International Economics Commons^™

Does Globalization Improve Quality Of Life?, Laura E. Hirt

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Employment, Income Distribution And Economic Growth In Seven Small Open Economies, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] Resurgent interest has been manifested among development economists in trickle-down, i.e., the view that the more rapid the rate of economic growth, the more rapid the improvement in employment and income distribution. Throughout this paper, the term ‘income distribution’ will refer to the location and dispersion of the pattern of incomes, i.e., to ‘absolute incomes and poverty’ and to ‘relative income inequality’. Empirical evidence supports trickle-down in some cases, but the evidence is contrary to trickle-down in others.

These data indicate:

1. A high rate of economic growth is neither necessary nor sufficient for inequality to decline.
2. A high rate …

The Dynamics Of The Local And The Global: Implications For Marketing And Development, A. Fuat Fırat

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Globalization’s contemporary omnipresence has resulted in an emphasis on the conflicts between the local and the global. This emphasis has blurred our ability to have insights that may be gained by recognizing that the local and the global are interdependent and cannot exist without each other. This paper explores the initial insights from such recognition regarding local identities, cultural development, and modern marketing’s shortcomings in aiding development. Preliminary conclusions as to how a new conceptualization of marketing can be instrumental in enrichment of meaningful and substantive human lives through constructing redefinitions of development and marketing based on these insights are …

Aid, Growth And Jobs, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

Various development objectives are worthy, but one objective merits special attention: reducing the scourge of absolute economic misery in the world. This study focuses on an important but relatively underemphasized approach to poverty reduction: helping the poor earn more in the labour market for the work they do, so that they can buy the goods and services they need to move up out of poverty. The core of the study is divided into three sections: defining the global poverty challenge and the world’s employment problem, presenting policy options for improving employment outcomes for the poor, and suggesting ways of choosing …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Taiwan’S Private Sector Labour Market Prior To 1996, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] Analysis of the inter-industry earnings differentials revealed that these differentials were quite small by international standards, and indeed, that earnings were rising at roughly the same rate in every sector of the labour market in Taiwan. Wage differentials in Taiwan's private sector are generally in line with the economy as a whole; quite small by international standards, with real wages rising at very similar rates throughout all of the major private sector industries, whilst also demonstrating similar growth and decline patterns. For example, the agricultural sector in Taiwan is a declining sector of the economy, relative to non-agriculture, whilst …

Economic And Demographic Aspects Of Taiwan's Rising Family Income Inequality, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] Since 1980, however, family income inequality in Taiwan has risen slowly but steadily. In this chapter, we apply decomposition methodologies devised by Fei and co-authors and by Shorrocks to Taiwan's Family Income and Expenditure Surveys to quantify the sources of Taiwan's rising family income inequality. Our principal finding is that labor income inequality accounts for more than 100 percent of the observed change— that is, household income inequality would have increased even more had not business income, property income and transfer income contributed to an equalization of incomes. However, the reason for this is not that individual earnings became …

The Impact Of Government Policies On Urban Employment In Small Economies, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] Most of the policies intended to affect urban employment are not specifically employment policies nor are they specifically urban. Rather, the amount of urban employment, the composition of that employment, and the returns from it are determined by a whole host of policies. To review them all in a short paper is an impossible undertaking. The criterion by which I decided which policies to consider is policy-relevance, asking which set of policies is apt to have the largest impact on employment.

Long-Term Economic Mobility And The Private Sector In Developing Countries: New Evidence, Gary S. Fields, Walter S. Bagg

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] Consistent with the mainstream view of economic growth as a factor promoting long-term economic mobility, we hypothesize that those economies in which economic growth has been most rapid are precisely the ones that have achieved the greatest progress toward poverty reduction through improved labor market conditions, especially in private employment. We also hypothesize that the positive relationship running from economic growth through the labor market to poverty reduction continued to hold in the 1990s in essentially the same way as in earlier years when globalization was less intense. Both hypotheses are confirmed by our data. Our results therefore cast …

Escaping From Poverty: Household Income Dynamics In Indonesia, South Africa, Spain, And Venezuela, Gary S. Fields, Paul L. Cichello, Samuel Freije, Marta Menéndez, David Newhouse

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] This study presents the main results of a larger, more technical report (Fields and others 2001) and subsequent work (Fields and others 2002) that analyzes income mobility in Indonesia, South Africa, Spain, and Venezuela. These economies were selected on the basis of the availability of panel data with which to analyze household income dynamics in the 1990s. By following households over time, we are able to investigate how households that were poor initially fared economically, relative to their richer counterparts. We can learn more about how and why households exit—and enter—poverty. To gauge income mobility, this study centers on …

Are Credit Unions In Ecuador Achieving Economies Of Scale?, Nick A. Marchio

Economics Honors Projects

This study tests the assertion that membership growth in credit unions is constrained by their unique structural features, such as their non-profit mission and member-based ownership. Although these features enhance inclusiveness, existing theory suggest that they work against efficiency when membership grows too diffuse. To address this issue, this study uses a model that takes into account existing theory on constrained-optimization in credit unions and theory on the adverse effects of diffuse ownership. Using data on 36 public credit unions in Ecuador, the empirical analysis finds evidence that credit unions can achieve economies of scale despite their problematic structural features. …

Can Non-State Certification Systems Bolster State-Centered Efforts To Promote Sustainable Development Through The Clean Development Mechanism, Jonathan G.S. Koppell, Kelly Levin, Benjamin Cashore

Publications from President Jonathan G.S. Koppell

Increasing economic globalization has coincided with the emergence and escalating influence of non-state actors and organizations in domestic and international policymaking, from shaping policy agendas to promoting private authority. The latter phenomenon has arisen, at least in part, from a critique of states' failures to adopt effective and enduring environmental policies. Rather than contest "command and control" institutions, non-state strategies embrace market approaches built around incentives and price mechanisms. Several forms of non-state authority have emerged, including corporate social responsibility, provision of information through labeling, and self-reporting.

Building A Better World, Pierre Landell-Mills

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Global New Deal: Economic and Social Rights in World Politics by William Felice. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. 204pp.