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Articles 1 - 23 of 23
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Assessing The Impact Of Stricter Food Safety Standards On Trade:Haccp In U.S. Seafood Trade With The Developing World, Julie Caswell
Assessing The Impact Of Stricter Food Safety Standards On Trade:Haccp In U.S. Seafood Trade With The Developing World, Julie Caswell
Julie Caswell
Health risks associated with seafood products prompted the introduction of mandatory HACCP in the seafood industry in the United States in 1997. This paper quantifies the trade impact of this introduction by analyzing patterns of seafood imports to the U.S. over the period 1990 to 2004. The results of a gravity model using panel data suggest that HACCP had a negative and significant impact on overall seafood imports from the top 33 developing and developed countries selling into the U.S. For developing countries, the results support the view of “standards-as-barriers” versus ”standards-as-catalysts” as the negative HACCP effect was experienced by …
Traceability Adoption At The Farm Level: Analysis Of The Portuguese Pear Industry, Julie Caswell
Traceability Adoption At The Farm Level: Analysis Of The Portuguese Pear Industry, Julie Caswell
Julie Caswell
Traceability is becoming a condition for doing business in European food markets. Retailers are adopting standards that are more stringent than what is mandatory. An example is EurepGAP, a quality standard for good agricultural practices that includes traceability as a main requirement. We analyze EurepGAP implementation in the Portuguese pear industry and find that implementation cannot be distinguished from sales to British supermarkets. Discrete choice models show the odds of traceability adoption increase with farm size and previous compliance with quality assurance schemes, while farm productivity has a negative impact on the probability of adoption.
An Employment-Targeted Economic Programme For South Africa, Robert Pollin, Gerald Epstein, James Heintz, Léonce Ndikumana
An Employment-Targeted Economic Programme For South Africa, Robert Pollin, Gerald Epstein, James Heintz, Léonce Ndikumana
Léonce Ndikumana
This is an independent report produced by a team of international and national consultants supported by the international Poverty Centre in Brasilia (IPC). Initial support for this report was provided by the Poverty Group of the United Nations Development Programme in New York. This Report is part of a wider global research programme encompassing several other countires. The views in this report are the authors' and not necessarily IPC's. However, the IPC regards this report as an important contribution to the debate on economic policies and employment programmes in South Africa as well as in other countries in Africa.
External Contradictions Of The Chinese Development Model: Export-Led Growth And The Dangers Of Global Economic Contraction, Thomas I. Palley
External Contradictions Of The Chinese Development Model: Export-Led Growth And The Dangers Of Global Economic Contraction, Thomas I. Palley
PERI Working Papers
China’s development model faces an external constraint that could cause an economic hard landing. China has become a global manufacturing powerhouse, and its size now renders its export-led growth strategy unsustainable. China relies on the U.S. market, but the scale of its exports is contributing to the massive U.S. trade deficit, creating financial fragility and undermining the U.S. manufacturing sector. These developments could stall the U.S. economy’s expansion, in turn triggering a global recession that will embrace China. This is the external constraint. These considerations suggest China should transition from export-led growth to domestic demand-led growth. This requires growing the …
Monetary Policy And Financial Sector Reform For Employment Creation And Poverty Reduction In Ghana, Gerald Epstein, James Heintz
Monetary Policy And Financial Sector Reform For Employment Creation And Poverty Reduction In Ghana, Gerald Epstein, James Heintz
PERI Working Papers
This report summarizes the findings of a UNDP-sponsored study on the structure of the financial sector, central bank policy, and employment outcomes in Ghana. The financial sector is the primary conduit through which monetary policy affects real economic outcomes, and monetary policy determines the resources available to financial institutions. Therefore, monetary policy must be coordinated with financial sector reforms in order to improve employment opportunities, reduce poverty and support human development. The report develops a critique of financial programming and inflation targeting, presents a series of empirical estimates on the impact of monetary policy variables in Ghana, and describes the …
Why Racial Stereotyping Doesn’T Just Go Away: The Question Of Honesty And Work Ethic, Elaine Mccrate
Why Racial Stereotyping Doesn’T Just Go Away: The Question Of Honesty And Work Ethic, Elaine Mccrate
PERI Working Papers
One of the most persistent stereotypes about blacks concerns honesty and work ethic. These characteristics are also central to employers' evaluation of prospective and current workers; employers say that these traits matter more than skills. However, honesty and work ethic are difficult to observe and assess, placing them squarely in the terrain of statistical discrimination theory. One common criticism of this theory is that employers should be able to collect enough information on prospective workers to render race irrelevant, and that highquality workers have incentives to signal their productivity to employers regardless of race. As a result, inefficient stereotypes should …
