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While trade can greatly contribute to providing more education opportunities in the development world, its potential has not been fully exploited so far. This paper examines how international trade can help increase supply of and investment in higher education, thereby enhancing access and quality in support of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). First, the paper examines the changing dynamics in the higher education sector and how these have spurred reforms in education systems and novel ways of delivering educational services. These factors, which include demand-side factors, reforms in government funding, technological developments, and the rise of global value chains (GVCs), have prompted mixed policies which increasingly regard foreign providers as prospective partners. Whereas these trends point toward the internationalization of education services, the role of trade agreements and their potential contribution to the SDGs have barely been explored. Therefore, the second part of the paper examines how trade agreements can help facilitate trade in education services and the flexibility they provide for attaining social policy objectives. International trade agreements can help attract foreign providers and foreign direct investment (FDI) in education by reducing barriers to entry, levelling the playing field among providers, and providing a predictable and transparent regulatory environment. At the same time, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) can support and complement the development of appropriate policy and regulatory frameworks to accompany market opening and promote the SDG goals of ensuring inclusive and quality education. Overall, a balance will need to be struck between opening trade in education and addressing regulatory challenges with a view to fostering coherence among policy objectives in support of the SDGs.

The changes that took place in the late twentieth century led to the transformation of the political system in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). As a result, there has been an increase in the competitiveness of some of the economies among the CEE states. Due to different priorities and goals, these countries are also characterised by different levels in socio-economic development. The aim of the article is to identify the determinants affecting the competitiveness among the selected CEE countries. Based on Eurostat data, a set of determinants affecting competitiveness was established. A number of determinants have been eliminated in relation to the variation coefficient. At the same time, a classification of the level of competitiveness among the CEE countries has been made by using the Perkal method. The analysis used 14 selected indicators, 10 of which are considered as stimulating and 4 as deteriorating the competitiveness of national economies. The result led to obtaining a synthetic level indicator of potential of the CEE countries. Following the findings of the conducted analysis, the highest economic competitiveness exists in Estonia and in the Czech Republic, while the lowest was found in Romania and Bulgaria. The results of the evaluation obtained with the Perkal method concerning the competitiveness of the CEE countries that belong to the EU are largely consistent with those presented in different global competitiveness rankings. However, the method applied in this article seems much simpler and less time-consuming, allowing at the same time an optimal choice of analytical determinants. The selected linear Pearson correlation's coefficient confirmed that there is a strong positive relationship between the designated values of the synthetic indicator of competitiveness and the GDP per capita. This confirms the validity of test method used.

This paper studies the life-cycle dynamics of exporters and multinational enterprises (MNEs). We present a dynamic model of trade and MNE activity in which the mode of serving a market depends on the well-known proximity-concentration tradeoff. We show that the option of performing MNE activities in the model produces life-cycle patterns for exporters that differ from those in an export-only model. Calibrating our model to rich firm-level data from France and Norway, our main quantitative finding is that a reduction in trade costs triggers much larger responses in growth rates and exit rates, for young exporters, in the model with MNEs than in the model without MNEs. We also show that the model is largely consistent with a set of new facts on the joint life-cycle dynamic behavior of exporters and MNEs.

This paper argues Rodrik's (2011) globalization trilemma is analytically mistaken. Rather than a trilemma, globalization poses a dilemma between more globalization and reduced national policy space. Not only may globalization shrink policy space, it may also twist it. The character of the twist depends on the type of globalization. There is no inherent contradiction between globalization and the democratic nation state. However, globalization has significant implications for the content of democratic politics which it tends to restrict. Furthermore, globalization can generate policy lock-in (Palley, 2017) which permanently reduces policy space. That has enormous implications for democracy and future democratic policymaking.

