Search

The majority of mainstream economists believe that globalization and trade liberalization have had a minor role in increasing U.S. wage inequality. A minority argues that capital mobility and outsourcing indicate a larger effect. This paper first surveys these views, and then argues that how we understand the policy consequences of trade liberalization helps determine the character our analysis of the issue itself. Thus, a shift in policy perspective, to consider the "equity costs" of trade liberalization in terms of eroded U.S. labor market institutions, produces a larger framework for analyzing the consequences of globalization and trade liberalization than is available in traditional comparative advantage efficiency reasoning. From this wider perspective, trade liberalization has likely had a greater impact on U.S. wage inequality than even the minority mainstream position allows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains, in terms of Galbraith's ‘conventional wisdom’ and ‘innocent fraud’ of mainstream economics, why the U.S. economy has experienced significant backsliding from the degree of progress our economic policies and institutions made toward producing a civilized economic society. It then sets out policy proposals for making progress toward a twenty-first-century ‘good society.’ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which U.S. institutions of higher education offer the best value to consumers? To answer this question, we evaluate U.S. institutions relative to a data envelopment analysis (DEA) multi-factor frontier based on 2000-2001 data for 1,179 4-year institutions. The resulting DEA 'best buy' scores allow the ranking of institutions by a weighted sum of institutional characteristics per dollar of average net price. The net price is calculated as tuition, fees, room, and board less per student financial aid. Institutional characteristics include SAT score, athletic expenditures, instructional expenditures, value of buildings, dorm capacity, and student body characteristics. The DEA scores indicate the distance of each institution from the 'best buy' frontier for the chosen characteristics, providing an objective means of ranking institutions as the best values in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyzed India's export competitiveness in the textiles and clothing (T&C) sector in the United States. The T&C industry is traditionally important for the Indian economy due to its significant contribution to export, employment, and industrial production. However, the competition in the global T&C market intensified after the Multi-Fiber Arrangement phase-out in 2005. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the export competitiveness of India's T&C sector in the U.S., India's largest export destination and one of the world's largest consumers of T&C. In this study, we calculated the comparative advantage of India's T&C based on Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA), Market Comparative Advantage (MCA), and Comparative Advantage by Countries (CAC). Our analysis shows that India had a comparative advantage in the T&C sector in the U.S. from 1991 to 2017, despite intensified competition in the global market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]