EU accession: Negotiating “environmental dumping”?

“Environmental dumping” is a concern frequently raised in discussions on the potential risks involved in the eastern enlargement of the European Union¹ (EU).² There is a general concern that the Central and Eastern European accession countries may be neither willing nor able to fully apply the EU’s environmental acquis communautaire, the body of Community environmental legislation, once they have joined the EU. As a result, these countries would benefit from a competitive advantage when selling their goods on the Internal Market. This article asks whether, and in which specific cases, such concerns may be justified.     

EU enlargement and social security

There is no uniform model of social security in the EU-15 and the inclusion of new member states will make the social security landscape in the EU even more diversified. Social security systems in the present EU are currently facing a number of problems due, among other things, to unemployment and demographic changes. Will EU enlargement help to solve these problems? Will it create new ones?     

EU enlargement: External economic implications

The coming eastward enlargement of the EU has not prompted much debate about its external economic implications, quite in contrast to the fierce debates which accompanied previous enlargements. This article discusses the main economic effects of the CEECs' move from “association” to EU membership, and in particular the external impacts with respect to agriculture, industry and FDI. It also deals with the somewhat sensitive subject of US-CEEC bilateral investment treaties, as well as the prospects for catch-up growth by the accession countries.     

The risk and predictability of equity returns of the EU accession countries

This paper investigates the importance of global risk factors and the predictability of returns of the 13 EU accession countries, using both unconditional and conditional asset-pricing tests during the turbulent period of 1997–2002. Applied for the first time to the full sample of EU accession countries, we conclude that the world excess return has only somewhat importance for Hungary, Poland and Turkey, indicating low financial liberalization and low integration with the world. The real G-7 interest rate followed by the world excess return, global foreign exchange rate and global inflation rates are the most influential in their explanation of the variation of local market returns. Predictability of local returns is high and variant; global instrumental variables have higher predictive power for eight countries, especially for Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania and Hungary, whereas local instruments are more important for the Czech Republic, Latvia, Poland and Slovenia. The failure of the conditional asset-pricing model to correctly price assets confirms partial integration with the world. Except for Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia and Malta, predictability cannot be explained by time variation in economic risk premiums, but by local information, market inefficiency and/or investor irrationality.     

Export product range and economic growth in the EU countries

We analyse the number of different HS8 products in the EU countries’ exports in 1995–2015. We review what share, or coverage, of the total possible number of these products the countries have exported each year. The EU15 countries have typically witnessed a slow rise in this coverage rate, that is, a widening of their extensive margins. The exception is Finland where the share has declined considerably. On the other hand, Ireland, Greece, Portugal and the new member countries have seen a dramatic increase in their export product coverage. We analyse how the development in the coverage rate and, as a comparison, the diversification of exports as measured by the Herfindahl–Hirschman index are associated with GDP per capita growth. We find that changes in the former measure are positively associated with economic growth after we have controlled for GDP per capita catching‐up as well as investment and export activity. We also find that smaller EU economies do not specialise more than large ones in their exports as could perhaps be assumed.     

The Effect of Aggregation Bias: An NTB‐modelling Analysis of Turkey's Agro‐food Trade with the EU

We explore how different data aggregation levels affect the gravity estimates of non‐tariff barriers (NTBs) in the agro‐food sector, and we examine their related impacts on policy simulations of an expansion to the European Union (EU) that would include Turkey. We calculate two sets of ad valorem equivalents (AVEs) of NTBs using the gravity approach to disaggregated and aggregated Central Product Classification data for 15 Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) agro‐food sectors. We find that the AVEs of NTBs vary substantially across products and that using aggregated data primarily results in greater effects of NTBs. In a second step, we incorporate the AVEs of NTBs into the GTAP model to evaluate Turkey's EU membership and conclude that aggregation bias has considerable effects on both the estimation of NTBs and the general equilibrium simulation results. Utilising different data aggregation levels leads to a great variability of trade costs of NTBs and, hence, to misleading trade and welfare effects.     

