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Applying Burgstaller's Ricardian two-sector growth model to the two-country open economy, this paper shows that the long-run Heckscher–Ohlin theorem holds also in a Ricardian world. In addition it is shown that, if two Ricardian countries that are different only in their demand parameters open trade, comparative advantage and the corresponding trade pattern at trade opening continue in the long run after the opening of trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan is known to have an exceptionally low level of inward foreign direct investment (FDI). The promotion of inward FDI is one of the policy goals of Abenomics structural reforms. This present paper studies the accumulation of Japan's inward FDI stock during the first 3 years of Abenomics (2012-2015), and finds no evidence that Japan's inward FDI stock increased more than the trend before Abenomics started would have predicted. A comparison of the main policies for promoting inward FDI that have been implemented to the real and perceived impediments to inward FDI reveals that it may be advisable to shift the emphasis of the policy to address more regulatory and administrative issues and to reduce the cost of doing business in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Empirical results on the links between trade openness and economic growth often suggest that, in the long run, more outward‐oriented countries register better economic growth. However, a similar level of trade openness can hide different types of trade structures. The aim of this paper was to enrich the way of measuring trade openness taking into account two different dimensions of countries’ integration in world trade: export quality and export variety. Based on the estimation of an endogenous growth model on a panel of 169 countries between 1988 and 2014 using a generalised method of moments estimator, our results confirm that countries exporting higher quality products and new varieties grow more rapidly. More importantly, we find a non‐linear pattern between the export ratio and the quality of the export basket, suggesting that openness to trade may impact growth negatively for countries which are specialised in low‐quality products. A non‐linear relationship between export variety, the export ratio and growth is also found, suggesting that countries increasing their exports will grow more rapidly after reaching a certain degree of the extensive margin of exports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a long-held belief that there is an association between economic growth and increased levels of international trade. However, more recent work has questioned this hypothesis and the re-opening of the debate has identified two key areas of contention. One is the extent to which the effects of openness are conditional on factors omitted from the core regression relationship and hence how the hypothesis is tested. The other is the meaning and measurement of openness and liberalisation. This paper addresses both these areas by exploring the nature of heterogeneity in growth performance among liberalising countries using a difference-in-difference approach. The results show that, while in aggregate there appears to be a positive but small impact of trade liberalisation on growth, this masks a huge range of responses. Empirical analysis of this heterogeneity shows that a one-size-fits-all policy is not necessarily the most effective, and suggests a case-by-case approach is more appropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Summer Olympics bring hundreds of thousands of visitors and generate upward of $10 billion in spending for the host city. This large influx of tourism dollars is only part of the overall impact of hosting the Olympic Games. In order to host the visitors and sporting events, cities must make sizable investments in infrastructure such as airports, arenas, and highways. Additionally, the publicity and international exposure of a host city may benefit international trade and capital flows. Proponents argue that this investment will pay off through increased economic growth, but research confirming these claims is lacking. This paper examines whether hosting an Olympiad improves a city's long-term growth. In order to control for the self-selection of cities that host Olympic Games, this paper matches Olympic host cities with cities that were finalists for the Olympic Games, but were not selected by the International Olympic Committee. A difference-in-difference estimator examines post-Olympic impacts for host cities between 1950 and 2005. Regression results provide no long-term impacts of hosting an Olympics on two measures of population, real Gross Domestic Product per capita and trade openness. ( JEL O18, R11) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the trade of China in the past 150 years, starting from the first opening of China after the Opium War. The main purpose of the paper is to identify what is (and was) China's 'normal' level of foreign trade, and how these levels changed under different trade regimes, from 1840 to the present. We present new evidence on China's foreign trade during the treaty port era (1842-1948), drawn from disaggregated trade data collected by the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, that yields important findings for current research. First, although the volume of foreign trade remained limited initially, there was a notable expansion in the diversity of products, with many new goods being imported into China. Second, the regional diffusion of foreign goods through China was greatly facilitated by the expansions of the port system. Third, the importance of Hong Kong as an intermediary in China's trade has undergone long-term fluctuations suggestive of learning effects. China's recent wave of liberalization has led by the early 1990s to a trade level comparable to the high of the 1920s. While much of China's recent growth in world trade is in line with her income growth, there is no doubt that China's trade openness today, comparable by some measures to Denmark's, is a stunning reversal relative to the pre-1978 and also the pre-1840 period. The paper emphasises the roles that history and institutional change have played in this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the liberalisation of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Mexico since the late 1980s, and its relationships with exports and imports. Such a process has eased the access of multinational corporations (MNCs) to the country, which has promoted exports. However, it has also resulted in a higher import content and the displacement of local firms, which has limited Mexico's economic development through the balance of payments constraint. The analysis is supported by the existence of linkages – bidirectional Granger causality – between exports, imports and FDI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an endogenous growth model where the level