Environmental and economic impacts of trade barriers: The example of China–US trade friction

The new age of trade wars could simultaneously affect the worldwide distribution pattern of the economy and environmental emissions. However, previous studies have focused on economic impacts, and on trade liberalization, while little is known about the equilibrium effects of trade barriers on the environment. Using a global computable general equilibrium model and taking the recent anti-trade policies of the Trump administration as an example, this study investigates the possible socio-economic and environmental effects of trade friction. Specifically, this study explores how the implemented six rounds of China–US trade friction and its different long-term development trends affect regional economic output, GHG and air pollutant emissions. Results show that trade barriers harm both countries’ economies and such losses have a certain permanence, while non-participants can benefit indirectly. Trade friction decreases participants’ GHG emissions, modifies global GHG emission distribution patterns, and leads to improved air quality in most countries. If governments continue to impose tariffs, global GHG emissions could counterfactually decrease by up to 5%. However, the change in trade patterns is not conducive to clean energy development in the less-developed regions, including the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, and emission reductions from trade friction are insufficient to avoid catastrophic climate change.     

The trade effects of Albania’s trade agreements with CEFTA members

Since the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) was signed in 2006, Albanian exports to CEFTA member countries have increased four-fold. Applying a trade growth decomposition methodology, we show that Albanian firms that did not export to CEFTA countries before the agreement account for a large share of this export growth. Exports also increased among goods that were the least traded before the agreement. Estimating a gravity equation, we find that the CEFTA increased Albanian exports between 34% and 144%, depending on how the previous bilateral agreements with CEFTA countries are accounted for. Additional regression analyses conclude that the CEFTA fostered exports through the reduction of tariffs.     

The ‘advancedness’ of knowledge in pollution-saving technological change with a qualitative application to SO2 cap and trade

This paper investigates the extent to which ‘advanced’ knowledge and technology played a role in the SO2 compliance process in electric power plants under the US SO2 cap and trade program. It investigates the hypothesis that advanced knowledge and technology dedicated to pollution abatement played a minor role in that process while relatively unadvanced forms of knowledge and technology played the main role. New qualitative evidence in this somewhat well-known case is considered: interviews with electric power plant R&D managers, plant-level compliance data, and the changes undergone by boiler manufacturer, coal mining and railroad companies in the supply chain. Advanced knowledge dedicated to pollution abatement like the type now being emphasised for carbon capture and storage (CCS) played a minor role, while unadvanced knowledge and technology played the main role. While there are clearly limits to how far this unadvanced knowledge and technology finding can be generalised to GHG emission control, the specific aspects of the SO2 case that might be broadly informative of the response to GHG emissions are elaborated. In any case, the paper shows how ‘innovation’ in pollution control can be inexpensive and effective without involving very much advanced knowledge and technology for pollution control.     

The direction of trade — past and present — and the ‘learning effects’ of exports to different directions

This paper looks at the direction of trade in manufacturer. The pattern predicted by the HOS model hasn'r materialized. But some sense of the historical pattern is made by looking at the distribution of world income, as well as exporting countries' policies and product composition. Given the historical pattern and in particular the direction of Japan's trade, it is argued that developing countries today are under-exporting to one another. This is to their detriment insofar as trade among less developed countries teends to be comprised of manufactures that are skill-and learning-intensive. The scope for an increase in such trade is assessed.     

The effects of the GSTP on trade flow: mission accomplished?

This paper investigates whether the Global System of Trade Preferences among developing countries (GSTP) achieves its intent to increase the trade of capital goods between member countries. For this purpose, trade data disaggregated by the degree of commodity differentiation and various GSTP regional dummies are employed in a gravity equation. Estimation results say that the value of trade between GSTP member countries has increased significantly since the formation of the GSTP in 1989, and the trade of differentiated commodities has increased remarkably compared with other commodities. Therefore, it can be asserted that the mission of the GSTP has been accomplished successfully.     

‘Expressive’ obligations in public good games: Crowding-in and crowding-out effects

We study individual contributions in a repeated linear public good experiment in which, in each period, subjects are required to contribute a minimum amount and face a certain probability of being audited. Audited subjects who contribute less than the required amount are convicted to pay the difference between the obligation and the voluntary contribution. We investigate the ‘expressive’ force of the obligations. While at early stages subjects contribute the minimum level, with repetition contributions decline below the required amount. We observe that expressive obligations exert a rather robust crowding-out effect on voluntary contributions as compared to a linear public good game. Crowding-out is stronger when payments collected through the auditing procedure are distributed to subjects rather than when they are a deadweight loss.     

