UK export assistance: Are we supporting the best programmes?

This article provides empirical evidence to show that differences exist in how UK exporters rate factors in their export marketing effort between: (1) those that are believed to be desired by importers; (2) the possibility for improving performance of these factors by a change in emphasis by people in the exporting firms; and (3) what international business assistance is actually requested by firms. It then looks at differences between firms based on their level of involvement in exporting, i.e. stage of internationalization, and the extent to which they are successful. It therefore substantially builds upon previous research by showing that there are differences between the factors that firms believe are desirable to importers and how their performance could improve with the emphasis and assistance of internal and external change agents. Furthermore, it shows that exporting firms should not be seen as homogeneous and that significant differences exist between firms based on their level of internationalization and their level of success.

In this way, the study has implications for UK policy makers insofar as it questions the idea that export promotion policies should be standardized, and offers evidence to support the view that firms with different characteristics actually require different kinds of support.     

U.K. SMEs’ awareness,use, and perceptions of selected government export assistance programs: An investigation into the effect of the internationalization process

This study reports on an empirical investigation into U.K. managers’ behavior toward and perceptions about selected export assistance programs. Specifically, it investigates whether differences exist between managers of U.K. small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in various stages of internationalization in relation to their awareness and frequency of use of the programs, together with their perceptions about the timeliness, reliability, and availability of the assistance schemes. It provides a contribution to the knowledge in the areas of export management and public policy because despite the fact that a body of literature exists on the topics of both export assistance and the internationalization process of firms, there is a need to bring these two research topics together in the form of a single U.K. study to establish whether current export assistance procedures are suitable for managers from firms in different stages of export development. The rationale for such a study is that if managers of U.K. SMEs in different stages of the internationalization process differ in both their behavior toward and perceptions about government assistance programs, U.K. policymakers may need to reconsider the way in which services are provided to avoid wasting scarce resources.     

The World Trade Organisation's Doha Cotton Initiative: A Tale of Two Issues

Four West African nations have demanded that the WTO's Doha Development Agenda include a Cotton Initiative that involves two issues: cutting cotton subsidies and tariffs, and assisting farm productivity growth in Africa. This paper provides estimates of the potential economic impacts of (a) complete or partial removal of cotton subsidies and import tariffs globally and (b) cotton productivity growth through the adoption of genetically modified (GM) cotton varieties. Use is made of the GTAP database and global economic model to address both these issues. On Doha, our results confirm that for cotton – unlike for other agricultural subsidies and tariffs – it is subsidy reductions rather than tariff cuts that would make by far the largest impact. For Sub‐Saharan Africa the potential gains are huge relative to the effects on that region of reforming other merchandise trade policies. And they could be more than doubled if that reform provided the cash for farmers to take advantage of the biotechnology revolution and adopt GM cotton varieties. But those potential gains, and the affordability of switching to costly GM seed, depend crucially on the extent to which high‐income countries are willing to lower domestic support to their cotton farmers.     

AIDS Home- and Community-Based Waivers: Effects on Use of Services,Expenditures, and Survival

State Medicaid home- and community-based waiver programs for persons with AIDS (PWAs) were implemented with the expectation that PWAs would use these services in lieu of more expensive hospital-based care. If so, Medicaid spending per PWA should decline, and program costs fall. We analyze Florida Medicaid claims data for PWAs from December 1995 through December 1997 to determine how participation in the waiver program affects the use of inpatient services, the receipt of antiretroviral combination therapies (available to Medicaid recipients throughout the study period), monthly expenditures, and survival of PWAs. We find that waiver participants are more likely to receive combination therapies but less likely to use hospital-based care than nonparticipants; white men and sicker patients are more likely to join the waiver program than other eligible PWAs; monthly expenditures for waiver participants are 52% lower than for nonparticipants; and waiver participation does not affect survival.     

Food Price Policy in East Asia

The primary objective of this survey is to examine the extent to which the available empirical literature suggests that economies of East Asia are following the policy trend of earlier industrialising economies in gradually changing from taxing to assisting food producers in the course of their economic development. More specifically, the survey attempts (a) to summarise the trends in agricultural incentives in East Asia; (b) to examine briefly the literature on motivations for those policy trends; and (c) to mention some of the future trade and policy implications.     

MORE ON WELFARE GAINS TO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES FROM LIBERALIZING WORLD FOOD TRADE

The common presumption that food-importing developing countries would be harmed by a liberalization of world food trade is questioned in this paper. Both theory and new empirical modelling evidence suggest the possibility of the opposite conclusion. Even if just advanced industrial countries were to liberalize their food trade, the present empirical analysis (using a model of world food markets) suggests that economic welfare and net foreign exchange earnings from food trade could improve for the vast majority of developing countries. The extent to which that gain would be greater if developing countries also were to liberalize their policies affecting food markets is shown as well. The analysis helps to reconcile differences between previous results using partial-equilibrium models and those derived from computable general equilibrium models.