Business Commons^™

Parity And Non-Parity Determinants Of Exchange Rates In Latin American Economies, Catherine S.F. Ho, Mohamed Ariff

Mohamed Ariff

This paper reports how non-parity fundamental factors together with parity factors are correlated with exchange rate movements. Seven Latin American countries were included in this study using a selection criterion that for a pair of countries to be included, the pair must have more than 50 per cent of trade with the group chosen. The econometric methods applied are appropriate to this topic and include pooled time series regression and seemingly unrelated regression. The findings show that there is support for short and long-run effects on exchange rates from inflation and interest rates. We entered non-parity factors suggested in recent …

Huge Growth Potential In 2015 For Used Books Market - A Surney, Lissa Coffey

LissaCoffey

Selling Buying Used Books - A Market With Huge Potential in 2015 - Selling/buying books online is a great way to earn extra income and an upcoming market having huge growth potential in 2015. Size the US market for used books ... Conduct research on used book selling and buying activities. The starting point for their analysis is the double-edged impact of a used book market ... But there's another effect: the presence of a market for used books ... "The growth reflects how easy is has become to sell used books.The used book market for college textbooks has been …

Testing Conflicting Political Economy Theories: Full-Fledged Versus Partial-Scope Regional Trade Agreements, Xuepeng Liu

Xuepeng Liu

We apply a duration analysis to test the conflicting predictions of the median voter model and the lobbying model using panel data on regional trade agreement (RTA) formation. Our results show that the pro-labor prediction of the median voter model is supported by the full-fledged free trade areas and customs unions (FTAs/CUs), while the pro-capital prediction of the lobbying model is supported by the partial-scope preferential trade arrangements among developing countries. This finding holds better for the country pairs with more different capital-labor ratios as a result of the stronger distributional effects of RTAs. The support for the median voter …

The Role Of The Law In The Availability Of Public Transit And Affordable Housing In Atlanta’S West End, Elliott Lipinsky

ELLIOTT LIPINSKY

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) is a branch of the U.S. Department of Transportation that administers federal funds and provides technical assistance for the support of locally operated public transit systems. MARTA / Atlanta metro area are part of FTA Region IV (the Southeast). FTA would be involved, for instance, in financing the federal grant monies discussed above. But actual regulation of operations (i.e., what MARTA does each day, or what MARTA will plan to do regionally) is more closely regulated by Georgia agencies.

Until recently, the Atlanta metropolitan area had no powerful central agency to coordinate regional transit. The …

Innovation, Demand And Employment, Mario Pianta

Mario Pianta

The paper examines the link between technological change and demand and their impact on employment in manufacturing industry. The specific nature of innovation, mainly oriented towards product or process innovations, is considered, in the light of the competitive strategies of firms and industries. An interpretative model is proposed and an empirical analysis is carried out, using the data of the European Innovation Surveys for five countries. The results of cross-industry regressions show that demand, structural change and orientation toward product innovations have a positive impact on employment change in the 1990s, while the intensity of innovative expenditure (including R&D, design, …

Technological Specialization And Economic Performance In Oecd Countries, Mario Pianta, Valentina Meliciani

Mario Pianta

The paper investigates the growing sectoral specialization in technological activities of OECD countries (measured using patent data) and its impact on countries' innovative and economic performance in the 1975-1990 period. Aggregate indicators of sectoral specialization are introduced, showing the extent to which countries concentrate their innovations in few fields, or spread them across several sectors. A general positive relationship is found between the degree of specialization in technology and higher rates of growth, while specialization in electronics-related fields is not associated to better economic or technological performances. The position of individual countries in these patterns is also examined, showing that …