Trade Liberalisation and Capital Spending by US Manufacturers

This is the first paper to study the impact of long‐term tariff reductions on capital spending by US manufacturers. We investigate fluctuations in investment for approximately 400 different four‐digit industries during the period 1974–2005. Our results indicate that the dismantling of tariff and quota protection has had a stimulatory effect on US manufacturing investment, despite the relatively low average tariff rate that existed at the start of our sample period. However, our findings reveal that reductions in input tariffs rather than output tariffs were the source of this effect, suggesting that better access to foreign inputs rather than increased foreign competition at the output level served as the primary stimulus for increased US manufacturing investment.     

应该从理论上否定"原罪"概念

本文认为,民间资本、私营经济并无“原罪”。否定“原罪”概念,有三个理由。第一,马克思借用神学概念提出“原罪”,带有否定资本的意思,认为资本一出生就有罪,这不仅与其所说的资本主义生产方式在历史上起的进步作用及生产力标准相矛盾,而且从根本上否定了劳动可以进行积累,合法经营可以致富,与实际情况不符。在一个半世纪之后的今天,资本仍有活力,还能在一定范围内调整生产关系。第二,“原罪”概念是不确定的,不能成为法律用语。把利润等同于“原罪”,认为利润获得者就有“原罪”,是把“原罪”概念泛化了,使之成为一个“莫须有”的罪名。第三,“原罪”是悬在私营业主头上的一把剑,随时可能掉下来。要使民营经济、私营企业健康发展,就是要改善投资环境,落实宪法中保护私有财产的庄严规定。     

WTO与中国资本项目管制

在21世纪的第一年,中国正式加入了WTO.这标志着中国经济将进一步融入世界经济,同时也意味着中国的发展将面临一个更为复杂的外部环境.     

资本帐户开放的模式选择

目前,关于资本帐户开放有两点我们是可以肯定的,一是资本帐户开放已经完全变成了一个发展中国家的重要经济问题;二是实现资本户户开放是资本帐户管理的改革方向。当前,资本帐户开放是一项隐含着巨大的风险的改革,这项性能能否成功,与资本帐户开放所选择的模式无不相关。本文就资本帐户开放的两种模式（“激进模式”和“渐进模式”）进行比较分析,以期对发展中国家有所启示。     

China to Gradually Make Capital Account Convertible

China is pushing forward its currency Renminbi (RMB)'s capital account convertibility gradually and in a stable manner, said an official with the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), ruling out both an adventurous leap and conservative cautiousness, according to a report of Xinhua on April 12.     

China to Gradually Make Capital Account Convertible

China is pushing forward its currency Renminbi (RMB)‘s capital account convertibility gradually and in a stable manner, said an official with the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), ruling out both an adventurous leap and conservative cautiousness, according to a report of Xinhua on April 12.……     

中国的资本账户开放、汇率制度改革与货币危机风险

在国内金融开放改革面临现实抉择之际,本文采用1970-2011年的102个国家面板数据,构建Logistic计量模型,实证分析中国的资本账户开放程度和汇率制度选择对于货币危机风险的现实影响。实证研究发现,随着资本账户开放程度的提高,选择实施浮动汇率制度或超级固定汇率制有助于降低金融危机风险。利用以上模型,结合中国宏观经济数据可以测算出,在中国当前金融开放改革中,保持有限资本开放,率先实施汇率制度灵活性改革,有利于降低货币危机风险。本研究结论是中国的金融开放改革为优化决策提供了重要的理论依据和实践参考。     

Business,Cinema and Sin

In less than fifteen years after the inventionof the movie camera in 1895 movies in theUnited States became very popular and haveenjoyed that popularity for almost a century.Films are big business, but also an art formand tension between film as business and filmas art was present at the beginning andcontinues today. A philosophy of art and aphilosophy of beauty with a direct reference toGod as Absolute Beauty reveals the enormouspower of film to influence and shape ourconsciences. Movies tell stories and exposureto stories help us to become who we are.Beautiful stories have the power to help us bemoral.     

资本项目开放与经济增长研究的比较分析

近年来国外学者对资本项目开放与经济增长相关性进行了大量的实证研究,认为实证结论差异的原因在于度量指标和样本上存在区别。多数实证研究认为发展中国家开放资本项目的收益少于发达国家。本文认为其原因在于资本项目开放后,在增加投资、提高资源配置效率和增加政策约束性方面,发展中国家所获得的收益小于发达国家。因此,发展中国家开放资本项目必须具备一定的宏观经济和微观金融条件。     

Trade Liberalisation,Economic Development and Poverty Alleviation

In a distinguished career spanning more than four decades, Jagdish Bhagwati has made numerous contributions to both trade theory and trade policy analysis. The current paper focuses on Bhagwati's major contribution to the ongoing debate surrounding the influence of trade liberalisation upon economic development and its potential to alleviate poverty in the world's poorest economies. In order to highlight Bhagwati's contributions in these fields we focus on the arguments developed in two of his numerous landmark publications; first his seminal 1964 paper on the Pure Theory of International Trade and, second, his 2004 book entitled In Defense of Globalization. Although separated in time by some four decades we argue that these two publications, despite their very different characters, each demonstrate beyond doubt the significance of Bhagwati's work in improving our understanding of the true nature of international trade and its potential to address questions of global poverty.     

