The Macroeconomic Effects of the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement on Canada: A Counterfactual Analysis

We evaluate the macroeconomic effects of the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on Canada's economy using a counterfactual analysis. We exploit the dependence of GDP growth (labour productivity and unemployment, respectively) among different economic entities and construct the counterfactuals using data from countries other than Canada. We find that in the adjustment period from 1989:Q1 to 1992:Q1, Canada's economy bore the short‐run adjustment costs of the FTA with a decline of the annual real GDP by 2.56 per cent and a decline of the labour productivity by 0.62 per cent. After the adjustment period, the FTA had a positive and permanent effect of 1.86 per cent on Canada's annual real GDP growth and raised the labour productivity from 1992 to 1994 by 2.39 per cent on average. Moreover, the FTA increased Canada's annual unemployment rate by 1.81 per cent in the period 1989–94.     

中国地下金融:发展现状与理论思考

经济的二元性是发展中国家普遍存在的现象,伴随经济的二元性,正规金融体系和地下金融体系的二元分化也就成为众多发展中国家在经济市场化改革过程中难以回避的问题.近年来,我国的地下金融业出现了一个较快的发展势头,规模已经相当可观,成为影响经济运行的一股重要力量.本文在考察中国地下金融业发展现状的基础上,运用经济学理论分析了其成因及影响,而后提出中国应对地下金融的政策建议.     

Export Performance and Access to Intermediate Inputs: The Case of Rules of Origin Liberalisation

Internationally fragmented production processes have highlighted the need of efficient sourcing from foreign suppliers. This paper aims to investigate how exports of final goods are affected by better access to foreign intermediate inputs. In particular, the paper empirically tests whether expanding the set of available intermediate input suppliers through preferential rules of origin liberalisation affects exports of final goods. We exploit the introduction of the southern Mediterranean countries into the Pan‐Euro‐Med zone of diagonal cumulation which meant that foreign intermediate inputs could be used from more countries than before without jeopardising the preferential access to the EU. Using a fixed effects specification that controls for detailed levels of unobserved heterogeneity and multilateral resistance, we examine the effect of the new diagonal cumulation possibilities on southern Mediterranean exports to EU‐15. We find a positive effect on both export intensity, the value of exports, and export diversification, the number of exported products. Being part of the Pan‐Euro‐Med zone of diagonal cumulation is associated with a 20 per cent increase in export intensity and a 5 per cent increase in export diversification.     

Aufschwung bleibt moderat — Wirtschaftspolitik wenig wachstumsorientiert

The German economy is experiencing a moderate upturn. Gross domestic product is expected to increase by 1.6 per cent this year and by 1.5 per cent in 2017. The upturn will be driven by private consumption, which will benefit from continued employment growth, sizeable increases in wage and transfer income, and also purchasing power gains thanks to lower energy prices. Fiscal policy will also be expansively oriented, partly due to rising costs related to refugee immigration. Public budgets will still post significant surpluses in the forecasting period, however. Failing to use this room for manoeuvre to promote growth, as seen in recent years, is not a sustainable path. In view of the continuous slack in the euro area economy, the monetary policy stance is considered to be appropriate. Should it become obvious in the course of this year that production does not return to normal capacity and that the inflation rate does not move towards two per cent, further measures to stimulate growth might become necessary. The scope for further monetary policy measures has been widely exhausted, though. A further economic stabilization could only be achieved through a combination of expansionary fiscal and monetary policy. This could severely damage the credibility of monetary policy, however.     

Detecting the impact of market factors on sales takeoff times of analog cellular telephones

We use two approaches to model the hazard probability of the time-to-sales takeoff for cellular analog telephony to determine the impact of three market factors: price, number of competitors, and number of competing standards. We compare a fully parametric hazard model with discrete-time survival mixture analysis (DTSMA) in our study of data drawn from 70 countries from different economic sectors and geographic regions. Both approaches use control variables to capture observed heterogeneity. The possible relative advantage of DTSMA is its ability to recognize unobserved heterogeneity using latent classes. Failure to account for unobserved heterogeneity can cause underestimation of hazard probabilities; we investigate the change in inferences such an omission may cause. Applying DTSMA to this data set, we find that model parameters have appropriate signs and offer support for all three hypotheses: Relatively falling prices, relatively greater number of competitors, and relatively fewer competing standards are each associated with relatively higher hazard probabilities. In contrast, in the estimation of the fully parametric hazard model, we find that some parameters are wrongly signed, and only one hypothesis, the effect of competing standards, is supported.     

