The United States and United Kingdom activities of Japanese banks, 1980–1988

This paper analyzes the United States and United Kingdom activities of Japanese banks by integrating their activities in these two markets with the regulatory environment for banks in Japan and Japan's overall external financial position, as well as with business opportunities in the two host countries. The paper concludes that the regulatory environment in Japan, including restraints on interest rates and possible quantitative restraints, has had an impact on activities of Japanese banks in these two foreign markets.Japanese banks appear to have adjusted to their domestic regulatory environment by using their London branches as a flexible funding source and their U.S. offices in extending commercial and industrial loans to Japan-based companies as well as a substitute location for interbank trading. In both markets Japanese banking offices are large net barrowers from unrelated banks because of constraints on raising funds in their homer market.     

Economic ramifications of China–United States trade war for the Russian Federation

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the article was to assess the impact of escalating China-United States trade war on the economic development of such countries as the Russian Federation, Poland, Turkey, Taiwan, Thailand, and South Africa. A cognitive map was developed to describe the general model of economic development of the countries under study, impacted by the trade war, which allowed for substantiation of a qualitative nature of the trade war ramifications in core economic sectors in the countries under consideration. The research results and recommendations are of scientific and practical importance, since they serve as the basis for elaborating further strategies to stem the risks of the escalating trade war to the countries engaged in international trade.     

Labour Productivity: A Comparative Analysis of the European Union and United States, 1994–2007

This article confirms that labour productivity in the European economies has continued to slow down in recent years. U.S. productivity growth has been higher than in the EU, but only since 2001. At the same time, both economies have modified previous employment performance: EU employment growth is now higher than in U.S. This article proposes that productivity growth be explained by demand dynamics, and investment in particular, not forgetting the influence of employment, along with other factors such as new technologies.     

Trade liberalization,intra-industry trade and the environment: competition mode and the order of firms’ moves

This paper explores the implications of trade liberalization by extending the intra-industry trade framework à la Fung and Maechler (J Int Trade Econ Dev 16(1):53–69, 2007) to the case of sequential move and taking the mode of firms’ competition into consideration as well. It is shown that the existing results obtained for the case of simultaneous price competition are robust in quantity competition and sequential move cases. Moreover, it studies the likelihood that the environmental effects of trade liberalization occur.

Unequal we stand: An empirical analysis of economic inequality in the United States, 1967–2006

We conduct a systematic empirical study of cross-sectional inequality in the United States, integrating data from the Current Population Survey, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Consumer Expenditure Survey, and the Survey of Consumer Finances. In order to understand how different dimensions of inequality are related via choices, markets, and institutions, we follow the mapping suggested by the household budget constraint from individual wages to individual earnings, to household earnings, to disposable income, and, ultimately, to consumption and wealth. We document a continuous and sizable increase in wage inequality over the sample period. Changes in the distribution of hours worked sharpen the rise in earnings inequality before 1982, but mitigate its increase thereafter. Taxes and transfers compress the level of income inequality, especially at the bottom of the distribution, but have little effect on the overall trend. Finally, access to financial markets has limited both the level and growth of consumption inequality.     

Transition programs for internationally educated nurses: what can the United States learn from the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada?

It is critical to conduct competency assessments of internationally educated nurses (IENs) to ensure public safety, as well as uphold accountability to nursing as a regulated profession. Transition programs are needed because of the required proficiency of the working language, as well as differences in nursing education, national health care systems, nursing practice and culture, etc. Transition programs in the United States are grossly under-developed because of lack of recognition of their importance, lack of funding and standardization, and decentralized regulation in nursing. United States can learn from the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada regarding how to best transition IENs. Its current hit-and-miss approach is inadequate and inconsistent with the emerging global trend to systematically deal with the transitional challenges of IENs at the national level.     

The economic and trade effects of the UK–Korea free trade agreement on the United Kingdom,Korea, Japan,China, and the European Union

We explored a comparative static computable general equilibrium model with six regions and 12 sectors to estimate the impacts of the recent UK–Korea free trade agreement (FTA) along with the European Union (EU)–Korea FTA. The empirical results provide quantitative evidence of the impact on national GDP, national exports and imports by sector, and the changes in exports or imports among the United Kingdom, Korea, Japan, China, and the EU. The UK–Korea FTA, along with the EU–Korea FTA, increases GDP and welfare for the United Kingdom and Korea; moreover, there is a large increase in automobiles, transport equipment, and machinery exports between Korea and the United Kingdom. The GDP and welfare level of non-member countries such as Japan and China will slightly decline. Exports from the United Kingdom and Korea to non-member countries are also expected to decrease in most manufacturing sectors. The UK–Korea FTA will lead to increases in imports between the United Kingdom and Korea due to mutual trade creation effects and trade diversion effects. However, non-member countries such as Japan's exports are expected to experience a large decline in automobiles to the United Kingdom and in most manufacturing products to Korea due to the negative impact of the UK–Korea FTA.     