of international transaction costs may be decisive for whether the relatively poor East specializes in agriculture production, imitates goods from the rich West, or makes its own innovations. The author shows that the East produces only agricultural goods if transaction costs are high, while innovation is profitable when transaction costs are low. In between there are a range of transaction costs where the East imitates, possibly resulting in a lower global growth rate and a larger international wage gap than if imitation were not possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is now a substantial empirical literature examining the determinants of aid effectiveness. A large part of this makes inferences based on a regression incorporating aid (as a share of recipient GDP) interacted with some institutional or policy variable. Recently, some authors have questioned the statistical robustness of such regressions, pointing out that results vary according to the way aid is measured and the estimator applied to the data. Moreover, the regression equations used to test hypotheses about the determinants of aid effectiveness are often introduced without any corresponding formal theory. We explore aid-policy interaction terms in the context of a simple theoretical model, showing how different nonlinearities may be conflated. The resulting difficulties in the interpretation of aid-growth regressions are illustrated in the context of a seminal paper in the conditional aid effectiveness literature. One simple change in the way that aid is measured - in per capita terms rather than as a fraction of GDP - completely changes the regression results. This indicates that adding interaction terms to otherwise linear regression equations is an inadequate way of capturing the nonlinearities in the growth process. Our aim is to re-emphasise the importance of grounding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article cites a study that examines the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations on agriculture that emerged as a critical element in the postponed Doha Development Agenda. Particularly, this paper aims to examine the potential implications of complete trade reform. These will then be used as a benchmark against which to evaluate options within the parameters agreed at the WTO in August 2004. Results show that agricultural trade reform is potentially more important as a source of gains to the world than reform of the much bigger nonagricultural merchandise sector.

The relationship between exports and economic growth has been analysed by a number of recent empirical studies. This paper re-examines the sources of growth for the period 1971–2001 for India. It builds upon) model to investigate empirically the relationship between export growth and GDP growth (the export led growth hypothesis), using recent data from the Reserve Bank of India, and by focusing on GDP growth and GDP growth net of exports. We investigate the following hypotheses: (i) whether exports, imports and GDP are cointegrated using the Johansen approach and Breitung's nonparametric cointegration test; (ii) whether export growth Granger causes GDP growth; (iii) and whether export growth Granger causes investment. Finally, a VAR is constructed and impulse response functions (IRFs) are employed to investigate the effects of macroeconomic shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism has been regarded as a major source of economic growth and a source of foreign exchange. It has also been viewed as an activity that imposes costs on the host country. Such costs include increased pollution, congestion and despoliation of fragile environments, and intra-generational inequity aggravation. One aspect that has been ignored is the general equilibrium effects of tourism on other sectors in the economy. This paper presents a model that captures the interdependence between tourism and the rest of the economy, in particular agriculture and manufacturing. An important result obtained is that the tourist boom may ‘immiserize’ the residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper formally integrates Ricardo's two-sector growth model with his theory of comparative advantage. Differences with conventional representations of Ricardian trade theory, as well as with Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson theory, are noted. It is shown that the Ricardian equilibrium terms of trade are fully determinate, as against the standard Millian view. Also, trade may, depending on direction of specialization, inhibit rather than promote growth and lead to a net contraction of the world economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to re-appraise the significance of the "real" as distinct from the "monetary" aspect of Smith's international trade theory. It will be argued that Smith's theory of foreign trade is so closely interwoven with his theory of domestic economic development that the two have to be considered together. This means that Smith's trade theory should not be treated simply as a static cross-section analysis of the existing pattern of trade based on the allocation of the given resources with the given productivity; rather it should be considered as an attempt to study the longer-run mutual interaction between foreign trade and domestic economic development, essentially involving an increase in the total volume of the resources and a rise in their productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A great deal of the current research into nineteenth- and twentieth-century globalisation has been focused through a neoclassical trade theory lens. Applying the Stopler-Samuelson paradigm from Heckscher-Ohlin trade theory, the result is an approach that sees price convergence as pivotal in defining, identifying, and measuring globalisation. This focus, however, obscures the implications of frontier incorporation and other insights achieved by viewing nineteenth-century globalisation as a mechanism whereby peripheral economies were incorporated into the core of organised economic activity. A frontier-centred perspective also reintroduces the role of economic institutions as a crucial element of economic growth and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade in a bilateral context, that is, home country's exports and FDI to a host country are analyzed using a gravity-model approach. The home country's primary concern in this study is on the possible loss of employment due to more FDI than trade. There have been concerns on knowledge spillovers and the erosion of technological leadership due to capital outflows. For a host country, the focus is on the effects of FDI on economic growth and development and technology trasfer. In this study, it is being hypothesized that institutional requirements are likely to be different for trade and FDI transactions. While geography and poverty may discourage trade, good institutions can help in other forms of economic integration with the rest of the world.