China: Economic reforms and WTO accession

Since its opening to the world in 1978, China has grown in excess of 9 percent and is now generally considered to be the third biggest economy in the world. It is aggressively pursuing admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO), but the United States remains at cross-purposes due to the closed nature of its markets and numerous violations of international agreements. In an effort to shed light on these issues, this article reviews the historical context, recent economic reforms, and challenges to deeper global integration in the post-Deng era. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

同异之间--我国与美日欧大国经济摩擦的特点分析

美国、日本和欧盟作为全球最发达的经济体和我国重要的贸易伙伴,在我国外经贸发展中发挥着重要作用。由于我国与美日欧经贸关系的重点不同,其各自对华贸易战略和贸易政策亦不同,因此,我国与美日欧大国的经济摩擦不仅表现出经济摩擦的一般特点,而且呈现出与不同国家经济摩擦的特殊性。     

Political cycles under external economic constraints: Evidence from Cyprus

This paper examines the presence of political cycles in a small open economy using data from Cyprus over the period 1978–2006, and explores their conditionality upon external economic constraints, such as globalization and European integration. Two basic results emerge. First, we find evidence of partisan shifts in economic policies and outcomes, although these effects seem to decrease as globalization progresses, and to disappear in the run-up to EMU. This implies that, while partisan cycles can emerge under a certain domestic political setting, the sensitivity of an economy to globalization pressures and the challenges resulting from EU/EMU membership can lead to their weakening. Second, we find evidence of electoral shifts in certain, more visible, subcomponents of the fiscal balance. However, in contrast to partisan distinctions, these opportunistic effects become more pronounced as globalization proceeds. It seems that constraints imposed on the ability of politicians to ingratiate themselves with partisans, may actually strengthen their incentives to engage in electioneering.     

Sanitary and phytosanitary measures in international trade: policy considerations vs. economic reasoning

Sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures are one form of non‐tariff international trade barrier with the objective of requiring consumer and intermediate goods to be safe and to provide information to protect consumers from deceptive practices. However, such barriers could severely restrict trade. The central strategy of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) SPS Agreement is to use science to distinguish between those SPS measures consistent with the Agreement and those in violation of the Agreement. SPS measures belong to what is known as trans‐science questions or questions which can be asked of science and yet which cannot be answered by science. Because of the presence of scientific uncertainty, science policies adopted by members should be identified by the WTO. WTO panels should not, however, establish scientific policies. Prohibitive measures would seem rather incompatible with the role the WTO assumed trying to promote free trade. Rather, facilitating the distribution of available information regarding SPS and food safety risk, or a lack of it, to consumers in importing countries would help them to make better informed decisions according to their own preferences and risk aversion.     

Trust considerations on attitudes towards online purchasing: The moderating effect of privacy and security concerns

The research examines the relationships between three common trust considerations (vendor, Internet and third parties) and attitudes towards online purchasing. The study incorporates privacy and security concerns as a moderating variable and finds that these relationships vary depending on the level of concerns a consumer has when purchasing online. The study suggests that “fears” surrounding the Internet as a place to do business still hinder the use of it for e-commerce purposes, but that the presence of a reputable agent might in some manner mitigate this risk. In the context of business to consumer relationships trust in the vendor is important for the consumer to accept any risk associated with a transaction. Theoretical implications for online customer behavior theory are also discussed.     

U.S. economic security and the challenge from China

Business Economics - The Chinese economic system is based on the concept of autocracy and state-directed capitalism. The Chinese challenge is playing out in four theaters: trade, North Korea, the...     

To liberalize or not to liberalize: Political and economic determinants of financial liberalization

Using a sample of 70 emerging market and developing countries, we examine the political and economic factors which affect the government's decision to liberalize the domestic equity markets. We document that the levels of industrialization and financial development, the quality of investor protection, and the level of the government's involvement in the economy are closely associated with the stock market liberalization decision. Furthermore, we find a positive and significant relation between the amount of foreign financial aid received by the governments in emerging market countries and the probability of stock market liberalization.     

Input trade liberalisation,institution and markup: Evidence from China's accession to the WTO

This paper investigates the effects of input trade liberalisation on firm markups and assesses how institutional environment affects such impacts by using Chinese firm‐level data. To identify the causal effects, we exploit the quasi‐natural experiment of China's WTO accession in 2001 and perform difference‐in‐differences estimation. The results show that input tariff liberalisation leads to a substantial increase in firm markups, and institutional environment significantly strengthens such an impact. We further uncover the underlying mechanisms through which input tariff liberalisation boosts firm markups, and show that both price and cost channels work for the input tariff cut effect on firm markups, of which the latter is much more important. In addition, we also demonstrate that input tariff cut significantly fosters aggregate markup growth, and the reallocation effect is found to be an important channel through which input tariff liberalisation boosts aggregate markup growth.