Export instability and concentration in the less developed countries: A cross-sectional analysis

A model to explain export instability in the less developed countries is formulated and tested on a sample of 48 less developed countries between 1957 and 1969. The explanatory variables suggested are commodity and geographic concentration and the importance of oil in the export sector. These variable are defined in a variety of ways to determine the sensitivity of the results to variable definitions. The results suggest that all three explanatory variables are significant in explaining export instability, although a considerable proportion of the variance in export instability remained unexplained.     

Employment instability,earnings and market structure

A model of incremental decision-making in local government is presented as an extention of that developed by davis et al. (1996) for US Congressional appropriation. This is then combined with joint supply and demand equation for local taxes and expenditure. An explicit Stone-Geary utility function derived when these fuctions are maximized subject to the supply and demand equations as constraints. Empitical results are then given for local authorities in England and Wales from 1974 to 1960. These results confirm a very important role for the bureauctic component within the overall tax-expenditure model.     

Export expansion and economic growth: Further empirical evidence

This paper examines the relationship between export expansion and economic growth in a sample of seventy-three developing countries, using data for the period 1960–1978. It shows that in both groups of low- and middle-income countries, export expansion is associated with better economic performance and that an important cause of this association is the favorable impact of exports on total factor productivity. The paper also demonstrates that the effect of commodity composition of exports on the relationship between export expansion and economic growth is substantial in more advanced developing economies.     

Public choice versus constitutional economics: A methodological interpretation of the Buchanan research program

Through conceptual redirections, the Buchanan research program attempts to react to the fact that economic policy advice is often ignored. In terms of positive analyses, the research perspective is focused on institutions, i.e., the rules of economic as well as political games. In terms of normative analyses, the democratic criterion of unanimous consent is substituted for the normative efficiency criterion employed by welfare economics. The underlying idea is to direct positive analyses toward developing informative explanations on which normative analyses can build in order to provide intellectual orientation and thereby to contribute to democratic self-enlightenment. However, large parts of the existing public choice literature can be regarded as empirically oriented welfare-economic analyses of the political sector. Consequently, they run the danger of duplicating the failure of economic policy advice. This is why, during the 80s James Buchanan has changed the name of his research program from public choice to constitutional economics.     

Export expansion and economic growth: Evidence from Chinese Provinces

This paper examines the effect of exports on economic growth based on the data of 30 Chinese provinces from 1978 to 1995. A theoretical model is based on the neoclassical production function, in which exports can affect output growth. It was found that the growth rate of exports and the growth rate of per capita output are positively related; i.e. provinces with faster growth of exports grew faster than the provinces with slower export growth. It was also found that investment in state enterprises was insignificantly related to output growth, while investment in private enterprises was positively related to growth.     

Political instability and labour market institutions

This paper investigates the relationship between political instability and labour market institutions. We develop a theoretical model in which political instability creates incentives for a government to introduce labour market regulation in the economy. The distortionary effect of regulation on unemployment effectively puts a constraint on the design of fiscal and public policies. We empirically investigate these predictions using panel data for 21 OECD countries for the period 1985–2006. Our results are consistent with the view that political instability is associated with more regulated labour markets, lower labour taxation, and lower unemployment benefit replacement rates.     

Export market correlation and strategic trade policy

In the traditional models of strategic trade policy pioneered by Brander and Spencer, exports of the domestic firm, engaged in a Cournot-Nash competition with the foreign firm in a neutral market, must be subsidized to maximize national welfare. We demonstrate that when the firms play the Cournot-Nash game in two stochastic and positively correlated markets, it may be optimal to tax exports to the more volatile market while subsidizing it in the other. The policy combination reduces the amplitude of aggregate profit and raises the utility of the risk-averse firm in a manner similar to the theory of portfolio choice. JEL Classification: F12, D18
Marchés d'exportation co-reliés et politique commerciale stratégique. Dans les modèles traditionnels de politique commerciale stratégique proposés par Brander et Spencer, les exportations de la firme nationale, qui est engagée dans une concurrence à la Cournot-Nash avec une firme étrangère dans un marché neutre, doit être subventionnée si l'on veut maximiser le niveau national de bien-être. On montre que, quand les entreprises jouent un jeu à la Cournot-Nash dans deux marchés d'exportation stochastiques et positivement co-reliés, il peut être optimal de taxer les exportations vers le marché le plus volatile et de subventionner les exportations vers l'autre marché. Cette combinaison de politiques réduit l'amplitude de variation des profits agrégés et augmente l'utilité de l'entreprise qui a une aversion au risque d'une manière qui ressemble à ce qui se passe dans la théorie des choix de portefeuilles.     

Strategic corporate social responsibility,imperfect competition,and market concentration

We examine the strategic use of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in imperfectly competitive markets. Before firms decide upon supply, they choose a level of CSR which determines the weight they put on consumer surplus in their objective function. First, we consider Cournot competition and show that the endogenous level of CSR is positive for any given number of firms. However, positive CSR levels imply smaller equilibrium profits. Second, we find that an incumbent monopolist can use CSR as an entry deterrent. Both results indicate that CSR may increase market concentration. Finally, we show that CSR levels decrease as the degree of product heterogeneity increases in Cournot competition and are zero in Bertrand Competition.     