Tension is growing between the interests of the middle classes that are in decline in the mature economies and the rising ones in emerging markets. The aim of the public policies proposed in this paper is to impede such a clash by not threatening de-globalisation, avoiding protectionism, fostering inclusive technological innovation, compensating the losers of globalisation in developed economies and reassuring the winners in emerging economies. It argues that the G20 concept of "inclusive growth" must overcome the challenges that come with reduced inequalities between countries, growing inequality within countries and the disruptive impact that accompanies technological innovation.

Gözgör, Giray (Dogus Author) This paper empirically examines causality relationship between economic growth and domestic credit in the economic globalization in 58 developed and developing countries over the period 1970-2010. We use the asymmetric Granger causality test that is based on modified Wald test statistics within bootstrapped critical values. We find a significant causality from domestic credit to economic growth only in seven developing countries. Furthermore, there is a unidirectional causality from economic growth to domestic credit in five developed and 10 developing economies.

Actualmente casi todos los envios internacionales necesitan emplear mas de un tipo de transporte desde su punto de origen hasta su destino final. Cada uno de los tipos mundiales de transporte de carga y pasajeros ha desempenado un papel esencial en la facilitacion de la diversificacion geografica del comercio. En este trabajo se evalua, a traves del metodo de Analisis de Componentes Principales, la competitividad del transporte internacional considerando, a su vez, las variables mas importantes que inciden en este sector y el desempeno de las economias respecto de dichas variables. Se analiza la estructura del sistema de transporte internacional para veintinueve paises, entre ellos siete de America Latina. Los resultados mostrados en el indice de competitividad del transporte internacional senalan que los paises mas competitivos en materia de transporte internacional son, en orden descendente, Hong Kong, Estados Unidos, Singapur, China, Suecia, Espana, Japon, Belgica, Dinamarca y Canada. El estudio destaca tambien que los paises de America Latina con mayores puntuaciones en este rubro son Brasil, seguido de Panama, Chile y Costa Rica. Currently most of international shipments need to use more than one type of transportation from its point of origin to final destination. Each one of the types of global transport has played an essential role in facilitating geographic diversification. In this paper we evaluate, through Principal Component Analysis methodology, the international transport competitiveness considering the most important variables that affect this sector and the economic performance of these variables on transportation, analyzing the structure of the international transport system of twenty-nine countries, including seven Latin American countries. The results shown in the competitiveness index of international transportation indicate that the most competitive countries in this field are: USA, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Sweden, Spain, Japan, Belgium, Denmark and Canada. Highlighting that, the countries of Latin America with the highest scores in this category are Brazil, followed by Panama, Chile and Costa Rica.

The global financial crisis which erupted in the United States instantaneously swept across Europe. Like the United States, the European Monetary Union (EMU) was ripe for a crash. It had its own real estate bubble, specifically in Ireland and Spain, indulged in excessive deficit spending, financially de regulated, and rapidly expanded credit. Policy responses and recovery patterns for key EU members like Germany, France (within the Eurozone) and the United Kingdom (outside the Eurozone) were similar. However, after the bubble burst and the crisis began unfolding it became clear that the Eurozone plight differed from America’s in one fundamental respect. There was no exact counterpart of Eurozone GIIPS (Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Spain) in the United States. The disparity is traced to the EU’s and Eurozone’s special form of governance called “supranationality” (a partially sovereign transnational organization) that has been largely ignored in economic treatises about the costs and benefits of customs unions, economic communities, and monetary unions. EZ members have put themselves in a monetary cage, akin to the gold standard. Member states have surrendered control over their monetary and foreign exchange rate policies to the German dominated European Central Bank (ECB), without supplementary central fiscal, private banking and politi cal union institutions. This should be enough in general competitive theory, but too often leads to factional and societal gridlock that compounds the misery, and could cause the EU to permanently and gravely underperform relative to community’s “un-caged” potential.

