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This article looks at the impact of U.S. national security concerns on imports of goods and services to the United States from an international perspective regarding Section 232 of the U.S. Trade Expansion Act. This international perspective involves elaborating on the impact of Section 232 concerning economic interests outside the United States. Much of the current focus on Section 232 has been in terms of its impact on U.S. concerns within the United States. Moreover, there is a need to bring to bear not just a World Trade Organization (WTO) analysis of Section 232 but also an analysis within the wider context of Public International Law and policy generally. In the analysis thus far, Section 232 has been the subject of much American "navelgazing" from a scholarly U.S. perspective. However, other than the growing focus on Section 232 from a WTO perspective, given the recent challenges in the WTO with reference to steel and aluminum, there is little if any analysis that brings to bear the wider set of principles and concepts that exist in public international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Washington-Beijing rivalry of the early twentieth century was neither pre-ordained nor an aberration. It was constructed as domestic constituencies in each country were socialized toward confrontation. Pro-cooperation coalitions, which had emerged in each country to support alignment against a mutually perceived Soviet threat, were undermined by the final chapter of the Cold War. Yet a simmering U.S.-China rivalry was subsumed by an unsustainable accommodation of mutual self-interest by Washington and Beijing during the first two decades of the post-Cold War era. By the 2010s, the rivalry had become quite visible as pro-cooperation coalitions in the United States and China had splintered and been supplanted by pro-confrontation coalitions. U.S. and Chinese geostrategic reassessments also contributed to the emerging rivalry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Will the US-led Indo-Pacific strategy lead to an extensive alliance network against China? This article shifts focus to non-Quad Asian states—in particular, Indonesia, Vietnam, and South Korea—that face a strategic dilemma in the US-China competition and examines their positions regarding a rising China and the Indo-Pacific strategy. While reluctant to join the US strategy for the Indo-Pacific region, Asian middle powers now aim to tame, rather than contain, China despite their slight variations of response to the Indo-Pacific strategy. The US and its three partners—Japan, India, and Australia—have not been successful yet in recruiting new members to their coalition, mainly because of the declining hegemon's (seemingly) weakened commitment to a liberal international order and the rising challenger's (potential) opposition and punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 21st century began with a crisis. First it was the 2008 Financial Crisis that led to the Great Recession. The aftermath of the crisis was not fully overcome and we have faced another crisis that erupted in the healthcare system. The COVID 19 pandemic brought the second wave (after the 2008 Financial Crisis) of global financial and economic shocks. Since 1944, we have had a global financial order shaped on the Bretton Woods Conference. The system showed solid performance till 2008, but the Financial Crisis empirically tested the existing deficiencies. In the US and other states, enormous monetary and fiscal interventions had to be done for saving the economies and the banking sectors especially. Sovereign debt had been a main source of funding for measures to maintain the economy. From a financial perspective, the same is being done now to cope with the COVID 19 pandemic shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the implications of the COVID-19 economic crisis for macroeconomic policy, and the roles of the State and the Fed and monetary policy in the United States economy. It argues that that the main effect will be to reinforce trends that had begun during the 2008 Great Recession in terms of the increasing relevance of counter-cyclical fiscal policies and monetary policy. The scale of fiscal policy responses needed to address the present crisis will have significant implications for the size of fiscal deficits and the federal debt, and are, therefore, likely to face political resistance and calls for fiscal austerity. Not only higher levels of deficits and debt will be necessary, but to some degree planning, not just to deal with pandemics, might become more relevant. Geopolitical concerns, aggravated by the pandemic will be another significant factor contributing to the growing role of the state. The financing needs of the fiscal interventions will in turn reinforce trends with respect to the role of the Fed as the fiscal agent of the Treasury that had been previously witnessed during the Great Depression and the 2007–9 Great Recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study conducts two different strategies in order to exploit the low-volatility anomaly in the U.S., the European and the German equity market. The first strategy uses quadratic optimization to calculate optimal portfolio weights. The second strategy sorts stocks into portfolio quintiles based on past realized volatility. Our main findings show that both low-volatility strategies outperform the respective benchmark market portfolio. While the effect is strongest during bull-market periods, it gets weaker during periods of market downturns. Additional results show that in the U.S. market, the low-volatility anomaly can be explained by trading volume and operating profitability. In the German market, operating profitability and the dividend yield can explain the low-volatility effect while in the European