Download or read book Comparative Advantage and the Cross Section of Business Cycles written by and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Comparative Advantage and the Cross section of Business Cycles written by Aart Kraay and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Business cycles are both less volatile and more synchronized with the world cycle in rich countries than in poor ones. We develop two alternative explanations based on the idea that comparative advantage causes rich countries to specialize in industries that use new technologies operated by skilled workers, while poor countries specialize in industries that use traditional technologies operated by unskilled workers. Since new technologies are difficult to imitate, the industries of rich countries enjoy more market power and face more inelastic product demands than those of poor countries. Since skilled workers are less likely to exit employment as a result of changes in economic conditions, industries in rich countries face more inelastic labour supplies than those of poor countries. We show that either asymmetry in industry characteristics can generate cross-country differences in business cycles that resemble those we observe in the data.
Download or read book Comparative Advantage and Heterogeneous Firms written by Andrew B. Bernard and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines how country, industry and firm characteristics interact in general equilibrium to determine nations' responses to trade liberalization. When firms possess heterogeneous productivity, countries differ in relative factor abundance and industries vary in factor intensity, falling trade costs induce reallocations of resources both within and across industries and countries. These reallocations generate substantial job turnover in all sectors, spur relatively more creative destruction in comparative advantage industries than comparative disadvantage industries, and magnify ex ante comparative advantage to create additional welfare gains from trade. The relative ascendance of high-productivity firms within industries boosts aggregate productivity and drives down consumer prices. In contrast with the neoclassical model, these price declines dampen and can even reverse the real wage losses of scarce factors as countries liberalize.
Download or read book Hysteresis and Business Cycles written by Ms.Valerie Cerra and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2020-05-29 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditionally, economic growth and business cycles have been treated independently. However, the dependence of GDP levels on its history of shocks, what economists refer to as “hysteresis,” argues for unifying the analysis of growth and cycles. In this paper, we review the recent empirical and theoretical literature that motivate this paradigm shift. The renewed interest in hysteresis has been sparked by the persistence of the Global Financial Crisis and fears of a slow recovery from the Covid-19 crisis. The findings of the recent literature have far-reaching conceptual and policy implications. In recessions, monetary and fiscal policies need to be more active to avoid the permanent scars of a downturn. And in good times, running a high-pressure economy could have permanent positive effects.
Download or read book Benefit Incidence and the Timing of Program Capture written by Peter Lanjouw and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1998 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: August 1998 Benefits from schooling and antipoverty programs in rural India were captured early by the nonpoor. The poor tend to benefit from program expansion, and lose from contraction. Conventional methods of assessing benefit incidence hide this fact. Survey-based estimates of average program participation conditional on income are often used in assessing the distributional impacts of public spending reforms. But program participation could well be nonhomogeneous, so that marginal impacts of program expansion or contraction differ greatly from average impacts. Using the geographic variation found in sample survey data for rural India for 1993-94, Lanjouw and Ravallion estimate the marginal odds of participating in schooling and antipoverty programs. Their results suggest early capture of these programs by the nonpoor. Thus, conventional methods of assessing benefit incidence underestimate the gains to India's rural poor from higher public outlays, and their loss from program cuts. This paper-a product of Poverty and Human Resources, Development Research Group-was prepared as a background paper for the Bank's 1998 Poverty Assessment for India. The authors may be contacted at [email protected] or [email protected].
Download or read book Total Strangers Or Soul Mates written by J. Luis Guasch and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1998 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: August 1998 As Latin American and Caribbean countries have liberalized their trade regimes, they have enthusiastically adopted antidumping measures that reduce competition. Competition laws are only beginning to make their appearance in the region. Antidumping and competition policies are strangers in the region when they should be soul mates. As a result of trade reforms in the 1980s and 1990s Latin American and Caribbean countries became more open than at any time since World War II. However, these countries have recently begun to use antidumping measures as the new protection weapon of choice, as other barriers to trade have been reduced. In fact, the fastest growing antidumping actions are within regional integration arrangements, where they are being applied by member countries against each other. Guasch and Rajapatirana argue that antidumping is anticompetitive and that its usual justification as a counter to predatory behavior is not relevant in the region. It is imperative, they say, that antidumping be contained if not altogether eliminated. While they find that safeguards are less anticompetitive than antidumping, they believe that all exceptional protection measures, such as antidumping, countervailing, and safeguards, should be considered together with competition policies. In other words, they should become soul mates rather than remain total strangers. Guasch and Rajapatirana do not find that fine-tuning antidumping policy is a good option. Rather, they believe that both trade and competition policymaking ought to be brought under a single entity, as in Peru. This would lead to a more competitive solution. This paper-a product of the Finance, Private Sector, and Infrastructure Group, Latin America and the Caribbean Region-is part of a larger effort in the department to. The authors may be contacted at [email protected] or [email protected].
