World Agricultural Trade Reform: Implications for Australia

In this paper we assess the implications of agricultural trade reform by GATT member countries. To do this, we link two general equilibrium models, a world food trade model and the ORANI model of the Australian economy. By treating the ORANI model as an integral part of the world model, we are able to focus on the implications for Australia of world agricultural trade reform.
The findings suggest that, if price distorting agricultural policies were removed by GATT member countries, world food commodity prices would rise, some by up to 30 per cent, and world food trade expand by about a third. Australia would be a major beneficiary of these international developments, the value of its agricultural exports rising by close to 15 per cent. In 1986, this would have meant for Australia additional export earnings of around SUS750 million, as well as more rapid economic growth.     

New Protagonists in Global Economic Governance: Brazilian Agribusiness at the WTO

The existing international economic order has been heavily shaped by US power and the US has been a key driver of globalisation and neoliberal economic restructuring, prompting speculation about whether the rise of new developing country powers could rupture the current trajectory of neoliberal globalisation. This paper analyses the case of Brazil at the World Trade Organization (WTO), a core institution in global economic governance. In the last decade, Brazil successfully waged two landmark trade disputes against the US and EU and created a coalition of developing countries – the G20 – which brought an end to the dominance of the US and EU at the WTO and made their trade policies a central target of the Doha Round. Brazil's activism has been widely hailed as a major victory for developing countries. However, I argue that rather than challenging the neoliberal agenda of the WTO, Brazil has emerged as one of the most vocal advocates of free market globalisation and the push to expand and liberalise global markets. I show that Brazil's stance has been driven by the rise of its export-oriented agribusiness sector. This case demonstrates that business actors from the Global South are becoming significant new protagonists in global economic governance; they are taking the tools created by the states and corporations of the Global North – in this case, the WTO and its neoliberal discourse – and turning them against their originators. At the same time, their interests are being wrapped in and advanced through a discourse of development and social justice and a strategic mobilisation of the politics of the North-South divide.     

巴西科技创新的政策重点与管理趋势述评

"金砖外交"正成为我国推进全球外交战略的品牌,我国与金砖国家的科技创新外交关系将进入全面、纵深发展阶段。巴西是南美大国,已快速崛起为全球第七大经济体,其科技创新取得明显成效。通过总结巴西科技创新的历史发展,研究了近年来巴西科技创新的政策重点,并对巴西科技创新管理的趋势与动向进行了分析述评。近10余年来,巴西推出多部立法,促进科技创新;持续颁布了国家层面的科技创新发展五年规划;推出工业研究计划和INOVACRED计划,有效推动企业创新。巴西强化科技创新管理,强调科技与产业深度融合,遴选能够拉动未来经济增长的重点技术领域给予巨额资助,重视科技计划和规划在科技管理中的引导和抓手作用。期望巴西的这些科技创新管理经验对我国具有一定借鉴意义。     

Effects of instantaneous groundwater availability on irrigated agriculture and implications for aquifer management

Groundwater is an important input for agricultural production in many parts of the world. Aquifer depletion has been shown to affect the rate that groundwater can be extracted from an aquifer. In this paper, we develop an analytical framework that accounts explicitly for the effects of limited instantaneous groundwater extraction rate (well capacity) on a producer's irrigation decisions. We show that limited well capacities can affect the producer’s groundwater use and profit. We draw three important insights from these findings. First, we demonstrate that the price elasticity of demand for groundwater is higher for lower well capacities. Second, farmers’ irrigation decisions are non-monotonic with respect to well capacity and climate conditions. Under a drier climate, producers with greater well capacities increase their groundwater use, and producers with lower well capacities reduce their water use. Third, through numerical analysis, we show that considering spatial heterogeneity in well capacities is important for estimating the cost-effectiveness and distributional impacts of groundwater management policies. Our results shed new light on the importance of extraction capacity for groundwater management policies and the potential impacts of climate change on agricultural production.     

