PROTECTION BY TARIFF BARRIERS AND INTERNATIONAL TRANSACTION COSTS

Using estimates of protection in the EU market against US exports, this paper illustrates the relative importance of natural and policy sources of protection and the measurement errors induced in the measurement of effective protection by omitting transactions costs. It also considers protection in the EU ‘domestic’ and export market, and the implications of the elimination of tariff barriers only on relative rates of protection in ‘domestic’ and export markets.     

PREFERENTIAL TRADE AGREEMENTS AND MULTILATERAL TARIFF COOPERATION*

Are preferential trade agreements (PTAs) building or stumbling blocks for multilateral trade liberalization? I address this question in an infinitely repeated tariff game between three countries engaged in intraindustry trade under oligopoly. The central result is that when countries are symmetric, a free trade agreement (FTA) undermines multilateral tariff cooperation by adversely affecting the cooperation incentive of the nonmember whereas a customs union (CU) does so via its effect on the cooperation incentives of members. However, when countries are asymmetric with respect to either market size or cost, there exist circumstances where PTAs facilitate multilateral tariff cooperation.     

IMPLICIT CONTRACTS, TRADE UNIONS AND INVOLUNTARY UNEMPLOYMENT

Implicit contract theory is used to predict the nature of optimal wage-employment contracts between a firm and a union with a utilitarian maximand, under an uncertain revenue product of labour. By allowing recruitment of outsiders in good states, and allowing unemployment of union members in bad states, a rich set of possible trajectories in wages and employment is achieved. Monotonicity of employment in prices is preserved, whereas monotonicity of wages is not.     

REGIONAL POLICY-MAKING AND REGIONAL DATA BASES

This paper deals with regional accounting problems in Finland. Regional policy planning problems and special regional characteristics of the country are discussed as a background to the development of regional accounts. Accounting problems such as regional division, regionalization methods, general and special solutions to problems affecting specific sectors of the accounts, and problems in allocating production across regions are dealt with in the paper. In addition, supplementary data such as state income and expenditure data by region and regional input-output calculations, both of which may be needed in regional policy-making, are discussed. In Finland, both types of data have been included in a regional data bank compiled by the Central Statistical Office. For the future, monitoring regional standards of living and observing differences in welfare and in production by region remain important challenges for the development of regional data systems.     

TARIFF RETALIATION AND OUTPUT UNDER A FLEXIBLE EXCHANGE RATE

In a macroeconomic model with unemployment a tariff may raise output in the tariff-imposing country, but if the foreign country retaliates output falls in both countries due to asset market factors which put downward pressure on prices and output.     

城市发展用地评价指标体系及方法研究

在城市化发展进程加快的形势下,城市发展用地空间布局问题,已经摆在我们面前。本文对城市发展用地选择、评价提出一套可行的评价指标体系,并利用层次分析法建立数学模型,并结合一个例子进行实证研究。