market none of these characteristics play a role in explaining the effect. Overall, our findings provide evidence that the low-volatility anomaly still is a robust phenomenon that is inherent in mature capital markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study forecasts a particular type of economic uncertainty (inflation uncertainty) in the United States and Euro Area over 1997–2017. By using monthly data, we compute inflation uncertainty based on three models: symmetric and asymmetric generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity models and a stochastic volatility model. While the first two provide symmetric and asymmetric measures of inflation uncertainty, respectively, the third measure offers greater flexibility when measuring uncertainty. The analysis of the out-of-sample forecasts for inflation uncertainty shows the superiority of the stochastic volatility model for forecasting the dynamics of inflation uncertainty in both the short (1 year) and medium (4 years) terms. This finding is particularly interesting, as it allows researchers to better estimate the main inflation cost, namely inflation uncertainty, as well as its effect on the real economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The chain version of the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem has only been tested by Cavusoglu and Elmslie (2005), with findings that fail to provide empirical support to its predictions. The present paper expands on that study and presents different results. Using data on capital-labor intensities, and exports and imports for ten manufacturing and three service sectors for the U.S. from 1970 to 2009, the predictions of the theory are confirmed by the data. These results are robust to different price indices, labor measures, and weight measures used to construct net export data. The difference in results between the two studies can be explained by the use of different capital stock data, as well as the longer time frame of the current study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a unique national-level household survey of informal labor in the United States, this paper examines the extent that rural versus urban residence influences the types and forms of participation in informal work activities. The informal economy consists of work activities that generate income or reduce expenditures outside the scope of state regulation in contexts where these activities otherwise would be regulated. Often associated with developing and transition economies, past research using both qualitative and quantitative methods demonstrate its prevalence in industrial and postindustrial economies. In the U.S., most of this research is geographically constrained or limited to specific subpopulations and sectors. Our analysis employs descriptive and multivariate techniques to analyze a national-level household survey on informal economic activity to explore rural-urban variation in the prevalence, forms, importance and correlates of participation in the informal economy. • Roughly two-thirds of sampled household reported some form of informal work. • The prevalence of informal work is higher in non-metropolitan (non-metro, i.e., rural) than metropolitan areas. • Non-metro households are somewhat more likely to engage in informal activity requiring access to land and natural resources. • Non-metro households are more likely to state reasons of economic distress such as insufficient local demand for labor. • The higher prevalence of informal work in non-metro areas remains after controlling for demographic and economic variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many rural communities in the United States are experiencing significant population aging, and these changes in age structure are often associated with shifts in economic activity. The demands for certain goods and services are expected to vary across age groups, and public- and private-sector service providers may make decisions based on their interpretation of demographic trends. The extent to which these perceived changes in the demand for services align with their provision has significant implications for the well-being of the older residents of aging communities. In this article, we draw on case studies of four aging communities across the rural United States to examine the provision of, and access to, aging-related services. We analyze how service provision is organized both within and between communities, how this organization is associated with the kinds of services available, the ways that older residents gain access to services, and the set of barriers to access they face. Our research suggests that aging-related service provision in rural communities is facilitated by partnerships among local community institutions and between them and external organizations. While in many cases population aging is associated with economic decline, the impact of demographic change is not mechanistic nor automatic. Our research shows that aging rural communities can be resilient, and that cooperative, multi-scalar relationships are a key to maintaining quality of life among older residents of communities with aging populations. • Service provision in aging communities is facilitated by partnerships between local and external organizations. • Links across domains within the same community are also valuable. • Aging rural communities can be resilient if cooperative, multi-scalar relationships are developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural‐urban migration is an integral part of the structural transformation as societies move from a traditional agricultural economy to a modern economy. This process has many potential consequences for migrants. Our study focuses on the lifetime health effects of the large mid‐20th century migration out of rural U.S. Northern Great Plains