Unanticipated exchange rate variability and the growth of international trade

Zusammenfassung Unerwartete Wechselkursschwankungen und das Wachstum des internationalen Handels. - Der Verfasser untersucht die oft zitierte These, die Wechselkursvariabilit?t habe den internationalen Handel beeintr?chtigt. Im Gegensatz zu früheren Arbeiten formuliert und sch?tzt er ein Modell mit zwei Gleichungen. Davon sch?tzt die erste die Bestimmungsgründe der Variabilit?t der realen Wechselkurse mit dem Ziel, zwischen den erwarteten und den unerwarteten Komponenten dieser Variabilit?t unterscheiden zu k?nnen. Die zweite ist eine Gleichung in reduzierter Form für die Bestimmungsgründe des Wachstums realer Exporte. Diese wird zum Testen der Hypothese benutzt, da? nur die unerwarteten Schwankungen der realen Wechselkurse das Wachstum der realen Exporte signifikant beeinflussen. Die Ergebnisse best?tigen diese Hypothese.

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Résumé La variabilité non-prévue des taux de change et l’accroissement du commerce international. - Dans cette étude l’auteur examine l’hypothèse souvent-citée que la variabilité des taux de change a empêché l’accroissement du commerce international. Contraire aux études antérieures, il formule et estime un modèle à deux équations. La première équation évalue les facteurs déterminants de la variabilité des taux de change réels pour différencier entre les éléments prévus et non-prévus de la variabilité des taux de change réels. La deuxième est une équation à forme réduite et contient les facteurs déterminants de l’accroissement des exportations réelles. Ce mod?le est utilisé pour vérifier l’hypothèse que seulement la variabilité non-prévue des taux de change réels a un effet significatif sur l’accroissement des exportations réelles. Les résultats confirment l’hypothèse.

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Resumen Variabilidad no anticipada de la tasa de cambio y el crecimiento del comercio international. - En este trabajo se investiga la muy citada hipótesis de que la variabilidad de la tasa de cambio ha inhibido el crecimiento del comercio internacional. A diferencia de trabajos previos, se formula y estima un modelo biecuacional. La primera ecuación estima las determinantes de la variabilidad de la tasa de cambio real (REER), con el fin de distinguir entre los componentes anticipados y no anticipados de la variabilidad de la REER. La segunda es una ecuación en forma reducida para las déterminantes del crecimiento real de las exportaciones. Se utiliza este modelo para llevar a cabo un test de la hipótesis de que sólo la variabilidad no anticipada de la REER afecta significativamente el crecimiento real del volumen de exportaciones. Los resultados indican que la variabilidad no anticipada de la REER ha inhibido el crecimiento de las exportaciones, mientras que la variabilidad anticipada no ha tenido efecto alguno.

     

Factor Taxation, Income Distribution and Capital Market Integration

This paper addresses the optimal mix of capital and wage taxation when policymakers maximize the political support of workers and capitalists, subject to a fixed revenue requirement. Capital market integration increases the efficiency costs of a tax on capital but simultaneously changes the political equilibrium through its effect on the distribution of factor incomes. These distributional effects are directly opposed in the capital importing and the capital exporting region. While the capital tax rate will always be lowered in the capital importing region, the tax rate in the exporting country will rise when political resistance to market-induced changes in the distribution of income is sufficiently high.     

Ill-behaviour of transformation-frontiers with environmental quality versus pollution

If one looks at environmental quality N as a renewable natural resource (with its own natural dynamics) which is changed by emissions Z, then one gets a better understanding of the shape of the damage function. In the case of a logistic growth dynamics one obtains a well-shaped transformation frontier N(Z), even in a two-species natural dynamics. For a more general natural interaction in the framework of a prey-predator model one obtains the possibilities of a cusp catastrophe which makes the transformation frontier N(Z) ill-shaped for the standard arguments of economists and their most favoured environmental policy instruments.     

Optimales Vertragsdesign bei moralischem Risiko in der Rückversicherung

This paper addresses the optimal design of risk sharing arrangements in reinsurance contracts with asymmetric information concerning the primary insurer’s behavior. The latter usually has significant unobservable discretions, for instance with respect to risk selection, implying a moral hazard problem. We show that the existence of moral hazard strongly affects the characteristics of the reinsurance indemnification rule, i. e. the connection between the level of losses and the indemnity, which is specified in the contract. For this analysis, a standard model framework from the theory of optimal reinsurance with perfect information is modified by the assumption that the primary insurer has unobservable control of the probability distribution of the extent of losses. In particular, the solution indicates that for this situation, a Pareto-optimal indemnity rule is less steep, and therefore the primary insurer’s share in a marginal increase of the loss is greater, compared to the case of complete information. A deductible, however, turns out not to be a suitable approach in this context.     

Finding Pareto Optimal Insurance Contracts

This paper deals with on-line computation—or step-wise learning—of Pareto optimal insurance contracts. Our approach tolerates that the loss distribution might be unknown, intractable, or not well specified. Thus we accommodate fairly inexperienced parties. Losses are here simulated or observed, one at a time, and they cause iterated revisions of the premium. The mechanical and global nature of probability calculus thereby yields to more tentative, myopic procedures, possibly closer to how humans operate or reason in face of risk. Sequential revisions may also reduce the expense of insurers' time and money in seeking sufficient statistics. Emphasized below is the remarkable simplicity and stability of the resulting adaptive procedures. Special attention goes to catastrophic risks, and to subsidized or competitive insurance.     

Habilitation von Ralf Hohlfeld

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

When in Rome ... Moral Maturity and Ethics for International Economic Organizations

A number of multinational enterprises have come under ethical scrutiny over the recent decades. In some cases, this may be due to a lack of maturity of corporate moral reasoning. The article is based on a framework developed by Lawrence Kohlberg. He suggested three main stages of moral development: They are (1) pre-conventional moral reasoning, (2) conventional and (3) post-conventional moral reasoning. The article places different approaches to business ethics into the framework developed by Kohlberg. It is argued that the first two stages form an insufficient basis for ethical guidance for multinational organizations. Five post-conventional ethical perspectives are presented to assist MNC's in their analysis in order to uncover the possible dilemmas, to avoid harming others and also to avoid costly embarrassment at the hands of critics.     

The road to a market economy

The ongoing conversion of the economies of former socialist countries into market economies has so far suffered from the lack of a theory of system transformation (policy) which indicates the means of achieving the desired objectives and makes it possible to evaluate the transformation policies of individual countries. The following article outlines the essential aspects of such a theory.