Would NAFTA have been Approved by the House of Representatives under President Bush? Presidents,Parties, and Trade Policy

This paper examines five trade policy votes in the United States House of Representatives, one during each of the last five presidential terms. The paper investigates the determinants of representative voting and shows that Congress members are more likely to support trade liberalization if the President is a member of their own party. The estimation allows a prediction to be made of the likely House trade votes under alternative presidential election outcomes. The model predicts that the probability of NAFTA being approved would have been greatly reduced by a victory for President Bush (41) in the 1992 election. Neither the trade promotion authority granted to President Bush (43) in 2001 nor the CAFTA signed in 2005 would likely have been approved under Democratic Presidents.     

Management of a capital stock by Strotz's naive planner

The capital management problem posed by R.H. Strotz is analyzed for the case of the ‘naive’ planner who fails to anticipate changes in his own preferences. By imposing progressively stronger restrictions on the primitives of the problem – namely, the discounting function, the utility index function, and the investment technology – the planner's behavior is characterized first as the solution to an ordinary differential equation and then via explicit formulae. Inasmuch as these characterizations leave the discounting function essentially unrestricted, the theory can accommodate, in particular, decision makers who discount time according to the hyperbolic and ‘quasi-hyperbolic’ curves used in applied work and said to be supported by psychological studies. Comparative statics of the model are discussed, as are extensions of the analysis to allow for credit constraints, limited foresight, and partial commitment.     

从计划到战略:政府管理模式的创新与转型

一、政府统筹发展模式转型的依据与意义 任何经济社会的运行和发展都需要宏观调控.但与生产力的发展水平、社会分工的复杂程度以及不同经济制度的运作需要相联系,政府统筹发展的具体模式或其在各个时期的基本实现方式是有差异的.一般来说,"自由经济"倾向于依靠"看不见的手"--市场自发力量来调节,这在比较简单的分工与交换条件下尚可为之."命令经济"则倾向于依靠"看得见的手"--自觉的计划手段来调节,这在高度社会化大生产和单一公有制条件下也许可行.然而现代经济社会常常呈不平衡和交织发展状态,"多元混合经济"在我们这个时代更具代表性.最适合市场经济条件下多元混合经济体的发展统筹模式,应是兼用"看不见的手"与"看得见的手"的现代战略管理(参见图1).     

The global audit profession and the international financial architecture: Understanding regulatory relationships at a time of financial crisis

This paper explores how regulatory relationships in the global audit arena are being affected by the current financial crisis. Key policy initiatives and debates are analyzed, along with institutional interactions, in particular between the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), international regulators and the large audit firms. The events are placed in the context of the new international financial architecture which has developed over the last decade. Using the illustrative lens of bank auditing, questions are asked of the nature and status of audit practice and the regulatory arrangements governing such practice. The paper shows the active nature of the regulatory responses to the crisis and the shifting and competing influences among key regulatory and professional participants in the global audit arena. Emphasis is placed on the need for audit researchers to be sensitive to the developing global financial architecture, and its potential implications for the study of audit practice in different national and international contexts.     

Numeraire choice in agricultural supply analysis

Should the choice of numeraire price for modelling profit functions be arbitrary, or is more careful study needed? Here, the choice of numeraire is examined using tests for models specification and out-of-sample predictive accuracy based on the crop and livestock data obtained from Iowa. The results of this study indicate that, for this data set and functional form, it does indeed make a difference which numeraire you choose. This is in contrast to previous studies which, in general, indicated that the choice of numeraire equation is arbitrary or, more commonly, offered no justification for the netput chosen.     

The Working of the Auditing Practices Committee—Three Case Studies

This is a study of the development of three different auditing guidelines by the Auditing Practices Committee (APC) of the UK and the Irish Republic. The guidelines are those on analytical review, fraud, and general insurance business. The evidence is derived from the APC's archives and includes agendas, minutes, working papers and correspondence of working parties and of the main Committee, in addition to published sources. The evidence is used to assess the validity of the public criticisms that have been made of the APC and the possible effectiveness of the recent reforms of the system.     

Mandatory Retirement Rules and the Retirement Decisions of University Professors in Canada

We examine the impact of mandatory retirement on the retirement decisions of professors in Canada using administrative data. Estimation of a discrete time hazard model indicates that faculty members at universities with mandatory retirement at age 65 have exit rates at age 65 that are around 30 to 38 percentage points higher than those of their counterparts at universities without mandatory retirement. This overall difference in exit rates is found when the sample is restricted by discipline, professional rank and type of university. Similar results are found for both men and women; however, the magnitude of this effect is somewhat smaller for women. Restricting the analysis to include faculty members who received their highest degree at age 34 or older does not affect the magnitude of the difference in exit rates between faculty at universities without mandatory retirement and those at universities with mandatory retirement. The estimated survival probabilities indicate that only 22.7% of faculty members employed at age 64 at universities without mandatory retirement will continue to be employed at the same university at age 72.     

WHY ARE TRADE BARRIERS SO LOW?

The political economy literature suggests that tariff rates should be high because the gains to producers from protection are enormous while the welfare costs are small. This paper presents and evaluates six possible explanations for the relatively low tariffs we see today in most developed countries.