Presents information on a study which investigated the impact of Uruguay Round Agreement on the world economy. Methodology; Characterization of the Uruguay Round; Results; Conclusion.

This article presents an empirical test on comparative cost theories. The tests are undertaken for three pairs of countries: Japan and the U.S., Peru and the U.S. and the Great Britain and the U.S. Although the choice of countries is determined by the availability of the relevant data, the coverage is interesting since the countries involved are at different levels of economic development, have different relative factor prices and due to differences in their geographical location, are likely to have different endowments of particular natural resources. The main finding of the tests discussed in this paper is that comparative costs can be explained in terms of the combined influence of the causal factors stressed in the Ricardian and Heckscher-Ohlin theories, even though neither theory gives satisfactory results when considered independently of the other.

Food standards have existed since the beginning of trade and exchange, but have increased and expanded in recent years, affecting global and local value chains. This has triggered vigorous debates on the impacts on trade and development. Standards may simultaneously enhance economic efficiency and redistribute rents, complicating policy analysis and implying that "the economics" and "the politics" of standards are often hard to separate. While substantial research has contributed important insights, dynamic aspects of standards have not received much attention. I present a framework to illustrate some dynamic economic and political aspects of standards in closed and open economies. This framework integrates changes over time in preferences, implementation costs, and protectionist pressures as determinants of standards, and suggests explanations for persistent differences in food standards across countries. Hysteresis in standards can persist due to protectionist motives, even if the initial standards were not introduced for protectionist reasons. I use some historical cases to document both the persistence and adjustment of standards over time and with international integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Railways were one of the main engines of the Latin American trade boom before 1914. Railway construction often required financial support from local governments, which depended on their fiscal capacity. However, since the main government revenues were trade-related, this generated a two-way feedback between government revenues and railways, with a potential for multiple equilibria. The empirical tests in this article support the hypothesis of such a positive two-way relationship. The main implication of our analysis is that the build-up of state capacity was a necessary condition for railway expansion and also, to a large extent, for export expansion in Latin America during the first globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combination of poor institutions and erratic macroeconomic policy, as measured by the volatility of fiscal policy, is associated with slower growth. We show that macroeconomic policy is more erratic in countries that are rich in natural resources, especially minerals and fuels, and in those that receive large aid inflows. Poor institutions also play a role. Although Africa is a major receiver of aid and exporter of natural resources, this is not purely an African phenomenon. Output volatility is not associated with slower growth after controlling for institutions and the volatility of fiscal policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overview: darkness before the dawn? A number of indicators suggest the global economy may decelerate into the year-end., One especially worrying development is an apparent renewed softening in world trade growth. Our OE export indicator dropped in October to its lowest level since May 2013 and some other trade indicators (e.g. for container trade) have also been subdued., At a country level, growth has remained subdued in the Eurozone, prompting another slight forecast downgrade this month. Japan meanwhile slipped back into technical recession in Q3., Emerging markets remain mixed but with an overall soft tone. Among the BRIC economies there are few signs yet of a significant cyclical upturn - and in Russia the situation has deteriorated further., There has been better news from the US, where Q3 growth again came in at an annualised rate above 3% and jobs growth continues at over 200,000 a month. Consumer spending growth ebbed a little in Q3 but we expect it to pick up in the quarters ahead., Despite some gloomy near-term signals, there are a number of key positive factors for 2015 and beyond. The first is the fall in oil prices - now almost 30% down from the June peak - which will support consumer spending and lower business costs., And global policy settings are becoming more supportive. Though the US has now ended asset purchases, the Bank of Japan has announced a big increase in asset purchases. And with the ECB suggesting a possible €1 trillion increase in its balance sheet, the flow of central bank policy support in 2015/16 may not be very different from 2014., Fiscal policy may also be moving in a more positive direction. The Eurozone seems to be edging away from austerity while in Japan there is a strong possibility that the second rise in the consumption tax, planned for Q4 2015, will be delayed., These positive factors mean that we expect world GDP growth to firm from 2.6% in 2014 to 2.8% next year. This will be