State trading organizations: A bias decision model and applications

This paper examines the role of public enterprises in international trade (State Trading Organizations - STOs). Section 2 contrasts motives given for STO creation with those given for public enterprises in general and with policy conclusions of international trade theorists. Section 3 explores sources of bias which at the time of the decision to create an STO lead to understatement of expected costs and overstatement of expected benefits. Section 4 provides a detailed examination of two recently-created Peruvian firms, ENCI and MINPECO, within this biased-decision framework. The concluding section suggests further research needed about STOs.     

The Information Revolution in the Asian-Pacific Region

In this paper, an attempt is made to survey literature dealing with these developments in the Asian-Pacific region. Section I explores the information sector. Section II focuses on telecommunications, the leading edge of the information infrastructure. Section III reviews writing about 'IT-led development', the view of information technology as a powerful tool for the promotion of socioeconomic development. Section IV looks at the role of the World Bank, the largest single hard-currency source of finance for telecommunications in developing countries. Section V reports on some aspects of IT trade and internationalisation. Section VI provides summary country case studies. Section VII raises some questions about the link between telecommunications and economic development.     

Reserve currency consolidation,gold policy and financial flows to developing countries: Mechanisms for an aid-augmented substitution account

This article examines various ways in which the consolidation of reserve currencies through the operation of a Substitution Account may be used to generate additional financial flows to developing countries. Minimum reference is made to current plans and developments and attention is instead focussed on the principal underlying issues. Section 1 describes the basic purpose of a Substitution Account and attempts to put this into the general context of international monetary reform. Section 2 catalogues the central problems that are associated with reserve currency consolidation and illustrates the range of differing versions of a Substitution Account that are available. Section 3 examines various ways in which an Account might be constructed to induce a flow of financial resources to developing countries, while Section 4 attempts to quantify the size of these flows. Section 5 demonstrates how the principle of substitution might also be applied to gold. Section 6 examines the likely acceptability of the various proposals discussed in this paper.     

江苏企业遭遇337条款调查的情况及其应对策略

337条款调查是美国关税法中一种具有一定隐蔽性的贸易救济措施。目前,我国已经成为美国国际贸易委员会337条款调查的主要产品来源国。江苏省作为外贸大省,本省企业遭遇337条款调查的数量位居全国前列。在应对337条款调查中,江苏省企业既有失败的教训,也有成功的经验。政府、行业协会和企业应当在总结以往实践的基础上研析最佳的应对策略。     

CAPITAL CONTROLS AND THE LENDING BEHAVIOUR OF SOUTH AFRICAN BANKS: PRELIMINARY FINDINGS ON THE EXPECTED IMPACT OF BASEL II

Banking regulation has developed rapidly over the past few years. There is a growing realization that the regulatory environment must keep pace with globalization and with advances in the financial sector. The 1988 Basel Capital Accord was an attempt to align regulatory capital with the actual underlying risks that banks face, thereby improving the soundness of the banking sector. The New Basel Capital Accord, due for implementation in South Africa in 2007, refines this principle and remedies some of the flaws of the 1988 Accord. This paper considers whether such implementation would have an effect on lending patterns and credit expansion in South Africa. It falls into five parts. Section 1 examines the rationale for the 1988 Basel Accord and outlines the relevant features of the New Accord. Section 2 reviews some of the criticisms directed towards the New Accord, concentrating on the speculation that its implementation will adversely affect bank credit expansion. Section 3 proposes a method of research for assessing the effect of the New Accord in South Africa. Section 4 analyses the trends in South African banking and considers how the New Accord may affect bank behaviour. Section 5 concludes.     

The Total Factor Productivity Debate: Determinants of Economic Growth in East Asia

This survey article examines the recent studies of technological change or total factor productivity (TFP) as a source of growth in East Asian economies. The major objective of the paper is to show that in the end the importance of technological change in economic growth depends largely on how TFP is defined and measured. The conclusions drawn by Alwyn Young and Paul Krugman are based too much upon the assumption that all technological change is TFP. Section II reviews the conceptual and empirical literature on this subject since the 1950s. Section III surveys the TFP studies of East Asian economies, with particular reference to the recent claims that TFP is generally insignificant. Section IV discusses the prospects for East Asian economic growth and dispels the pessimism of such authors as Young and Krugman.     

