Not all trade restrictions are created equally

There has been great focus in the recent trade theory literature on the introduction of firm heterogeneity into trade models. This introduction has highlighted the importance of the entry/exit decision of firms in response to changes in trade barriers. However, it is typical in many of these models to use iceberg transport costs as a general form of trade barriers that can be interchangeable with ad valorem tariffs. I show that this is not always an appropriate conclusion. Specifically, I illustrate that profit for an exporter is more elastic in response to tariffs than iceberg transport costs, which affects the entry/exit decision of firms. This has implications for welfare analysis and empirical specifications.     

Should multivariate early warning systems for banking crises pool across regions?

Most extant work on prediction of banking crises has utilised global samples, which are in turn dominated by observations from middle-income countries, and rely on a single estimator. However, economic and financial structures as well as the pattern of shocks may differ substantially across regions, while a range of specifications is desirable to check robustness. Accordingly, in this paper we test the implicit pooling assumption in earlier multivariate work on Early Warning Systems using both logit and binary recursive tree specifications separately for crises in Asia and Latin America, as well as the pooled sample. Results suggest markedly different crisis determinants across regions, implying global samples are inappropriate.     

百年农民观念变与不变的经济学分析

近百年以来,或因政权变更、或因现代化建设,农村土地资源的占有使用支配等发生变化,附着在其上的观念也发生变化：被剥夺意识强化、宿命等传统意识逐渐淡化和稀释、阶级意识填补了传统意识稀释而留下的空间、工业观念深入人心、传统小农意识之壳中不断增添新内容。而有些制度则没有改变或虽改变却承载的意识不变,附着其上的观念则变化不大：宗族意识、均平意识、宿命意识、循环意识、贵土贱农意识等仍然存在。农民观念的现代化,最重要的是农民生活于其中的经济制度的现代化。不触动农民生活于其中的经济制度,被思想运动清除掉而成为历史的东西将会卷土重来。     

Immigrant Struggles in New Orleans Post-Katrina

Race relations in New Orleans have often been narrowed to Black and white, especially pre-Katrina. According to the 2000 census, the city was about 67% African American, 27% white, 2% Asian, and 3% “Hispanic.” In a city with a deep history of racial tensions between Black and white, other people of color—and especially recent immigrants—often went unmentioned in discussions of city demographics. The city’s world famous culture—whether in the traditions of Mardi Gras Indians and secondline parades, or in music like jazz and bounce—is also famously rooted in specifically African cultures. Even in media coverage of the city post-Katrina, the story of immigrant experiences has remained mostly invisible. When these stories have been told, they have often fit into the old stereotypes of “model minorities” (as in the case of the Vietnamese recovery) or of low-wage workers stealing jobs (as in the case of news reports on the city’s new Latino population). However, the stories of these other New Orleanians offer an important lens through which to view the overall struggle over the city’s recovery. And the work of grassroots activists from these communities, who strived to not only work for justice for their friends and neighbors, but also to build broad multi-racial alliances, provides an inspiring example for people in other cities who are waging similar fights.     

Foreign Investors in The Netherlands: Heterogeneous Employment and Productivity Effects

Recent academic research suggests that the effects of inward foreign direct investment for productivity and employment may vary across foreign investors with different characteristics. Using a newly created dataset that integrates micro-level information from The Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency and Statistics Netherlands, this paper explores the role of several of these characteristics, including e.g. the country of origin, activities and tasks, age and strategic role of foreign affiliates in The Netherlands in the 2000–2007 period. Our analysis shows that important employment and productivity differences exist for nearly all these dimensions.     

A Successful Example of South-South Cooperation

The 5th Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation was held on 19th July in 2012 in Beijing.Foreign ministers and ministers responsible for foreign economic cooperation from China and 50 African countries as well as President of the African Union Commission attended the meeting.