Budgetary-Neutral Fiscal Policy Rules and External Adjustment

Large external imbalances and fragile fiscal positions have emerged as major policy challenges for the euro area in the financial crisis. The paper analyses whether shifting government purchases between tradable and non-tradable goods could help reduce external fluctuations without large swings in the overall fiscal stance. The policy rules considered are budgetary-neutral in the sense that the overall level of government expenditure is kept constant. We compare the policy rules to fiscal devaluation as a strategy to reduce external imbalances and find that state-dependent changes in the composition of government purchases between tradables and non-tradables can stabilise excessive fluctuations in the event of economy-wide supply and demand shocks. Contrary to fiscal devaluation, the expenditure-shifting rule faces a trade-off between stabilising domestic activity and enhancing household welfare, on the one hand, and reducing excessive fluctuations in external positions, on the other hand. The excess volatility of domestic variables associated less volatility in the external position implies welfare losses for standard specifications of household utility. The adverse welfare effect is absent in the case of fiscal devaluation.     

Weltgetreidemarkt: Anhaltender Boom oder kurzfristige Spekulationsblase?

Zusammenfassung   Die Weltagrarm?rkte waren im letzten Jahr von stark steigenden Preisen gepr?gt. Wird diese Entwicklung durch fundamentale Faktoren gestützt oder handelt es sich um eine kurzfristige Erscheinung? Welche Rolle spielen dabei das Bev?lkerungswachstum und die Steigerung der Pro-Kopf-Einkommen? Was geht auf die Nachfrage nach biogenen Kraftstoffen zurück? Diese Fragen werden beispielhaft anhand des Weizenmarktes behandelt. Prof. Dr. Bernhard Brümmer, 39, ist Inhaber des Lehrstuhls für Landwirtschaftliche Marktlehre am Department für Agrar?konomie und Rurale Entwicklung der Universit?t G?ttingen; Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Ulrich Koester, 70, ist Emeritus des Lehrstuhls für Landwirtschaftliche Marktlehre an der Universit?t Kiel; Prof. Dr. Jens-Peter Loy, 44, lehrt in der Abteilung Marktlehre des Instituts für Agrar?konomie an der Universit?t Kiel und ist Inhaber des Lehrstuhls für Marktlehre an der CAU Kiel.     

Scandinavia's monetary convergence with the European Community

In the twelve months preceding the conclusion by the EFTA countries and the EC of the agreement on the establishment of a common European Economic Area in October 1991, the three Skandinavian EFTA members-Norway, Finland and Sweden-decided to tie their currencies to the ECU. What objectives do these countries hope to achieve by this move? What effects is it likely to have?     

Convergence,the “tax-state” and economic dynamics

Convergence, the “Tax State” and Economic Dynamics. — The paper analyses the welfare/efficiency relationship of taxation and empirically tests the relationship between taxes and economic dynamics for OECD countries. Since taxes are only one of the determinants of economic growth, in a first step the influence of other sources of or impediments to economic growth is analysed. This general model - which contains hypotheses about catching-up, the technological gap, human capital and inflation - is tested against a specific model in which the specific interest is in the role of taxes. For the group of the most important OECD countries taxation turns out to be growth-retarding.     

Financial liberalisation and sustained interest differentials

In the last decade, many of the more advanced developing countries in Latin America and Asia have deregulated and opened up their financial markets. What impact has this had on the efficiency of the financial sector? How can the existence of sustained interest differentials be explained?     

Corporatism,technological gaps and growth in oecd countries

Summary The main purpose of the present approach is to empirically demonstrate that the hypothesis "the corporatist economies have outperformed others in the 1970s" should be qualified. To do so, it is first necessary to account for the impact of technological catch-up processes which after World War II in Western industrial countries have been of central importance. Since the then existing technological gaps have narrowed in the course of time, catching-up potentials also have decreased, and thus economic growth. The analysis of corporatism led to the hypothesis that economies which are competitively organized have done as well as the corporatist economies. The true losers being those countries which are neither characterized by a high degree of national consensus nor by a highly competitive structure. The empirical results support this hypothesis for the 1970s when large supply shocks and monetary disturbances hit the world economy.

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Zusammenfassung Korporativismus, technologische Lücken und Wachstum in OECD-L?ndern. - In dieser Untersuchung wird empirisch gezeigt, da? das Wirtschaftswachstum in den Industriel?ndern in den sechziger und siebziger Jahren eine Funktion von technologischen und institutionellen Faktoren war. Unter Berücksichtigung technologischer Aufholprozesse führt die Analyse des Korporativismus zu der These, da? die wettbewerblich organisierten L?nder zumindest ebenso schnell gewachsen sein dürften wie die korporativistischen Volkswirtschaften, w?hrend die eigentlichen Verlierer jene L?nder sind, die weder durch ein hohes Ma? an nationaler übereinstimmung noch durch eine stark wettbewerblich ausgerichtete Struktur gekennzeichnet sind. Die empirischen Ergebnisse stützen diese Thesen für die siebziger Jahre, in denen die Weltwirtschaft starken angebotsbedingten Ver?nderungen und monet?ren St?rungen ausgesetzt war.

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Résumé Corporativisme, ?technological gap? et croissance dans les pays OCDE. - Dans cet article, l’auteur démontre empiriquement que la croissance en pays industriels dans les années soixante et soixante-dix était une fonction des facteurs technologiques et institutionnels. En considérant les processus technologiques ?catching-up?, l’analyse menait à l’hypothèse que des pays organisés compétitivement auraient eu au moins la même performance que les économies corporativistes. Les vrais perdants seraient les pays qui n’étaient pas caractérisés ni par un haut degré de consensus national ni par des structures strictement compétitives. Les résultats empiriques supportent ces hypothèses pour les années soixante-dix quand des grands chocs et des perturbances monétaires touchaient l’économie mondiale.

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Resumen Corporativismo, brecha tecnológica y crecimiento en los países de la OECD. - En este trabajo se demuestra empíricamente que el crecimiento de los países industrializados en los a?os sesenta y setenta se debe a factures tecnológicos e institucionales. Tomando en cuenta el impacto del proceso de alcanzar la frontera tecnológica se deriva la tesis que países en los cuales rige la competencia deberfan haberse desarrollado al menos a la par de los países corporativistas. Los países rezagados serfan aquellos que no se caracterizan ni por un alto grado de consenso nacional ni por estructuras competitivas. Los resultados apoyan la tesis para los a?os setenta, cuando la economía mundial sufrió importantes shocks de oferta y problemas monetarios.

     

Towards an attention‐based view of technology decisions

The importance of technology decisions is widely acknowledged in both research and practice. However, we know little about how companies structure technology decisions from an organizational point of view and how attention is distributed in the course of the decision process in order to identify, process, and transfer information between the organizational units involved. Using the attention‐based view of the firm and 14 qualitative case studies, we present five approaches for organizing technology decisions: (1) centralized decision‐making, (2) busy information bee, (3) double‐blind analysis, (4) moderated expert panel, and (5) coterie approach. On this ground, this paper introduces a new, attention‐based view on technology decisions, which improves the theoretical understanding of organizations and provides guidelines for practitioners in choosing an appropriate organizational configuration in this regard.