Why organizations matter: A journey away from the fairy tale

This paper contends that a major breakthrough has occurred in economics, that this breakthrough is related to the matching of economics and organization theory, and that this breakthrough is already remodeling our understanding of how economic systems work. Section I comes back to the problem of the existence of organizations and to its generalization through the concept of "governance" structures. Section II develops the explanation provided by transaction cost economics of the trade-off among these structures. Section III compares recent contributions of agency theory and of transaction cost economics to the analysis of the structuring mechanism of formal organizations. Section IV explores some properties of the government of organizations. Section V argues that what precedes may have major consequences on public policies and regulations. Distinguished Address presented at the Forty-First International Atlantic Economic Conference, Paris, France, March 12–19, 1996.     

Some theoretical and empirical issues relating to economic stabilization in developing countries

This paper surveys some issues relating to economic stabilization in developing countries. Section 2 examines the contributions of terms-of-trade deterioration and real exchange rate appreciation to payments imbalances in non-oil developing countries during the 1970s. Section 3 distinguishes between demand-side and supply-side policies, and discusses their respective roles in stabilization programmes. The effects of exchange-rate changes are considered within this framework. In Section 4, the effects of alternative stabilization policies on output, prices and the balance of payments are illustrated using simulations of a model that incorporates the major relationships relevant to a typical programme. Section 5 summarizes the conclusions.     

Growth and the Subsectoral Pattern of the Manufacturing Sector in Indonesia - A Comparative Study of 16 Countries

There is a widely held and optimistic view that, based upon the successful implementation of the product-cycle theory and the technological ladder hypothesis, ASEAN countries, the so-called Asian near NICs, will follow the Asian NICs up the ladder and take off as the second tier of NICs in the near future. To realise this ambition, each of the near NICs needs to successfully achieve two take-offs: first, rapid quantitative expansion based upon existing comparative advantage and, second, the successful transformation of their industrial structures to create dynamic comparative advantages. The Indonesian manufacturing sector recorded an average growth rate of 12% in 1980-90, but the accompanying structural changes were not great. The ‘rapid growth’but ‘modest structural change’of the Indonesian manufacturing sector raises the important problem of cultivating new leading sectors in the future. Usually the machinery subsector plays a big role in other ASEAN and NIES economies, but it still needs more momentum for development in Indonesia. This implies a strong need for the institutional and physical infrastructures, and supporting industries for the machinery subsector, as well as further diversification of the industrial structure. The purpose of this paper is to describe the features of industrialization in Indonesia in the 1980s, to measure the capacity of the transformation of the Indonesian manufacturing sector, and to discuss some policy issues related to furthering industrialization in the future. Section I contains some introductory remarks. In Section II, we implement the comparative analysis based upon two aggregate indicators. In Section III, we further analyse the structural changes at a more disaggregate level of 16 subsectors. In Section IV we concentrate on the machinery subsector, and analyse the growth potential and the necessary industrial policy in the medium or long run. In Section V we analyse the possible long-run development of a specialization pattern in the Indonesia manufacturing sector. We present the summary and conclusions with some relevant policy discussions in Section VI.     

THE WORLD ECONOMY: ANALYSIS AND PROSPECTS

In this chapter of the review, Oxford Economic Forecasting providesan analysis of the current world economic climate and sets outthe main features of its latest forecast. Section I gives asummary of world prospects. The UK forecast is covered in moredetail in Section II. Part III examines an issue of some importancefor the world economy: the effects of lower oil prices.     

Industrial decentralization under apartheid: The relocation of industry to the South African periphery

This paper is concerned with industrial decentralization in South Africa, specifically the impact of decentralization on industrialization in the bantustans. The paper begins by describing the evolution of decentralization policy and examines the results to date. Particular attention is directed towards the revised program introduced in 1982. Section 3 identifies the political imperatives that have underpinned the program since its inception and discusses the alternative thesis that a drive towards “spontaneous” decentralization may have emerged more recently. The fourth section, drawing upon the results of the authors' two surveys, focuses upon the factors that militate against the development of growth points in the bantustans. This shows that most are severely disadvantaged with respect to growth points established in “white” areas and may therefore be largely excluded from any “spontaneous” drive towards decentralization. Finally, Section 5 demonstrates that the supposed “developmental” impact of decentralization on the bantustan sub-economies is extremely limited, with most of the benefits draining back to the metropolitan centers.     

