Addressing causality in the effect of capital account liberalization on growth

Evidence supporting the positive effects of capital account liberalization on growth is mixed at best. Even after conditioning on the quality of domestic financial institutions, a significant number of studies still find no effect. One possible explanation is reverse causation. If low growth countries liberalize in order to spur growth, the observed correlation between growth and liberalization will underestimate the impact of capital account openness. To eliminate this bias, I instrument capital account liberalization with the average level of openness of other countries to capture the “fad” element in financial liberalization. IV estimates indicate a significant positive effect of liberalization on growth, confirming the predictions of economic theory.     

Using choice experiments to assess smallholder farmers' preferences for pig breeding traits in different production systems in North-West Vietnam

Livestock form key components of the livelihood strategies of many of the world's poorest people. However, despite the potential to alleviate poverty and improve food security through livestock development interventions, the lack of smallholders' participation in the planning and design of breeding programs has often been a major cause of the failure of such programs. Particularly in developing countries where livestock production is still mostly subsistence-oriented and livestock fulfil manifold functions a considerable number of livestock breeding programs have failed. The development of adequate tools to characterise these functions, bearing in mind that these are expressed only rarely in properly functioning markets, is therefore important.This paper seeks to advance the application of such methodologies to the smallholder pig sector in Vietnam. A choice experiment was applied across 140 households involved in pig breeding in order to assess farmers' preferences and the trade-offs for a list of adaptive and productive traits. These included growth, reproduction, disease resistance, feed requirements and appearance.The findings indicate that smallholders highly value both adaptive and performance traits, particularly in resource-driven (i.e. subsistence) production systems. Performance traits were more highly valued in the demand-driven (i.e. market-oriented) systems. These findings have implications for breeding program breed choice and breeding objectives.     

The New Nomos of Europe

According to Carl Schmitt, in his late work The Nomos of the Earth, published in 1950, the long evolution in the relation between humans and the earth has been decisive for the nature of traditional legal order. The historical links to European international jurisprudence (ius publicum Europaeum) have decayed with the old world order that supported them. Territoriality, once the foundation of the nation-state has evolved, causing a parallel change in the nation-state paradigm of sovereignty and the fabric of international law which has its basis in that paradigm. If Schmitt is correct in his prognoses about the end of a global era and the rise of a new yet uncharted world order in the mid-1940s, then the architects of the nascent European Coal and Steel Community face the same conditions, and must carry out their work with the same cultural, social and juridical raw materials, against the backdrop of the same concrete historical experience. This article will attempt to continue the trajectory of Schmitt's historical analysis of the ius publicum Europeaum, suggesting how its central concepts and theses map onto the grand geopolitical and civilisational project of European construction from 1950 to 2004 and beyond. It will explore the applicability of the concept of nomos for the nature of EU evolution, and interpret general elements of the European legal system in terms of the concept of nomos.     

International Knowledge Flows: Evidence From Patent Citations

This paper explores the patterns of citations among patents taken out by inventors in the U.S., the U.K., Francc. Germany and Japan. We find (I) patents assigned to the same firm are more likely to cite each other, and come sooncr than other citations; (2) patents in the same patent class are approxinlatcly 100 titlles as likely to cite each other as ydtents froin different patent classes, but there is not a strong time pattern to this effect; (3) patents whose inventors reside in the same country are typically 30 to 80% more likely to cite each other than inventors from othcr countrics, and these citations come sooner; and (4) there are clear country-specific citation tendencies, e.g., Japanese citations typically come sooner than those of othcr countries.     

Are patent fees effective at weeding out low‐quality patents?

The paper investigates whether patent fees are an effective mechanism to deter the filing of low‐quality patent applications. The study analyzes the effect on patent quality of the Patent Law Amendment Act of 1982, which resulted in a substantial increase in patenting fees at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Results from a series of difference‐in‐differences regressions suggest that the increase in fees led to a weeding out of low‐quality patents. About 10% of patents in the lowest quality decile were filtered out, with the effect concentrated in the patents of firms whose overall patent portfolio was medium to large (more than 20 patents). The study has strong policy implications in the current context of concerns about declines in patent quality.     

Labour productivity and rice production in Bangladesh: a stochastic frontier approach

During the NCAA basketball tournaments from 2002 to 2005, men's games produced 27% more upsets than women's games. To test whether these unpredictable results were due to gender differences, we conduct logit analysis to explain upsets by gender and other potentially significant variables, including differences in competing teams’: (i) RPI scores, (ii) percentage of freshmen, (iii) percentage of seniors, (iv) top scorer's total points and, (v) top three scorers’ total points. These analyses suggest that gender plays a significant role in explaining predictability.     

Investment in human capital and gender wage differences: evidence from the NLSY

This paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) to investigate gender differences in returns to various forms of human capital. Since the NLSY includes relatively detailed information regarding on- and off-the-job training, we place special emphasis on measuring gender differences in the incidence of and returns to formal post-school training. Also considered is the role of nonhuman capital factors such as industry and occupation in explaining the wage gap. It is found that about 60% of the gender wage gap in the sample is explained by mean differences in individual characteristics and market circumstances. This suggests a smaller role for discrimination in explaining the wage gap than previous research has found. The research indicates that training does not affect the gender wage gap. Also it is found that there is no statistically significant difference in the rate of return to other measures of human capital for women versus men. Our research suggests that the largest factors contributing to the wage gap are differences in the stocks of human capital for men and women, and differences in the distributions of men and women across industries and occupations.     

China's New Role in the International Financial Architecture

The rise of China is challenging the international financial architecture in a number of ways. This paper highlights three that are of critical importance: the challenge of absorbing massive Chinese savings; the incorporation of China into a cohesive global financial safety net; and the organisation of China's participation in funding the demand for international investment projects. The global financial architecture needs to be reformed. But what role should China play? The paper defines the options open to China and the opportunities and barriers it will face. We argue that China can work with the established economic powers in reforming the existing architecture. At the same time, China seeks cooperation in building new institutions and organisations that fill gaps in the existing arrangements. But no matter how international financial diplomacy plays out in the near term, deep financial and economic reform at home will alone deliver China a central role in the international financial architecture. Domestic reform could also attend to some of the challenges that currently plague China's impact on the system. The success or failure of these domestic reforms will be at the crux of the strength or fragility of the international financial architecture in the years ahead.