National and international flows of knowledge are fundamental determinants of technological progress. In this article we review the existing literature on knowledge flows and we propose a method for estimating them, based on patent citations. Citations are links between inventions that reveal a learning process at the technological frontier. We use data for the period 1975-1996 for 147 subnational regions in Europe and North America. We find that geographical distance and technological differences constitute major barriers to knowledge flows. We also show that these flows may have positive, but small, effect on total factor productivity.

This paper examines the existing literature on trade liberalisation and itseffect on the economies of developing countries. It will also briefly examine the theory of comparative advantage which is seen as justification for global trade liberalisation under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. This process is also associated with greater openness, economic interdependence and deepening economic integration with the world economy. The study is important because once again the international institutions strongly advocate trade and financial liberalisation in developing countries. The proponents of trade liberalisation argue that multilateral trade negotiations would achieve these goals, and poor countries particularly would benefit from it. However, such policies may increase vulnerability and make developing countries further hostages of international finance capital. Adoption of open market policies in agriculture would also mean the abandoning of self-reliance and food sovereignty, which may have wider consequences in terms of food shortages, food prices and rural employment.Keywords. Trade liberalisation, Industrialisation, WTO, International financial institutions, Developing countries.JEL. F02, F.10, N00.

This paper studies how the sensitivity of consumption to income has changed over time as the degree of financial integration has risen. In standard theory, greater financial integration facilitates international borrowing and lending, helping to reduce the sensitivity of consumption growth to fluctuations in income. The paper examines the empirical validity of this prediction using an array of indicators of financial integration for a large sample of advanced and developing countries over the period 1960-2011. Two main results are reported. First, the sensitivity of consumption to income has declined over time as the degree of financial integration has risen. The decline has been more pronounced in advanced economies than in developing ones. Second, the regression analysis indicates that a higher degree of financial integration is associated with a lower sensitivity of consumption to income. This finding is robust to the use of a wide range of empirical specifications, country-specific characteristics, and other controls, such as interest rates and outcome-based measures of financial integration. The paper also discusses other potential sources of the temporal changes in the sensitivity of consumption to income.

From the 1990s, it intensified in the global economy the implementation of strategies for companies of fragmenting their production processes and allocate their productive activities in various countries and regions, forming with this global value chains to recreate the international division of work in the global economy. Given this scenario, sectoral policies were implemented as the Brazilian Automotive Regime (RAB) in 1996 and the Innovate-Auto in 2012 to promote the automotive sector gain in competitiveness and productivity. The objective of this study is to analyze these policies for the automotive industry adopted from the 1990s and its impact on Brazil's participation in the automotive supply chain, as well as its relation to the dynamics of the Brazilian international insertion in recent decades, proposing further ideas contribute to the reflection on the construction of a public policy agenda in Brazil that aims to integrate the country in the global chain of automotive value.

This paper provides a historical background to contemporary debates on the international monetary system: their genesis, similarities, and differences of problems it has faced at different times. It looks sequentially at the design of the Bretton Woods system; the tensions it faced since the 1960s and its collapse in the early 1970s; the management of the collapse, the failure to agree on a new system, and the resulting non-system that followed; the maturing of these ad hoc arrangements, and the reforms after the North Atlantic financial crisis and debates on how to build up a broader global 'financial safety net'.

Robert Triffin (1911-1993) played an important role in the international monetary debates in the postwar period. He was known as one of the main advocates of a multipolar international monetary system. In this paper we analyse the origins of Triffin's "regional" approach towards international monetary integration. We argue that Triffin's experience with the European Payments Union (EPU) played hereby a crucial role. Triffin was not only an "architect" of the EPU, but the EPU also led to an important shift in Triffin's view of the geography of the international monetary system. Before his work on the EPU, Triffin thought of the international economy as composed of two geographical entities: national economies and the world economy. With his work on the EPU he introduced a third geographical entity: the region. The EPU would so be at the basis of Triffin's advocacy of a regional approach towards international monetary integration. Moreover, while Triffin was initially quite positive on the IMF, he became, through his EPU experience, more critical of the IMF and its worldwide approach.