states, primarily to urban locations in the West and Midwest. An analysis of marginal treatment effects (MTEs) shows that (a) migrants are positively selected, and (b) the causal impact of migration is decreased longevity. Our evidence suggests that elevated mortality among migrants is linked to increased smoking and alcohol consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have examined the influence of intraparty factionalism on government stability and policy development in democratic systems for some time, yet factionalism in major political parties in the United States remains understudied. This article draws on scholarship on minority influence from social psychology, as well as studies of party polarization and coalitions in comparative politics, to explore the impact of factionalism in the US Congress on support for foreign policy initiatives. It proposes a novel framework to examine the longitudinal impact of the Freedom Caucus or Tea Party in the Republican Party on foreign policy initiatives championed by the majority. It conducts a plausibility probe of the model linking factionalism, minority influence strategies, and delays in establishment progress on foreign policy through case studies of comprehensive immigration policy reform debates and Trade Promotion Authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The paper concludes that factions that demonstrate persistence and consistency in support of minority positions do appear to influence the scope and direction of foreign policy commitments, votes on major legislation, and nonvotes over time. It also offers suggestions for future study of more contingent and multilinear models of foreign policy processes in comparative perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the jump intensity in the Euro area, Japan, the UK and the US and measure their reactions to the US Federal Reserve meetings together with the country's own monetary policy meetings. Evidence suggests that the jump intensity in all the markets is highly persistent. Further, the US monetary policy positively impacts the jump intensity in almost all the cases, including in the sub-sample periods found by the structural break test. Moreover, in assessing the joint effects on jump intensities, we find that the US policy dominates the monetary policy of the country itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates post-2000 trends in homeownership rates in the US by immigrant status, race, and ethnicity. Homeownership rates for most groups examined rose during the housing boom of the early and mid-2000s but fell during and after the housing bust. By 2015 homeownership rates had fallen below year 2000 levels for most groups but not all. In particular, some Asian immigrant groups experienced sizable gains in overall homeownership rates and in regression-adjusted differences relative to white non-Hispanic natives. Some other immigrant and minority groups also made gains relative to white non-Hispanic natives. We document and discuss these changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have examined the influence of intraparty factionalism on government stability and policy development in democratic systems for some time, yet factionalism in major political parties in the United States remains understudied. This article draws on scholarship on minority influence from social psychology, as well as studies of party polarization and coalitions in comparative politics, to explore the impact of factionalism in the US Congress on support for foreign policy initiatives. It proposes a novel framework to examine the longitudinal impact of the Freedom Caucus or Tea Party in the Republican Party on foreign policy initiatives championed by the majority. It conducts a plausibility probe of the model linking factionalism, minority influence strategies, and delays in establishment progress on foreign policy through case studies of comprehensive immigration policy reform debates and Trade Promotion Authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The paper concludes that factions that demonstrate persistence and consistency in support of minority positions do appear to influence the scope and direction of foreign policy commitments, votes on major legislation, and nonvotes over time. It also offers suggestions for future study of more contingent and multilinear models of foreign policy processes in comparative perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article shows how the norm supporting governmental action to protect and foster competitive markets was harmonized with economic rights to contract and property during the 19th century, and with the development of the social safety net during the 20th century. It explains why the Constitution, as understood today, does not check the erosion of the entrenched but threatened national commitment to assuring competitive markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a thesis for why the US overtook the UK and other European countries in the 20th century in both aggregate and per capita GDP as a case study of recent models of endogenous growth, where 'human capital' is the engine of growth. By human capital we mean an intangible asset, best thought of as a stock of embodied and disembodied knowledge comprising education, information, entrepreneurship, and productive and innovative skills, which is formed through investments in schooling, job training, and health as well as through research and development projects and informal knowledge transfers (cf. Ehrlich and Murphy 2007). The conjecture is that the ascendancy of the US as an economic superpower in the 20th century owes considerably to its faster human capital formation relative to that of the UK and 'old Europe.' This paper assesses whether the thesis has legs to stand on through both stylized facts and a supplementary quasi-experimental