以国外市场为主,其中2001～2005年投资主要面向新兴市场,而2006～2008年则主要面向经济合作与发展组织发达国家,并因此引起西方国家的极大关注和质疑;受全球金融危机影响,主权财富基金一度出现大幅萎缩,部分主权资金退回国内市场,但最新交易表明,主权财富基金已再次开始把目光投向海外寻找战略性投资,以进一步实现其赢利目的.     

Structural change in OECD comparative advantage

In the post-war period, the goods composition of trade in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries has changed considerably. We analyze the evolution of comparative advantage using a detailed trade data set and a new analytical tool: the Harmonic Mass index (HM index), which enables us to identify periods of structural change. We then discuss which forces may be responsible for the main structural changes, which primarily took place in many OECD countries in the mid 1980s. The advantage of the HM analysis is that it indicates when structural breaks occur in history.     

Cultural similarities and housing market linkage: evidence from OECD countries

The subprime crisis provoked a growing study on international housing market linkage. Nevertheless, the extant literature fails to explore housing price co-movements in terms of culture and a country’s responses (e.g. housing market conditions and government participation). Employing the databases on cultural similarities, housing market conditions and government participation in 18 OECD countries over 1970–2016, this article suggests that culture similarities affect house price co-movements via information dissemination efficiency and investment conduct consistency. In addition, housing supply elasticity and government participation are able to mitigate house price contagion. Hence, to withstand external shocks, countries should pay attention to the role of cultural similarities in housing price interdependence. Moreover, it is necessary to ensure that housing supply is resilient and improve government participation.     

Cultural similarities and housing market linkage: evidence from OECD countries

The subprime crisis provoked a growing study on international housing market linkage. Nevertheless, the extant literature fails to explore housing price co-movements in terms of culture and a country’s responses (e.g. housing market conditions and government participation). Employing the databases on cultural similarities, housing market conditions and government participation in 18 OECD countries over 1970–2016, this article suggests that culture similarities affect house price co-movements via information dissemination efficiency and investment conduct consistency. In addition, housing supply elasticity and government participation are able to mitigate house price contagion. Hence, to withstand external shocks, countries should pay attention to the role of cultural similarities in housing price interdependence. Moreover, it is necessary to ensure that housing supply is resilient and improve government participation.     

International reserves and the global financial crisis

This study examines whether pre-crisis international reserve accumulations, as well as exchange rate and reserve policy decisions made during the global financial crisis, can help to explain cross-country differences in post-crisis economic performance. Our approach focuses not only on the total stock of official reserves held by countries, but also on the decisions by governments to purchase or sell reserve assets during the crisis period. We introduce new data made available through the IMF Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) Reserve Template, which allow us to distinguish interest income and valuation changes in the stock of official reserves from the actively managed component of reserves. We use this novel data to gage how (and whether) reserve accumulation policies influenced the economic and financial performance of countries during and after the global crisis. Our findings support the view that higher reserve accumulations prior to the crisis are associated with higher post-crisis GDP growth.     

The Uneven Pace of Deindustrialisation in the OECD

Throughout the OECD, the period since the 1970s saw a secular decline in manufacturing's share of GDP and a secular rise in the share of services. Despite this being a central feature of growth, the economic forces behind deindustrialisation and the reasons why its pace varied so markedly across OECD countries are not well understood. Adopting an econometric approach founded in neoclassical production theory, we provide an empirical analysis of the role of changes in relative prices, technology and factor endowments in driving changes in production structure. The speed of adjustment to changes in these determinants of production structure varies across OECD countries and is correlated with levels of employment protection.     

Economic Crises and Migration: Learning from the Past and the Present

This article considers the effects of past economic crises and cycles on migration with a view predicting the effects of the crisis of 2008–10. It then uses very recent data to test these as hypotheses. It examines the great migration to the New World in the nineteenth century (including in response to the Irish potato blight) in some detail because this was largely unhampered by changes in migration policy. It then more briefly looks at twentieth‐century experience – the 1930s, the 1970s and Asia in 1997–98. The hypotheses tested are that migration is reduced by downturns in destination countries but hardly affected by the cycle in home countries; that such downturns also lead to some return migration; that existing migrants suffer the effects of downturns more severely than natives and that although downturns may affect the timing of migration policy changes, the latter owe more to underlying secular forces than to short‐term shocks. Data from 2008–09 suggest support for each of these hypotheses.     

Does a Common Currency Promote Countries’ Growth via Trade and Tourism?

The main aim of this study is to contribute to the debate on the effects of a common currency. In particular, the impact of a common currency on growth via trade and tourism is explored for a panel dataset which includes 179 countries as destination and 30 OECD countries as origin over the period 1995–2006. This research contributes to previous work in three ways: (i) tourism is included as an additional channel for a common currency to promote growth; (ii) the heterogeneity of countries is addressed by dividing the sample into three groups of countries by income; and (iii) up‐to‐date data including the case of the euro are considered. The results obtained suggest that a common currency strengthens economic growth by promoting not only international trade but also tourism.     

