Trade Policy in Canada and Australia in the Twentieth Century

The paper provides an analytical comparison of the evolution of trade policy in Canada and Australia and of the two countries' roles in international trade diplomacy. Despite similarities in history and resource endowment, these roles have differed substantially, especially during the third quarter of the twentieth century. The focus is on the reasons why Canadian and Australian attitudes and policies differed so markedly. The importance of the USA as a trading partner, differing economic experiences during the decade of the 1920s, and the more concentrated composition of Australian exports all played a part. Once in train, the position that Australia was different and need not participate in GATT tariff cuts as long as agriculture was excluded became the inertial position, while Canada played an active role in GATT's early development. After 1973 Australia's position as an outlier among high-income countries' trade policies was reversed, and Australian and Canadian trade policies again became similar in the 1980s.     

Variance components models for survival data

Extensions of the Cox proportional hazards model for survival data are studied where allowance is made for unobserved heterogeneity and for correlation between the life times of several individuals. The extended models are frailty models inspired by Y ashin et al. (1995). Estimation is carried out using the EM algorithm. Inference is discussed and potential applications are outlined, in particular to statistical research in human genetics using twin data or adoption data, aimed at separating the effects of genetic and environmental factors on mortality.     

Measuring International Trade Costs

The costs of international trade have become an increasingly important item in trade negotiations (under the heading ‘trade facilitation’) and element of trade theory, but definition and measurement of trade costs remain in their infancy. This paper argues that the most conceptually appropriate measure is the gap between cost‐insurance‐freight (cif) and free‐on‐board (fob) values of traded goods, but that this must be measured on a consistent volume of trade. Such data are only available for a few countries. We calculate cif–fob gap values for the three largest trading nations that report such data (Australia, Brazil and the USA). These values provide plausible estimates of ad valorem trade costs for the three importing countries and for all countries’ exports. The estimates indicate that although trade costs have fallen over the last two decades, average trade costs now exceed the average tariff rate on imports into the USA and Australia. Country rankings by the cif–fob gap values differ significantly from those by commonly used proxies for trade costs, such as the indicators of time and cost in the World Bank’s Doing Business database, and analysis based on such proxies is likely to produce misleading results.     

Resource management and transition in Central Asia,Azerbaijan and Mongolia

This paper analyses resource management experiences of seven resource-rich Asian transition economies. The countries’ experiences illustrate that a series of hurdles need to be surmounted to benefit from resource abundance, and that neither the similar initial institutions nor those created in the 1990s were immutable. For Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan the ability to earn revenue from cotton exports permitted avoidance of reform. Oil in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan was associated with large-scale corruption, but with soaring revenues in the 2000s their institutions evolved and to some extent improved. Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia illustrate the challenge facing a small economy with a large potential mineral resource, with the former suffering from competition for rents among the elite and the latter from lost opportunities.     

The Eurasian Landbridge and China's Belt and Road Initiative: Demand,supply of services and public policy

Rail links between China and Europe are typically analysed in the context of China's Belt and Road Initiative, focusing on China's economic rise and the implications for international relations. This paper argues that establishment of the China–Europe Landbridge predated the BRI and has been market‐driven, as service providers identified and responded to demand for efficient freight services along pre‐existing railway lines. Governments' role was trade facilitating, that is reducing delays and costs at border‐crossing points, rather than investing in hard infrastructure. Service providers responded by linking European and Asian value chains (e.g., in automobiles and electronic goods) and reducing costs for traders shipping between China and Europe. The Eurasian Landbridge provides a case study of servicification as a component of increased trade in the twenty‐first century.     

Book Reviews

Review of World Economics -     

Rezensionen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Polynomial operators and the asymptotic distribution of dynamic multipliers

This paper employs formal manipulations of polynomial operators with matrix coefficients to derive dynamic and long-run multipliers. The same technique is employed to derive the asymptotic distribution of these quantities in a very simple manner. Some recursion formulae are given which make the computation of the covariance matrix of the limiting distribution a relatively simple process. The Klein Model I is used to provide a numerical illustration.