Consequences of the debt crisis

The indebtedness of the developing countries to foreign creditors which has expanded rapidly over the past few years rose by a further 18% last year and by the end of the year had reached the estimated level of $626 billion. The debt servicing for this sum amounted to $131 billion.¹ The rescheduling operations required as a result of the accumulating payment difficulties reached a volume of $40 billion. According to the Mexican Minister of Finance, the restructuring of Mexico's foreign debts alone was the largest multilateral support operation in modern financial history.²     

Is the USA depriving the rest of the world of capital?

High American interest rates and confident expectations about the future dollar exchange rate have exerted an unprecedented attraction on foreign capital in the past two years. Gross capital inflows into the USA came to as much as $ 89 billion and $ 83 billion in 1982 and 1983 respectively. It is widely held that this is depleting the supply of capital to the rest of the world. Is this view justified?     

XV. Bibliographien und nachschlagewerke

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

III. Weltwirtschaft und Wirtschaft einzlner Länderund und Gebiete

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Die Struktur der Herstellkosten bei Vollautomation und permanenter Erzeugung

Ohne ZusammenfassungMit 1 Textabbildung     

The evolution of coastal tourism destinations: a path plasticity perspective on tourism urbanisation

Evolutionary and relational approaches to economic development are gaining ground in geography as a discipline, although in the subfield of tourism geography, their potential is only just becoming recognised. This article focuses on the evolution of mature tourism destinations, taking the path dependency concept forward from the notion of path creation into the new domain of path plasticity. Drawing on the notion of cultural political economy, we examine how tourism destinations can break with path dependency routines incrementally and move steadily towards different future paths, which may recast tourism in a different light in the overall “urban” context of the destination. Using a case study of a Mediterranean coastal destination on Catalonia's Costa Daurada, we explore the inter-tangled tourism and urban development processes in relation to the socio-spatial dimensions of urban change. The article argues for a wider range of social and cultural criteria in the analysis of tourism evolution – advocating the use of path plasticity and a cultural political economy approach – to offer an alternative perspective on shifting tourism situations, reflecting the inherently “urbanising” nature of tourism development in the traditional coastal resort context. It adds to the growing literature on governance and strategy-making in sustainable tourism.     

Business cycles and productivity growth: Are temporary downturns productive or wasteful?

This paper investigates the relationship between the structure of the business cycle and total factor productivity (TFP) growth in U.S. manufacturing. Previous empirical studies on cycle-growth interactions have been conducted at the aggregate level, and have produced mixed results. In contrast, we examine the dynamic linkages between temporary employment shocks and TFP at the industry level, using the NBER Productivity Database. Given the substantial differences in factor intensities, costs and the nature of innovation and productivity-enhancing activities across industries, there are good reasons why cycle-growth interactions may be more readily captured at the sectoral level. We construct an exactly identified Vector Autoregressive model for employment and TFP growth, and find strong support for the “opportunity-cost” view of business cycle-productivity growth interaction. This result suggests that recessions can lead to TFP growth through reorganization and restructuring effects. On the other hand, we find little support for the notion that temporary booms increase TFP through “learning-by-doing” effects. The responsiveness of TFP to employment shocks also seems to be related to the degree of job reallocation within individual industries and the capital intensity of the industry in question. This is further evidence in favour of the view that employment shocks can trigger reorganization effects. Finally, we suggest possible future avenues for this research, including the adjustment of TFP measures to allow for variable factor utilization over the cycle.