工业文明的战略转型——从可持续发展到超越“资本逻辑”

可持续发展作为批判工业文明发展模式的新范式和普遍接受的发展观,现已成为全球发展战略研究中的主导思想和世界各国的共同行动纲领,但其理论与实践的巨大差距引人深思。马克思对资本逻辑的批判性分析,为深刻认识当前可持续发展存在的局限性提供了理论依据,为工业文明的战略转型以及人类新文明的构建指明了前进的方向。     

Inflation targeting in Brazil

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Inflation Targeting (IT) framework as it is applied in the case of Brazil since its adoption in June 1999. For this purpose we first summarize the macroeconometric model utilized by the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB) in its pursuit of the IT framework. While the focus of this paper is on Brazil, we also examine the experience of other countries with IT (in particular, the BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia, India, and China), both for comparative purposes and for evidence of the extent of success of this ‘new’ economic policy pursued by other IT countries. In addition, we compare the experience of Brazil with IT and with that of non‐IT countries. In the context of non‐IT countries, we ask the question of whether it makes a difference in the fight against inflation whether a country has adopted IT or not. Finally, we examine some features of the Brazilian experience with IT regime.     

Subordinated Financial Integration and Financialisation in Emerging Capitalist Economies: The Brazilian Experience

This paper analyses the recent changes in financial practices and relations in emerging capitalist economies (ECEs) using the example of Brazil. It argues that in ECEs these financial transformations, akin to the financialisation phenomena observed in Core Capitalist Economies (CCEs), are fundamentally shaped by their subordinated integration into a financialised and structured world economy. To analyse this subordinated financialisation, the paper draws on the framework of international currency hierarchies. It shows by means of two specific processes how the existence of a hierarchic international monetary system has changed the financial behaviour of domestic economic agents, and with it the structure of the financial system. The first process highlights the phenomenon of reserve accumulation and the changing behaviour of domestic banks. The second points to ECEs’ sustained external vulnerability and its impact on the operations of Brazilian non-financial corporations. The paper also shows that not only were these financial transformations shaped by ECEs’ subordinated financial integration, but also that it was these financialisation tendencies themselves which contributed to cementing existing hierarchies and further deepened existing asymmetries between ECEs and CCEs.     

“中美国”的终结

在过去十年中,世界经济表现较好的原因是,形成了由中国出口导向型发展和美国过度消费相结合的经济模式。2007～2009年的金融危机可能标志着"中美国"时代的终结。本文将从经济史学者的视角研究这一时期的种种事态发展及其产生的深远影响。中国经济模式在1998～2007将近10年间,某些方面类似于西德和日本第二次世界大战之后的经济模式,即对美的贸易顺差在推动经济增长中发挥了主要作用。然而值得注意的是,中国与这两个国家的经济模式存在着两个关键性差异。首先,中国干预货币的规模是前所未有的,而这对世界经济造成的扭曲也是如此;其次,中国迄今为止仍抵制类似西德和日本升值货币的做法。从中可以推断出,当前的"中美国"形式不可能长久。在20世纪70年代,世界经济的重新平衡有赖于汇率的大幅度调整。但是,中国政府目前采取的汇率调整却无法平衡当前世界经济。     

Governance as ‘Kicking Away the Ladder'

The label ‘poor governance’ throws together real evils such as corruption and rent-seeking with a new group of alleged evils which are actually good for development, including a role for the state in the economy and support for domestic capital. Successful development policies of Europe in the late nineteenth century and the Asian Tigers and Brazil in the second half of the twentieth century are now labelled as ‘poor governance.’ This is what Ha-Joon Chang described as ‘kicking away the ladder’ by which rich countries climbed to development, so that today’s poor countries cannot follow. Mozambique is cited as an example of how the good governance rhetoric has been misused to retard development and poverty reduction.     

The World Bank and Emerging Powers: Beyond the Multipolarity–Multilateralism Conundrum

The discrepancy between the increasingly multipolar world economy of the recent decades and the stubbornly limited representativeness of the organisations mandated with its governance causes much strain in global politics. Some scholars suggest that this chronic mismatch will undermine existing multilateral bodies, while others expect the present architecture to persist. This article contends that the outcomes of this challenge are institution-specific. In settings where significant operational realignments are possible within existing mandates and governance structures, the multipolarity–multilateralism conundrum could be partly mitigated. The argument is based on a thematic analysis of all IBRD-IDA loan commitments between 2002 and 2015 in the World Bank’s seven all-time top borrowers: Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey (collectively, the Big Seven). The key finding is that while these emerging countries remain the Bank’s biggest clients, the terms of their engagement have shifted precisely along the lines where they had already differed from the rest of the Bank’s clientele: away from politically onerous governance and institutional reforms, and towards developing physical and market infrastructure while attaining social sustainability. This implicit realignment is facilitated by the Bank’s diverse policy repertoire, which allows considerable inter-regional and intra-regional variation in lending patterns to accommodate member preferences.     

