The limited role of small stock exchanges in economic development: A case study of Mozambique and Swaziland

The establishment of a successful stock market in a developing economy can provide a major source of development finance, both channelling domestic savings and attracting foreign investment. But small markets generally fail. Two micro-markets, Mozambique and Swaziland, provide an interesting case study to examine the features of new markets in sub-Saharan Africa that differ in a number of ways, including colonial legacy, membership of the Common Monetary Area and the dynamics of the political economy that defines the links between the citizens, the local elite and the state. In both countries, the operational aspects of the stock exchange are clearly inadequate as a means of promoting international investment. Thus, gains from regional integration initiatives or foreign investment are unlikely, as the market's small size and incomplete institutions currently offer limited potential for either domestic or international risk diversification. However, the political economy in both countries is the real barrier to growth.     

货币危机的政治经济学解释:文献评述

作者从文献的角度对货币危机的政治经济学解释做了一次比较全面的梳理,从中可以看出国际金融政治经济学的研究特点和思维方式。在理论构建上,政治经济学的学者们完全沿用了经济学模型中的不完全信息和动态博弈论,引入了预期的形成以及市场交易者和政府之间的战略互动,从而成功地把各种政治和经济变量纳入到一个模型之内。他们的贡献是,把政治变量引入到市场交易者和政府的预期形成中,强调了政治变量以及作为一种信息的政治变量在市场交易者和政府预期中的作用或者地位,并强调了政治变量在市场交易者和政府之间战略互动或动态博弈过程中的作用,从而更好地解释了货币危机的原因,提高了预测货币危机的准确性。在实证研究上,政治经济学通过预期效用函数、战略概率模型等方式,较为成功地实现了对政治因素这个分类变量的模型化,较好地实现了对政治因素的量化分析。     

The Impact of Political Influence on Appointees: Evidence from the Small Business Administration Disaster Loan Program

Presidential disaster declarations provide disaster aid through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and are known to be motivated by political factors as well as by need. The extent to which politics influence the Small Business Administration (SBA) disaster declaration decision, made by a presidential appointee, has not been previously measured. We use new data covering 1960–2013 to show that SBA declarations are subject to the same political influences as presidential declarations. Disasters occurring during reelection years, as well as those occurring in electorally important states, are more likely to receive SBA declarations. The effect of politics is stronger in the period prior to the passage of the Stafford Act in 1988, showing that the two types of declarations are substitutes for political purposes.     

The Political Economy of Chinese-Style Privatization: Motives and Constraints

The paper examines how the privatization of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) can be successfully triggered and completed. By identifying the motives of local government leaders and the constraints that face them during transition, we conclude that: first, whether local governments are motivated to privatize their SOEs, depends on if the ownership transfer is expected to stimulate sufficiently high growth of local tax revenues without sacrificing the bureaucrats private control benefits. Second, a specific privatization program can succeed only if it manages to satisfy the managerial cooperation constraint, the workers compensation constraint, and the bank-debt-servicing constraint. The motives-cum-constraints political economy approach offers an important explanation for the pace and scope of the ongoing Chinese-style privatization.     

On Taxation,Political Accountability and Foreign Aid: Empirics to a Celebrated Literature

The Eubank findings on taxation, political accountability and foreign aid have had an important influence on academic and policymaking debates. Eubank has warned that his findings should not be generalised across Africa until they are backed by robust empirical evidence. This paper puts some empirical structure to the celebrated literature. The empirical evidence which is based on data from 53 African countries for the period 1996‐2010 broadly confirms the Somaliland‐based Eubank hypothesis that in the absence of foreign aid, the dependence of government on local tax revenues provides the leverage for better political governance.     

The Political Economy of Industrial Policy in China: The Case of Aircraft Manufacturing

This paper focuses on China's efforts to build a world-class aircraft manufacturing industry. In the first half of the 1990s, the potential of the Chinese industry to mount a competitive challenge to Western aircraft builders was largely discounted. Nowadays, the threat is taken more seriously. The growth in the Chinese air transport market has reinforced the bargaining power of national aircraft producers and authorities are giving priority to building science and technology capacity in this area. Progress in creating military/civilian synergies has proven much more modest and the overall industry still lacks effective coordination.     