the best year since 2011, though growth will remain sub-par for a recovery period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a reference guide for monetary affairs. Names of publishers of books and the addresses of periodicals are provided to aid readers. Listings include only basic material, not news items or reports of transitory significance. "Foreign Trade and Finance: Essays in International Economic Equilibrium and Adjustment," is written by William R. Allen and Clark Lee Allen. Part I of "Balance of Payments and Economic Growth," by John M. Letiche, presents a critical review of current theoretical explanations of the international balancing process. Part II is an application of this theoretical analysis to particular issues of economic development. "Exchange Stabilization Funds," by Mordechai E. Kreinin is an abstract of a doctoral thesis completed at the University of Michigan in 1954. In "International Financial Transactions and Business Cycles," by Oskar Morgenstern, the interaction of international money markets and the spread of business cycles in the periods of 1879-1914 and 1919-1938 are studied.

This study examines the effects of international trade on output and tests the null of Granger non-causality between trade and economic growth in Australia. The single-equation IV-GMM, DOLS, FMOLS and NLLS and the system-based ML estimates consistently support the positive and significant long-run effects of exports and investment on output. The effects of imports are consistently negative across all the estimates. The OLSEG, RLS and ARDL-ECM estimates provide a mixed and weak and that overparameterised level-VAR estimates no support for the effects of trade on output. The estimates of the model with structural breaks provide a dominant support for the cointegrating relationship among variables. In conclusion, the evidence supporting the positive and significant long-run effects overwhelms the evidence providing a mixed, weak or no support for the effects of trade on output. The results of the study can be inductively generalised to mimic the findings of the literature at large and to suggest that a part of the inconclusiveness over the gains of trade could analogously be ascribed to the use of different methodologies and test statistics across studies. The results support the acceleration of exports and investment to foster the higher levels of output and economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(1248) Andrea Goldstein, Nicolas Pinaud, Helmut Reisen and Dorothy McCormick When the OECD Development Centre launched research in 2005 to document the economic, political and social impacts of China’s and India’s economic growth on sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, the arrival (or resurgence) of new important players had triggered concerns among traditional donors. Accusations ran from free riding on Western debt relief over violation of governance standards and unfair company competition to fragmentation of aid delivery. At the same time, there was a tendency to neglect the diversity of SSA in terms of resource endowments, trade links and industrial development. It was time then to promote African voices from various backgrounds to reflect Africa’s heterogeneity. The introductory section presents a summary of findings about the economic impact of the two Asian giants in SSA countries by Africa-based economists, with three practical conclusions. First, African countries should favour strategies that minimise areas of direct competition with the Asian giants. Second, industrialisation strategies are required to exploit opportunities complementary to the Asian development path. Third, sectors of mutual interest should be identified in order to develop long-term views on how to cooperate with China and India and these views should be mainstreamed into national development plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using South Africa as an example, this article explores how the structure of production affects export diversification and economic growth. We show that the lagging process of structural transformation is part of the explanation for stagnant exports per capita in South Africa over the past 40 years. This slow structural transformation is shown to be a consequence in part of the peripheral nature of South Africa's productive capabilities: the country is specialized in sectors intensive in highly specific factors of production that cannot be easily redeployed to other activities. Using this methodology, we examine the sectoral priorities of the South African Department of Trade and Industry and explore the policy implications of the country's orientation in the product space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, Mexican leaders have followed other Latin American countries in pursuing neoliberal economic policies designed to stimulate foreign investment, reduce public spending, and promote free trade. Recent studies of indigenous movements and popular protests challenge the idea that these market-based economic reforms enjoy a broad consensus and suggest that elites impose them by force. By turning the focus to middle-class Mexicans, I argue that some nonelite sectors of society avidly welcome the reign of the free market. Although they do not profit directly from unregulated capitalism, the middle class looks to neoliberalism to ensure access to the material markers of class status. The rising popularity of multilevel marketing companies in Mexico, which glorify consumption and celebrate the possibilities of entrepreneurship, demonstrates the appeal of neoliberalism to citizens