Social Models, Growth And The International Monetary System: Implications For Europe And The United States, Lilia Costabile, Roberto Scazzieri
Social Models, Growth And The International Monetary System: Implications For Europe And The United States, Lilia Costabile, Roberto Scazzieri
PERI Working Papers
This paper explores the relationship between economic growth and the welfare state. We argue that: (i) the institutional constraints set by the international monetary system may be at least as effective determinants of growth differentials between countries as the different dimensions of their welfare states. We show how this international system may impose an asymmetric discipline/flexibility mix on the macreoconomic policies of different countries, thereby influencing their growth performance.; (ii) the European currency reshapes some of the pre-existing constraints and also open up new opportunities; (iii) in the new international setting, Europe is facing a choice between alternative models. In …
This Paper Explores The Relationship Between Economic Growth And The Welfare State. We Argue That: Postcommunist Mortality Crisis, Lawrence King, David Stuckler, Patrick Hamm
This Paper Explores The Relationship Between Economic Growth And The Welfare State. We Argue That: Postcommunist Mortality Crisis, Lawrence King, David Stuckler, Patrick Hamm
PERI Working Papers
During the transition to capitalism, the postcommunist countries have experienced unprecedented mortality crises, although there has been considerable variation within — and between — countries and regions. Much of this variation remains unexplained, although alcohol and psychological stress have been found to be major causes of declining life expectancy. We move beyond this finding by showing that the implementation of neoliberal-inspired rapid large-scale privatization programs (mass privatization) was a major determinant of the decline in life expectancy. We find that mass privatization also increased alcohol-related deaths, heart disease, and suicide rates, strong evidence that mass privatization created psychosocial stress that …
Accounting For Inequality: A Proposed Revision Of The Human Development Index, Elizabeth Stanton
Accounting For Inequality: A Proposed Revision Of The Human Development Index, Elizabeth Stanton
PERI Working Papers
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a country-level measure of social welfare based on national values for average life expectancy, rates of adult literacy and school enrollment, and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Since HDI is based entirely on national averages it can provide only limited information about distribution within countries. The distribution of access to key resources is an important determinant of the effect of health, education and income on both individual well-being and on the aggregate well-being of a population as a whole. This paper makes a case for the importance of inequality to measuring social welfare; …
Corruption And Pro-Poor Growth Outcomes: Evidence And Lessons For African Countries, Léonce Ndikumana
Corruption And Pro-Poor Growth Outcomes: Evidence And Lessons For African Countries, Léonce Ndikumana
PERI Working Papers
There is growing consensus on the view that corruption hurts economic performance by reducing private investment, by adversely affecting the quantity and quality of public infrastructure, by reducing tax revenue, and by reducing human capital accumulation. In addition to inefficiency effects – causing lower growth for a given endowment in factors and technology –, corruption also has adverse distributional effects as it hurts the poor disproportionately. For a given level of government budget and national income, high corruption countries achieve lower literacy rates, have higher mortality rates, and overall worse human development outcomes. Corruption deepens poverty by reducing pro-poor pubic …
Price-Based Vs. Quantity-Based Environmental Regulation Under Knightian Uncertainty: An Info-Gap Robust Satisficing Perspective, John K. Stranlund, Yakov Ben-Haim
Price-Based Vs. Quantity-Based Environmental Regulation Under Knightian Uncertainty: An Info-Gap Robust Satisficing Perspective, John K. Stranlund, Yakov Ben-Haim
PERI Working Papers
Conventional wisdom among environmental economists is that the relative slopes of the marginal social benefit and marginal social cost functions determine whether a price-based or quantity-based environmental regulation leads to higher expected social welfare. We revisit the choice between price-based vs. quantity-based environmental regulation under Knightian uncertainty; that is, when uncertainty cannot be modeled with known probability distributions. Under these circumstances, the policy objective cannot be to maximize the expected net benefits of emissions control. Instead, we evaluate an emissions tax and an aggregate abatement standard in terms of maximizing the range of uncertainty under which the welfare loss from …
Risk Aversion And Compliance In Markets For Pollution Control, John K. Stranlund