A case-control study on risk factors of domestic accidents in an elderly population

The aim of this study was to evaluate the combined influence of several lifestyle, health and housing factors in the occurrence of home injuries (HIs) among the elderly. The subjects were recruited from 10 hospitals in Rome, Italy. This study is a paired case-control study. Cases included subjects, aged 65-85 years, who visited the Emergency Department for an HI and were subsequently hospitalised (15 September 2004-30 June 2005). Controls were the subjects of the same gender, age (±3 years) and area of residence of cases. A conditional logistic regression model was used for analysing the variables obtained. In this study, we enrolled 107 hospitalised cases. It was found that the living room was the place where 33% of the accidents occurred. Eighty-seven per cent of the accidents were falls, and 33% of the accidents were the immediate consequence of sudden malaise. One-half of the cases reported one or more leg fractures. The variables that were independently associated with HI were poor household illumination, poor emotional status, regular physical activities and housekeeping activities. We conclude that this study shows the areas of intervention to target HI prevention activities.     

Why India Lags Behind China and How It Can Bridge the Gap

Though India has been growing at six per cent annually since the late 1980s, it trails behind China, which has been growing at ten per cent per annum since 1981. The single most important factor explaining this difference is the relatively poor performance of Indian industry. Whereas the share of industry in China's GDP rose from 42 per cent in 1991 to 51 per cent in 2001, it remained virtually stagnant in India. By contrast, services grew rapidly in India, expanding from 42 per cent in 1991 to 48 per cent in 2001. With the information technology sector less than two per cent of the GDP, services growth was largely in the informal sector. Approximately 77 per cent of India's workers live in rural areas. To bring a large chunk of this workforce into the modern sector, India must achieve a much higher growth in the traditional, unskilled‐labour‐intensive industry. Growth in the information technology sector gives India an extra lever but cannot be the main engine of transformation. Therefore, the right approach is to walk on two legs: traditional labour‐intensive industry and the modern IT industry. Both legs need strengthening through further reforms. The paper suggests four specific reforms, three for industry and one for IT, necessary to achieve the transformation to a modern economy.     

A random coefficients mixture hidden Markov model for marketing research

The hidden Markov model (HMM) provides a framework to model the time-varying effects of marketing mix variables. When employed in a panel data context, it is important to properly account for unobserved heterogeneity across individuals. We propose a new random coefficients mixture HMM (RCMHMM) that allows for flexible patterns of unobserved heterogeneity in both the state-dependent and transition parameters. The RCMHMM nests all HMMs found in the marketing literature. Results of two simulation studies demonstrate that 1) averaging across a large number of different data generating processes, the RCMHMM outperforms all its nested versions using both in-sample and out-of-sample performance and 2) the RCMHMM is more robust than its nested versions when underlying model assumptions are violated. In addition, we apply the RCMHMM to an empirical application where we examine the effectiveness of in-game promotions in increasing the short-term demand for Major League Baseball (MLB) attendance. We find that the effectiveness of four promotional categories varies over the course of the season and across teams and that the RCMHMM performs best.     

基于SAS的调整人群归因危险度评估法在口岸流行病学调查中的应用研究

[目的]探索调整人群归因危险度评估法在口岸流行病学调查中的应用。[方法]基于回归模型的调整RR估计加入到PAR估计中,以一整套公式计算调整控制一个或多个变量后的PAR指标,评估多因素影响的口岸流行病发生频率及控制效果,并采用国际权威的统计分析标准软件SAS分析平台进行编程实现。[结果]以宁波口岸某病流行病学调查资料为数据源,对与该病相关的四种风险影响因素由计算机分别自动计算调整人群归因危险度,在校正其他三种因素的基础上,评估每种风险因素所致的危害程度,结果为风险因素A所致的危害占11.8%,风险因素B占30.8%,风险因素C占15.9%,风险因素D占38.2%。[结论]调整人群归因危险度能够评估导致口岸传染病流行风险因素的单独效应,可作为评价流行病发生与控制效果的有效评估方法。     