fearful of diminished purchasing power. By tying consumption to globalized free markets, neoliberalism does not need coercion to win acceptance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The two edited collections and the monograph reviewed here provide the means to consider an extended range of commodities, locations, commodity/value chains, and issues of theory and method in political economy, beyond those presented by Gibbon and Ponte (2005) that we considered in the first part of this essay. Our discussion here touches on issues concerning how ‘global’ global commodity/value chains are; the symbolic attributes of commodities and commodity fetishism; the politics of consumption (or simply politics of selling and buying); the strengths and weaknesses of the economic sociology of commodity/value chains; and how the ‘slices’ extracted from larger organisms in studies of particular commodities may be reinserted, as it were, as part of the understanding of contemporary capitalism and of issues of development in the economies of the ‘South’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade in promoting economic growth across selected developing countries and examines the interaction among FDI, trade, and economic growth. Data from 66 developing countries are examined. Results of the study suggest that FDI, trade, human capital, and domestic investment are important sources of economic growth for developing countries. It is discovered that there is a strong positive interaction between FDI and trade in advancing economic growth. Results also show that FDI stimulates domestic investment. The contribution of FDI to economic growth is enhanced by its positive interaction with human capital and sound macroeconomic policies and institutional stability. With the results, there is an implication that lowering the inflation rate, tax burden, and government consumption would advance economic growth in developing countries.

The estimated static welfare gains from international trade are very small, on the order of one percent of GDP. The case for free trade is therefore increasingly linked to trade’s apparent positive effects on economic growth. But how large are these growth effects? The vast empirical literature has emphasized the statistical significance, not the economic significance, of the trade-growth relationship. This survey’s re-examination of the empirical literature focuses on the size of the relationship between trade and growth. Our survey reveals that the many empirical studies are surprisingly consistent in terms of the size of the relationship: A one percentage point increase in the growth of exports is associated with a one-fifth percentage point increase in economic growth. Given the power of compounding, the effect of trade on growth is very important for human welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article attempts to analyze the main ideas developed by economist Michal Kalecki with regards to development planning in mixed economies and shows the consistency of his approaches as expressed by him or developed under his guidance. In a developed mixed economy, Kalecki would specify three basic conditions for planning development. The first is control on foreign trade and financial operations. Secondly, control over pirate investment in order to avoid undesirable projects and the readiness of the state to step in and carry out high priority projects for which private capital is not forthcoming. The last is price stability, except for corrections arising from variations in the terms of trade.

Post-war welfare effort (i.e., welfare spending as a share of national income) in advanced capitalist political democracies is proposed to result from policy routines emphasized in the traditional academic literatures complemented and mediated by class-linked factors stressed in the 'new political economy' literature. Both sets of factors are integrated into a single conception of state policy-making. In this, self-interested elite and administrative state personnel respond to their environments by means of relatively discretionary and relatively automatic policy routines, respectively. Left and non-Left governments mediate these routines and do so differently in different long-term institutional (strong-union versus weak-union) and macroeconomic (expansionary versus crisis) contexts. Welfare expansion is found to be amply explained by the proposed processes, differentiated by context. Left parties and militants are found to matter primarily in contexts marked by `Left corporatism' (or strong unions) and/or by relatively `expansionary economic climates'. Ironically, Left-party governments in Left corporatist contexts are found to be particularly sensitive to inflation where transfer spending is concerned. Where unions are strong, policy making is generally less incremental and more flexible. After 1973, policy sensitivity to real economic growth or decline looms large, and working-class-linked politics are muted where unions are weak, most especially where they are decentralized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the aid and trade relation between European Union (EU) and Africa to counter China in the quest for energy and other resources. It aims to position Europe more favorably than China in terms of economic growth. The comment from the European Commission on EU's partnership with Africa is stated. In relation, it also offers information on the EU-Africa summit to be held in December in Lisbon, Portugal, wherein efforts to improve control of African migration to Europe and human trafficking will be discussed.