empirical analysis. The stylized facts indicate that the US led other major developed countries in schooling attainments per adult population member, beginning in the latter part of the 19th century and lasting throughout the 20th century, especially at the secondary and tertiary levels. The quasi-experimental analysis constitutes the first attempt to test the hypothesis that the US's ascendancy to a major economic power stems largely from the impact of the first Morrill Act of 1862, which launched the public higher education movement in the US through the establishment of land grant colleges and universities across the nation during the latter part of the 19th century. The higher education movement appears to have spearheaded a higher long-term rate of growth in per capita income in the US relative to the UK and other major European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We develop a factor‐augmented vector autoregression (FA‐VAR) model to estimate the effects that unanticipated changes in U.S. monetary policy and economic policy uncertainty have on the Chinese housing, equity, and loan markets. We find the decline in the U.S. policy rate since the Great Recession has led to a significant increase in Chinese housing investment. One possible reason for this effect is the substantial increase in the inflow of “hot money” into China. The responses of Chinese variables to U.S. shocks at the zero lower bound are different from those responses in normal times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SYNOPSIS: The objective of this paper is to provide a systematic evaluation of independence as a foundational element of the auditing profession. We maintain that while independence is a theoretically appealing construct, it is fraught with practical problems surrounding its implementation, monitoring, and regulation. We analyze the current oversight of auditor independence and evaluate the need for auditor independence from the perspective of information users and information producers. In the process, we discuss important implications and intractable challenges that affect one or more parties involved in the financial-reporting process. Finally, we carefully evaluate alternatives to the current regulatory approach for managing auditor independence (i.e., proscribing various auditor-client relationships). We conclude that increasing audit committees' responsibilities for monitoring the auditor's independence—along with additional disclosure about threats and safeguards to auditor independence—is worthy of further consideration and debate as a path toward addressing the auditor independence conundrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SYNOPSIS: Does the auditor's responsibility under U.S. authoritative guidance extend to providing assurance of financial reporting quality—specifically whether financial statements "faithfully reflect the firm's underlying economics"—after the auditor has concluded that financial statements are fairly presented in conformity with GAAP, in all material respects? The question arises because DeFond and Zhang (2014) state such a view and cite U.S. authoritative guidance as support. We review SEC, PCAOB, and FASB guidance and other sources and find no authoritative support for DeFond and Zhang's (2014) view. We also find that the PCAOB explicitly recognizes the lack of objective criteria that would be necessary to evaluate financial reporting quality beyond application of GAAP to events and transactions. Further, we find no evidence that practicing auditors do (separately) assess or assure that financial statements faithfully reflect the entire firm's underlying economics. Overall, these findings suggest DeFond and Zhang (2014) express a personal (and impracticable) normative view and not the auditor's actual responsibility or practice under extant U.S. standards. More broadly, results reinforce the importance of defining and measuring audit quality based on the auditor's actual responsibilities and the importance of accurately characterizing authoritative guidance and practice for scholarship regarding complex and multifaceted matters, including audit quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Functional theory suggests that each level of government expands in the arena in which it can best perform, reducing the price of federalism. Focusing on the functional pattern of American federalism, we suggest that increased federal welfare spending increases state government performance in the “new economy” development policy areas by helping states minimize welfare costs and divert more own-source resources into economic development. The central focus is on the direct and indirect empirical relationships between federal welfare spending and state new economy performance. The authors use an index of innovation capacity that reflects the cumulative performance of a myriad of overlapping and mutually dependent state policies intended to bring about new economy development; this index measures state new economy development performance by focusing on the observable outputs of such polices rather than the adoption, implementation, or substance of individual policy choices. Mediating variables, such as state fiscal comfort and administrative capacity, measure the indirect impact of federal welfare spending on state new economy performance. The authors find that federal welfare spending stimulates state new economy development directly, but also indirectly through its positive impact on both state fiscal comfort and administrative capacity. The findings suggest that federal intergovernmental transfers continue to be an important policy mechanism with spillover effects for state economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information regarding the contribution of the body of water or the South China Sea in the U.S.-China rivalry or the trade war between the two countries. It mentions the importance of a geopolitical analysis to describe the growing tension between the countries in the South China Sea. It discusses the tendency that the rivalry was important in maritime dimensions. It highlights the geostrategies of the two countries along with the future of the flash point of the South China Sea.

