Do Endowments Predict the Location of Production?


Book Description

Examining the relationship between factor endowments and production patterns using international and Japanese regional data, we provide the first empirical confirmation of Ethier's correlation approach to the Rybczynski theorem. Moreover, we find evidence of substantial production indeterminacy. Prediction errors are six to thirty times larger for goods traded relatively freely. A compelling explanation of this phenomenon is the existence of more goods than factors in the presence of trade costs. This result implies that regressions of trade or output on endowments have weak theoretical foundations. Furthermore, since errors are largest in data sets where trade costs are small, we explain why the common methodology of imputing trade barriers from regression residuals often leads to backwards results.




Globalization and Poverty


Book Description

Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.




Spatial Location of Firms and Industries


Book Description

Where economic activity will locate in the future is one of the most important questions in economics. 'Global' competitiveness often depends on highly concentrated 'local' knowledge, capabilities and common tacit codes of behaviour, which can be found in a geographical concentration (cluster) of firms.




Neoliberalism 2.0: Regulating and Financing Globalizing Markets


Book Description

In today's increasingly globalized environment, many economic fundamentals need to be reconsidered in order to regain stability in the global marketplace. One such consideration is the failing dynamics of the international tax infrastructure. Neoliberalism 2.0 brings a 21st century assessment of the Pigovian taxes, considering a completely new calibration of the international tax systems, inspired by the historically developed Pigovian tax model. The book considers the impact neoliberalism had and will have on regulatory infrastructure, democracy in an era of globalization and reduced legitimation of the national state. The Pigovian model brings home the often forgotten relationship between taxation (as a part of the regulatory sphere), macro-economics, and the political-philosophical context in which law and economics emerge. The model also takes into account the phenomena of globalization and financialization and is tested using the financial sector as an example. This book addresses the many challenges a Pigovian shift would imply for the sovereign and its national economies. Neoliberalism 2.0 demonstrates the ability to design a paradigm-changing alternative to the current tax infrastructure, while taking into account a low economic growth environment of the future, the implications of globalization and the changing relationship between citizens and their state.




The Economics of International Integration


Book Description

International economic integration has played a significant part in economic policy decisions for most countries and regions throughout the world over decades. This text looks at why the success of integration schemes has been so variable and what the prospects are for integration in the future.




The Economics of European Integration


Book Description

Acclaim for the first edition: ÔThe book is essential for students in European studies, international economics and business or international relations at both graduate and postgraduate level.Õ Ð Ricardo Pinheiro-Alves, The Times Higher Education Supplement Thoroughly revised and updated, the second edition of this highly acclaimed textbook will be required reading for graduate and undergraduate students on a wide range of courses including: European economics, economic policy, European integration, European studies and international relations. Exploring the EU at an important turning point and during uncertain and turbulent times, the text will also prove an invaluable reference tool for academics and policy makers concerned with any facet of European integration. Comprehensive and accessible, this far-reaching text: ¥ provides in-depth, state-of-the-art analysis of the origins, achievements and prospects of principal EU economic policies ¥ covers all EU member countries as well as candidate countries ¥ sets scenarios for future EU policy and organisational evolution ¥ prescribes possible paths and directions for the EU, not only for economic policies but also for organisational structure; ¥ features supplementary data via a companion website. Topics explored in detail include: EU budget, competition policy, Common Agricultural Policy, fiscal integration, monetary integration, industrial policy in manufacturing and services, trade policy and international economic cooperation, regional policy, social policy, mobility of labour, energy policy, transport policy, environment policy and enlargement.




Benchmarking Structural Transformation Across the World


Book Description

This paper documents stylized facts on the process of structural transformation around the world and empirically analyzes its determinants using data on real value added by sector of economic activity (agriculture, manufacturing and services) for a panel of 168 countries over the period 1970-2010. The analysis points to large differences in sector shares both across and within regions as well as for countries at similar levels of economic development. Using both linear and quantile regression methods, it finds that a large proportion of the cross-country variation in sector shares can be accounted for by country characteristics, such as real GDP per capita, demographic structure, and population size. It also finds that policy and insitutional variables, such as product market reforms, openness to trade, human and physical capital, and finance improve the baseline model’s ability to account for the variation in sectoral shares across countries.




Evolutionary Spatial Economics


Book Description

A crucial question in contemporary economics concerns where economic activities will locate and relocate themselves in the future. This comprehensive, innovative book applies an evolutionary framework to spatial economics, arguing against the prevailing neoclassical equilibrium model, providing important concrete and theoretical insights, and illuminating areas of future enquiry.




Contemporary Issues in Urban and Regional Economics


Book Description

If all politics are local, then all economics are regional and local. Globalisation, for all its mystery and so-called inevitability, has its foundations and bloodlines in urban and regional economics. The economic impacts of poverty, housing, transportation, education, and crime are included. This new book includes within its scope: multiplier and impact analysis, input-output models, growth theory, migration, urban and regional labour markets, urban and regional public policy, regional devolution, small firms policy, and foreign direct investment.




Spatial Inequality and Development


Book Description

"This is an introduction to spatial and regional inequality. Drawing on data from 25 countries from around the world, it examines the questions: What exactly is spatial inequality? Why does it matter? And what should be the policy response to it?"--Provided by publisher.