The International Effects of China’s Growth,Trade and Education Booms

China’s international trade flows have increased by 500 per cent since 1992, far outstripping GDP growth. Likewise tertiary education enrolments have increased by 300 per cent. We simulate these changes using a multi‐sector growth model of the Chinese and USA economies. A decade of trade biased growth in China is found to raise USA GDP by approximately 3–4.5 percentage points and has a large impact on the demand for tertiary education in China. Despite these positive effects of growth, the results suggest that the expansion of China’s education sector per se has practically no long‐run impact on the USA economy.     

Productive capabilities: An empirical analysis of their drivers

Recent contributions to the growth and trade literature have argued that the structure of an economy, as measured by its productive capabilities, is a key determinant for inter-country differences in development. Productive capabilities have been shown to be highly predictive of future economic growth, yet the country-level variables associated with them remain relatively unknown. In this paper, we empirically explore what variables are systematically associated with productive capabilities using a model averaging framework that can handle a very large number of potential explanatory variables without the need for arbitrary model selection. In order to estimate our dynamic panel specification, we propose a novel Bayesian averaging of classical estimates procedure based on the simple and efficient bias-corrected least squares dummy variable estimator. Our baseline and robustness analysis consider a large number of variables, sample periods and model priors. We find that there is persistence (as measured by the lagged dependent variable) and that variables, such as commodity terms of trade, energy availability, government consumption, capital per worker, arable land and capital inflows show a strong and robust association with capabilities.     

Trade Facilitation and Export Diversification

This paper shows that improved trade facilitation can help promote export diversification in developing countries. We find that 10 per cent reductions in the costs of international transport and domestic exporting costs (documentation, inland transport, port and customs charges) are associated with export diversification gains of 4 and 3 per cent, respectively, in a sample of 118 developing countries. Customs costs play a particularly important role in these results. Lower market entry costs can also promote diversification, but the effect is weaker (1 per cent). We also find evidence that trade facilitation has stronger effects on diversification in poorer countries. Our results are highly robust to estimation using alternative dependent and independent variables, different country samples, and alternative econometric techniques. We link these findings to recent advances in trade theory that emphasise firm heterogeneity, and trade growth at the extensive margin.     

A Global Assessment of the Economic Effects of Export Taxes

This paper uses a new detailed global data set on export taxes at the HS6 level and the MIRAGE global Computable General Equilibrium model to assess the impact of export taxes on the world economy. We find that removing export taxes would have worldwide effects: the average export tax on global merchandise trade was 0.48 per cent in 2007, with the bulk of these taxes imposed on energy products. The removal of these taxes would increase global welfare by 0.23 per cent, a larger figure than expected gains from the Doha Round. Both developed and emerging economies, such as China and India, would gain from such policies even if they currently impose export taxes. Medium and small food‐importing countries without market power (such as the least‐developed countries) would also benefit from the elimination of export restrictions – especially during food crisis situations. Both the energy sector and the export taxes implemented by the Commonwealth of Independent States countries appear to play a critical role in the overall economic impact of such a policy change. However, the fact that some countries, such as Argentina, would experience income losses due to such a policy change is a major challenge to overall positive reform in this area.     

Practical general equilibrium estimation of resource pulls under trade liberalization

This paper discusses the application of a model similar to the one developed in Leif Johansen's Multi-sectoral study of economic growth (1964) to the problem of determining general equilibrium responses of the economy to changes in commercial policy. This method amounts essentially to specifying a log-linear approximation to the general equilibrium solution for the economy, and solving the resulting linear equations for changes in endogenous variables as functions of exogenous variable changes. For a 35-sector model of the Chilean economy with labor as the only variable factor of production (to avoid the problem of overdetermination of many commodity price and output shifts when only two factors are considered in constant returns production functions), it is found that (i) the specification of the way in which intermediate inputs enter the production function is numerically important in determining output responses to tariff changes, detracting from the credibility of fixed coefficient effective rate of protection calculations if variable intermediate input coefficients are the rule (as appears likely empirically); (ii) exchange rate elasticities with respect to individual tariff changes are fairly large, so that the usual partial equilibrium assumption of exchange rate insensitivity to ‘small’ tariff revisions is not valid; (iii) employment effects of different tariff revisions are highly variable and in some cases substantial.     