Structural change in the United States: Social accounting estimates for 1982–1988

During the 1980's, extensive structural adjustments took place in the U.S. economy. This paper uses estimates of sectorally detailed social accounting matrices to evaluate the changes in receipt and expenditure patterns, including interindustry linkages, over the 1982–1988 period. Among other effects, our results reveal increasing service orientation, shifts in energy use, and increased import and foreign investment dependence. Detailed evidence on direct and indirect demand linkages indicates large shifts in the composition of government expenditure and private investment, the latter being intensified by declines in the rate of domestic capital formation.We would like to thank Greg Alward for the 1982 IMPLAN input-output data, Norman Bakka for the National Income and Product Account Data, Ken Hanson for helpful suggestions, Mark Planting for 1985 BEA input-output data, Valerie Personick for the activity output data, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments.     

Whose policy uncertainty affects commodity trade between Australia and the United States?

Recent studies are assessing the impact of news-based policy uncertainty measure on trade flows between countries. In this paper we add to this new literature by investigating the symmetric and asymmetric effects of Australian policy uncertainty index and the U.S. index on trade flows of 63 two-digit industries that trade between the two countries. When we estimated a symmetric and linear model for each industry, we found short-run effects of both uncertainty measures on 30% of the industries' trade flows. However, this number increased to 70% when an asymmetric and nonlinear model was estimated. The long-run effects of both policy uncertainty followed similar pattern. Less than 10% of trade was affected by the estimates of the linear models. However, estimates of the nonlinear models predicted that 41.20% (26.53%) of the U.S. exports to Australia was affected by the U.S. uncertainty (Australian uncertainty). As for the Australian exports to the United States, 6.72% (5.5%) of its exports were affected by the changes in the U.S. policy uncertainty (Australian uncertainty). In almost all industries, increased uncertainty was found to hurt the trade and decreased uncertainty was found to boost it at different rate or asymmetrically. In sum, the U.S. and Australian policy uncertainty measure affects U.S. exports to Australia much more than they affect Australian exports to the United States.     

A Takayama–Judge activity model applied to the analysis of allocation and trade in Sweden

The purpose of this article is to formulate a numerical general equilibrium model of the Swedish economy, and to use the model for a quantitative evaluation of the pattern of comparative advantages. The model is essentially a Leontief type of input-output model, extended with linear demand functions for final commodities, foreign trade activities and capacity and resource constraints. Due to the linearity the model can easily be reformulated and solved as a quadratic programming model. The evaluation of the pattern of comparative advantages of the Swedish economy is carried out as an analysis of the choice between inport and domestic production in a temporary equilibrium framework with exogenously given world market prices, exports and domestic production capacities.     

Explaining constitution-makers’ preferences: the cases of Estonia and the United States

This article is concerned with the effects of the kinds of framers involved in constitution-making on the content of constitutional provisions proposed during the drafting process. It tests the hypotheses that predict framers’ constitutional preferences on the basis of their institutional position, partisan background and constitutional expertise with two specific cases: the Constitutional Assembly of Estonia (1991–1992) and the Federal Convention (1787) of the United States. The case studies show that most of the hypotheses find only partial confirmation in both instances of constitution-making. The institutional position of a framer (being a member of existing legislature or executive) and constitutional expertise does not necessarily influence his or her constitutional preferences in the predicted way. The only theoretical proposition that is corroborated in both cases concerns the importance of group interest in a constitutional choice of electoral system and modes of representation: in the Estonian case, the design of the constitutional electoral rules was strongly influenced by partisan interest; in the US case, the interests of territorial subunits played a major role.     

Returns to education: the Greek experience, 1988–1999

This article provides estimates of private rates of return to education in Greece derived from Mincerian-type earnings equations. The data come from the latest three household surveys of the country covering the 1988 to 1999 period. The empirical evidence suggests that: rates of return associated with female high school and university graduates exceed the respective rates for male graduates; rates of return pertaining to tertiary education graduates are increasing over time, whereas the corresponding rates for secondary education graduates follow an inverted U-shaped pattern and dropouts from any education degree end up with rates of return lower than the rates associated with the immediately preceding education level.     

