Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Iraq Contracts Policy Bolsters Terrorist Agenda, Thierry Warin

Thierry Warin

Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy secretary of defence, announced on December 9 a list of 63 countries allowed to bid on Iraq reconstruction contracts. A backlash is now in evidence: Germany, France and Russia will be excluded.

Determinantes Explícitos E Implícitos De La Deuda Externa Pública Peruana, José Manuel Martin Coronado

José-Manuel Martin Coronado

This research aims to prove that sound economic policies are nothing more that basic conditions for the foreign public debt problem. In fact, by studying the factors of public debt issues in Peru, Latin America and the emerging economies it’s clear that some implicit economic and non-economic factors have to be considered because of the social complexity and variable characteristics in emerging economies. This causes failures in economic policies assumptions, inefficiencies, distorted causality and nonrational behavior. This paper proposes, first, to perform a deep and comparative analysis of the foreign debt determinants in emerging economies, then, to allocate financial resources, …

Was Japan’S Real Interest Rate Really Too High During The 1990s? The Role Of The Zero Interest Rate Bound And Other Factors, Hiro Ito

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Japan’s more than a decade long “Great Recession” has presented a disconcerting case of what could happen if interest rates are bounded by zero and deflation sets in. Since Krugman (1998), the commonplace observation is that the deflationary situation combined with the zero nominal interest rate has caused elevated real interest rates, thereby nullifying monetary policy. This paper investigates this oft -cited claim and examines whether it is associated with anomalies in the way real interest rates are determined by employing an error correction model (ECM) based on the time-varying parameter model with Markov-switching variances. Using this model it is …

The War For Oil Or The American Dilemma Of Hegemonic Nostalgia?, Cyrus Bina

Faculty Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Monetary Convergence And Risk Premiums In The Eu Accession Countries, Lucjan Orlowski

WCBT Faculty Publications

This study examines the impact of various monetary policy regimes on the ability to lower inflation and exchange rate risk premiums in the EU accession countries as they undergo monetary convergence to the eurozone. It proposes a monetary policy framework of flexible targeting of relative inflation risk premium that is believed to be credible and useful for managing these two categories of risk. A model of inflation and exchange rate risk premiums within the context of inflation targeting is developed. Recent trends in these risk premiums in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland are tested by employing the threshold ARCH …

The Relevance Of Inflation And Exchange Rate Risk For Monetary Convergence To The Eurozone, Lucjan Orlowski

WCBT Faculty Publications

This study places a strong emphasis on the ability of Central European Countries to lower inflation and exchange rate risk premiums on their path of monetary convergence to the eurozone. A model of the nexus between both risk premiums is presented along with the recent evidence supporting well-coordinated interactions between these risk premiums for Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. The analysis implies that monetary policies based on direct inflation targeting are likely to contain these risk premiums in the candidate countries and can be effectively used during the remaining period of their preparations for entering the euro area.

International Economic Convergence: Measuring Economic Growth And Income Inequality From 1975-1999, Brian Kent Smedley

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

As the world continues to be reshaped by technological advances and globalization, national borders are rapidly dissolving. Nations that are many thousands of miles away now seem closer than ever due to modern technology and transportation. The world has experienced tremendous progress and economic growth in the last few decades, and today people in many countries enjoy a higher standard of living than the world's citizens have ever known. Yet despite all that we have accomplished as a human society, somehow we are still unable to solve the most fundamental problem facing humanity: relieving the poverty and misfortune of billions …

Earnings Momentum In International Markets, Dong Hong, Charles M. C. Lee, Bhaskaran Swaminathan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines the profitability of earnings momentum strategies based on analyst forecast revisions in eleven international equity markets. While analyst forecast revisions exhibit persistence in all countries, the profitability of trading strategies based on these revisions varies. Specifically, earnings momentum yields significant profits in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom, but not in Malaysia, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, or Taiwan. Interestingly, price momentum exists only in those countries where earnings momentum is profitable. In general, markets with high levels of corruption (low investor protection) exhibit weak momentum. Collectively, these findings suggest that the momentum phenomenon …

Review Of Japan's Economic Dilemma: The Institutional Origins Of Prosperity And Stagnation, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. $ 54.95 Hardcover, $ 19.95 Papercover. Bai Gao. Reviewed By Christian Aspalter., Christian Aspalter

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Book review of Bai Gao, Japan's Economic Dilemma: The Institutional Origins of Prosperity and Stagnation, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. $54.95 hardcover, $19.95 papercover.

