A Comparison of Household Recycling Behaviors in Norway and the United States

This paper investigates empirically the determinants of household recycling in Norway and compares the results with a similar, recently published, study of households in the United States. The comparison focuses on the relative importance of user fees on waste disposal, community recycling programs, and socioeconomic factors. Both data sources are nationwide, material-specific, and at the household level. One major finding is that a disposal fee provides a significant economic incentive to Norwegian households, whereas its effectiveness in the United States is still up for debate. Providing households with convenient recycling options, such as curbside and drop-off recycling, appears generally effective, but less so in Norway than in the United States. Socioeconomic characteristics are less important predictors of behavior in Norway than in the United States. Qualifications on the comparison are provided throughout and two extensions for future research are suggested at the end.     

国际直接投资对国家经济安全影响的比较研究

本文比较研究了国外直接投资(FDI)对美国、新加坡、印度和中国等国的经济安全的影响，提出了一些结论及政策建议。     

Corruption: The good,the bad,and the uncertain

This paper argues that the relationship between corruption and economic growth is dependent upon the uncertainty involved. Employing data on a cross‐section of countries, this paper uses an interaction between the frequency of bribery payments and the uncertainty regarding the delivery of the service in exchange for these bribes to show that corruption has a negative association with growth unless the uncertainty is minimal. Furthermore, the negative association becomes larger in magnitude with higher levels of uncertainty. At extremely high levels of uncertainty a relatively small increase in corruption, equivalent to moving from Sweden to the United States for example, is associated with economically large decreases in economic growth.     

THE SOVIET PATH TO ECONOMIC GROWTH: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Considerable attention has been devoted in the past to the methodological issues involved in the measurement and explanation of economic growth. Following the method pioneered by Denison and applied by him to the United States and Western Europe, comparative studies have been made of various other countries; that for Japan is of special interest. The present paper extends the analysis to the Soviet Union. In order to preserve comparability, the analysis follows the Denison methodology exactly, and compares the results with those for the United States, Northwest Europe, and Japan.     

Business cycle and level accounting: the case of Portugal

This paper studies what accounts for the recent business cycles phenomena in Portugal and why it is depressed relatively to the United States. The business accounting procedure applied here suggests that most of the changes in output per worker in Portugal over the period (mainly, from 1979 to 1991) can be attributed to changes in economic efficiency. For instance, the strong economic recovery in output per worker just after Portugal joined the European Union until the first years of the 1990s can be essentially attributed to improvements in economic efficiency. From 1979 to 2000, Portugal caught up with the industrial leader. Its output per worker is currently depressed by about 46% relative to the United States level (it was depressed by 57% in 1979). In the 1980s all of this depression in output per worker relative to the United States was due to the productivity factor. By 2000 Portugal depression relative to the United States was a mix of the French and Japanese depression. The labor factor accounted for roughly 24% of this depression, while the economic efficiency accounted by about 89%.      

Catching Up and Convergence: Long-run Growth in East Asia

The paper attempts to combine the traditional learning model with the recent theory of economic growth using Maddison's long‐run real GDP per capita data of the three fastest growing countries in East Asia: Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. The authors first explain games of catching‐up among nations, and then explain the learning coefficients of Taiwan and Korea with Japan and the United States through periods before and after World War II. The model of leaning leads to the logistic model of economic growth of convergence between two countries. Using time‐series data, the coefficients of a logistic model are estimated to confirm that the real GDP per capita of Taiwan and Korea are converging to that of Japan and the United States, respectively. Similarly, Japan's GDP per capita converges to that of the United States. The time required for finite convergence for these countries is also estimated.     

Economic Integration Among Taiwan, Hong Kong and China: A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis

This paper investigates the effects of economic integration among Taiwan, Hong Kong and China (CEA). A seven-region, seven-sector computable general equilibrium model for world production and trade is developed for this purpose. The simulation results demonstrate that the three Chinese economies would benefit greatly from further integration by means of liberalizing trade policies. The opportunity cost of isolating the United States from East Asia is high for both the US and the three Chinese economies, suggesting that an economically integrated CEA is in the long-term strategic interest of the United States.     

