An Incumbent Country View on Eastern Enlargement of the EU Part I: A General Treatment

An eastern enlargement of the EU, from an incumbent country point of view,involves a fiscal burden from extending Union agricultural and cohesion policiesto new members, coupled with potential gains as well as adjustment problemsderiving from an extended customs union and a larger single market. Enlargementis controversial, because the net effect is unclear, a priori, and will certainly vary across individual countries. Our two-part contribution tries to do shed light on this controversy. In this first part, we present a general treatment of the likely effects on different incumbent countries, while a subsequent companion paper will take a closer look at the specific case of Austria. The general view of part I, in turn, first focuses on various empirical measures highlighting crucial differences between incumbents, pertaining to the fiscal burden on the one hand, and integration gains on the other. We then argue that a proper evaluation must rely on an explicit welfare criterion, and we use a general model of economic integration in order to identify the principalchannels through which aggregate welfare of an incumbent country is affected by an enlargement of the EU. We address traditional effects of trade creation and trade diversion, as well as growth effects arising from an abolition of trade barriers. In addition, we ask how enlargement affects foreign direct investmentand labor migration, and what this implies in welfare terms for an incumbent western European country. Taken together, these effects generate a certain presumption of integration gains, which need to be set against the fiscal burden. However, a final judgement requires a case-by-case approach, based on empirical implementations of enriched and parameterized models for specific countries. The companion paper, therefore, uses a suitably specified, calibrated dynamic equilibrium model, in order to take a closer look at the Austrian case.     

Eastern Enlargement of the EU: How Much Is It Worth for Austria?

For present member countries, eastern EU enlargement entails gains from integration as well as fiscal costs. The authors use a calibrated model to quantify the dynamic effects of discriminatory trade liberalization and immigration from eastern applicants. It is found that enlargement is expansionary and yields a remarkable fiscal dividend. Surprisingly, integration compresses the wage spread between skilled and unskilled labor. Overall, the (dynamic) gains from integration clearly outweigh the fiscal cost. While ambiguous a priori , enlargement is found to hold a remarkable net welfare gain for Austria.     

An Analysis of EU Voting Procedures in the Enlargement Context

The problem of a fair and effective voting system in the EU deserves particular emphasis, due to the fact that several issues to be agreed upon concern matters of crucial national interest. The aim of this paper is to assess, in the enlargement context, the advantages and disadvantages of different voting systems within the EU, studying the statistical distributions of the rate of winning and blocking coalitions on the basis of a simulation model. The different scenarios of the voting procedures’ results confirm the positive effects of the Penrose square root rule, which remains the only valid voting system to be adopted in the future for the main EU decision-making bodies.     

东扩对中国欧盟贸易发展的影响与对策

新入盟的中东欧新成员国与中国经济发展水平相近,产业结构类似,同中国在贸易领域具有较大的竞争性,东扩成为影响中欧贸易的重大事件.本文对东扩之后中欧贸易的发展分别进行了理论和实证分析,认为尽管理论分析的结果不容乐观,但是实际上由于诸多因素的共同作用.东扩之后中欧贸易仍然保持了良好的发展势头.本文还对东扩对中欧贸易的负面影响、进行分析,提出必须要高度重视这些负面影响,并对东扩后中欧贸易发展提出了针对性的对策建议.     

The economics of Frank H. Knight: An Austrian interpretation

This paper interprets, in the modern Austrian economics perspective, Frank H. Knight's three core contributions; namely, economic methodology, theories of human action, uncertainty and entrepreneurship. Though Knight is regarded as one of the founding fathers of the Chicago School of economics, this paper argues that Knight's contributions are essentially Austrian. Influenced by William James, Henri Bergson and Max Weber, Knight's subjectivist economics can be seen as a link between Carl Menger and Ludwig von Mises in the history of Austrian subjectivism. This paper further suggests that Knight may be more appropriately located in the Austrian-German School, for the reason that the term “Austrian School” is too narrow to accommodate german influences. This paper concludes that Knight's legacies have left much to be appreciated by neoclassical mainstream economists in general and Austrian economists in particular. The author thanks Dian Kwan for her proof reading in this essay.     

