The economic impacts of the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement - A general equilibrium analysis

After 21 rounds of intense negotiations over nearly a decade, the deal of China-Australia Free Trade Agreement was finally completed in late November 2014. This paper attempts to examine both the causes and consequences of this delayed conclusion by running simulation experiments on a computable general equilibrium model, to see how the free trade agreement affects the world economy not only on the two countries involved, but also on the rest of the world with a particular reference to New Zealand. Based on the simulation results, policy implications are generated.     

Post- war European economic development as an out of equilibrium growth path. The case of the Netherlands

The paper examines a number of aspects of post-war economic development of the Netherlands in the light of recent out of equilibrium growth theory. It contains a comparison of the stylized facts of the long run performance of the economies of the United States and the Netherlands which suggests that the US has been on an equilibrium growth path for more than a century, but that the Netherlands followed a radically different growth path, especially after 1945. It is attempted to explain this erratic behaviour of the investment ratio and the wage share after 1945 by examining two aspects more in detail: the financing of the acceleration of growth after 1945 and the phase of too rapid growth during the 1950s and 1960s, when the growth of the demand for labour tended to be higher than the increase in its supply.     

Assessing the economic impacts of the EU-Singapore FTA with a dynamic general equilibrium model

Negotiations for the EU-Singapore FTA were concluded on December 6, 2012. Given that this is the EU’s first FTA with an ASEAN member country and the second one with a major Asian trading partner after the conclusion of the EU-Korea FTA, this agreement paves the way for future FTAs with countries in the region. The goal of this paper is to quantify the economic impacts of the EU-Singapore FTA using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model. The resutls estimated in this paper suggest that the bilateral reduction of tariff and non-tariff barriers brings benefits for both sides: Singapore GDP is expected to increase by € 2.7 billion whereas the EU gains are assessed at € 550 million. In addition, EU exports to Singapore would rise by some € 1.4 billion and Singapore’s exports to the EU by some € 3.5 billion. In a complementary scenario, the current paper also assesses the value of this FTA as an insurance policy against any hypothetical tariffs hikes in Singapore to WTO bound levels. In such a “worst case” scenario, the EU-Singapore FTA will protect EU GDP from a decrease of € 350 million and prevents a loss of € 3.7 billion EU exports to Singapore.     

The future of the high-skill equilibrium in Germany

Is the celebrated German skills system in peril? Western Germanemployers have cut apprenticeship places since the 1980s, whilethe institutional supports of the 'high-skill equilibrium' (HSE)analysed by Finegold and Soskice (Oxford Review of EconomicPolicy, 4(3) 1988) are threatened: the globalization of equitymarkets menaces the 'patient capital' on which German companiesdepend; lean production techniques have rendered strategiesof incremental innovation vulnerable on international markets;and German employers and labour face mounting organizationaldifficulties. This article derives implications from the HSE-modelto assess these challenges against existing evidence. In fact,only the declining capacity of employers' associations and unionsconstitutes an empirically verifiable threat to the German apprenticeshipsystem, the magnitude of which depends on questionable assumptionsof the HSE-model. Of potential future salience, though, is thegrowing importance of service-sector jobs and the further trainingsystem in Germany, which may eventually undo the political compromiseon which the HSE has historically rested.     

经济全球化进程中我国政府的经济职能

在经济全球化进程中,每一个国家都是在既定国际关系准则约束下争取自己国家最大利益的“经济人”。政府行政作为“国家的组织活动、,对发展中国家而言,全球化并不意味着政府削弱经济职能,而 相反地强化了政府在经济活动中的地位与作用。正如日本学者正村公安所说：全球化“与其说削弱了经济性国家主权,还不如说是加强了各国政府的责任,即在充分理解本国经济政策的国际影响的基础上,采取适当手段,有效地先例经济性国家主权”。对中国来说,即将“入世”意味着融入全球化浪潮的步伐加快了,因此,改革行政管理体制,强化政府合理的经济职能,提升良性的政府能力,在经济全球化的激烈竞争中就显得尤为必要和紧迫。     

The development of economic history in Norway

Abstract

It might be a matter of dispute whether economic history is today a subject in its own right in Norway, that is whether there is a significant body of historians who identify with one another and with the problems, techniques and assumptions of economic history. Economic history is not really formally established. In contrast to Denmark and Sweden, there are no departments of economic history in the universities. An important exception is the economic history department at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration in Bergen. At Oslo University there has also been for some time a chair in “economic and social history” in the history department. At the new Norwegian School of Management in Oslo there is also about to be established a “Business History Unit”. Those working with economic history outside these institutions will normally be attached in some way to the history departments of other universities or to the university colleges (distrikts-høgskoler).     

The long wave in economic life

Summary In this paper a review is given of the theory of the long wave or Kondratieff cycle. Five different categories of explanations are discussed, of which the most important ones are Schumpeter's innovation theory and the alternations in the growth of fixed capital, recently stressed again by Forrester. To these elements the concept of the industry life cycle and an explanation of clusters of basic innovations are added to complete an endogenous long wave mechanism. Using Schumpeter's four phases a long wave chronology is presented. This suggests that in the mid-1970s Western economies have entered the depression phase of the long wave.[/p]This article is a rewritten version of an inaugural lecture held at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, on May 12, 1977.     

The state in Chinese economic history

We survey the recent economics and history literature on the Chinese state to investigate its role in China's long-term socioeconomic development. We highlight three insights. First, unlike in Europe, where interstate competition helped give rise to capitalist states with high capacity, the Chinese state emerged from a different historical context. Second, the 18th- and 19th-century Chinese state does not fit into the mould of a strong and extractive Oriental despotic state as once commonly believed. By conventional measures, early modern China had a weak state. Third, state building and centre-local relations are two useful dimensions to understand development and change in China's recent history and political economy. To adapt China to a changing world, Chinese state builders embarked on a long process of state building from the late-19th century through the Republican and Communist eras. Facilitated partly by regional decentralisation, the process now sees the Chinese state playing a substantially larger role in the economy and everyday life than any previous time in history.     

The economic history of Thailand

The article, which is a first step in writing a general economic history of Thailand, highlights the marked discontinuities between stagnation and growth, mono–crop culture and diversification, which occurred around the 1950s. While many factors were involved, an underlying theme was the transition from ‘expensive’ to ‘cheap’ labour caused by population growth and the closing of the rice frontier.     

新世纪经济建设和经济体制改革的道路和途径

<正> 十六大报告在“经济建设和经济体制改革”部分,提出了“本世纪头20年经济建设和改革的主要任务”,规划了完成这一任务的道路和途径,即3条新路子,一个根本途径。 一、走新型工业化道路。新型工业化道路主要包含以下4个方面的内容:第一,继续实现工业化,这是必须完成的历史性任务。第二,注意推进信息化,这是我国加快实现工业化和现     

新加坡环境管理的经济手段

自然资源和环境所特有的属性决定了有效配置资源环境产品必须借助于政府的干预,本文集中论述了新加坡政府在环境管理方面所采用的主要经济手段,为我国社会主义市场经济体制下自然资源和环境的管理提供参考。     

The Diaspora and economic development in Africa

Review of World Economics - While the dominant collective belief asserts that brain drain is detrimental to the development of small economies, new studies hold the reverse view. This paper aims at...