The Salmon-Agreement Between Norway and the European Union—A Welfare Economic Analysis

The relationship between tariff policy and anti-dumping use is empirically examined. Using a panel dataset of 56 countries over the period of 1995–2007, the effects of tariff liberalization on anti-dumping use are found to vary across world regions. For European countries, as well as developed North American and Latin American countries, a lower tariff rate appears to induce more use of anti-dumping measures, which emerge as a protection tool among trade liberalization regimes. In contrast, a reduction in a tariff rate leads to lower anti-dumping use in developing North American and Latin American countries and in developed Asian, African, and Middle Eastern countries. In terms of initiating anti-dumping action, developed countries are likely to be more sensitive than developing countries to tariff policy change in most regions of the world.     

Complaining: A function of attitude,personality, and situation

The random nature of situations where an acquired product or service contains a defect or deficiency means that consumers usually have no experience of seeking redress (i.e., complaining), or their experience may be from totally different situations. Because of this, most people have not formed a clear attitude about how to behave in the specific situation and they may also be uncertain about social norms for proper behavior. Hence, their behavior is guided by more general traits and dispositions as well as by situation‐specific factors, which are bound to exert a relatively strong influence on behavior. This study confirms that the likelihood that consumers will complain over defects and deficiencies depends a lot on the situation and specifically on the size of the loss due to the defect and deficiency. However, some individuals refrain from complaining even in serious cases. This study shows that the propensity to complain depends on the person's attitude toward complaining and on personality traits (inclination to become dissatisfied). The two latter variables reinforce one another. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Politics and privatization in Central and Eastern Europe

This article examines how government ideology influenced privatization efforts in Central and Eastern Europe after the transition from socialism. We analyse a dataset of privatization indicators covering small‐ and large‐scale industries in 19 transition countries over the period 1990–2007 and introduce a government ideology index. The results suggest that market‐oriented governments promoted the privatization of small‐scale industries more than that of large‐scale ones. In the rapid transition process in the early 1990s, leftist governments stuck to public ownership more strongly than in the following period from the mid‐1990s to 2007. The remarkable differences between leftist and right‐wing governments concerning both the role of government in the economy and the basic elements of political order are in line with developments in OECD countries, and may also hold further implications for transition and democratizing countries outside Central and Eastern Europe.     

Delegation and Threat in Bargaining

Two principals (“nations”) appoint one agent each to bargain over the provision of a public good. Two institutional set-ups are studied, each with a different level of authority given to the agents. Here authority means the right to decide the own side's provision if negotiations break down. In equilibrium the principals choose agents with preferences differing from their own. The low-authority equilibrium Pareto dominates (with regard to the principals) the case of the principals deciding on the provisions simultaneously (autarchy). The high-authority equilibrium is Pareto dominated by the low-authority equilibrium and it may even be dominated by autarchy.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: C71, and C72.     

Gender,productivity, and the nature of work and pay: evidence from the late nineteenth‐century tobacco industry

Women have typically been paid less than men throughout history. We investigate earnings in Swedish cigar making around 1900. Strength was unimportant, yet the gender wage gap was large. Differences in characteristics, such as age and experience, and different jobs within firms, account for two‐thirds of the gap overall, and the entire gap for piece‐rate workers. Firms were as willing to employ women as men in the better‐paying piece‐rate section, and women were willing to take those jobs. In contrast, discrimination was extensive in the time‐rate section. Men in this section benefited from greater outside opportunities and customary wages elsewhere. Theory holds that labour market discrimination will reduce profitability, and make firm survival harder, a proposition that has never been tested historically. We find that cigar firms that feminized their workforces most extensively were most likely to survive. Product market competition prevented firms employing (overpaid) men to any great extent. We argue that economic historians must interpret industry‐specific gender wage differentials in the context of workers' outside opportunities, and in the context of product markets, which can—and in this case did—limit firms' room for manoeuvre.     

European Agriculture after Brexit: Does Anyone Benefit from the Divorce?

The UK exited the EU on 31 January 2020, with a transition period agreed as part of the Withdrawal Agreement. During this transition period the UK and the EU will decide on their future trading relationship. No matter what form this relationship takes, there will be disturbances to agri‐food markets. This study analyses four different scenarios with increasing barriers to trade, ranging from a very close relationship similar to the European Economic Area to a distant relationship in which the UK and EU trade on Most Favoured Nation terms, using the EU focused global agricultural sector model CAPRI. In the UK, food prices will increase in all scenarios, making consumers in the UK the biggest losers. Only in a free trade agreement scenario does the UK show an unambiguous positive net welfare gain in just the agri‐food sector. In the case of the European Economic Area scenario, which assumes continued access to the single market, the net welfare impact would depend on the size of the UK’s continued contribution to the EU. In the EU, declining food prices would benefit consumers but the sum of the loss in farmers’ incomes and the UK’s EU CAP contribution would be much greater than the consumer’s gain. These impacts in agricultural markets under different future trade arrangements will also be influenced by the UK’s agricultural policy changes in direct payments as well as by possible further UK trade liberalisation after the end of the transition period.     

Heroin Consumption,Prices and Addiction: Evidence from Self‐reported Panel Data*

Estimation models of drug demand should encompass the aspect of addiction. Here, we consider two static panel data regression models and two cross‐section models with lags or leads in drug consumption as additional regressors. Heroin injectors attending a needle exchange service in Oslo were interviewed twice, with a one‐year interval. Despite our relatively small sample, we obtain statistically significant price and income responses for nearly all of the models and specifications applied. The sample is split by dealing status, with dealers obtaining price elasticities in the range of [?0.15, ?1.51] and non‐dealers [?0.71, ?1.69]. Somewhat surprisingly, the estimates of the variance of the latent individual‐specific variable are rather low in the panel data models, although higher for non‐dealers than for dealers.