Export market participation with sunk costs and firm heterogeneity

In this article we investigate the importance of sunk costs, firm characteristics and spillovers from nearby exporters on a firm's decision to participate in exporting. The empirical analysis involves the estimation of a nonstructural, discrete choice, dynamic model with firm heterogeneity. By using panel data for Estonian companies from 1994 to 1999 we find that: (i) both sunk costs and observable firm characteristics are important determinants of export market participation; (ii) previous history matters, in that, if a firm has been exporting the previous period or the period before, it significantly increases the likelihood of the firm exporting in the current period; (iii) larger firms with high capital intensity and foreign ownership are more likely to be exporters; (iv) operating in an export-oriented industry increases a firm's likelihood of exporting.     

Labor market reforms, job instability, and the flexibility of the employment relationship

We endogenize separation in a search model of the labor market and allow for bargaining over the continuation of employment relationships following productivity shocks to take place under asymmetric information. In such a setting separation may occur even if continuation of the employment relationship is privately efficient for workers and firms. We show that reductions in the cost of separation, owing for example to a reduction in firing taxes, lead to an increase in job instability and, when separation costs are initially high, may be welfare decreasing for workers and firms. We furthermore show that, in response to an exogenous reduction in firing taxes, workers and firms may switch from rigid to flexible employment contracts, which further amplifies the increase in job instability caused by policy reform.     

Endogenous growth,decline in social capital and expansion of market activities

We model in an endogenous growth set-up the hypotheses that the expansion of market activities weakens social capital formation and that firms can invest in formal mechanisms of control and enforcement to substitute for social capital (trust, work ethics, honesty). The model shows that the economy tends to grow faster when it is relatively poorer in social capital and that perpetual growth can be consistent with the progressive erosion of social capital. These results may help to reconcile Putnam's claim that social capital has declined in the U.S. with the satisfactory growth performance of the U.S. over the same period.     

Horizontal market concentration: Theoretical insights from spatial models

This paper aims to further the study of horizontal mergers by reviewing the theory on spatial models that may be useful for their analysis. We examine the incentives conveyed by locations for undertaking merger and merger-related strategies, as well as the impact of the latter on strategic location choices. This literature review therefore focuses on the two-way relationship between horizontal market concentration and firm location.     

Parameter instability,stochastic volatility and estimation based on simulated likelihood: Evidence from the crude oil market

Stochastic volatility models with fixed parameters can be too restrictive for time-series analysis due to instability in the parameters that govern conditional volatility dynamics. We incorporate time-variation in the model parameters for the plain stochastic volatility model as well its extensions with: Leverage, volatility feedback effects and heavy-tailed distributed innovations. With regards to estimation, we rely on one recently discovered result, namely, that when an unbiasedly simulated estimated likelihood (available for example through a particle filter) is used inside a Metropolis-Hastings routine then the estimation error makes no difference to the equilibrium distribution of the algorithm, the posterior distribution. This in turn provides an off-the-shelf technique to estimate complex models. We examine the performance of this technique on simulated and crude oil returns from 1987 to 2016. We find that (i): There is clear evidence of time-variation in the model parameters, (ii): Time-varying parameter volatility models with leverage/Student's t-distributed innovations perform best, (iii): The timing of parameter changes align very well with events such as market turmoils and financial crises.     

Coverage area expansion, customer switching, and household profiles in the Japanese broadband access market

This paper examines the diffusion process of Internet broadband access in Japan by modeling the household choice of access modes. Estimates reveal that the characteristics of users, rather than those of the access modes, play a significant role in demand substitution across the modes. Simulation exercises indicate that had optic fibers (fiber-to-the-home; FTTH) been made available to the whole country in 2005, only 10% of households would have switched to that mode. This result implies that once chosen, the household choice of access mode persists, and that indirect network effects are an important element in decisions to adopt the new technology of broadband. Finally, policy implications are discussed.     

The riegle-neal act and local banking market concentration

The Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994 greatly transformed the American banking system by allowing the widespread establishment of interstate bank branching networks. This paper examines possible effects on local banking market concentration that resulted from the provision in the Riegle-Neal Act that allowed states to opt-in to the establishment of de novo interstate branches. Regression analysis using data from more than seven hundred cities does not provide any evidence that allowing the establishment of de novo interstate branches caused increases in local banking market concentration. These results may help alleviate some concerns that passage of the Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act currently pending in Congress will result in lessened competition in local banking markets. The author would like to thank discussant Janice Breuer and other participants of the International Atlantic Economic Conference, held in Quebec City from October 16–19, 2003 for helpful comments and suggestions. The author would also like to thank Trevor Lyon for his valuable research assistance.     

金融发展对出口贸易规模与结构的影响

金融发展对一国专业化分工模式的选择及其对外贸易的开展具有深远的影响。利用中国大陆省级面板数据(2001—2005),本文基于一阶差分GMM估计技术检验了金融发展对对外出口规模及其出口商品结构的影响。在控制了人均实际资本存量、人均受教育年限等众多因素后,本文发现,金融发展规模与金融发展效率对对外出口规模及其制成品在出口总额中的份额皆有显著的正向影响,而金融发展效率对对外出口结构的影响较对对外出口规模的影响更加明显。     

出口卡特尔与反垄断的法律探讨

出口卡特尔是出口商之间设定价格同盟以及建立排他性出口销售渠道的横向协议.为了鼓励出口,维护本国利益,世界各国反垄断法普遍对本国出口卡特尔予以反垄断"豁免",而对外国出口卡特尔则依据"合理原则"认定其是否危害本国竞争环境,并进行相应制裁.我国的反垄断法应当限制国外出口卡特尔,同时应明确对国内出口卡特尔的"豁免".