The European Commission’s New Industrial Policy in an Integrating and Globalizing World

The European Commission has launched a new industrial policy for Europe in October 2005. While manufacturing industry remains a key building block of the European economy, it faces a number of challenges—as well as opportunities—in the form of rapid technological change; increasing trade and financial integration of the world economy; and the rise of new emerging market competitors. Whilst some sectors are performing strongly, the overall industrial structure of the EU economy makes it less than ideally positioned to face these challenges. The new industrial policy articulated by the Commission is to help the European economy adapt to the new circumstances. In contrast to old policies that sought to ‘pick winners’, the new approach starts from the screening of horizontal policies and framework conditions in terms of their implications for specific industrial sectors. Second, the Commission has integrated policy by bringing more closely together different policy dimensions of key relevance to various industries. Finally, the industrial policy attempts to achieve a greater consensus over policy, through the involvement at an early stage of key stakeholders and Member States in policy making.     

The behavior of intra-daily exchange rates

The behavior of exchange rates is examined as they evolve continuously over time. The data consist of Swiss franc/U.S. dollar rates for nine days during the years 1978–1980 as quoted by a major Swiss dealer operating on the interbank market. Since this market is highly organized, the observations are market prices at the same time. The distributions of relative changes in exchange rates measured over one minute are highly leptokurtic. The normal distribution is rather rapidly approached when the measurement interval is lengthened from one up to ten minutes. Time series analysis reveals that the natural logarithms of exchange rates are adequately described by a random walk, the same stochastic process as has been found for daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly observations. For short time intervals, significant autocorrelations sometimes occur at the first few lags, which are, however, not stable enough over time to form a basis for reliable forecasts.     

Signed Central Moments of Integer Random Variables with Decreasing Density

Signed central α-moments of integer valued rv with decreasing density are considered. These are all positive if α≥3/2. We state sharp universal bounds on α depending only on the expectation of the random variable. For special cases the bounds are also evaluated numerically.     

Prices of raw materials continue to rise

Following the abatement of the boom market during the early months of 1983, the coming months will see an “adjustment” of world market prices for industrial raw materials to “fundamental” market conditions. Price fluctuations are likely during this period. A gradual increase in demand for raw materials and a moderate rise in raw materials prices can be expected during the further course of 1983 and in 1984.     

A note on lindahl taxes when public goods are inputs to household production

This note explores the incidence of benefit taxation when public goods yield utility only indirectly, as inputs to household production. It provides a condition for tax progression in terms of measurable parameters. The result is contrasted with the usually considered case of public goods being ordinary consumption goods, in which the parameters that indicate whether benefit taxation would be progressive are inestimable because of the preference revelation problem.I am grateful to two referees for insisting on clarifications and for providing useful suggestions.     

The internationalization of energy supply structures

The World Energy Conference will be held in Munich in mid-September. It will have to deal with diverse and complex problems of energy policy, for the seventies have presented tremendous challenges in the energy field. The control over oil—with 46% of the world supply still by far the most important source of energy—has been reorganized and two oil crises have exposed the flow of supplies to severe disruption and political hazards. As far as can be foreseen, the supply is unlikely to keep abreast of the world-wide rise of energy consumption. To replace the oil gradually will therefore be the major task in the energy field in the coming decades. What will be the supply position between now and the year 2000? And which structural changes will have to be effected?