Prevailing Protectionism Challenge to International Mining

An overall adjustment of global industries is going on and the global resource allocation layout is changing.Developed countries attempt to maintain the existing resource allocation layout while emerging countries such as China and India are getting involved in global resource allocation and are playing an increasingly active role.The reporter from China's Foreign Trade magazine had an interview with relevant offcials,experts and professionals in mining investment on such issues as the current characteristics of international mining market,the situation of international mining market in the year 2012 and the foreign investment direction of Chinese mining,and analyzed the above issues.     

Transparency and the regulatory process in Europe and the United States: two research priorities

Transparency research related to the regulatory process would benefit most from two types of empirical studies. One batch of studies, described in the fifth section of this essay, would focus on the American states and the member states of the European Union to identify the factors that determine whether regulatory processes are more transparent and whether transparency is successful in improving regulations and the regulatory process. In other words, we need comparative state (for the US) and member state (for the EU) studies to develop metrics for the quality of regulations and the role of transparency is advancing or weakening the quality of regulations at the state (for the US) and member state (for the EU) level. The second batch of studies, described in the sixth section of this essay, would explore who uses the information currently provided at the levels of transparency currently available in regulatory processes at the European Union and federal government of the United States. Who benefits from transparency and how are they using the available transparency mechanisms?     

Financial inclusion and food insecurity: Examining linkages and potential pathways

Considering the worsening levels of food insecurity globally, studies exploring the link between financial inclusion and food insecurity have become imperative. This paper contributes to the literature by examining the effect of financial inclusion on food insecurity using a multidimensional index of financial inclusion and a food insecurity construct obtained from the Food Insecurity Experience Scale. Based on data extracted from the seventh round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey, our preferred endogeneity-corrected results indicate that improvements in financial inclusion is associated with a reduction in food insecurity. This finding is consistent across different conceptualisations of food insecurity, alternative weighting schemes and cut-offs for the financial inclusion index and different quasi-experimental methods. Financial inclusion is mainly effective in reducing food insecurity in male-headed and rural-located households. Our findings reveal that entrepreneurship is an important pathway through which financial inclusion influences food insecurity.     

Sales expectations and inventory changes in retail trade

In this paper a single equation inventory investment model is estimated for the United States retail sector. Monthly data for the 1970s are utilized. In estimating the model it is alternatively assumed that expectations were formed according to a seasonal model, to perfect foresight, and to a narrowly rational expectations model. We find that a model in which expected sales and the expected rate of inflation are narrowly rational can explain most of the variation in retail inventory investment during the time period studied. The results of the estimation imply that retailers have a relatively short forecast horizon, that they can react quickly to either unexpected sales or to a deviation of actual from desired inventory stocks, and that an increase in the real of interest has a statistically negative impact on retail inventory investment.     

A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ELDERLY PERCEPTIONS OF THE CONSUMER MOVEMENT*

The decade of the 1970s witnessed the passage of an unparallelled amount of legislation designed to protect the needs of disadvantaged and low income consumers, characteristics which describe many members of the elderly population segment. This research was designed to assess elderly perceptions of the market-place today and of the performance of businesses and government agencies in protecting and promoting their interest as buyers. The elderly, when compared to other population segments, showed a more negative attitude toward the accomplishments of the consumer movement and the role of businesses and government in protecting buyers than other population segments.     

Monetary–fiscal policy interactions and fiscal stimulus

Increases in government spending trigger substitution effects—both inter- and intra-temporal—and a wealth effect. The ultimate impacts on the economy hinge on current and expected monetary and fiscal policy behavior. Studies that impose active monetary policy and passive fiscal policy typically find that government consumption crowds out private consumption: higher future taxes create a strong negative wealth effect, while the active monetary response increases the real interest rate. This paper estimates Markov-switching policy rules for the United States and finds that monetary and fiscal policies fluctuate between active and passive behavior. When the estimated joint policy process is imposed on a conventional new Keynesian model, government spending generates positive consumption multipliers in some policy regimes and in simulated data in which all policy regimes are realized. The paper reports the model's predictions of the macroeconomic impacts of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's implied path for government spending under alternative monetary–fiscal policy combinations.     

EXPERIENCES AND PROBLEMS OF THE CIS COUNTRIES IN TRANSITION FROM THE MPS TO THE SNA

This paper reviews the transition of national accounts in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries from the Material Product System (MPS) to the United Nations System of National Accounts (SNA) and discusses the major problems that still need to be solved in order to improve the quality of their national accounts. It argues that the MPS practice tended to exaggerate growth not because of different concepts, but because of methodological problems such as inadequate deflation due to poor price data and incomplete coverage of the non-observed economy as well as overpricing of new or modified products and institutional flaws that motivated data fabrication by enterprises. However, the heritages of the problems under the MPS, together with the emerging new types of institutional units, new sources of income and market-driven new services, have made the transition difficult.