Im Mai 2004 traten acht ehemals planwirtschaftlich organisierte Staaten Zentral- und Osteuropas der Europäischen Union bei. Dieser Beitrag untersucht die möglichen ökonomischen Folgen dieser EU-Erweiterungsrunde in den Grenzregionen der alten Mitgliedsstaaten in Deutschland, Österreich und Italien. Die Erweiterungseffekte auf das Bruttoinlandsprodukt pro Kopf in diesen Grenzregionen werden dabei anhand der Methode der synthetischen Kontrollgruppe geschätzt. Die Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass die Grenzregionen in den alten Mitgliedsstaaten von der Osterweiterung profitieren konnten. Allerdings sind die Effekte in den einzelnen Regionen sehr unterschiedlich; insbesondere ökonomisch bereits starke und erfolgreiche Regionen mit einem vergleichsweise starken Industriesektor und besserer Infrastrukturausstattung konnten von den Wachstumsimpulsen der EU-Osterweiterung profitieren.

In der Europäischen Union wird immer wieder die Solidarität zwischen den Mitgliedstaaten hervorgehoben oder eingefordert. Das manifestiert sich aktuell sowohl mit der Flüchtlingskrise als auch mit Forderungen nach einer Vertiefung der Europäischen Währungsunion. Dies legt nahe, der Frage nachzugehen, in welchem Ausmaß zwischen den EU-Staaten über die Beiträge zum EU-Haushalt und den von dort fließenden Ausgaben in die Mitgliedstaaten eine innergemeinschaftliche Solidarität geübt wird und wer dabei die Nutznießer sind. Die Ausgaben des EU-Haushalts beliefen sich zuletzt (2014) auf 142,5 Milliarden Euro oder 1,024 Prozent des gemeinsamen Bruttonationaleinkommens. Dies mag vergleichsweise gering erscheinen, wenn man diesen Wert mit der Staatsquote in den Mitgliedstaaten vergleicht, die im Durchschnitt der 28 Länder 2014 bei 48,2 Prozent des Bruttoinlandsprodukts lag, wobei die Spannweite von 34,3 Prozent in Rumänien und 58,1 Prozent in Finnland reichte. Gleichwohl lässt sich zeigen, dass mit dem EU-Haushalt eine nennenswerte Umverteilung zwischen den Mitgliedstaaten betrieben wird. Die Struktur des EU-Haushalts hat sich im Zeitablauf deutlich verändert. Wurde im Jahr 2000 noch fast jeder zweite Euro für die Agrarpolitik ausgegeben, ist dieser Anteil inzwischen auf unter 40 Prozent gesunken. Dagegen haben die Ausgaben für den wirtschaftlichen, sozialen und territorialen Zusammenhalt (Kohäsion) absolut und anteilsmäßig zugelegt, wie auch die Ausgaben für die sogenannten inneren Politikbereiche, die sehr verschiedenen Zwecken dienen.

The European Union set up an experiment in international relations that arouses the most varied reactions, going from extreme euphoria to nationalist xenophobia. This feeling of confusion is due not only to the wide range of issues that are embraced nor the organic complexity of the institution, but, principally, to superficial analysis emanating from the traditional doctrine, which still stubbornly lies on the surface, focusing in the appearance of international phenomena, without entering into its real concrete and full essence. Thus, in order to develop a consistent study is fundamental to understand European integration in their most hidden aspects, without disregarding their political and legal form, but up to them until unravelling the reality of its political economy. Up to this point it is possible to understand which lesson could be extracted from European experience to South American reality.

