Economic competitiveness of selected European countries

In many publications, the notion of economic competitiveness has different meanings. For example, it could mean competitiveness by county or by creating more goods and services than competitors in the world market [The World Competitiveness Report, 1944]. In this paper, a proposal is given for measuring competitiveness and preparing a ranking list for selected European countries (the European Union members and Poland) based on data obtained fromThe World Economic Competitiveness Report [1994]. To fulfill such an objective, special producers are used. Moreover, results obtained from similarity, distance, and development measures calculated for every country serve as the basis for dividing the analyzed countries into three homogeneous groups.     

跨国公司与发展中国家的出口竞争力

在很多发展中国家东道国,跨国公司在当地出口总额中都占有相当重要的地位,很多国家都利用跨国公司作为推动当地出口的先锋。跨国公司对东道国出口的影响不仅表现在跨国公司自身的出口,更重要的是跨国公司在东道国的投资带动整个东道国出口竞争力的提高和出口总量的增长,这也是发展中国家引进跨国公司,促进出口增长的实质意义所在。本文特别关注的是跨国公司通过影响东道国比较优势变革来提高发展中东道国出口竞争力的静态和动态方式,并进一步探究这种效应的实现渠道。变革及影响比较优势是一国出口贸易的基础,静态的比较优势特征决定了目前…     

Anticipating the futures of nanotechnology: Visionary images as means of communication

Reports of the current success and future potential of nanotechnological innovation in the field of medicine are frequently illustrated with images depicting speculative and futuristic visions. Based on a case study of visionary images of nanorobots and mini-submarines in the human body in popular science magazines, the business press and daily and weekly newspapers, this paper demonstrates that, despite their weak reference to current developments in nanomedicine, these images serve as a means of communication for the 'exchange' of expectations between the discourses of science, economy and the mass media.

Through a systems-theoretical and discourse-analytical examination of the dynamics of discourse-networks surrounding these images, the investigation focuses on a certain mediality of futuristic visual images which has been rather neglected in recent Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Technology Assessment. The 'communicative spaces' suggested by visionary images enable productions of meaning for the current potential of nanotechnological innovations in and between various discourses. The dynamics of expectations within the communication processes can be reconstructed according to the variations of discourse-specific (i.e. scientific) evaluations of the depicted visions, which in turn can be described as the recursive processing of other (i.e. economic and mass medial) evaluations.     

The role of technology development in national competitiveness — Evidence from Southeast Asian countries

Technology development (TD) plays a key role in national competitiveness (NC) by giving a country a competitive edge in our age of information. Lots of researchers have focused on specific areas of TD, such as technology transfer, technology acquisition, and technology management, in most of developed countries. To our knowledge, however, they have seldom discussed the influence of TD on other categories of NC and vice-versa in developing and less-developed countries. In this study, we examine the influences of each category of NC of TD. Southeast Asian countries are divided into three patterns by means of a cluster analysis. The results show that Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Laos have the same rank on measures of TD and NC. Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, and Laos have the same rank on measures of TD and Economic Performance. Malaysia and Thailand have the same rank on measures of TD and Management Capability. In contrast, the TD performance of Southeast Asian countries is worse than the human resources performance because of their insufficient human resources assigned to R&D. Furthermore, based on a strategic grid for comparing the relative performance, four types of country and their achievements are discussed. Singapore outperforms all Southeast Asian countries. Malaysia and Thailand have to leverage their TD resources in order to enhance their NC. The other countries are still hindered in developing the determinants of their NC. Finally, our study offers a path to the identification of how countries of each pattern should supplement their insufficient capabilities, and what are the most important issues that need to be addressed in retuning their TD policies in order to enhance their NC.     

Evaluating the development of high-tech industries: Taiwan's science park

Science park has been widely recognized for its importance to the development of high-tech industries. However, as the space availability is limited, selection of firms with better efficiency and/or growth potential in specific high-tech industries to get into the science parks has become a critical issue for the Taiwan government. Accordingly, this study applies Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a multiple inputs-multiple outputs evaluation method, to analyze the comparative performances of the six high-tech industries currently developed at Taiwan's Hsinchu Science Park. Malmquist indices of productivity change are also used to analyze the growth potentials of the six high-tech industries. In addition, individual output/input ratio analysis is done to examine the differences on individual productivity items between the efficient and inefficient industries. The results of these analyses provide some policy implications for Taiwan and other countries facing the similar problems.     