Markov Switching Garch Models Of Currency Crises In Southeast Asia, Celso Brunetti, Roberto S. Mariano, Chiara Scotti, Augustine H. H. Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper develops a model which is able to forecast exchange rate turmoil. Our starting point relies on the empirical evidence that exchange rate volatility is not constant. In fact, the modeling strategy adopted refers to the vast literature of the GARCH class of models, where the variance process is explicitly modeled. Further empirical evidence shows that it is possible to distinguish between two different regimes: îordinaryî versus îturbulenceî. Low exchange rate changes are associated with low volatility (ordinary regime) and high exchange rate devaluations go together with high volatility. This calls for a regime switching approach. In our model …

Ceo Turnover And Foreign Market Participation, Bruce A. Blonigen, Rossitza B. Wooster

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Anecdotal evidence suggests that new CEOs with foreign backgrounds direct their firms to become more international in their operations. We examine this hypothesis formally using data on U.S. S&P-500 manufacturing firms from1992 through 1997 and biographical information on CEOs’ birth and education locations that allow us to identify changes from U.S.- to foreign-connected CEOs. Robust to a variety of specifications, we find that a U.S. firm’s switch from a U.S. to a foreign CEO leads to substantial increases in the firm’s proportion of its foreign assets and foreign affiliate sales. In fact, our preferred specification indicates that foreign asset and …

Enterprises And The Constitution Of The World Economy, Jean-Philippe Robé

Jean-Philippe Robé

No abstract provided.

New Rules To The Old Great Game: An Assessment Of The Shanghai Cooperation Organization's Proposed Free Trade Zone, Leland Rhett Miller

Maryland Series in Contemporary Asian Studies

No abstract provided.

The Political Economy Of Perverse Financial Liberalization: Examples From The Asian Crisis, Nancy Neiman Auerbach, Thomas D. Willett

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

Debates continue to rage about the causes of recent currency and financial crises around the globe and their implications for the desirability of domestic and international financial liberalization. Beneath the heated exchanges of the most vocal disputants, a quiet consensus is beginning to emerge among serious scholars and policy officials. The big lesson from these crises is that while financial liberalization is still a desirable goal, it must be approached very carefully. It’s not just that without the proper pre-conditions liberalization will not provide full benefits. The results can sometimes be disastrous. What was once considered to be an arcane …

Das Zeitalter Der Knappheit – Ressourcen, Konflikte, Lebenschancen, Isidor Wallimann, Michael Dobkowski

Books

Michael N. Dobkowski and Isidor Wallimann establish a disturbing but realistic scenario of the disastrous future that awaits humankind as surplus populations collide with dwindling resources. Authors consider a number of cause-and-effect situations on industrialization, biophysical limits, exponential population growth, and genocide, to name a few. This volume is a critical contribution to the field and will serve as an ideal introduction to courses in the environment, population, resources, genocide, and social conflict.

Job Creation, Job Destruction, And International Competition, Michael W. Klein, Scott Schuh, Robert K. Triest

Upjohn Press

The authors present a picture of how the effects of international trade on employment in U.S. manufacturing industries vary widely. They explore the labor-market dynamics and adjustment costs associated with international factors, particularly the way fluctuations in exchange rates, overseas economic activity, and the altering of trade restrictions contribute to churning-the simultaneous job creation among some firms and job destruction among others.

Production Sharing And Singapore’S Global Competitiveness, Sven W. Arndt

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

Singapore has made spectacular progress in recent decades in pushing its economy into the world's top ranks. One important payoff has been a substantial rise in living standards. Among the main drivers behind this accomplishment have been entrepot trade, which exploits an important natural comparative advantage, on the one hand, and enlightened education, social, and economic policies, which have built up man-made comparative advantage based on human capital, on the other.

Monetary-Policy Targeting In The Central European Transition Economies, Lucjan T. Orlowski

WCBT Faculty Publications

This chapter examines the monetary-policy-targeting systems, in the second half of the 1990s (until 1998), of three Central European EU-accession candidates—the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland--and advocates the potential benefits of applying a direct-inflation-targeting (DIT) system in them. For the purpose of the analysis presented here, DIT is defined as "a monetary policy framework that is based on the assumption of long-term price stability as the official policy goal and on the designation of the official inflation forecast as intermediate policy target" (Orlowski, 2000). Section 1 is a brief overview of monetary-targeting practices in the Czech Republic Hungary, and Poland. …

The Rogues Of 'Quoddy: Smuggling In The Maine New Brunswick Borderlands 1783-1820, Joshua M. Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Smuggling has been an important problem in American-Canadian relations. Yet the nature of smuggling is little understood; it is by definition an elusive, secretive, and subtle practice. This dissertation explores smuggling as a social force within a border community on the United States-Canada boundary. Smuggling almost always involved the illicit crossing of political boundaries, and as such can be used as a means of studying popular attitudes toward the creation of national borders. Moreover, because smuggling is directly related to the transition to modem capitalism, this study sheds light on the roots of both American and Canadian economic development. The …

New Social Movements And The Struggle For Worker’S Rights In The Maquila Industry, Victoria Carty

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

"Campaigns to improve worker’s rights in export processing zones (EPZs), also referred to the maquila industry in Latin America, is an important topic analytically and politically. On theoretical and practical levels, the co-existence of market economies with effective means to ensure adequate working conditions for workers is a critical question. Underlying the issue is a vigorous debate regarding how the global economy should be governed; who or what should govern it, and whose interest is should serve (Faux, 2002)."