Using a panel fixed effects model for a sample of 121 countries covering 1975‐2005, we examine how financial development, financial liberalization and banking crises are related to income inequality. In contrast with most previous work, our results suggest that all finance variables increase income inequality. The level of financial development conditions the impact of financial liberalization on inequality. Also the quality of political institutions conditions the impact of financial liberalization on income inequality, in contrast to the quality of economic institutions. Our main findings are robust for using random effects, cross‐country regressions and legal origin as instrument for financial development., KOF Working Papers, 410

Using a panel fixed effects model for a large sample of countries, we examine how financial development, financial liberalization and banking crises are related to income inequality. Our results suggest that all finance variables increase income inequality. In addition, the impact of financial liberalization on inequality seems to be conditioned by the level of financial development. There is evidence that the quality of political institutions conditions the impact of finance on income inequality, in contrast to the quality of economic institutions. Our main finding is robust for using random effects, cross-country regressions and legal origin as instrument for financial development.

The macroeconomic production function is a traditional key element of modern macroeconomics, as is the more recent knowledge production function which explains knowledge/patents by certain input factors such as research, foreign direct investment or international technology spillovers. This study is a major contribution to innovation, trade, FDI and growth analysis, namely in the form of a combination of an empirically relevant knowledge production function for open economies – with both trade and inward FDI as well as outward foreign direct investment plus research input – with a macro production function. Plugging the open economy knowledge production function into a standard macroeconomic production function yields important new insights for many fields: The estimation of the production potential in an open economy, growth decomposition analysis in the context of economic globalization and the demand for labor as well as long run international output interdependency of big countries; and this includes a view at the asymmetric case of a simple two country world in which one country is at full employment while the other is facing underutilized capacities. Finally, there are crucial implications for the analysis of broad regional integration schemes such as TTIP or TPP and a more realistic and comprehensive empirical analysis.

The texts of the COP 21 Decision and its Annex are scrutinized from the particular point of view of the extent to which economic theoretic concepts can be considered to inspire them. While this is shown to be partially the case in some of the intentions, the texts themselves contain more diplomatically formulated promises than implementation of mainstream well established economic concepts.

Since the onset of the global economic crisis, on no occasion have the European Commission or European Union member state governments singled out Swiss commercial interests for discriminatory treatment. Even so, 200 official acts taken across the EU since November 2008 have caused collateral damage to Swiss commercial interests, three-quarters of which are still in force. Swiss exports worth more than 17 billion francs face one or more crisis-era trade distortion. However, inferred trade cost data reveal that Swiss commercial interests have been discriminated against more than other major suppliers to EU markets in only three member states.

We explore the role of the transfers that UK regions received from the European structural and cohesion funds, as well as other economic and social factors, in determining the support for the Remain vote in the Brexit referendum. We .nd that past European transfers have played virtually no role in the referendum. Economically strong regions tend to be in favor of remaining in the EU. Somewhat surprisingly, the intensity of immigration from the EU is positively correlated with the Remain vote.

Since its foundation, the European Union contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and prosperity in Europe. This process over the years has been followed by several challenges. This research observes the challenges and prospects of European integration for the Western Balkans. The latest security, political and economic challenges affect the pace of European integration and enlargement policy. This new environment also has an impact on the credibility of the European integration process for the Western Balkans, affecting the support of citizens for the EU perspective. New additional efforts for an integration reform agenda are needed to show further progress, as the EU integration seems to be the best alternative for the Western Balkans. In addition, this research through comparative statistical evidence observes the convergence of the Western Balkans economies with the EU and further considers catching-up with the EU living standard. This assumes increasing competitiveness through higher investments and credible structural reforms, which also requires credible policymaking and political leadership. In addition to policy recommendations, this research concludes with a call for deeper political view of the European integration process because of potential conflicting short-term political and long-term economic interests and time-(in) consistency challenges of the European integration agenda of the leadership in the Western Balkans.