The economics of immigration: An Austrian contribution

Any managed migration system will fail to achieve the optimal quantity or mix of immigrants because centrally planning the international labor market suffers from the same epistemic problems that make it impossible to optimally plan any market. In response to the artificial relative price structure, imposed by managed migration systems, the domestic stock of human and physical capital becomes distorted. Managed migration systems also set in motion the dynamics of intervention that lead to further interventions into the economy.     

The recession of 1990: An Austrian explanation

Conclusion Deficit spending and money-supply expansion do not eliminate recessions. Theycause recessions. This fact will never be understood unless economists and government policymakers stop trying to micro-manage the economy, and start studying what their actions are doing to the structure of production. Heavy inflation of the money supply followed by sharp cutbacks change the rules right in the middle of the game for millions of businesses in the economy. For the last 40 years, government expansionary policies have stimulated industries to create false and untenable investments. These policies are followed by government corrective actions that destroy those same projects—waste the billions of dollars invested in them, and throw millions out of work. Business cycles are not an essential feature of market capitalism. They are the result of government interference with the market. In the misdirection of labor and the distortion of the structure of production during past business cycles, it was fairly easy to point to the places where the excessive expansion had occurred because it was, on the whole, confined to the capital goods industries... In contrast, the present expansion of money, which has been brought about partly by means of bank credit expansion and partly through budget deficits, has been the result of a deliberate policy, and has gone through somewhat different channels... I do not doubt that in a sense we have today the same kind of phenomenon, but the over-expansion, the undue increase of labor employed in particular occupations, is not confined to a single, clearly defined block such as the capital-goods industries. It is now spread much more widely, and the distribution is much more difficult to describe. It is a field I would wish some statistically minded economist would investigate in order to show how the process operated in particular countries. Friedrich A. Hayek     

The ethics of pure entrepreneurship: An Austrian economics perspective

The Review of Austrian Economics - This paper focuses on the justice of income distribution in a system of private property rights. Milton Friedman argued that the “ethical principle that...     

The Export Performance of the 2004 EU Enlargement Economies since the 1990s: a Constant Market Share Analysis

This study focuses on the export performance of the 2004 European Union (EU) enlargement economies to the EU15 between 1990 and 2013. The long time span analysed allows to capture different stages in the relationship of these new members with the EU before and after accession. The study is based on the constant market share methodology of decomposing an ex-post country’s export performance into different effects. Two constant market share analyses were selected in order to disentangle (i) the growth rate of exports and (ii) the growth rate of exports relatively to the world. Both approaches are applied to manufactured products grouping products in different classifications of sectors. Results provide information on export performance for the ten economies individually considered, including the importance of each EU15 destination market.     

欧盟东扩对中国出口贸易的消极影响及我国对策

欧盟东扩后，欧盟迅速成为中国最大的贸易伙伴和第二大出口市场。扩大的欧盟市场无疑给中国的出口贸易带来挑战和机遇。对欧盟东扩给中国出口贸易带来的消极影响进行分析，是为了更好地制定对策，以健康、稳步地发展中欧贸易。     

Growth Effects of EU Membership: The Case of East Germany

The East German experience after unification in 1990 probably comes close to what might be called a controlled experiment for assessing the growth effects of EU membership. This article uses an open-economy neoclassical growth model as a measure of reference against which the actual performance of the East German economy can be evaluated. With no obvious differences in institutions and technology, and with physical capital accumulation in East Germany exceeding the West German rate, differences in human capital remain as the major reason for differences between the theoretical and the actual East German growth rate. Simulation results suggest that East Germany's stock of human capital per worker reaches only about one third of the West Germany level. The main lesson from the East German experience for other EU accession countries is that catching up may come to a halt below the EU average, even under pretty favorable institutional and financial conditions.     