Risk Aversion And Compliance In Markets For Pollution Control, John K. Stranlund
PERI Working Papers
This paper examines the effects of risk aversion on compliance choices in markets for pollution control. A firm’s decision to be compliant or not is independent of its manager’s risk preference. However, noncompliant firms with risk averse managers will have lower violations than otherwise identical firms with risk neutral managers. The violations of noncompliant firms with risk averse managers are independent of differences in their benefits from emissions and their initial allocations of permits if and only if their managers’ utility functions exhibit constant absolute risk aversion. However, firm-level characteristics do impact violation choices when managers have coefficients of absolute …
Working Paper Of Fiscal Impact Analysis: Methods, Cases, And Intellectual Debate, John Mullin, Zenia Kotval
Working Paper Of Fiscal Impact Analysis: Methods, Cases, And Intellectual Debate, John Mullin, Zenia Kotval
John R. Mullin
Fiscal impact analysis seeks to connect planning and local economics by estimating the public costs and revenues that result from property investments. This type of analysis enables the comparison of revenues to costs associated with new development indicating whether local government can meet new demands for services, or must raise taxes to meet new service demands. This paper is a comprehensive description and assessment of current methods for estimating fiscal impacts, it discusses the influence of local factors such as property tax structure and type of development or growth pattern on fiscal impacts and limitations of methods frequently used. It …
Pursuing Manufacturing-Based Export-Led Growth: Are Developing Countries Increasingly Crowding Each Other Out?, Arslan Razmi
Pursuing Manufacturing-Based Export-Led Growth: Are Developing Countries Increasingly Crowding Each Other Out?, Arslan Razmi
Economics Department Working Paper Series
This study empirically investigates the presence of crowding out effects emerging from intra- developing country competition in export markets for manufactured goods. Export equations are estimated for a panel consisting of twenty major developing country exporters of manufactures, after developing weighted price and quantity indexes based on their exports to thirteen major industrialized countries. The results indicate that in spite of an increase in the elasticity of industrialized country expenditures on imported products, crowding out effects became much more significant in the 1990s. The estimated crowding out effects vary across time periods, SITC categories, and levels of technological sophistication of …
Social Segregation And The Dynamics Of Group Inequality, Samuel Bowles, Rajiv Sethi
Social Segregation And The Dynamics Of Group Inequality, Samuel Bowles, Rajiv Sethi
Economics Department Working Paper Series
We explore the dynamics of group inequality when segregation of social networks places the initially less affluent group at a disadvantage in acquiring human capital. Extending Loury (1977), we demonstrate that (i) group differences in economic success can persist across generations in the absence of either discrimination or group differences in ability, provided that social segregation is sufficiently great, (ii) there is threshold level of integration above which group inequality cannot be sustained, (iii) this threshold varies systematically but non-monotonically with the population share of the disadvantaged group, (iv) crossing the threshold induces convergence to a common high level of …
Aspects Of Informalization And Income Distribution In Developing Countries: A Modified Specific Factors Approach, Arslan Razmi
Aspects Of Informalization And Income Distribution In Developing Countries: A Modified Specific Factors Approach, Arslan Razmi
Economics Department Working Paper Series
This paper explores aspects of increased informalization in developing countries with the help of a modified specific factors model with a fixed nominal wage in the formal sector, which is assumed to have a “lighthouse” effect on the informal sector wage. Both sectors produce a tradable good each, with informal sector production being embedded in international production networks. Comparative dynamic exercises that attempt to simulate recent economic developments in many developing countries yield plausible results, and suggest various channels for increased informalization. Contrary to standard sticky wage models, wage suppression in the formal sector leads to informalization. Changes in factor …
Border Wars: Tax Revenues, Annexation, And Urban Growth In Phoenix, Carol E. Heim
Border Wars: Tax Revenues, Annexation, And Urban Growth In Phoenix, Carol E. Heim
Economics Department Working Paper Series
Phoenix and neighboring municipalities, like many in the South and West, pursued a growth strategy based on annexation in the decades after World War II. This paper explores the link between annexation and competition for tax revenues. After discussing arguments for annexation, it traces the history of annexation in the Phoenix metropolitan area. A long-running series of "border wars" entailed litigation, pre-emptive annexations, and considerable intergovernmental conflict. The paper argues that tax revenues have been a key motivation for annexation, particularly since the 1970s. It then considers several related policy issues and argues that while opportunities for annexation are becoming …