This work is about the question of Franco-German relations and the creation of the European common currency. For this purpose the analysis was made with the perspective of international political economy. Between the meetings of European leaders in the Dutch cities of Hague and Maastricht, among 1969 and 1992 the European monetary integration had developed with the Werner Plan, the "Snake", the European monetary system and finally the decision for the creation of a common currency, after German reunification. Geopolitics and geo-economic concerns influenced this question, materialized in a floating rate regime with liberalization of capital movements add relations between superpowers in the Cold War with your tensions and strains. The objective too is to demonstrate the fragile basis when the project of the common currency is supported.

The Belt and Road initiative, recently embarked on by China, aims to improve cross-border infrastructure in order to reduce transportation costs across a massive geographical area between China and Europe. The authors estimate how much trade might be created among Belt and Road countries as a consequence of the reduction in transportation costs (both railway and maritime) and find that European Union countries, especially landlocked countries, should benefit considerably. This is also true for eastern Europe and Central Asia and, to a lesser extent, south-east Asia. In contrast, if China were to seek to establish a free trade area within the Belt and Road region, EU member states would benefit less, while Asia would benefit more. Xi Jinping’s current vision for the Belt and Road, centred on improving transport infrastructure, is very good news for Europe as far as trade creation is concerned.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union (EU), one of the most important symbols of the European regional integration process, completed fifty years in 2012. At first glance, many of its positive aspects, which places the EU as the global largest exporter position of agri-food goods, stands strong in the defense of agricultural protectionism, position which is reflected in the European way of acting in the negotiations and the CAP as a concerned policy to ensure food security in the European Continent. All these elements show positive traits of European regional integration. However, the CAP is quite controversial because over the decades it favored the interests of the European farmers maintaining its level of income, especially of certain member states of the EU, persists for more than five decades keeping the essence of its original structure, even it is an extremely costly policy to citizens of the European bloc of regional integration and resulted in imbalances. Taking into account these elements, the purpose of this article is to discuss the origins of the CAP, which are linked to food security in the post-Second World War Europe, the interests that supported its original formulation, the previous negotiations and those that occurred during the its institutionalization process. In addition, we intend to analyze the first results of the integrated European policy in the agricultural area, which went through incremental changes until 1992.

The international diplomatic environment has reached to an unprecedented development, involving one of the newly specialized diplomatic types, namely the economic diplomacy. At the core of the fast movements in the diplomatic spheres across the Globe are the international agreements like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) that determined diplomacy to dissolve into new subtypes, evolving from ground to the ocean and implementing new ways of achieving economic and climate sustainability. One of the newly created diplomatic spheres, is the blue ocean diplomacy that acts mainly in accordance with the rules and regulations that are being applied to the transatlantic economy. Even though TTIP encourages the increase of trade flows across the Atlantic, it will also ease the foreign investment procedures that, under the approach of keeping a sustainable environment, will represent one of the most important initiatives in implementing the blue economy concept within the framework of the transatlantic diplomacy.

A global renminbi needs to be backed by a large, deep and liquid renminbi bond market with a world-class Chinese government bond (CGB) market as its core. China's CGB market is the seventh largest in the world while sitting alongside a huge but non-tradable and captive central bank liability in the form of required reserves. By transforming the non-tradable cen-tral bank liabilities into homogeneous and tradable CGBs through halving the high Chinese reserve requirements, the size of the CGB market can easily double. This would help over-come some market impediments and elevate the CGBs to a top three government bond mar-ket globally, boosting market liquidity while trimming distortions to the banking system. With a foreign ownership similar to that of the JGBs, CGBs held by foreign investors may increase ten-fold by 2020, approaching 5 percent of the 2014 global foreign reserves and facilitating a potential global renminbi, especially in the wake of the renminbi's inclusion into the basket of the IMF Special Drawing Rights.