Picking the Poor: Indicators for Geographic Targeting in Peru

Geographic targeting is perhaps the most popular mechanism used to direct social programs to the poor in Latin America. This paper empirically compares geographic targeting indicators available in Peru. To this effect, I combine household–level information from the 1997 Peru Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) and district–level information from the 1993 Peru Population and Housing Census. I then conduct a series of simulations which estimate leakage rates, concentration curves, the impact of transfers on poverty as measured by the headcount index, poverty gap and P2 measures of the FGT family, and non–parametric (kernel) densities when transfers are based on alternative indicators. I conclude that there is substantial potential for geographic targeting in Peru. However, the differences in outcomes across geographic targeting indicators are small, and are not statistically significant. These results are in keeping with earlier work which suggests that (among reasonable alternatives) the choice of geographic targeting indicator does not have an important bearing on poverty outcomes, and are at odds with more recent research which stresses the advantage of poverty maps which "impute" consumption or income.     

A Vision for Australia: Indicators from Singapore

This article suggests that Australia could benefit from observing more closely Singapore's current development strategy. The production of labour intensive manufactures primarily by foreign firms and for export formed the core of Singapore's successful economic advance in the 1960s and 1970s. While a factor endowment strength—comparatively cheap labour—lay behind this achievement, the Singapore government actively supplemented this strength by creating a business environment highly favourable to the needs of foreign investors.
With full employment and rising wage levels since then, Singapore lost its comparative advantage in the production of low wage manufactures to other East Asian countries. Recently, its development has been based more on created than inherited advantages. The Singapore government argues that the resources crucial to sustained per capita income advance in middle and higher income countries are not natural resources but rather information, technology, investible funds, research and development (R&D) spending and professional people. Singapore aims to develop its business environment to attract such resources to Singapore.
The government's vision for Singapore is a nation where the share of professional and highly skilled manpower in the workforce rises over time. This employment goal informs the government's approach to all policy matters: infrastructure development, education, urban development, microeconomic reform, taxation, fiscal, monetary and exchange rate policy, support for manufacturing and service activities, and attitudes to foreign investors.
By comparison with Australia, Singapore has a very level playing field. The government sees no conflict between intervening to attempt to create competitive advantage while vigorously pursuing microeconomic reforms to make the playing field in Singapore still more level.     

Anticipating Nelson and Winter: Jack Downie's theory of evolutionary economic change

An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change , by Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter continues to have great influence on evolutionary economic thought. While their modeling techniques and the breadth of their vision for evolutionary theorising must be seen as seminal and effective innovation in economic theory, they were not the first inventors of such a theory. Close examination reveals that much of the economic theory was anticipated by Jack Downie whose book, The Competitive Process, was published in 1958. The extent of anticipation is remarkable, with not merely the two elements of population ecology, selection and mutation, but the way in which they are theorised to work being replicated by Nelson and Winter.     

Money-income causality: Results for six countries

In this paper we attempt to ascertain multivariate money-income causality. Previous studies using a bivariate framework likely suffer from bias as a result of omitted variables. A framework is developed where both U.S. money and domestic money in an open, nonreserve currency country may influence that country's income. Reverse causation from income to domestic money is also possible. We use data from six countries to test the model. Our results suggest that both U.S. and domestic money stocks are important determinants of income. Thus, bias exists in previous studies. However, our results vary by country and are sensitive to the measure of money included which suggests that important variables may still be omitted.     

The healthy development of economies: A strategic framework for competitiveness in the health industry

Applying a strategic decision-making perspective on the economics of business, we suggest that a competitive locality in the health industry is one that, relative to other localities, is effective in: (1) providing the healthcare that enables everyone to participate fully in the democratic development of the locality; (2) providing the healthcare that is democratically identified as a direct objective of this development; (3) contributing through the health industry to any other democratically determined objectives of the locality's development. The paper hypothesizes that strategic decision-making in organizations is an especially significant determinant of the impacts of the health industry. We conclude that: (i) a locality that suffers concentration in the power to determine the objectives of its health industry could not be strictly competitive in that industry; (ii) the first best way to achieve competitiveness in the health industry would be to democratize its strategic decision-making. What this would entail in practice is discussed in some detail.     