Structural change and ‘new facts’ in Pantaleoni's non-equilibrium dynamics

The goal of this paper is to investigate Maffeo Pantaleoni's early 20th century dynamic theory, and, in particular, to highlight the novelty of his notion of second-kind dynamics. The main thesis is that Pantaleoni employed the notion to build a truly original, non-orthodox disequilibrium dynamic theory capable of accounting for the dynamic and structural instability of the economic system as well as for the ‘true’ uncertainty affecting decision-making processes.     

Institutions and ‘Science’: The Contest about Pluralism in Economics in France

ABSTRACT

For a long time, France was a country in which various approaches to economics coexisted. This pluralism began to dwindle in the mid-1990s. Since then, France has witnessed the increasing and now overwhelming domination of mainstream economics. This article, drawing on a study of the evolution of the recruitment of professors of economics in France, documents the situation and links the observed trends to the changing institutions governing the discipline (a centralized system evolving under the influence of international norms and instruments). It is demonstrated that far from being fair and neutral devices, the rules and instruments governing economics—notably the ranking lists of economic journals—incorporate specific worldviews strongly biasing the assessment of research toward the mainstream. This article documents the tentative use of ‘voice and exit’ by the French Association of Political Economy to reform the economics discipline. Furthermore, it discusses the arguments proclaimed by Jean Tirole to prevent the French Ministry of Higher Education from creating a new university section called ‘Economy and Society’ to reinstate pluralism: they fall back on a monistic view of science that is questioned notably by developments—both factual and conceptual—in science studies and epistemology.     

Geopolitica: The ‘Geographical and Imperial Consciousness’ of Fascist Italy

Very few contributions have been published in English on the Italian geopolitical tradition of the interwar years. This is rather surprising, given the fact that, after Geopolitik, Italian geopolitics was one of the largest and most significant in Europe. This article aims to fill this void, by offering a detailed and critical investigation into this intellectual production. Although the article traces the origins of Italian geopolitics back to the 1920s, its main focus is on Geopolitica (1939–1942), the journal which, more than any others, embodied the attempts to give Italy its own geopolitics. Despite its ambitious proposal to become the ‘imperial-geographical consciousness’ of the Fascist regime, Geopolitica remained largely confined within the circle of academic geography and ultimately also failed to influence the development of Italian geographical tradition.     

Marginal WTP and Distance Decay: The Role of ‘Protest’ and ‘True Zero’ Responses in the Economic Valuation of Recreational Water Quality

We evaluate the sensitivity of distance decay in individuals’ stated willingness to pay (WTP) for water quality improvements in eutrophied lakes. We extend the standard model of contingent valuation (CV) by allowing individuals to adopt a sequential evaluation process consisting of two decision stages. In the first stage respondents decide whether they are ‘protesters’, have a WTP   \(=\)   ‘true zero’ or a \(\hbox {WTP}>0\) . Conditioned on a strictly positive WTP, we use Lee’s selectivity-corrected model to determine the magnitude of their WTP in the second stage. Using CV survey data from Norway we find significant distance decay in the first stage classification of respondents as ‘protesters’, ‘true zero’ WTP, or positive WTP. In the second stage model for positive WTP responses, we find little or no significant relationships when correcting for selection. Results suggest that previous findings of significant distance decay in contingent valuation of lake and river water in Europe may be driven by the definition of ‘protest’ and ‘true zero’ respondents. We find that WTP for water quality may be more useful as a qualitative indicator of political support for user financed water quality measures, than as a cardinal measure of marginal utility of water quality improvements.     

The ‘Value’ of Europe: The Political Economy of Culture in the European Community

During the 1970s and 1980s the “cultural sector” became one of the primary motors for wealth creation in the European Community. At the European and national scales, a group of actors helped transform Europe's vast array of practices and services (tourism, heritage, books, audio-visual products, etc.) into “cultural industries” and pushed the EC to develop a common cultural policy to support these industries. Documenting these changes at the European scale, I argue that the perceived impact of cultural policy for particular national economic competitiveness was also significant. Italian MEPs and members of Italy's national government were especially important, as they fought to protect the country's historical heritage and promote tourism. France pushed the strongest and I show how that country's efforts were primarily intended to protect its audio-visual and publishing industries from the EC internal market's liberalisation policies, which were vocally supported by Britain because they would have served that county's national economic interests.     