The only import relief mechanisms available under the U.S.-Arab countries FTAs are safeguard measures. These FTAs do not include provisions on antidumping and countervailing duties.The present article consists of an analysis of the safeguard measures incorporated in the U.S.-Arab countries FTAs. Specifically, the article will outline the standards-injury and causation- used to apply safeguard measures. Furthermore, the article illustrates remedies available for domestic industries and duration of these remedies. The article also presents the issue of global safeguard measures and the exclusion of imports of parties in the FTAs from global safeguard actions. Finally, the article will address special safeguard measures for selected sectors namely textile and agriculture. The article concludes by arguing that the presence of safeguard measures in any FTA is necessary to facilitate the transition to a liberalized trade regime and accommodate the needs of domestic industries in the face of increased competition from other industries in trading partners. However, survey of U.S.-Arab countries FTAs demonstrates the great influence the U.S. exerted in articulating the safeguard provisions with no or little consideration of the needs of Arab countries and their domestic industries. A flexible safeguard regime should be adopted.

A dynamic general equilibrium model that generalises Roemer's [23] economy with a global capital market is analysed. An axiomatic analysis of the concept of unequal exchange (UE) between countries is developed at general dynamic equilibria. The class of UE definitions that satisfy three fundamental properties - including a correspondence between wealth, class and UE exploitation status - is completely characterised. It is shown that this class is nonempty and a definition of UE exploitation between countries is proposed, which is theoretically robust and firmly anchored to empirically observable data. The full class and UE exploitation structure of the international economy is derived in equilibrium.

This paper develops a 'structural political economy' approach to two fundamental tensions that emerged as the eurozone crisis unfolded: real exchange rate misalignments and external debt build-up. The approach builds on a classical legacy going back to Francois Quesnay, who conceptualised interdependent sectors as being also socio-political groups. In the context of the European integration process, we analyse the overlapping economic and political dimensions of how sectoral interests evolved within and across countries with regard to real exchange rate adjustments and potential debt write-offs. Central to our analysis is the interplay between sectors' particular interests and their interest in preserving the 'viability' of the systems to which they belong (regional, national, supranational). The sectoral perspective developed in this paper complements, enriches and often questions results usually obtained from country-level political economy analyses. In the last section of the paper we show how sectoral and country-level interests are at play within the institutional set-up of a monetary union, and how this can lead to stances in favour of further integration or disintegration.

International law, political science and economics scholars are all concerned with analyzing the performance of the WTO as an organization. In this paper we focus on the objectives that these different disciplines attribute to the WTO and how performance is assessed against these objectives. The literature in all three fields is vibrant, but the focus of each discipline is often on very different dimensions of WTO performance. While this implies significant complementarity across disciplines it also suggests potential opportunity costs in foregone synergies. Even when similar phenomena are the focus of analysis, different concepts, connotations and labels makes cross-disciplinary debate less efficient or prohibits it altogether. Greater effort to promote cross-fertilization across disciplines would enrich and strengthen research on the performance of the WTO.

If output gaps in a currency union are not sufficiently coherent, the common monetary policy will not be optimal for all countries or regions in the union. It is common practice to measure coherence of output gaps by a correlation coefficient. We propose new measures of output gap coherence, which take differences in the signs and-or amplitudes of the output gaps more adequately into account than the correlation coefficient. We apply these measures to the euro area, using the US as a benchmark. We also examine how sensitive our findings are to different ways of calculating the output gaps. Copyright 2012 Oxford University Press 2011 All rights reserved, Oxford University Press.

Sovereign wealth funds have recently moved to the front and center of discussion, both within the investment world and the political arena. In this paper we evaluate the differences and common features of these funds. Utilizing an ownership database, we probe the ownership, geographic, and industry concentration of the funds deployed by these entities. We also compare and contrast the main features of two of the largest sovereign wealth funds.

The ASEAN Charter was signed at the 13th ASEAN Summit in November 2007. After each country ratified the Charter, it went into effect on December 15, 2008. This was the first time that a Charter was signed and went to effect for ASEAN. The ASEAN Charter will play a very significant role in the development of ASEAN intra-regional economic cooperation and economic integration including the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). This paper will examine the significance and contents of the ASEAN Charter from the perspective of AEC and intra-regional economic cooperation/economic integration.