浅析欧盟利用绿色壁垒限制我国企业的政策趋势

近年来,绿色壁垒成为欧盟限制我国企业的最新趋势。本文对欧盟及其成员国近年来的政策进行了文献调研,分析了这一趋势的表现、成因、影响与应对建议,主要内容如下:欧盟科技创新政策正不断提高绿色壁垒,主要表现为提升进口产品环保标准、支持当地企业环保转型以及推动国际经贸规则中环保标准的提高。我国企业或将受到较大影响。究其原因,绿色壁垒与传统限制手段相比具有更多优势。未来,原材料出口、机电产品等与欧盟环保差距较大的领域可能受到较大影响。建议我国政府密切关注欧盟情况,做好前瞻性应对预案,推动我国企业环保转型。     

中日钢铁企业效率比较研究

尽管我国钢铁产量已跃居世界首位,但钢铁大国不等于强国,我国钢铁企业在技术、规模等方面与世界发达国家还存在较大差距.日本自上世纪70年代以来成为世界上最大的钢铁强国,并保持了20余年,技术与规模正是其长盛不衰的主要原因.本文使用2004-2009年中日钢铁企业面板数据,运用目前较为先进的投入产出理论和效率与生产率分析方法对两国钢铁企业效率进行比较分析,结果发现中国钢铁企业整体上快速进步但技术效率下降,可谓大而不强,日本钢铁企业中大中型钢铁企业的全要素生产率的提升速度要快于中小型钢铁企业,规模与技术优势明显,呈现衰而不弱,因此,提高技术投入、扩大企业规模、提高产业集中度是中国钢铁产业做强的必由之路     

OPTIMAL EDUCATION POLICIES AND COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE

We consider the optimal education policies of a small economy whose government has a limited budget. Initially, the economy is closed and the government chooses its education policy to maximize welfare under autarky. When the economy trades with the rest of the world the government chooses a new education policy that maximizes welfare under trade. Is it ever optimal for the government to choose its new policy so that it reverses the economy's comparative advantage? We find that if the budget stays fixed when it is optimal to ‘move up the skills chain’ it is not feasible. In such a case, a foreign loan is welfare improving. A move in the opposite direction can be optimal, and when it is optimal it is also feasible.     

农产品价格与农民收入增长关系的动态分析

实证分析表明,在1978～2010年的样本区间内,农产品生产价格上涨对我国农民收入水平的提高没有显著作用。因此,在出台提高农产品价格的政策选择上,应持谨慎的态度。农业生产资料价格上涨对农民收入增长具有较微弱的负向影响。切实控制农业生产资料价格的非理性上涨,应是政府的长期政策取向。而加大政府对农业的支持力度,建立和完善符合国际惯例和中国国情的农业综合补贴支持体系,推进农业产业化以加快农村劳动力的转移,不失为解决农民增收困难问题的重要途径。     

Hot Money Flows,Cycles in Primary Commodity Prices,and Financial Control in Developing Countries

Because the U.S. Federal Reserve’s monetary policy is at the center of the world dollar standard, it has a first-order impact on global financial stability. However, except during international crises, the Fed focuses on domestic American economic indicators and generally ignores collateral damage from its monetary policies on the rest of the world. Currently, ultra-low interest rates on short-term dollar assets ignite waves of hot money into Emerging Markets (EM) with convertible currencies. When each EM central bank intervenes to prevent its individual currency from appreciating, collectively they lose monetary control, inflate, and cause an upsurge in primary commodity prices internationally. These bubbles burst when some accident at the center, such as a banking crisis, causes a return of the hot money to the United States (and to other industrial countries) as commercial banks stop lending to foreign exchange speculators. World prices of primary products then collapse. African countries with exchange controls and less convertible currencies are not so attractive to currency speculators. Thus, they are less vulnerable than EM to the ebb and flow of hot money. However, African countries are more vulnerable to cycles in primary commodity prices because food is a greater proportion of their consumption, and—being less industrialized—they are more vulnerable to fluctuations in prices of their commodity exports. Supply-side shocks, such as a crop failure anywhere in the world, can affect the price of an individual commodity. But joint fluctuations in the prices of all primary products—minerals, energy, cereals, and so on—reflect monetary conditions in the world economy as determined by the ebb and flow of hot money from the United States, and increasingly from other industrial countries with near-zero interest rates.     

