International fragmentation: Boon or bane for domestic employment?

In this paper, we introduce the fairness approach to efficiency wages into a standard model of international fragmentation. This gives us a theoretical framework in which wage inequality and unemployment rates are co-determined and therefore the public concern can be addressed that international fragmentation and outsourcing to low wage countries lead to domestic job-losses. We develop a novel diagrammatic tool to illustrate the main labour market effects of international fragmentation. We also explore how preferences for fair wages and the size of unemployment benefits govern the employment effects of outsourcing and critically assess the role of political intervention that aims to reduce unemployment benefits under internationally fragmented production.     

Price uncertainty,future markets and correlation

This paper examines the optimal trade and hedging decisions of a competitive exporting firm which faces concurrently hedgeable exchange rate risk and non‐hedgeable inflation risk. The macroeconomic interaction between exchange rate and domestic inflation rate risk is described by a state variable. The (strong) correlation is pivotal in determining the optimal risk management. It is shown how optimal hedging strategies are affected by state‐dependent preferences of the firm. The optimal hedge policy is to minimize the variation of marginal utility of final wealth across states of nature instead of minimizing the variance of final wealth.     

Werner Uhlmann (1928–2011)

Obituary

Werner Uhlmann (1928–2011)     

Structural change and environmental impact

Although structural change in many industrialized countries has increased since the early 1970s, the environmental policy aspects of this change have hardly been investigated. Using a set of four indicators, this study examines the correlation between structural changes and environmental pollution in thirty-one Eastern and Western industrialized countries from 1970 to 1985.     

THE EFFECT OF FORWARD MARKETS ON MULTINATIONAL FIRMS

This paper presents a model of a risk averse multinational firm under exchange rate risk. The firm, which owns and controls assets in two countries, is engaged in production, sales and forward contracting whenever forward markets exist. First, we investigate the effects of exchange rate uncertainty without any risk sharing markets. It is shown that the firm internalizes missing hedging markets by increasing foreign production and lowering foreign sales. Therefore the firm hedges by repatriating foreign profits in the form of goods. Second, the implications of the existence of forward markets of global market decisions are discussed. It is shown that a separation theorem holds. This does not imply that the multinational firm shifts all the risk into the forward exchange market.     

Poverty,environment and development

The United Nations Committee for Development Planning (CDP) in its annual report 1992 will address the relationships between poverty, environment and development, as a kind of input to the discussion that led to and will ensue from the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). We have asked Professor Udo E. Simonis, a member of the CDP and chairman of a respective working group, to summarize the main findings and recommendations of that report.     

Imperfect Forward Markets and Hedging

This paper considers a hedging model of a risk-averse competitive firm facing output price uncertainty. Imperfections exist in forward transactions in that the firm faces a downward-sloping demand function for its forward sales. We show that the optimal output and hedge ratio of the firm are, in general, not separable, and are related in a deterministic manner. We also derive some economic implications of production and hedging decisions when firms differ in their attitudes towards risk. A more risk-averse firm is shown to produce less and hedge more than a less risk-averse firm.
(J.E.L.: D21, D81).     

A Simple Axiomatization of the Foster, Greer and Thorbecke Poverty Orderings

The paper presents a simple characterization of the poverty orderings which are represented by a poverty measure belonging to the Foster, Greer, and Thorbecke class. All properties introduced are formulated within an ordinal framework. Furthermore, a new concept is proposed: the equivalent societal income which—if given to each individual in society—yields the same level of poverty as the actual income distribution. It is a specific indicator of the underlying poverty ordering, has attractive properties and allows us to prove the main result in a direct way.