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - the so-called BRICS countries - all show high economic growth rates. They suffered only shortly under the turbulences of the international financial crisis in 2008/2009 and were able to recover quickly - in contrast to most industrialized nations. In recent times of economic fragility in industrialized countries, the BRICS are playing a decisive role for global economic stabilization. The BRICS countries opt for different catching-up strategies. Although they have experienced remarkable growth rates over the past years, similar income levels like in the most important industrialized countries are still beyond reach in the medium term. Additionally, BRICS states still show considerable deficits in terms of access to education and regarding their health systems. Such infrastructural problems, however, can be important obstacles for future development.

Immediately after World War II the allied powers began what would be a slow march towards a worldwide economic and political order. They established an organization for political and military crises (the United Nations), economic rehabilitation (the International Monetary Fund), facilitation of capital transfers (the World Bank), and promotion of free trade among nations (the World Trade Organization). These organizations did, however, institute (or tried to institute) change from the top down, which reflected the prevailing philosophy of the time. The problem was and is that these organizations ignored inevitable change from the bottom up. The very fact of national sovereignty precluded a top down imposition of a world economic order. Instead, a peculiar interaction has been occurring between this top down rules and bottom up reactions that can best be explained through chaos, or complexity theory. These elements (both nations and international organizations) may be likened to individual units in social space. Each individual unit is influenced both by the surrounding units (i) and by factors in its immediate environment (е). The presence of self-reinforcing (feedback) behavior ensures reverse causality whereby the individual unit influences its environment, which in turn, influences the individual unit. In this system, the total number of inputs equals the total number of elements in the system (i+ е) = N. In a binary system of this magnitude, where N is a large number like the WTO membership (W = 152 countries), chaos is likely to ensue. With nations and international organizations problems may come in two different ways. The first is when N ≤ 2, an ordered system emerges, because the elements have “low connectivity” to inputs. In this, the system withstands small perturbations and returns shortly to its original attractors; this homeostatic property also implies that significant behavioral (or permanent) changes can be achieved only by the introduction of major perturbations in the system. In the same vein, in a system with “high connectivity” order can also emerge if there exist biased “Boolean Switching Rules”. The current movement to worldwide economic order represents the introduction of specific “point attractors” to bring nations into global equilibrium. Unfortunately, these attractors are being introduced from the “top-down” by the wealthiest nations of the world. Hence, despite the presence of such “point attractors” as outlined above, the top-down approach also has the effect of incorporating strange attractors from the local systems. This paper discusses the adaptive complexity of designing and implementing world governance rules to sustain the survival and growth of the WTO. The paper utilizes the methodologies of “adaptive complex systems” and “evolutionary economics” and highlights its arguments by employing clinical studies from the U.S.A. Latin America, and Africa., Numéro Spécial « Special Issue on Nonlinear Financial Analysis :Editorial Introduction » Guest Editor :Catherine Kyrtsou, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

ASEAN has been an important axis of regional economic cooperation and FTA in East Asia. As part of the structural change of the world economy, ASEAN has promoted deepening and widening of regional cooperation. The advancement of intra-ASEAN economic cooperation and East Asian regional economic cooperation as an axis of ASEAN will have major influences on the overall East Asian economy as well as the world economy. This paper confirms the significance of intra-ASEAN economic cooperation within the structural change of the world economy, and addresses current issues relating to intra-ASEAN economic cooperation. Section 2 discusses the significance of intra-ASEAN economic cooperation within the structural change of the world economy. Section 3 analyzes the experiences of intra-ASEAN economic cooperation during the period from 1976 to 2003. Section 4 discusses the new developments in intra-ASEAN Economic Cooperation since 2003, and ASEAN and the East Asian regional economic cooperation. The concluding section summarizes these analyses, and also presents key issues relating to intra-ASEAN economic cooperation.