Home Country Investor Protection,Ownership Structure and Cross‐Listed Firms' Compliance with SOX‐Mandated Internal Control Deficiency Disclosures

We examine whether home country investor protection and ownership structure affect cross‐listed firms' compliance with SOX‐mandated internal control deficiency (ICD) disclosures. We develop a proxy for the likelihood of cross‐listed firms' ICD misreporting during the Section 302 reporting regime. For cross‐listed firms domiciled in weak investor protection countries, we have three main findings. First, firms whose managers control their firms and have voting rights in excess of cash flow rights are more likely to misreport ICD than other firms during the Section 302 reporting regime. Second, there is a positive association between the likelihood of ICD misreporting and voluntary deregistration from the SEC prior to the Section 404 effective date. Third, for firms that chose not to deregister, there is a positive association between the likelihood of ICD misreporting and the reporting of previously undisclosed ICDs during the Section 404 reporting regime. We do not find similar evidence for cross‐listed firms domiciled in strong investor protection countries. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that, for cross‐listed firms domiciled in weak investor protection countries, managers who have the ability and incentive to expropriate outside minority shareholders are reluctant to disclose ICDs in order to protect their private control benefits. The results of our study should be of interest to regulators who wish to identify noncompliant firms for closer supervision, investors who wish to identify ex ante red flags for poor financial disclosure quality, and researchers who wish to understand the economic forces governing cross‐listed firms' financial disclosure behavior.     

The role of housing vouchers in baltimore city,Maryland

In Baltimore City, the relative well-being of black and white families using Section 8 housing vouchers versus Section 8 housing certificates is compared. Logistic regression is used to examine whether the social and economic characteristics of a regional planning district play a significantly different role in the likelihood that a district will have voucher or certificate recipients. A second analysis examines the average monthly rent paid by blacks and whites for housing in the certificate and voucher programs. The results suggest that whites receive greater economic benefits in the voucher program than in the certificate program while blacks do not. This article is based on a paper entitled /’’ The Impact of Housing Vouchers on the Black Family,” which was funded by the Baltimore Urban League and presented at the National Conference of Political Scientist, March 1989.     

Market Performance Implications of the Transfer Price Rule

The “transfer price rule” (TPR) defines a vertical price squeeze as an input price, output price combination set by a vertically‐integrated firm monopoly producer of an essential input that would not allow the firm's downstream unit to earn at least a normal rate of return on investment in the “as‐if” case that it had to purchase the input at the price charged independent firms. In its 2009 linkLine decision, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the TPR for the purpose of enforcing the anti‐monopolization prohibition of Section 2 of the Sherman Act. In contrast, a vertical price squeeze, defined by a TPR‐like standard, is an abuse of a dominant position under Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. In this article, we model the impact of the TPR on market performance. We find that the TPR increases consumer surplus and net social welfare if all firms remain active in the downstream market. It sometimes induces the upstream firm to refuse to supply the downstream firm, and in such cases, consumer surplus and net social welfare are reduced. The impact of the TPR on market performance thus depends on whether or not an upstream firm can refuse to supply downstream firms on terms that would offer it at least a normal rate of return on investment.     

The “North-South” controversy and Britain's regional problems

The extent of regional economic disparities in Britain has recently become the focus of considerable controversy. Attempts have been made to portray the existing situation in terms of a “North-South divide” or as “two nations”. Opponents of this point of view have argued that no such stark division of the country exists, and that prosperous areas can be found in parts of the North just as depressed areas can be found in parts of the South.

This paper considers the pattern of regional disparities which now prevails in Britain. Section I is a detailed presentation of the existing situation. Section II considers the question of how sharp a division there now is between different parts of Britain, followed, in Section III, by a discussion of the process of change which has brought about the regional disparities which we now observe. Implications for government policy are then considered.     

The impact of proposals to develop the king's cross railway lands

If the British Rail proposal for the King's Cross Railway Lands is approved, the scheme will go ahead just as the latest round of local authority legislation begins to bite. By the time builders are on site, new laws and regulations governing the provision of housing, education, services, local authority finance and land use controls will all be in place. In this context, the King's Cross scheme will act as a great Trojan horse unleashing huge changes in a highly concentrated form on a community whose guardians have already been disarmed. This article describes some of the likely effects of this unequal contest —on the local authority involved (Section I) and on the surrounding local communities (Section II). It argues the need for other local authorities to rethink their conceptual and corporate approach to future large-scale planning applications well in advance of their arrival at the Town Hall.     

The determinants of medical malpractice incidents: Theory of contingency fees and empirical evidence

Summary A common criticism of the contingent fee arrangement is that it increases the total number of claims [Dietzet al., 1973, pp. 87–167]. This is true. But without contingent fees, risk averse plaintiffs would not offer the fair value of an incident and, as a consequence, would bear more of the cost of medical malpractice. This conclusion was reached in Section II by examining an expected utility model of plaintiff's decision-making.Section III presented empirical evidence on the determinants of malpractice incidentsper capita. High income, exposure to surgical operations, and a favorable legal system encourage incidents. The supply price of lawyers' time is negative and significant.This project was supported by Grant Number HS 01971 to the Health Services Research Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from the National Center for Health Services Research, HRA.