An Asymmetric Dynamic Struggle Between Pirates And Producers, Alex Coram
An Asymmetric Dynamic Struggle Between Pirates And Producers, Alex Coram
Economics Department Working Paper Series
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to our understanding of the dynamics of struggles over resources by studying a game between a producer that can guard and buy fortifications and a pirate. It is assumed that the returns from defence and raiding depends on the ratio of the resources spent on each activity and that all produced goods can be stolen. It attempts to characterise the trajectory of the resources and the defence and raiding activities of the pirate and producer. I show, among other things, that the pirate’s strategy is to farm the producer and that the …
Japanese Growth And Stagnation: A Keynesian Perspective, Takeshi Nakatani, Peter Skott
Japanese Growth And Stagnation: A Keynesian Perspective, Takeshi Nakatani, Peter Skott
Economics Department Working Paper Series
This paper uses a modified Harrodian model to understand both the long period of rapid Japanese growth and the recent period of stagnation. The model has multiple steady-growth solutions when the labour supply is highly elastic, and government intervention, we argue, took the Japanese economy onto a high-growth trajectory. Labour constraints began to appear around 1970, and a combination of high saving rates and slow population growth account for the stagnation of the 1990s. This combination produces a structural liquidity trap and threatens the sustainability of attempts to ensure near full employment through …fiscal policy or by running a persistent …
Relative Advantage, Queue Jumping, And Welfare Maximizing Weath Distribution, Alex Coram, Lyle Noakes
Relative Advantage, Queue Jumping, And Welfare Maximizing Weath Distribution, Alex Coram, Lyle Noakes
Economics Department Working Paper Series
Suppose individuals get utilities from the total amount of wealth they hold and from their wealth relative to those immediately below them. This paper studies the distribution of wealth that maximizes an additive welfare function made up of these utilities. It interprets wealth distribution in a control theory framework to show that the welfare maximizing distribution may have unexpected properties. In some circumstances it requires that inequality be maximized at the poorest and richest ends of the distribution. In other circumstances it requires that all wealth be given to a single individual.
Whose Money? Whose Time? A Nonparametric Approach To Modeling Time Spent On Housework, Sanjiv Gupta, Michael Ash
Whose Money? Whose Time? A Nonparametric Approach To Modeling Time Spent On Housework, Sanjiv Gupta, Michael Ash
Economics Department Working Paper Series
We argue that earlier quantitative research on the relationship between heterosexual partners’ earnings and time spent on housework has two basic flaws. First, it has focused on the effects of women’s shares of couples’ total earnings on their housework, and has not considered the simpler possibility of an association between women’s absolute earnings and housework. Consequently it has relied on unsupported theoretical restrictions in the modeling. We adopt a flexible, nonparametric approach that does not impose the polynomial specifications on the data that characterize the two dominant models of the relationship between earnings and housework, the “economic exchange” and “gender …
Mandated Wage Floors And The Wage Structure: New Estimates Of The Ripple Effects Of Minimum Wage Laws, Jeanette Wicks-Lim
Mandated Wage Floors And The Wage Structure: New Estimates Of The Ripple Effects Of Minimum Wage Laws, Jeanette Wicks-Lim
PERI Working Papers
Minimum wage laws have become a key political issue, following on the heels of over 130 successful living wage campaigns around the country. In the debates surrounding these mandated wage floors, one recurring issue has been whether the legislation has wider-ranging impacts on wages than the legally-required raises alone. Advocates on both sides of the debate dispute the potential magnitude of 'ripple effects'- the nonmandated raises given by employers to maintain a similar wage hierarchy before and after a change in the wage floor. These ripple effects have the potential to greatly expand the overall impact of mandated wage floors. …
The Fallacy Of The Revised Bretton Woods Hypothesis: Why Today’S System Is Unsustainable And Suggestions For A Replacement, Thomas I. Palley
The Fallacy Of The Revised Bretton Woods Hypothesis: Why Today’S System Is Unsustainable And Suggestions For A Replacement, Thomas I. Palley
PERI Working Papers
Dooley et al. (2003) have argued that today’s international financial system has structural similarities with the earlier Bretton Woods (1946 – 71) arrangements and is stable. This paper argues that the comparison is misplaced and ignores fundamental microeconomic differences, and that today’s system is also vulnerable to a crash. Eichengreen (2004) and Goldstein and Lardy (2005) have also argued that the system is unsustainable. However, their focus is the sustainability of financing to cover the U.S. trade deficit, whereas the current paper focuses on inadequacies on the system’s demand side. The paper concludes with suggestions for a global system of …