Banks,Financial Liberalisation and Financial Crises in Emerging Markets

The East Asian financial crisis has raised a series of important issues. Amongst them is the question of the role of the banking sector and financial liberalisation in contributing to financial crises. How do weaknesses in the domestic banking sector, when combined with both domestic and international financial liberalisation, engender currency crises? What is lacking in the literature is a simple conceptual framework within which these connections can be conceptualised and drawn out and in which the role of banks is explicitly discussed. This paper seeks to provide just such a framework. Within it, international financial liberalisation can be seen as fuelling a boom in domestic credit, which leads to acute balance sheet problems for domestic banks, and exposes the country concerned to a currency crisis in the event of a sudden reversal of capital inflows, which banking weaknesses may itself trigger.     

Unemployment and Trade Liberalisation

In contrast to the focus of the public debate over trade liberalisation on job losses there is a widespread view among economists that unemployment and trade issues should be considered separately. This view cannot be justified theoretically, and ignores the growing number of general equilibrium trade models with unemployment. In a simple model with an exogenous wage floor, trade liberalisation can lead to either gains or losses depending on the production technology, severity of the factor market distortion, factor intensities of the industries and conditions in trading partners. Definite results can be derived about gains from liberalising trade with lower wage floors, about relative abundance of the unemployed factor dampening losses when trade is liberalised, and about gains when the good which uses the unemployed factor is exported. The theoretical models are then linked to the policy modelling literature, using the example of recent Australian controversies over liberalisation of trade in automobiles and textiles. It is argued that trade liberalisation would be better advanced by including endogenous employment in trade policy simulation exercises and by discussing employment effects rather than brushing them aside as temporary adjustment problems or regional difficulties.     

Liberalisation and international cooperation

While being a necessary consequence of the ongoing and desirable process of international division of labour, the increasing freedom of international money and capital movements has in recent years impaired the efficiency of national economic policy instruments. In order to overcome this drawback the loss in national economic policy autonomy should be counterbalanced by a gain in economic policy cooperation between the national economies.     

资本账户开放与顺周期财政政策倾向——来自跨国面板数据的证据

在构建一个局部均衡模型的基础上,利用92个国家1960—2016年的面板数据,实证考察资本账户开放对财政政策周期性的影响,得到三个方面的研究结论。(1)主权国家整体上具有明显的顺周期财政政策倾向,并且随时间的推移呈现一定增强趋势;发展中国家的顺周期财政政策倾向要远远高于发达国家。(2)随着资本流动管理的强化,顺周期财政政策倾向趋于减弱。从管制口径来看,资本账户流入管制对顺周期财政政策的缓解作用要明显强于资本账户流出管制;从管制类型来看,股票、房地产等市场的顺周期缓解效果要明显强于直接投资。(3)对于发展中国家,适当的资本流动管理可以弱化顺周期财政政策的不利影响。研究结论亦支持中国当前渐进式的资本账户开放路径。     

Foreign Direct Investment,Economic Performance and Trade Liberalisation

In a number of influential papers published by V. N. Balasubramanyam and collaborators during the decade of the 1990s, compelling arguments and supporting evidence was presented to indicate that export‐promoting trade and investment strategies attract more and more productive inflows of foreign capital than do import‐substituting strategies. This paper revisits these hypotheses in the context of more recent cross‐section data and reports evidence to suggest that the earlier findings are robust.     

Trade and Market Liberalisation in Eastern Europe

SUMMARY

The question of why multinational companies (MNCs) choose to locate in one region rather than another has been an important topic in IB research for many years, but has recently received even more attention. This paper presents the results of an econometric investigation of the locational determinants of Italian firms in Central and Eastern Europe. Italian firms have been very active investors in the CEE countries. Our results broadly confirm the findings of previous studies, but we also find that both trade liberalisation and market liberalisation are important influences upon the location decision. If the CEE governments wish to attract further (Italian) foreign investment, then further liberalisation of their domestic economies should be a policy priority.     

我国对外贸易发展与人民币资本账户开放

本文首先回顾了我国外汇账户管理的改革历程,总结了我国近年来对外贸易的发展情况,说明了出现贸易逆差的基本原因;然后,论述了金融市场对贸易发展的作用以及经常账户、资本账户改革对贸易发展的影响。最后,针对我国金融体系的现状,提出了对资本账户开放策略的建设性建议。     

Trade Liberalisation and Economic Growth

There has been a long‐held belief that there is an association between economic growth and increased levels of international trade. However, more recent work has questioned this hypothesis and the re‐opening of the debate has identified two key areas of contention. One is the extent to which the effects of openness are conditional on factors omitted from the core regression relationship and hence how the hypothesis is tested. The other is the meaning and measurement of openness and liberalisation. This paper addresses both these areas by exploring the nature of heterogeneity in growth performance among liberalising countries using a difference‐in‐difference approach. The results show that, while in aggregate there appears to be a positive but small impact of trade liberalisation on growth, this masks a huge range of responses. Empirical analysis of this heterogeneity shows that a one‐size‐fits‐all policy is not necessarily the most effective, and suggests a case‐by‐case approach is more appropriate.     

Trade Liberalisation,Market Structure and the Incentive to Merge

In this article, we consider whether a movement towards freer international trade generates incentives for firms to merge and if so what forms of merger are most profitable. In a linear Cournot framework, we show that a reduction in trade costs may, but will not necessarily, encourage mergers. Both market structure and the level to which trade costs fall are shown to play a decisive role. Domestic mergers will be encouraged only if the product market is not highly concentrated and trade costs fall below a threshold level. International mergers can be encouraged in any market structure, and are generally more profitable than domestic mergers.