Four myths and a financial crisis

The main driving force of the financial crisis of 2007‐2009 was a rapid deterioration of the trust of private agents in the quality of financial institutions. In turn, this loss of confidence entailed a sharp decline in many asset prices and brought to their knees several large financial institutions with centennial traditions. This article surveys the critical moments of the crisis, presents some of the shock‐amplifying mechanisms, and comments on the effectiveness of various policy measures. We point out four conceptual myths that did not survive this crisis. The conclusion opens the debate on what structural changes in the existing financial architecture are required to contain such crises in the future. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Learning from the “worst behaved”: Iceland's financial crisis and the Nordic comparison

This article explores how the financial crisis in 2008 could have been partially avoided by Iceland through observing the warning signs. Iceland experienced the harshest consequences from the financial crisis in the Western world, such as the total collapse of its banking sector. This article compares the prelude of Iceland's financial crisis to the Scandinavian one, less than 20 years ago, providing an understanding of the sources of the crisis and its impact. Results show that signs of overexpansion in Iceland were clear and numerous. Iceland's structural weaknesses resemble many other badly hit countries, simply more extreme. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

OECD Export Credit Agencies: Supplementing Short-Term Export Credit Insurance during the 2008 Financial Crisis

ABSTRACT

The 2008 financial crisis impacted international trade in part due to decreases in trade finance and export credit insurance. This article shows that Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member states used their public Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) to supplement the lack of private short-term export credit insurance as a means to increase trade. All OECD states, except Greece and Estonia, either increased the capacity of their ECAs to provide short-term export credit insurance, or they developed new products for this purpose. More generally, states that changed their short-term export credit insurance programs had major trading partners with defaults.     

Top income shares in OECD countries: The role of government ideology and globalisation

This paper investigates how government ideology and globalisation are associated with top income shares in 17 OECD countries over the period 1970 to 2014. We use top income shares of the World Wealth and Income Database (WID ). Globalisation is measured by the KOF index of globalisation. Static and dynamic panel model results show that the top income shares increased more under right wing governments than under left wing governments. The ideology‐induced effect was stronger when globalisation proceeded more rapidly. Globalisation was positively correlated with income shares of the upper‐middle class (P99–P90), but negatively with income shares of the rich (top 1%) in the overall sample. We show that the relationship differs between Anglo‐Saxon countries and other OECD countries. Globalisation was more pro‐rich in Anglo‐Saxon countries than in other OECD countries. Government ideology does not turn out to have a statistically significant effect on top income shares in Anglo‐Saxon countries after the 1980s, whereas ideology‐induced differences in the distributional outcomes continued in other OECD countries.     

Foreign direct investment: A strategic move toward sustainable free enterprise and economic development in Saudi Arabia

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has been viewed in many circles as one of the key drivers for economic development. Irrespective of their ideological differences, most countries around the world have been competing to attract FDI. China, for example, is a country formally characterized by communist ideology. It has been highly proactive in formulating policies amenable to FDI so much so that in 2003, China overtook the United States as the biggest recipient of FDI, having attracted U.S. $53 billion from Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries and elsewhere. In this article, an attempt is made to critically examine aspects of FDI, especially with reference to economic development in Saudi Arabia. The research study in this article reports new research findings based on a survey of Saudi managers/enterprises that highlight the current status of FDI in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In particular, the study finds that while Saudi managers generally welcome FDI into the country, at the same time, they do retain ambivalent attitudes toward its perceived benefits.     

The crisis-resilience of services trade

Much attention has been focused on the impact of the current crisis on goods trade; hardly any on its impact on services trade. Using new trade data from the USA, and more aggregate data from other OECD countries, the authors show that services trade is weathering the current crisis much better than goods trade. On the basis of new evidence from Indian services exporters, it is suggested that services trade is more robust relative to goods trade for three reasons: less cyclical demand; lesser dependence on external finance; and few explicitly protectionist measures so far taken in services.     

International Competitiveness: A Case Study of American,Swedish, and Ukrainian Forest Industries

ABSTRACT

The objectives of this article are to assess changes in the international competitiveness of the forest products industries in three countries (Sweden, the US, and Ukraine) during the years preceding, during, and after the recent economic crisis. To deepen the exploration of the three countries’ competitiveness, we propose a Cross-Country Relative Competitiveness Index. The results show that comprehensive measurement of comparative and competitive advantages is essential for determining why a given industry in a given country is doing well or badly. They also provide broad background information for subsequent, more detailed explorations of important changes and trends.     

Trade Protection During the Crisis: Does it Deter Foreign Direct Investment?

This paper looks empirically at the implications that protectionist measures implemented during the current crisis may have had for a country’s ability to attract foreign direct investment. The research utilises data on such measures that are available from Global Trade Alert, combined with bilateral FDI data between OECD countries and a large number of partner countries for 2006 to 2009. This allows us to examine the short‐run effect that protectionist measures may have had on bilateral FDI flows. The verdict from this analysis is clear: a country that implements new protectionist measures may expect that this may result in lower foreign direct investment inflows into the economy. The point estimates from our preferred specifications suggest that, depending on the empirical model, the implementation of a trade protection measure is associated with about 40 to 80 per cent lower FDI inflows. Trade protection does not appear to have any implications for the country’s FDI outflows, however. The negative effect on FDI inflows does not appear to be due to direct investment measures but rather to actions related to intellectual property rights protection and other more trade‐related measures.     

Globalisation and Inter‐occupational Inequality: Empirical Evidence from OECD Countries

How does globalisation affect inter‐occupational wage inequality within countries? This paper examines this by focusing on two dimensions of globalisation: openness to trade and openness to capital flows, using a relatively new data set on occupational wages. Estimates from a dynamic model for 15 OECD countries spanning the period 1983–2003 suggest that increased openness increases occupational wage inequality in poorer OECD countries as predicted by the Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson model, but for the more advanced OECD countries, we find no significant effect. The absence of the expected result for the latter category can be due to a rapid increase in the supply of skilled labour, to outsourcing of skilled jobs or because changes in the trade flows are too small to have any significant effect in those countries.     

An emergency supply test for another oil crisis

In the spring of 1978 the International Energy Agency (IEA) staged the second “Allocation System Test”, a simulation exercise designed to check the ability of 19 OECD countries to cope jointly with another oil crisis. The topicality of such a contingency test is demonstrated by the disturbances in Iran. The following article sheds light on the motives, objectives and mechanisms of the IEA concept. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A02GP001 00004