发展中国家地区主义的政治经济学——以南太平洋地区为例

自20世纪60年代起,地区主义在发展中国家广泛兴起。在长期的地区主义实践中,发展中国家逐步形成了多层次、开放性、经济和安全优先的地区主义发展路径,并且正朝着综合性、多功能、外向型的方向发展。这一路径的形成主要取决于发展中国家所拥有的地区秩序的双层结构。从地区内部看,对于发展中国家而言,地区主义的发展有其特有的战略考虑。在政治上,通过对话与协商维护国家独立与主权平等,维护国内稳定和地区安全;在经济上,通过贸易、金融、货币等政策的协调,来化解内部经济矛盾与冲击。从对外联系看,尽管很多时候外部大国介入地区事务能够增进地区利益,但由于在客观上存在的对外不对称依赖关系,这种介入很可能会成为组建排他性的地区政治经济集团的制约因素。总之,由于地区内的优先政治经济考虑以及对地区外力量的借重与依赖,在可以预见的未来,发展中国家地区主义难以发展成为欧洲式的政治经济联盟。     

Impacts of Sequential Free Trade Agreements in East Asia: A CGE and Political Economy Analysis

Abstract

This paper estimates the economic impacts of the various sequential liberalization scenarios in East Asia, emphasizing the significance of the “sequence” of the liberalization process in computable general equilibrium (CGE) analysis. The major findings are as follows: (1) “Sequence” matters in measuring the economic impacts of free trade agreement (FTA) scenarios in the region; (2) Scenario 1 (Korea-China FTA → Korea-Japan FTA → China-Japan FTA) is the sequence maximizing Korea's economic gains, whereas Scenario 3 (Korea-China-Japan FTA) is the one most preferred economically by China and Japan; (3) Korea's FTAs with the United States (US) and European Union (EU) can be evaluated as a preemptive strategic move, causing changes in FTA preferences of Korea and Japan; (4) the prediction of Bond and Baldwin (adjustment cost and juggernaut effect) and that of Evenett et al. (trade diversion effect) are supported by the empirical results that Korea's (China's) expected gains from northeast Asian FTA sequences increase (decrease) after Korea's FTAs with the US and EU are made; (5) predictions about the International Political Economy (IPE) theories (power consideration and domestic politics) upon the sequential FTA formations in East Asia are consistent with the findings above.     

China's WTO Commitments in Agriculture and Impacts of Potential OECD Agricultural Trade Liberalizations*

After accession to the WTO, China's agriculture is affected by the implementation of its WTO commitments and will be impacted by any multilateral liberalization (actions by the rich OECD economies in particular) resulting from the Doha negotiations. Using the actual commitment data, our computable general equilibrium simulation results show that China's WTO commitments will lead to increased agricultural imports and slightly declined outputs in China. The resulting efficiency gains will be negated by terms‐of‐trade losses, leading to quantitatively small welfare impacts. Furthermore, sectoral results depend critically on correctly representing the more complex policy measures, such as the tariff rate quotas. The negative output effects on Chinese agriculture can be alleviated/reversed if the rich OECD countries commit to reform their agriculture policies. The present paper concludes that trade liberalization should be carried out in both developing and developed countries. Reforming the latter will be particularly helpful in easing the problems facing those developing countries that are carrying out ambitious trade reforms.     