Inventory investment in the United States, 1920–1941

An inventory investment function for the inter-war period in the United States is estimated using recently published quarterly data. The estimates obtained are consistent with plausible lag structures. An increase (decrease) in sales causes unplanned inventory decumulation (accumulation) in that quarter but by the end of a year more than half of the adjustment of inventories to a new equilibrium is complete.     

Sewage pollution and institutional and technological change in the United States, 1830–1915

This article examines institutions for water pollution control and their interaction with water supply and sanitation technologies in the United States before the First World War. The article discusses how growth of settlements polluted waters and created pressure to adopt local institutional responses and networked water supply and sewerage technologies in the mid-19th century. However, the new urban technologies undermined local institutional responses and expanded the scale of water pollution problems they were expected to resolve. Water companies, households and local governments litigated their water pollution conflicts in the courts in the absence of other alternatives. In the end of the 19th century, many states adopted water pollution policies. At first, public health authorities enforced the new policies to protect public water supplies from sewage contamination. However, when the effectiveness of filtration and chlorination of drinking water was demonstrated in the early 20th century, public health authorities ceased to enforce discharge prohibitions and instead pressured water companies to adopt the new technological measures to protect public health.     

The US–China Phase One trade deal: An economic analysis of the managed trade agreement

In light of the recent tit-for-tat trade dispute between China and the US, interest in quantifying the effects of the so-called Phase One agreement has risen. To this end, this paper quantifies the impact of the asymmetric managed trade agreement using such a multi-country open-economy dynamic general equilibrium model. Besides assessing the direct implications for China and the US, this paper analyzes trade diversion effects. The model-based analysis finds noticeable positive (negative) impacts of the agreement for the US (China) as well as negative spillover effects for countries not directly affected by the managed trade deal due to trade diversion. The impact of possible future trade agreements is also examined.     

Mapping the Dynamism of the United States' Geopolitical Code: The Geography of the State of the Union Speeches, 1988–2008

The changing geographical foci of the geopolitical code of the United States are examined by a content analysis of the presidential State of the Union Speeches between 1988 and 2008, the last year of President Reagan's term through the presidency of George W. Bush. The State of the Union speeches are interpreted as geopolitical discourse within a structural setting, using seven foreign-policy paradigms as an organising framework. The empirical findings illustrate an increase over time in the number of regions and countries mentioned in the speeches. Also, notable differences between administrations in terms of their advocacy of globalist or regionalist policies and emphasis upon allies or adversaries are found.     

China–US economic and trade relations,trade news,and short-term fluctuation of the RMB exchange rate

The trade war between the US and China affects the fluctuation of RMB exchange rate. We collect news on China–US trade policies and talks from January 2017 to July 2020. Results show that China–US dialogue and tariff imposition have the greatest impact on the percentage of RMB appreciation and depreciation. Additionally, tariff relaxation and increasing enterprise restrictions can cause a sharp appreciation and depreciation. “Policies” events and trade news from the US influence RMB fluctuations the most significantly. Finally, positive events cannot significantly cause RMB appreciation, but negative events can significantly cause RMB devaluation.     

The evolution of State-Local balance sheets in the United States, 1953–2013

State and local debt in the United States more than doubled as a share of gross domestic product between 1953 and 2007. Using a historical accounting framework, we find that there is no straightforward relationship over time between state and local deficits and debt growth. We find that only 17 percent of the variation in aggregate state–local debt ratios comes from variation in the fiscal balance. This is especially true in the 1980s, the period of most rapid increase in state–local debt ratios. Before 1980, there were small but persistent deficits, but stable debt ratios. In the 1980s, state and local sectors shifted toward budget surpluses but saw rising debt ratios. This is explained by a faster pace of asset accumulation. Our results demonstrate the autonomy of balance sheet variables and suggest that changing debt ratios cannot be explained by real income and expenditure flows.     

Industry-specific determinants of vertical intra-industry trade: the case of EU new member states’ agri-food sector

The determinants of intra-industry agri-food trade are analysed to only a limited extent in the literature. This article investigates the industry-specific determinants of vertical intra-industry agri-food trade between new member states of the EU and the other EU countries for the period 1999–2010 by applying a dynamic panel data model. Results suggest that IIT is mainly low vertical in nature, suggesting regional export of low-quality products to EU markets. Results also show that vertical product differentiation and FDI are positively related to VIIT, suggesting that quality growth and investments foster vertical intra-industry trade. As to productivity and factor endowments a negative relationship with VIIT was found, implying the labour abundant and similar nature of NMS agricultural sectors.