Exploring the causes of the slowdown in remittances to Mexico

This article explores the slowdown of remittances to Mexico and the role that may have been played by some key variables from the United States economy. The findings show that several measures of United States economic activity and different proxies for the unemployment of Mexican nationals living in the United States do not appear to have a strong impact on remittance transfers. On the other hand, this study finds that United States housing variables do seem to affect remittance transfers. In particular, there is a special prominence of the impact shown by the number of housing starts in the United States. Overall, the results seem to suggest that there is not a single United States economic factor that is responsible for the decrease of remittances to Mexico but rather a combination of factors. Among these factors, the decrease in United States housing activity seems to play a major role.     

A COMPARISON OF ALTERNATIVE MEASURES OF ECONOMIC WELL-BEING FOR GERMANY AND THE UNITED STATES

This paper, using six waves of data (1984-89) from the United States Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), compares economic well-being using single year income, multi-year income, and wealth as measures. We find inequality to be greater in the United States than in Germany regardless of the measure used. However, the relative degree of inequality varies across measures. When we disaggregate our data by age and gender categories, in general we find greater inequality in the United States, but wealth inequality among older Germans is greater than it is among older Americans.     

美国自华进口对其经济增长的影响

本文利用协整分析与Granger因果检验方法,对美国自华进口对美国经济增长影响进行了实证研究。研究认为,美国GDP增长与美国自华制成品进口间呈反向长期均衡关系,与自华初级产品进口问则没有这种均衡关系,但美国自华制成品进口不是引致美国GDP下降的原因。美国不应将其经济增长趋缓或下降归咎于中国,中国也应通过扩大进口缓解当前的国内流动性过剩。     

Optimal fiscal policy under monopolistic competition with firm heterogeneity

Government spending is a policy instrument used to sustain economic development and improve social welfare. Empirical observations, however, reveal a significant decrease in the government spending to GDP ratio for the United States. In addition, the United States has been observed to exhibit a rise in firm heterogeneity in productivity in recent decades. This paper shows that the optimal size of government expenditure will decrease as firm heterogeneity increases. We thus indicate that the rise in firm heterogeneity in productivity may serve as a plausible vehicle to explain the decline in the share of government spending in GDP for the United States.     

中国经济与美、日经济波动的相关性研究

中国经济与美、日经济波动有很强的相关性和长期的均衡关系,美国经济与中国经济间有正向关系;日本与中国经济间却是负向关系。美、日两国经济的共同波动会通过资本流动的渠道影响中国。因此,为了降低美日经济波动对中国的影响,中国贸易必须走多元化的路子,而且应减少对国外资金流入的依赖。     

THE SOCIAL ACCOUNTS FROM A CONSUMER'S POINT OF VIEW

After a short introduction, the first part of this paper (section 3 through 9) provides an outline of the revisions proposed to the System of National Accounts (SNA) of the United Nations which are now under discussion. These proposals were considered by an expert group at the end of 1964 and were accepted by the Statistical Commission of the United Nations in 1965 as the basis for further work on the extension and revision of the SNA. The aim of the revision is to provide a fully integrated system of accounts and balance sheets in which input-output, flows-of-funds and sector balance sheets are incorporated in a generalised accounting framework. Whereas the real side of the economy has been studied analytically in many countries (input-output analysis, demand analysis and so on) much less experience is available on modelling the financial side of the economy, apart from econometric work on saving behaviour, which is fairly widespread. Accordingly, the second part of the paper (sections 10 through 14) contains a discussion of financial model-building in which a number of possibilities are explored. The final topic discussed (section 15) is demographic accounting, by which is meant a framework for recording and analysing human, as opposed to economic, flows and stocks. The development of such a system arose out of the emphasis placed by the expert group on the integration of demographic and economic information.     

