The globalisation–welfare state nexus: Evidence from Asia

How globalisation influences social expenditure has been examined for industrialised countries. Globalisation has often been shown to be positively associated with social expenditure in established industrialised countries, a finding that corroborates the compensation hypothesis. Scholars have focused on industrialised countries, because social expenditure is difficult to measure in developing countries. I use new data on social expenditure for Asian non‐OECD countries. Globalisation is measured by the new KOF Globalisation Index. My results do not suggest that globalisation influenced social expenditures in Asia. Neither do the results suggest that the nexus between globalisation and social expenditures varied across high‐income countries, such as Hong Kong and Singapore, and lower‐income Asian countries or across Asian regions. It is conceivable that Asian citizens did not demand increasing social support when globalisation proceeded rapidly because they enjoyed family and other private assistance. Asian countries also have weaker tax and labour market institutions than OECD countries and have therefore more difficulties in increasing social expenditure.     

Taxation and entrepreneurship in a welfare state

Does tax policy affect the rate of self-employment in a modern welfare state? This question is analyzed empirically based on Swedish data for the entire postwar period. Available tax data indicate that payroll taxes have had a negative influence on the unincorporated rate of self-employment, though the effect is modest. No effects from regular labor income taxation or capital gains taxation are found. The paper improves upon earlier studies in that it tries to separate the effects of different taxes and uses cointegration techniques. A further extension is that it studies a Scandinavian high-tax welfare state. Earlier time-series studies analyzing self-employment and taxation have, with few exceptions, been based on data from countries with relatively low tax levels and less comprehensive welfare systems, notably the USA and the UK.     

The economics of welfare

We need to tone down the emotional content of the discussion of welfare and deal with facts. The author points out that public assistance takes two principal forms: crude and subtle. The former includes aid to the needy; subtle aid is given regardless of need. In the minds of many, crude programs are welfare, but the subtle programs are not. Statistics reveal that of the 14 million who receive direct aid, only 1 percent are unemployed males. Therefore, no significant group can be identified as undeserving. The system, as it now stands, humiliates the recipients, offers inadequate benefits, lacks fairness and uniformity and perpetuates poverty. The author offers six corrective measures that should be taken.     

Fiscal policy and the recession: The case of Greece

This paper presents an analysis of the implications of Greece’s intense and long-lasting fiscal and external imbalances for the potential efficacy of a discretionary fiscal policy response to the current recession. It argues that, given recent developments in interest rate spreads and the credit markets’ increased sensitivity to risk, the interest rates applicable to the entire amount of Greece’s external debt would tend to be higher with a fiscal expansion than without one. Moreover, it deduces from a simple model that the leakages associated with increased interest payments to foreign creditors could well cancel out any positive multiplier effects generated by a fiscal expansion, resulting in a failure to stimulate growth. The implications of this finding for policy is that Greece should continue to avoid the adoption of a fiscal stimulus package, not only out of respect to its fiscal obligations as an EU member but, ultimately, because such a package would be ineffective as an economic recovery tool. While the analysis focuses on the Greek economy, it may be of relevance to other EU economies suffering from serious macroeconomic imbalances.     

Aggregate scale economies, market integration, and optimal welfare state policy

Using a two-sector-two-country model with aggregate scale economies and unionisation, we show that optimal welfare state policy entails positive levels of unemployment benefits under free-trade and capital mobility. In this setting, economic integration does not reduce the revenue raising capacity of governments and thus does not lead to a race-to-the-bottom in social standards. Instead, trade and capital flows interact with welfare state policies in increasing welfare even when each government acts independently (non-cooperatively) in determining its optimal welfare payment. Cooperation is shown to improve upon non-cooperative outcomes by raising both the generosity of the welfare state and aggregate welfare.     

The great appreciation, the great depreciation, and the purchasing power parity hypothesis

Although there has been much recent work on purchasing power parity (PPP), neither univariate nor panel methods have produced strong rejections of unit roots in US dollar real exchange rates for industrialized countries during the post-1973 period. We investigate the hypothesis that these non-rejections can be explained by one episode, the large appreciation and depreciation of the dollar in the 1980s, by developing unit root tests which account for this event and maintain long-run PPP. Using panel methods, we can strongly reject the unit root null for those countries that adhere to the typical pattern of the dollar’s rise and fall.     

The welfare loss of negative value-added

This brief paper applies the ‘triangles’ method of measurement of the cost of protection to an industry with negative value-added in international prices. The production loss cannot be estimated in this case by the normal procedure, which utilizes the effective protective rate: the latter is negative, when defined in the conventional way, and is thus useless for the purpose on hand.The production loss is separated into two components: the negative value-added itself — the foreign-exchange loss; and payments to domestic productive factors — the domestic resource loss. Despite the fact that the effective protective rate as such does not appear in the formula for the estimation of the production loss, this loss is presented as, among other things, a rising function of the output duties and of input coefficients and as a declining function of input duties — all the ingredients which make the effective rate of protection.     

德国船厂在衰退中挣扎

作为欧洲的第一造船大国,德国船厂在这场金融危机中首当其冲。由于新接订单的停滞和缺乏金融机构的支持,从2008年以来,在一波接一波的撤单大潮中已经有4家船厂倒闭。     

Oil,debt, banking and the world recession

The threat of a major debt crisis is presently hanging over the international financial community like Damocles' sword. Behind the crisis lies the flood of petrodollars into the financial institutions of the industrial world since the mid 1970s and the consequent large-scale lending to “doubtful customers”. A simple solution to the problem is not in sight.     

The Asian economic recession and retail change: the implications for retailer strategies in Asia

For almost three years the Asian Economic Crisis has been one of the most talked about influences on the retail sector in the region. This paper argues that the economic crisis has hidden or diverted attention away from the underlying changes in retailing that have been proceeding for much longer.A more dynamic and proactive retail sector appears to be evolving, one which is now less of a 'taker' of the strategies of manufacturers and more of a 'setter' of trends in product development and logistics. European and American retailers often appear to be major catalysts in this process, but this is not to say that the Asian retail sector will not develop in its own way, matched to local needs. What does now appear to be clear is that as economies in the region recover, most of their retail sectors will not go back to 'business as usual'.     

The great trade collapse and Indian firms

The collapse in global trade during the 2008–09 crisis has been widely studied using the developed nation(s) data. I use firm‐level data from Indian manufacturers to show that: (a) Indian firms experience strong negative demand shocks concerning their exports to the USA and the EU, the effect being significantly higher in case of the USA. Results assert that 1% increase in the exposure towards the crisis‐affected zones (the USA and the EU combined) reduces an average Indian manufacturing firm's export earnings by 1.17%–1.36%; (b) trade in consumer non‐durables and durables are the two most affected sectors, impact being higher for the latter; (c) evidence in support of similar effects throughout the size distribution of firms, with the effect being highest for small or the most vulnerable firms; (d) drop in demand, as a result of the 2008–09 crisis, only affects the high‐exposure industries. My results are robust to IV analysis and a variety of checks.