Can World Poverty Be Eliminated?, William F. Felice

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

World Poverty: New Policies to Defeat an Old Enemy edited by Peter Townsend and David Gordon. Bristol: The Policy Press, 2002. 454pp.

and

World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms by Thomas Pogge. Malden, MA: Blackwell/Polity, 2002. 264pp.

and

There is an Alternative: Subsistence and Worldwide Resistance to Corporate Globalization edited by Veronica Benholdt-Thomsen, Nicholas Faraclas, and Claudia von Werlhof. New York: Zed Books. 2001. 288pp.

United States Sugar Trade, Jeremy R. Meiners

University Avenue Undergraduate Journal of Economics

The best means to understand the effects of the tariff-rate quota system on production and consumption of sugar is by creating an economic model. By analyzing the most recent figures concerning consumption, importation, production, and tariff-rate quotas, an economic model of the sugar market of the United States can be produced. From this model, the effects of the removal of the tariff-rate quota system can be seen, as well as the effects on domestic consumers and producers. Through this model, an accurate picture of whom the tariff-rate quota affects and what these effects are is shown.

A Free Trade Agreement Of The America's: A Case Study Of Brazil, Maria Eliana Cadario

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper will examine the likely impacts of the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) that was initiated by President Bush in 1994 and is anticipated to include 34 countries in the Western Hemisphere excluding Cuba and to come into force during 2005. The paper will focus on the likely trade effects for Brazil, the largest potential member of the FTAA. In the first part, I will review the current trade relations between countries in the Western Hemisphere and the US, including the various bilateral and multilateral agreements such as NAFTA, MERCOSUR, CBI, The Andean Trade Preference Act, …

Can Majority Voting Provisions Do It All?, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Incentives, Institutions, And Development Assistance, Michael Kremer

Clemens Lecture Series

No abstract provided.

Of Legal Transplants, Legal Irritants, And Economic Development, Katharina Pistor, Daniel Berkowitz

Faculty Scholarship

The collapse of the socialist system has given way to unprecedented economic and legal reforms in the former socialist countries. Over the past decade they have enacted new legislation in all areas of the law, drawing heavily on legal models from developed market economies, including common law and civil law countries. While the transplanted laws now on the books is largely consistent with Western practice, the enforcement of these new laws is often ineffective (Berkowitz, Pistor, and Richard, 2003).

What Caused Enron? A Capsule Social And Economic History Of The 1990s, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

The sudden explosion of corporate accounting scandals and related financial irregularities that burst over the financial markets between late 2001 and the first half of 2002 e.g., Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia, and others-raises an obvious question: why now? What explains the sudden concentration of financial scandals at this moment in time? Much commentary has rounded up the usual suspects and blamed the scandals on a decline in business morality, “infectious greed,” and similar subjective trends that cannot be reliably measured.

Beyond Balancing The Interests Of Creditors And Developing States, Anna Gelpern

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The traditional view of sovereign debt as a relationship between a developing country government and and its foreign private creditors is increasingly out of date. Financial institutions and individuals inside the borrowing countries are are becoming more and more important as creditors to their governments. At the same time, as countries remove restrictions on cross-border capital flows, foreign creditors are participating more actively in domestic law, local-currency debt markets. These developments imply fundamental changes in lending decisions and, where the loan goes bad, in the sovereign debt workout process.

Regionalism Versus Globalism: A View From The Americas, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The well-deserved celebration of UNIDROIT'S first seventy-five years focused on a topic that is of particular interest to the Organization of American States and to the organ of the OAS to which the author belongs, the Inter-American Juridical Committee. The topic of the 75th Anniversary Congress--"Worldwide Harmonization of Private Law and Regional Integration"--implicates one of the several dichotomies with which we in the Inter-American system who work on questions of private international law (and international private law) have been grappling in recent years, the problem of regional versus global approaches to the harmonization of private international law (and international private …

Aquaculture, Michael Rice

Michael A Rice

This is the chapter on small-scale aquaculture within a volume intended as a guide for practitioners engaged in sustainable rural livelihood and food production projects in the developing world. Included in this chapter on aquaculture are fundamentals of aquaculture water quality, selection of sites and construction methods for fish ponds, and management techniques for carp and tilapia which are nutritious and easy to grow in artisanal ponds. The fundamentals of cage culture of fish is also covered, along with the fundamentals of culturing oysters and other molluscan shellfish in coastal waters.