“微信公众平台”在思政教育工作中的应用现状及对策研究

微信公众平台在思政教育工作中的应用呈现快速发展态势,“微思政”的开展成为常态。文章旨在分析当下微信公众平台在思政教育工作的应用现状,探析其中不足,并就其给出相应的应对建议,以期为思政教育在微信公众平台的更好开展给出一定的指导性建议,进一步推动思政教育工作的发展。     

广西财政支农支出对农民收入影响的协整分析

文章采用协整分析方法对1982--2007年广西财政支农支出对农民收入的影响进行了实证分析。研究表明,广西财政支农与农民收入之间存在长期均衡关系,加大财政支农力度能有效促进农民增收。广西财政支农支出结构中对农民增收效应高低的次序为：支援农村生产支出最高,农业基本建设支出次之,支援不发达地区支出居第三,农林水利气象等部门的事业费最差。     

The Determinants of Corruption: Cross‐Country‐Panel‐Data Analysis

This study explores the determinants of corruption, utilizing the Hausman and Taylor's technique to estimate a random effects model that incorporates both the effects of corruption determinants that vary over time and those that are time‐invariant, and using a larger panel dataset and a comprehensive set of corruption determinants. The first interesting result is that perception of strong support for rule of law is strongly correlated with reduced corruption, suggesting that a better quality of law enforcement reduces corruption. Rich countries have lower corruption, and the perception of free expression and accountability strongly decreases corruption, indicating that providing greater opportunities for citizens to participate in selecting their government, more freedom of expression, and free media are effective ways of curbing corruption. Conversely, natural resource abundance, country population size, country's dominant religious tradition, ethnic fractionalization, and political stability are unimportant determinants of corruption, while previous research has suggested they are important.     

Association Lecture—The Economic Roots of Political Underdevelopment in the Middle East: A Historical Perspective

Key institutions of the pre‐modern Middle Eastern economy, all grounded in Islamic law, blocked the development of democratic institutions. This talk identifies three mechanisms that played critical roles. Islam's original tax system failed to produce lasting and credible constraints on governance. The waqfs (Islamic trusts) founded to provide social services to designated constituencies were politically powerless. Profit‐making private enterprises remained small and ephemeral, hindering the formation of stable coalitions capable of bargaining with the state. The last two mechanisms jointly delayed the rise of a civil society able to provide the checks and balances essential to democratic rule.     

Exchange rate policy and export performance in a landlocked developing country: The case of Nepal

This paper examines the implications of Nepal's exchange rate policy for its export performance over the period 1980–2010. We first document Nepal's long-standing currency peg against the Indian rupee and that Nepal's real exchange rate appreciated substantially from the late 1990s. We then employ a gravity modeling approach to confirm that this real exchange rate appreciation has adversely affected Nepal's exports, especially to third-country markets. Nepal's exchange rate-related export competitiveness trap provides a motivation to reconsider the current peg.     

The Future is in the Past: Projecting and Plotting the Potential Rate of Growth and Trajectory of the Structural Change of the Chinese Economy for the Next 20 Years

Based on the convergence hypothesis and referring to the experience of East Asian high‐performing economies from 1950 to 2010, this paper projects and plots the potential growth rate of the Chinese economy over the next 20 years. It predicts that the potential growth rate of per capita GDP adjusted by purchasing power parity averages at 6.02 percent from 2015 to 2035, while the potential GDP growth rate of 2015 would still be above 8 percent, which implies that the realized rate of growth has not reached its potential since 2012. Besides, based on the per capita GDP projected and on cross‐country comparison, the paper plots the trajectory of structural change of the Chinese economy from 2015 to 2035. The result shows that: (i) the value‐added share of primary industry will drop more rapidly than the employment share; (ii) the value‐added share of secondary industry will decline and employment share will present an inverted U shape whose turning point will probably come between 2020 and 2025; (iii) both the value‐added and employment share of tertiary industry will increase continuously.     

Sources of Growth and Structural Change in the Vietnamese Economy, 1996–2003: A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis*

We use the MONASH‐VN model, a dynamic computable general equilibrium model of the Vietnamese economy, to investigate Vietnam's rapid growth and structural change over the period 1996 to 2003. We do this in two steps. First, we estimate changes in variables representing production technologies, consumer preferences, government policy and other structural features of the economy. Movements in these structural and policy variables are then used to explain the recent history of Vietnam's rapid growth and structural change. We find the most important sources of growth and change to be technical improvements, favorable shifts in foreign demand for Vietnamese goods and employment growth. Other important factors include movement in household preferences away from primary products and towards manufactures and services, expansion in agricultural land supply, and tax reform.