Using Psychology to Reinforce the Austrian Argument for Freedom: The Case of Loan Decisions

The emphatic statements of F. A. Hayek, and other members of the Austrian school of economics, in advocacy of a free society have produced much misgivings among the economics profession. The paper aims to make the Austrian views more intelligible by tracing them back to a theory of the mind that Hayek develops in The Sensory Order. More generally, the paper argues that Austrian economics would greatly benefit from extending itself from a pure logic of choice toward psychological analysis. The argument is illustrated throughout the paper by examples taken from the loan decision process of a banker.     

东中西合作互动促进区域协调发展

2004年3月5日,温家宝总理在《政府工作报告》中指出:加强东、中、西部地区多种形式的合作,形成东中西互动、优势互补、相互促进、共同发展的新格局,是促进区域协调发展的战略举措。1 东中西合作,按性质划分,大体有两类。一是“对口支援”,二是互惠互利的经济技术协作。前者是依     

The Enlargement Challenge: Can Monetary Union Be Made to Work in an EU of 25 Members?

This article considers the evolution of Europe's monetary union over the next five to ten years, concentrating on the most important likely change, namely the increased number and heterogeneity of participating states.     

东部较发达省市人口下降区人口发展趋势——基于生育政策调整的县域个案诠释

通过比照2000年第五次全国人口普查和2010年第六次全国人口普查分县数据,发现人口净输入的东部9个较发达省市也出现了219个人口下降区,约占全国人口下降区总数的21.43%。这些人口下降区在形成机制、人口年龄构成、经济发展、空间分布及农村地区社会发展等方面具有一定的共性特征。借助人口发展预测模型对县域个案的分析发现,执行单独两孩生育政策仅能产生较小的短期效应,长期来看无法阻止人口下降区人口总量持续下降和人口老龄化加速的趋势。国家应高度重视正在扩大的人口下降区及其引发的社会经济冲击,进一步调整和完善生育政策,提升人口下降区中心城市的人口集聚能力,加速构建县域医护快速响应系统,特别是要重点解决好人口下降区留守儿童的教育问题。     

The Politics of Socio-technical Intervention: An Interactionist View

In this article, we apply concepts from symbolic interactionism - a well-established tradition of interpretivist sociology - to investigate the social and political processes involved in a sociotechnical intervention. The intervention was designed to elicit operator involvement in an experimental trial of an advanced manufacturing system at an industrial site in Australia. The interactionist concepts of social worlds, boundary objects and trajectories are used to explore the interrelationships among the theoretical, practical and contextual elements of intervention. We believe that these concepts are flexible intellectual resources that can extend and enrich our understanding of the politics involved in the shaping of work and technology. Such an understanding is necessary if the fields of user participation and sociotechnical design are to move beyond the production of normative discourses and methods into effective interventions in the complex social environments in which technical decisions are made.     

The Austrian theory of the firm: Retrospect and prospect

Using as a focusing device the famous arguments of Coase (Economica 4(16), 386–405 1937) and Hayek (The American Economic Review 35(4): 519–530 1945), I sketch in bold strokes what an Austrian theory of the firm would look like. Such a theory would pay serious attention to issues of knowledge, uncertainty, change, and complementarity. I describe a literature in which much of this theory has already been constructed; make connections to closely related literatures in economics and management; and suggest directions for future development.     

Expectations in Austrian Business Cycle Theory: An Application of the Prisoner's Dilemma

The standard account of Austrian Business Cycle theory posits that central bank manipulations of interest rates fool bankers and investors into believing that there has been an increase in the real supply of loanable funds available for capital investment. However, reliance on foolishness ignores the entrepreneurial emphasis within the Austrian tradition and fails to produce the strongest possible case for Austrian Business Cycle theory. We use the prisoner's dilemma framework to model the profit maximizing behavior of bankers and the investors under uncertainty when the market rate of interest is below the underlying rate of time preference.     

法经济学视角下我国宪政的经济功能

与西方国家宪政的功能相比,我国宪政的突出功能就是经济功能.宪政的经济功能是宪政功能的一种作用形式,是宪政对于经济产生特定影响的表现形式和由此形成的结果.从法经济学的角度进行分析,我国宪政的经济功能包括宪政对社会资源进行合理分配的功能,满足市场经济发展需求的政治、法律和文化供给功能以及宏观调控功能.