AN ENVIRONMENTAL RESTRICTION AND INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN A CAPITALIST ECONOMY

Let us consider a growing economy where capitalists organize production emitting pollutants. The government is supposed to issue emission rights in order to control the amount of emitted pollutants, while capitalists must control their emission of pollutants in accordance with the amount of emission rights they buy. It is assumed that workers are also allowed to purchase emission rights. We show that the conventional inverse relationship holds between the wage rate and the profit rate, and between per capita consumption and the growth rate in this economy. We also study how economic variables such as the wage rate and per capita consumption are affected by the workers' purchase of emission rights.     

试述物流史及其发展

物流涉及领域很广,包括生产领域的物资管理、交通运输、流通领域的分拨配送和消费领域的服务等。随着国民经济的发展,物流业已成为我国经济发展的重要产业和新的经济增产点。本文首先讨论了物流史,接着分析了物流企业实现绿色物流和优化物流业发展的制度环境,最后做了总结。要树立社会化大生产观念,摈弃"大而全、小而全"的经营思想,放弃传统的自营物流方式,树立第三方物流理念,将资源和能力集中在掌握关键技术、核心业务和市场控制能力方面。     

Predator–Prey Model Estimates of the Cyclical Profit Squeeze

This paper extends the empirical literature on the cyclical profit squeeze (CPS) theory of crisis by developing a multivariate model with superior decomposition methods. A structural time series (unobserved components) model with trend and structural VAR components is employed. The VAR captures the dynamic cyclical interaction between unemployment and profit's share of income and is interpreted as a linear version of Goodwin's (1967) predator-prey model. Model extensions incorporate the accumulation process and structural shifts. Estimation results for the US economy are used to sort out the controversial relevance of the CPS in the post-1970 period. It is concluded that the CPS is relevant during the period from 1949 to 1985, but is moderately weakened in the post-1970 period. Inconclusive statistical support for the CPS is found for the post-1985 era.     

Goodwill and dynamic advertising strategies

In this paper, we empirically analyze weekly advertising policies of manufacturing firms in consumer goods markets. We assume firms engage in persuasive advertising, thus policies of firms affect the goodwill of a brand. We introduce a demand and a goodwill production function. A simple transformation of the demand function allows us to identify not only the demand parameters but also the parameters of the goodwill production function. We reconstruct the unobserved goodwill levels using these parameters and past advertising levels. We restrict our attention to Markov Perfect Equilibrium (MPE) strategies which are functions of payoff relevant state variables. Without imposing further restrictions on the dynamic competitive environment, we investigate the relationship between observed advertising strategies—which are assumed to be MPE—and payoff relevant state variables by means of several reduced form specifications. The most important determinant of advertising intensity turns out to be goodwill. We demonstrate that controlling for an advertising campaign significantly improves the explanatory power of the model. JEL Classification L13 . C73 . M30 . M37 I would like to thank Volkswagen Stiftung for the generous financial support which made this research possible.     

How Income and Crowding Effects Influence the World Market for French Wines

Wine prices rose rapidly between 2001 and 2011 but have now stagnated. The growth phase could be explained by the increased demand from emerging markets, while the subsequent stagnation may result from the crowding effect caused by the entry of numerous new varieties onto the wine market. The generalised model of ideal variety proposed by Hummels and Lugovskyy combines these two elements, and focusing on French exporters, we find partial support for this explanation at the world level. A 1 per cent increase in GDP per capita (income effect) generated an increase in price of 1.13 per cent between 2001 and 2011. In contrast, a 1 per cent increase in market size (competition effect) reduced prices by 1.10 per cent over the same period. This paper goes further into the analysis of these effects by considering wine exports according to the mode of transport used and indirectly evaluates economies of scale when wine is exported by land, sea or air (via a gravity equation). Economies of scale are observed for transport by plane and ship but not for road. A 10 per cent increase in the value of wine exported by road (plane) leads to a rise (reduction) in transport costs of 0.5 per cent (19 per cent).