新古典宏观经济学的经济周期理论述评

二十世纪七十年代初,凯恩斯主义经济学在受到经济实践批判的同时,新古典宏观经济学也指出了其理论的缺陷,并以此为基础构建其宏观经济学的微观基础,即经济主体的理性原则、理性预期、市场出清,建立了货币经济周期理论和实际经济周期理论,否定政府政策的有效性,反对政府干预,力图完成其对凯恩斯主义经济学全面彻底的批判。     

The determinants of reforestation in Brazil

This article analyses the main determinants of reforestation in Brazil during the 1980s and 1990s. In the year 2000 Brazil had the sixth largest planted forests area in the world. The planted forests in Brazil saw a huge increase from 1960 to 1985. Since then, however, that stock has decreased, but the demand for roundwood continues to increase. That situation will result in a scarcity of roundwood from reforestation in Brazil in few years. The expected roundwood scarcity motivates an econometric study to compare market forces and economic policies in stimulating the reforestation in Brazil. Considering the main firms reforesting in Brazil, it can be pointed out that small and medium farmers have been planting forests while private or public programmes are present. Otherwise, large wood-based firms consider factors other than prices (such as their future demand for roundwood) to be more important in their planting decisions. Those results cast doubts about the efficiency of the market price system in solving the future scarcity of roundwood in Brazil.     

Understanding China’s Foreign Trade Policy: A Literature Review

China has continued to experience rapid growth in its foreign trade since the implementation of its reform and opening-up policies. In recent years, the country has become the world’s largest exporter and second largest importer of goods and commodities. China’s trade policy has also gradually been transforming from protectionism to open trade. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive survey on the literature of China’s trade policy. The review covers (1) export and import policies, (2) tariff and non-tariff barriers, and (3) policy effects and motivations behind the policy design. This paper also reports on important topics and issues that deserve more research attention.     

International Financial Contagion: Why are Eastern Europe's banks not failing when everybody else's are?

While the Asian financial crisis spread to Russia and Brazil, the transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs) are largely unaffected by international financial contagion. This is the more surprising considering that most economies have experienced severe banking sector problems in the past, that large bad loan ratios are still prevalent, that banking regulation and supervision are only slowly improving, and that stabilizing policies have slowly been eliminated. What insulated the CEECs from the recent wave of financial instability? To consider the counterfactual, we first provide a framework that links banking crises to financial deregulation. We then focus on a number of macro- and microeconomic factors, using data compiled from the IMF's International Financial Statistics, from the World Bank's World Debt Tables, and from the BIS's Consolidated International Banking Statistics. We first compare past experiences in CEECs with those in other emerging economies as a cross-sectional reference point. We then consider whether the situation in CEECs has changed since the last banking sector problems, in order to establish a reference point across time. Our results indicate that the factors leading up to past banking crises are generally different in CEECs from those in other emerging economies. However, in recent years, the characteristics of CEECs have become more similar to those of other emerging economies.     

Capital flight from sub‐Saharan Africa: linkages with external borrowing and policy options

Even as African countries became increasingly indebted, they experienced large‐scale capital flight. Some of this was legitimately acquired capital fleeing economic and political uncertainties; some was illegitimately acquired wealth spirited to safer havens abroad. This paper presents new estimates of the magnitude and timing of capital flight from 33 sub‐Saharan African countries from 1970 to 2004. We then analyze its determinants, including linkages to external borrowing. Our results confirm that sub‐Saharan Africa is a net creditor to the rest of the world, in that the subcontinent’s private external assets exceed its public external liabilities: total capital flight amounted to $443 billion (in 2004 dollars), compared to the external debt of $195 billion. Econometric analysis indicates that for every dollar in external loans to Africa in this period, roughly 60 cents flowed back out as capital flight in the same year, a finding that suggests the existence of widespread debt‐fueled capital flight. The results also show a debt‐overhang effect, as increases in the debt stock spur additional capital flight in later years. In addition to policies for recovery of looted wealth and repatriation of externally held assets, we discuss the need for policies to differentiate between legitimate and odious debts, both to ease current burdens on African countries and to improve international financial governance in the future.