The North American free trade agreement: International competitiveness for vegetables

Summary and conclusion This research contributes to the knowledge base of potential impacts of NAFTA using quadratic programming, which treats consumers and producers in different regions uniquely and specifies the direction and volume of trade between regions, net social payoff, as well as equilibrium prices to producers and consumers. Our results show that net social payoff and the volume traded between producing and consuming regions increases significantly under NAFTA. Mexican producers gain the most since their market share equalled 80 percent and 64 percent for cucumbers and cantaloupes, respectively, in the post-NAFTA scenario. California producers lose the most, e.g., their market share for cucumbers declined from 76 percent in the pre-NAFTA scenario to nearly zero in the post-NAFTA scenario. On the consumption side, the amount of total cantaloupes consumed more than doubled, while the amount of total cucumbers consumed increased slightly (2 percent). Mexico's producer prices for both crops was significantly lower compared to U.S. producer prices. Since net social payoff increased under NAFTA, the overall gains exceeded the overall losses. The authors with to thank Drs. Harry Hall, Michael Reed, and Angelos Pagoulatos (all from the University of Kentucky) for their helpful suggestions.     

The effects of economic freedom,regulatory quality and taxation on the level of per capita real income: a preliminary analysis for OECD nations and non-G8 OECD nations

This study of the impact of economic freedom, regulatory quality and the relative burden of taxation on the level of per capita real income/GDP among OECD nations over the period 2003 to 2007 adopts a modified version of the overall economic freedom index computed by the Heritage Foundation (2013), one with the fiscal freedom and business freedom indices removed. This study then provides panel least squares fixed-effects estimates for five linear specifications/models. Each nation during this time frame can be regarded either as a nation per se or as a de facto ‘economic region’ within the OECD. The analysis first focuses upon all of the OECD nations and then, as a robustness test, subsequently focuses only on non-G8 OECD member nations. The estimations in this study all provide strong empirical support for the three central hypotheses proffered here, namely: (1) the higher the overall degree of economic freedom, the higher the per capita real income (GDP) level; (2) the higher the level of regulatory quality, the higher the level of per capita real income (GDP) and (3) the higher the overall tax burden, expressed as a per cent of GDP, the lower is the level of per capita real income (GDP).     

Testing for PPP in developing countries using confirmatory analysis and different base countries: an application to Asian countries

Previous studies on PPP have tested either the null hypothesis of non-stationary or the null of a stationary real exchange rate and used the US as the base country and focused on industrialized countries. It has been argued that testing either null is insufficient to confirm the presence of PPP. It has also been noticed that the results are sensitive to the choices of the base country; for instance, the US versus Germany. In contrast to previous studies, this paper uses different unit root tests, confirmatory analysis, and different base countries to test PPP for a sample of developing countries in Asia during the current float. Overall, the results do not seem to be sensitive to the choice of the base country, and joint rejections are not present but joint non-rejections are far more common. Using Perron's test, which allows for a one-time break in the series, the results indicate evidence of stationarity for Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia and Thailand when the US is the base country. When Japan is the base country, evidence of stationarity is detected only for Indonesia.     

The stability and breakup of nations: a quantitative analysis

This paper quantitatively analyzes the stability and breakup of nations. The tradeoff between increasing returns in the provision of public goods and the costs of greater cultural heterogeneity mediates agents’ preferences over different geographical configurations, thus determining the likelihood of secessions and unions. After calibrating the model to Europe, we identify the regions prone to secession and the countries most likely to merge. We then estimate the implied monetary gains from EU membership. As a test of the theory, we show that the model can account for the breakup of Yugoslavia and the dynamics of its disintegration. We find that economic differences between the Yugoslav republics determined the order of disintegration, but cultural differences, though small, were key to the country’s instability. The paper also provides empirical support for the use of genetic distances as a proxy for cultural heterogeneity.     

Introduction: Quality of Life Indicators

Economic growth has increased the potential for a materially more fulfilling life. But economic growth has a price: it undermines the contributions of households, communities, and nature, on which all economic activity depends. How can we make visible, in economic terms, the qualities that are lost as a consequence of excessive economic activity? In the spirit of these critical discussions, Feminist Economics has initiated this issue's exploration of quality of life: Which aspects of life do economists regard as essential to the concept? What can we learn from disciplines whose traditions of quality of life research are older than ours? The ten articles that follow suggest, in the brief form allowed by the format, a number of different ways to approach these questions.