The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement and Its Expected Effects on World Trade

Intereconomics - The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement creates the world’s largest free trade zone. The agreement has the potential to increase trade relations among its...     

《欧盟—日本经济伙伴关系协定》透视及中国的应对之策

《欧盟—日本经济伙伴关系协定》是发达经济体之间达成的代表"全面高标准"的双边贸易协定,结构严谨、涵盖面广,包括货物贸易、服务贸易、投资自由化、可持续发展等领域。在当前全球贸易保护主义抬头的大背景下,它的生效将给缔约双方、世界政治经济格局以及中国均带来重大影响。中国应借鉴该协定的先进之处,兼顾自身发展差异,形成有特色的高水准自贸协定范本,并通过"五位一体"协调发展的全方位、综合性的自贸区战略布局加以应对。     

Unilateral Climate Policy and Competitiveness: Economic Implications of Differential Emission Pricing

Unilateral climate policy raises concerns about international competitiveness and emission leakage that result in preferential regulatory treatment of domestic energy‐intensive and trade‐exposed (EITE) industries. Our applied analysis of unilateral EU abatement illustrates the potential pitfalls of climate policy design which narrowly focuses on competitiveness concerns about EITE industries. The sector‐specific gains of differential emission pricing in favour of these branches must be traded off with the additional burden imposed on other industries. From the perspective of the unilaterally abating region preferential EITE emission pricing can induce non‐negligible excess cost as policy concedes (too) low emission prices to EITE industries and thereby foregoes relatively cheap abatement options in these sectors. With respect to global cost‐effectiveness of unilateral climate policy, we find that differential emission pricing in favour of EITE industries can reduce emission leakage and thereby provide global cost savings compared with uniform pricing. However, the scope for cost savings is limited and may change into substantial cost increases if unilateral reduction targets are moderate and EITE industries get close to exemptions.     

Embracing Free Trade: The EU's Economic Partnership with Algeria

In recent years the European Union (EU) has concluded a new generation of agreements with its Mediterranean partners as part of a new initiative known as the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. The following paper takes the example of Algeria and examines the likely impact of the progressive formation of a bilateral free trade area on the participating economies.     

EU/ACP Economic Partnership Agreements: Impact, Options and Prerequisites

The EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACP) are presently renegotiating their trade relations. Behind these negotiations are the fundamental conflict between the existing arrangement and multilateral trade rules, the frustration regarding poor ACP trade performance, the ineffectiveness of trade and trade-related ACP policies, and the inefficiency of corresponding EU assistance. This article highlights the fundamentals of the envisaged Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the EU and the ACP countries, sums up previous estimates of their probable economic impact, discusses policy options for ACP countries and sheds light on basic prerequisites, particularly on institutional conditions, that should be fulfilled to ensure the success of EPAs.     

Media Mergers with Preference Externalities and Their Implications for Content Diversity,Consumer Welfare,and Policy

One of the primary concerns regarding media mergers involves their potential adverse effect on content/viewpoint diversity. This paper presents a formal treatment of the influence that within-group consumer preference externalities over media content have on a media outlet’s incentive to engage in product repositioning both before and after merging with another media outlet. We first present a model of consumer behavior under preference externalities and derive aggregate consumer expenditure functions for media output. It is shown that even assuming the merged entity sets a uniform price and content mix across market areas, the relative access to some minority (majority) group subscribers will increase (decrease) post-merger (and vice versa). We derive sufficient conditions under which the merged entity will in fact have an incentive to homogenize its post-merger price/content mix. And while the post-merger repositioning effects arguably suggest the consumer welfare implications of such mergers are ambiguous a priori, it is posited that the observed idiosyncratic preferences for media content among demographic groups may translate into significant losses to consumer welfare in some instances and may also adversely affect some individuals’ participation in civil affairs, such as voting. Finally, the relation of the model to previous empirical work on media mergers and diversity, and the potential for non-traditional policy interventions to offset the competitive harms of such transactions, are also discussed.     

中美战略和经济伙伴关系到了该行动的时刻

中美相互依存度日益增高,双方一直努力寻求建立积极的战略和经济伙伴关系,但遗憾的是进展非常缓慢,近两年似乎是分道扬镳。究其根源是美国政界出于思维定式对中国和平发展的真实战略意图产生误判,一系列试图遏制中国经济发展的贸易保护主义措施不断高涨。实际上,这种政策是逆经济全球化和贸易自由化的潮流而动,既损害中美双方经济利益和两国人民福利,也破坏多边贸易体系,延缓全球经济复苏的进程。     

The Asymmetric Impact of War: Resilience,Vulnerability and Implications for EU Policy

Intereconomics - In 2019, over 96% of EU27 oil needs, nearly 90% of natural gas and over 43% of solid fuels were met by net imports, with the largest share coming from Russia (35% of oil, 40% of...     