Financial conditions indexes for the United States and euro area

Financial conditions indexes are developed for the United States and euro area using a wide range of financial indicators and a dynamic factor model. The financial conditions indexes are shown to be useful for forecasting economic activity and have good revision properties. Variants of the indexes that allow for cross-economy effects reveal very strong financial linkages across the United States and euro area.     

THE NATIONAL BALANCE SHEET OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

The paper discusses national balance sheets in the light of the proposals for their inclusion in the revised SNA. The author uses his own estimated national balance sheet of the United Kingdom as a basis for discussing the problems encountered in the compilation of national balance sheets, and the greater part of the paper is concerned with questions of valuation, classification and statistical source material. The concluding section deals briefly with the structure of the national balance sheet of the United Kingdom and compares its structure with that of the national balance sheet of the United States. Provisional national balance sheets of the United Kingdom for each of the five years 1957 to 1961 are presented.     

Potential Contagion Effects on OECD Countries: A FAVAR Model under Bayesian Framework

This paper studies whether and how US shocks impact the OECD countries in the case of a simulated crisis. Using Bayesian estimation methods we extract constrained factors (global, country and variable type specific) from a sample of 153 economic and financial OECD variables from 1980–2008. These factors are the transmission channels through which national shocks spread to other countries, as in a pandemic. The Bayesian interpretable factors are used to estimate FAVAR models. Our main findings suggest that differences exist in the contagion effects. This implies that no generalizations can be made for OECD countries even of equal economic size and in the same geographic region. In addition, our results show that a large portion of the variance of domestic economic variables is explained by global factors; and that the interest rate shock appears to play an important role in the spillover mechanism from the United States to the rest of the world. More precisely, Australia, the United Kingdom and Scandinavian countries appear to be most sensitive to the US shocks.     

Veblen and Kropotkin on Human Evolution

This paper studies the spillover effects of economic fluctuations in the United States on economic activity in Latin America and the Caribbean. Fluctuations in U.S. GDP growth have spillover effects that stimulate real growth and accelerate price inflation across many countries. Underlying these spillover effects are significant movements in private consumption, and to a larger extent, private investment. Openness to the United States has significant effects that accelerate growth of exports and/or imports across many countries. The net effects on the trade and current account balances vary across countries. Overall, the evidence supports concerns about adverse spillover effects of a slowdown in the U.S. economy on neighboring countries, necessitating careful mobilization of countercyclical domestic tools to hedge against potential risk and mitigate the severity of economic downturns.     

The impacts of robotization on macro and sectoral economies within a world econometric model

A world model of industry and trade is developed to evaluate the probable global impact of robotization on the macro and sectoral economies. It is found that robotization in Japan and Korea has a positive impact on their economic growth, whereas robotization in the United States apparently has a negative impact on economic growth. It is also found that the international impacts of robotization in Japan are negative for the United States, but positive for the Korean economy.     

浅析美国在华直接投资与中美贸易的关系

贸易和投资——世界经济全球化的两个主要推动力量,日益向着一体化的方向发展。随着经济全球化的日益深入,中美两国的经贸联系越发密切。美国是当今世界经济的主要引擎之一,其在华的直接投资对中关进出口贸易产生着举足轻重的影响。文章分析了美国在华直接投资与中关贸易的发展趋势及其特点,并在此基础上探讨了美国对华投资与中关贸易互相促进的关系。     

A New Approach for Regulating Information Markets

Information markets are markets for contracts that yield payments based on the outcome of an uncertain future event, such as a presidential election. They have the potential to improve decision making and policies throughout the economy. At the same time, there are regulatory hurdles to establish such markets, largely arising from state prohibitions on Internet gambling. This paper reviews the current regulatory structure for information markets in the United States and offers recommendations for reform. We argue that the authority for regulating many information markets should be shifted from the states to the federal government. In addition, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission should administer an “economic purpose test”. That test would only allow information market contracts that are likely to provide significant financial hedging opportunities or valuable information for improving economic decisions.