Eisenbeis, Kwan and Wall argue that there is a material conflict between the monetary policy and financial stability mandate of the Federal Reserve. There is a conflict in concept, but the magnitude and importance of the conflict seems small in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What state capacity is and how to strengthen it remain open questions, as the underlying incentives of the state, its citizens, and its agents align in some areas of state activity and diverge in others. This article lays out a framework that integrates classical and experimental approaches within a common theoretical structure based on the diverse capacity challenges states face with respect to extraction, coordination, and compliance. Addressing each in turn, we show that state capacity is an interactive process, the product of institutions governing relations between the state, mass publics, and bureaucrats. We argue that the institutions ensuring capacity and the processes that bring them into being vary. Our review highlights trends in recent research, as well as relevant differences in opportunities for and obstacles to empirical work on the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper contributes to the literature on the causes of the 2007–2008 financial crisis in the United States. By means of an agent-based model, we replicate an artificial credit-network economy in order to assess the impact of growing income inequality in the presence of peer effects and home equity borrowing. We show that the resulting debt-financed consumption boom jeopardises the stability of the economic system, thus paving the way for a financial crisis. Our model includes a behavioural rule for consumption based on expenditure cascades, a hierarchical structure of household finance, an articulated credit market with collateralised consumption loans and mortgages and a simple housing market. Results show that the model is able to capture the economic and social pressure of inequality on low and middle income households that pushes them to increase their consumption via home equity extraction. Rising non-performing loans lead to higher bad debt on the banks’ balance sheets and, consequently, to the emergence of a crisis as an endogenous dynamic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how attitudes towards the United States are affected by provision of information. We generate a “panel” of attitudes in urban Pakistan, in which respondents are randomly exposed to fact-based statements describing the US in either a positive or negative light. Anti-American sentiment is high and heterogenous in our sample at the baseline, and systematically correlated with intended behavior (such as intended migration to the US). We find that revised attitudes are significantly different from baseline attitudes: attitudes are, on average, revised upward (downward) upon receipt of positive (negative) information, indicating that providing information had a meaningful effect on US favorability. The within-subject design and data on respondents’ priors allows us to investigate the underlying mechanisms. We find that revisions are largely a result of salience-based updating. We reject unbiased information-based updating as the only source of revisions. In addition, a substantial proportion of individuals do not respond to the information. This heterogeneity in revision processes means that there is no convergence in attitudes following the provision of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Taxation impacts individuals' lives in significant, and sometimes unequal, ways. While much sociological research examines factors that contribute to economic inequality and policy development, the relationship between inequality and tax policies remains understudied in sociology. In this article, I review extant research highlighting the ways in which taxation is an important site of inequality in the United States. I focus on how some of the most valuable tax policies related to work, marriage, investments, and homeownership contribute to economic inequality with class, gender, and race/ethnicity variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Volatile markets and economic environments can significantly distort the shape and smoothness of yield curve movements. This study explores the influence of movements in United States interest rates on South African interest rates. This study aims to identify the main underlying movements present in the United States and South African yield curves and to further determine the dominant factors that are responsible for driving South African interest rate movements. The principal settings for the study were the United States and South African markets representing, respectively, a developed and developing market. Principal component analysis was used to discern the major drivers of developing and developed market interest rates. The findings show that the principal component analysis technique is able to effectively classify and quantify the movements of yield curves across both markets in terms of three main factors, namely level, slope and curvature shifts. During certain periods, South African yield curve changes were largely driven by variations in United States interest rates and the rand/dollar exchange rate. Results also demonstrated that a volatile market and economic environment can significantly distort the shape and smoothness of yield curve movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]