Economic Policy,Institutions and Entrepreneurship

Small Business Economics - Economists have debated the issue of state intervention in the economic process in capitalist economies intensively for decades. Often, however, without considering the...     

《曼谷协定》与区域经济合作——对我国参与区域性实质优惠制度安排的若干建议

《曼谷协定》是中国加入的第一个具有实质性优惠制度安排的区域贸易协议。本文通过分析《曼谷协定》及其框架下的区域经贸合作,探讨我国参与实质性区域优惠安排的成功经验与不足,并对这一区域合作体的前景作初步展望。     

Monetary Policy: The Implications of Capacity Constraints and J-Curve Effects

We present a stylized model to analyse the short- and long-run effects of monetary policy on international debt and competitiveness. The features of this non-linear model include both currency and asset substitution in a two-country framework, paying special attention to the dynamics of international debt. We find, in contrast to conventional wisdom, that, in addition to raising competitiveness and reducing debt, a monetary contraction can generate inflation in the presence of capacity constraints. Furthermore, if the inflation effect is sufficiently strong, there may be adverse short-run responses. The policy analysis explicitly considers the short-run dynamics of competitiveness, debt, prices and trade. We find there is a second J-curve effect which only occurs when the standard J-curve effect is present together with capacity constraints. The existence of cyclical short-run behaviour presents a warning to policy-makers when assessing the progress towards target equilibrium to bear in mind that adverse short-run movements may be consistent with the long-run desired aim (i.e. there may be initial movements in the “wrong” direction which are consistent with the “expected” long-run outcome).     

Entrepreneurship, Economic Growth and Public Policy

This paper is an introduction to the second Global Entrepreneurship Research Conference. The conference focused on developing a better understanding of the relationships among entrepreneurship, economic growth and public policy, and variations according to the stage of economic development. The papers in this special issue conduct analysis with GEM micro-and-macro data, and offer several important policy recommendations. First, middle-income countries should focus on increasing human capital, upgrading technology availability and promoting enterprise development. It is important to start enterprise development policies early because the main drivers are perceptual variables that are difficult to change in the short run. Second, for developed economies, reducing entry regulations, in most cases, will not result in more high-potential startups. Both labor market reform and deregulation of financial markets may be needed to support growth of high-performance ventures.      

经济增长、外商直接投资与政府选择

改革开放以来积极引进外商直接投资对加速国民经济的发展起到了重要的作用,其深层次的积极影响主要体现在示范效应方面.然而,随着时间的推移,国民经济运行对外商直接投资的依赖也正在形成和增强,这对国民经济的长远发展非常不利.在未来进一步深化对外开放的过程中,我国当然需要进一步扩大引进外商直接投资的规模,但政府应当着力于重构内资与外资的关系,在更好地促进国内资本生长发育的基础上来扩大引进外资,从整体上协调好对外开放与国民经济发展之间的关系.     

试论审计政策与审计决策的相关性

审计政策决策过程中要发挥“企业家精神”,审计政策的制订要遵循审计规律和决策规律等“内在制序”。审计政策能够在全社会得到理解尊重并贯彻执行的逻辑力量在于：公共受托责任观念赋予了审计在国家制度中的道德合理性,而其合法性即人民授予的审计监督权完整的体现了人民或国家的意志。     

Portfolio Flows to Emerging Markets: Prospects,Pitfalls and Policy Implications

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the pattern of debt and equity portfolio flows (FPI) to the developing countries in recent years and discusses some policy and operational measures to facilitate greater FPI flows. Our analysis suggests that many countries need to adopt more aggressive measures to attract foreign portfolio investment. The major areas where improvements can facilitate FPI are identified as: political and legal environment, private sector development, improvement in macro-economic management, development of capital markets, strengthening of financial institutions, enforcement of market regulations, improvements in market operations, and effective dissemination of market information.     

Market Concentration, Economic Welfare, and Antitrust Policy

The authors review the foundation for incorporating market concentration directly into consumer utility functions, and develop a general equilibrium model to derive welfare-maximizing principles for optimal enforcement of antitrust policies toward concentrated market structures, including merger policy. An intriguing result is that increased market concentration can fail to maximize economic welfare even if a proposed merger might generate positive net efficiencies.

世贸组织《政府采购协议》的完善及其对我国政府采购制度的影响

在对《政府采购协议》分析的基础上,本文重点提出该协议各缔约方在世贸组织新回合谈判中,应通过提高政府采购的透明度、将《服务贸易总协定》项下的服务采购纳入该协议的规范之中、给予发展中国家更多的优惠待遇,并借鉴联合国国际贸易法委员会的《政府采购货物、工程与服务项目示范法》,不断完善该协议。同时指出我国目前的政府采购状况和有关立法同世贸组织《政府采购协议》要求仍存在差距,为此建议在修改我国《政府采购法》草稿时,应明确规定政府采购的主体、扩大政府采购的领域以及保障质疑程序的实施等,以缩小我国《政府采购法》与世贸组织《政府采购协议》要求之间的差距。