Political stability and trade agreements: Evidence for ‘endgame FTAs’

This paper empirically examines the idea that Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) are more likely to be signed by governments playing ‘endgames’; that is, when governments are about to lose power. Two empirical strategies shed light on this hypothesis. One relies on events that increase the probability of political turnover, the other on term limits. I find that countries are more likely to sign FTAs after the unexpected exit of their leaders, when political instability is high. The key finding is partly confirmed in the term-limits strategy as governments are found to form more FTAs during their last term in office.     

The effects of education on spouses’ satisfaction in Europe

This article identifies the effects of both own and spouses' education levels on individual economic satisfaction for European households. To that end, it estimates several specifications based on the family collective approach, for each of the 14 EU countries, by using the eight waves of the European Community Household Panel, 1994–2001. After demonstrating that the IV Hausman–Taylor procedure is the selected estimation method in the majority of cases, the empirical results show that male and female income satisfaction significantly increases when the husband achieves higher education qualifications in the majority of European countries. However, the positive effect of the wife's higher education on female income satisfaction only appears in a very limited number of countries. Additionally, increases in individual wage and nonwage incomes generally lead to higher satisfaction levels.     

The Geo-Social and Global Geographies of Power: Urban Aspirations of ‘Worlding’ African Students in China

This paper conceptualises the geosocial by examining the transnational connections of African student migrants and their educational experiences in Chinese cities. While there is now an established scholarship on Chinese migration to Africa, new research on the concurrent flow of African migration to China is emerging. Recent publications on African migrants in China tend to focus on the experiences of African traders, drawing out issues of illegality, ‘low-end’ globalisation and their impacts on Chinese trading cities. In comparison, this paper shifts the analytical lens to African educational migration in Chinese cities, foregrounding how global householding patterns reflect and leverage on the geopolitical and geo-economic dimensions of China-Africa relations. The paper shows that individual and family goals are negotiated through educational migration that, on the one hand, is concerned with accumulating human and cultural capital through a learning stint in Chinese cities, and on the other hand, is framed by perceptions of China-Africa relations. The paper argues that through educational migration, transnational social reproduction links Africa with China, but the social differentiation and everyday sociality that the African students experience in Chinese cities reinforce racial coding and development asymmetries. In so doing, the paper draws out how the geosocial reflects and constitutes the geopolitical and geo-economic dimensions of transnationalism.     

The political economy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership: a ‘21st Century’ trade agreement?

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was the first of the ‘Mega-FTAs’ to be signed. Had it been ratified, it would have created the world’s largest preferential trade area. The negotiators of the TPP aspired to create ‘a next-generation transformative agreement’ that would address a new trade agenda focused on regulatory coherence and business facilitation. The expectation was that this agenda would generate a 21st Century trade politics that would be less contentious, at least among business actors, than traditional negotiations on market access. Studies of another Mega-FTA under negotiation, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) that has a similar agenda found unified business support for the agreement domestically and the emergence of transnational business coalitions in support of the agreement. Recent theorising on trade politics suggests, however, that global value chains (GVCs) that involve vertical intra-industry trade introduce ‘traditional’ distributional issues that will divide business interests domestically – and, in the case of GVCs organised on different geographical bases, internationally as well. This cleavage was evident in the TPP negotiations, unlike those for TTIP, as were other divisions among business – both domestically and across countries – over the sharing of existing rents and of new rents generated by regulatory harmonisation.     

The effects of remittances on support for democracy in Africa: Are remittances a curse or a blessing?

We examine the effect of remittances on the legitimacy of democracy in Africa, testing whether remittance recipients are less likely to support democracy than non-recipients. We hypothesize that the effect of remittances on support for democracy varies across classes (i.e., groups or subtypes) of individuals sharing similar but unobserved background characteristics. Using the Afrobarometer surveys, we try to find out whether the respondents fall into different hidden classes in such a way that the effect of remittances on the degree of support for democracy depends on the class. Our results support that remittances may be a curse for the degree of endorsement and support for democracy, depending on the class of individuals that we consider. The analysis of the probability of being in the remittance curse class indicates that the perception of national priorities plays an important role. People who attest that freedom and rights are the main national priorities have a lower probability of belonging to the remittances curse class than individuals who choose national priorities that are oriented towards the economic conditions of their country.     

Deficits and Divided Governments: The Case of the German ‘Bundesrat’

The hypothesis of divided government is applied to the development of deficits in Germany. Since the party system is relatively stable, divided governments emerge not from coalitional governments, but rather from the bicameral structure of the country. Different majorities in the two chambers promote deficits, especially in the case of central government deficits. The results suggest that under different majorities in the two chambers deficits are more than 0.5%-Point higher. Further, it is indicated, that only ideological polarization, but not unstable majorities per se induces higher deficits.