Download or read book Crisis Management in Argentina During the 1994 95 Mexican Crisis written by Eduardo J. J. Ganapolsky and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1998 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mexican crisis of 1994-95 had strong spillover effects on Argentina. The Argentine government successfully announced a series of policies to mitigate the contagion effects. This paper studies how capital markets reacted to each policy announcement and news. Capital markets welcomed announcements that demonstrated a firm commitment to the currency board. The agreement with the IMF, the dollarization of reserve deposits in the central bank, and changes in reserve requirements had a strong positive impact on market returns. After a period of higher volatility, the appointment of a new finance minister significantly decreased the variance of stock and bond returns, while lower reserve requirements increased the volatility of interest rates.
Download or read book Calm After the Storms written by Francisco H.G. Ferreira and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1998 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the profound political and economic changes of the 1970s and 1980s behind it, and regardless of its trade patterns, Chile's income distribution is, for the moment, calm. Education may be the most important variable affecting the structure of, and changes in, inequality in Chile. After rising in the 1960s, falling in the early 1970s, and rising again from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, income inequality seems to have stabilized in Chile since about 1987. With the stormy period of economic and political reform of the 1970s and 1980s well over, no statistically significant Lorenz dominance results could be detected after 1987. Scalar measures of inequality confirm this picture of stability but suggest a slight change in the shape of the density function-with some compression at the bottom compensated for by a stretching at the top. As inequality remained broadly stable, sustained economic growth led to substantial poverty reduction, according to a range of measures and with respect to three different poverty lines. Poverty mixed stochastic dominance tests confirm this result. All of these findings are robust to different choices of equivalence scales. An examination of the factors underlying these trends suggests that an equilibrium has (for the moment) been reached between rising demand for and supply of skills-the demand for skills associated with technological progress and the supply of skills associated with expansion of education. Chile's trading pattern might well be tangential to its recent distributional dynamics. This paper-a product of the Poverty Reduction Group, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network-is part of a larger effort in the network to understand income distribution dynamics in developing countries. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project Poverty and Income Distribution Dynamics in a High Growth Economy: The Case of Chile, 1987-94 (RPO 681-59). Francisco H.G. Ferreira may be contacted at [email protected].
Download or read book Manufacturing Firms in Developing Countries written by James R. Tybout and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1998 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Appraising Workfare Programs written by Martin Ravallion and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1998 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper offers some simple analytic tools for a rapid appraisal of workfare programs. It discusses requirements for successful programs and explains the conditions and information requirements that should be taken into account when designing and implementing such programs. Programs are studied in the abstract and from stylized versions of a range of actual programs.
Download or read book Enterprise Isolation Programs in Transition Economies written by Simeon Djankov and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1998 with total page 21 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I provide the first comprehensive analysis of isolation programs for financially distressed firms in transition economies. The study is based on empirical evidence from the Romanian program. The results indicate that the isolation program did not deliver any tangible improvements in operational performance, nor did it enhance the process of privatization or liquidation of large loss-making enterprises. I also show that firms included in the program faced softer budget constraints than their comparators outside the program. These findings question the feasibility of creating special programs for enterprise restructuring and privatization under government auspices.
Download or read book Small States in the Global Economy written by David Peretz and published by Commonwealth Secretariat. This book was released on 2001 with total page 634 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book contains fifty-four tables covering selected economic, social, demographic and Millennium Development Goal indicators culled from international and national sources and presents information unavailable elsewhere. A detailed parallel commentary on trends in Commonwealth small states, looking at growth, employment, inflation, human development, and economic policy, permits a deeper understanding of developments behind the figures.
Download or read book The American Business Cycle written by Robert J. Gordon and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 882 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades the American economy has experienced the worst peace-time inflation in its history and the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. These circumstances have prompted renewed interest in the concept of business cycles, which Joseph Schumpeter suggested are "like the beat of the heart, of the essence of the organism that displays them." In The American Business Cycle, some of the most prominent macroeconomics in the United States focuses on the questions, To what extent are business cycles propelled by external shocks? How have post-1946 cycles differed from earlier cycles? And, what are the major factors that contribute to business cycles? They extend their investigation in some areas as far back as 1875 to afford a deeper understanding of both economic history and the most recent economic fluctuations. Seven papers address specific aspects of economic activity: consumption, investment, inventory change, fiscal policy, monetary behavior, open economy, and the labor market. Five papers focus on aggregate economic activity. In a number of cases, the papers present findings that challenge widely accepted models and assumptions. In addition to its substantive findings, The American Business Cycle includes an appendix containing both the first published history of the NBER business-cycle dating chronology and many previously unpublished historical data series.
Download or read book Heckscher Ohlin Business Cycles written by Alejandro Cuñat and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Business Cycles written by Wesley Clair Mitchell and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Macroeconomic Policies in the World Economy written by Horst Siebert and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The integration of goods and financial markets has progressed on a global scale in recent years. Thus, the cyclical patterns in the world economy may have changed too. Against this background, experts in international economics analyze the synchronization of business cycles and their volatility in this book. Is there an European business cycle? What is the role of multinational corporations and monetary policy in transmitting business cycles? Further, they discuss the need and feasibility of internationally coordinating monetary and exchange rate policies and the quantitative effects of tax competition.
Download or read book Business Cycles written by Victor Zarnowitz and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 613 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents the most complete collection available of the work of Victor Zarnowitz, a leader in the study of business cycles, growth, inflation, and forecasting.. With characteristic insight, Zarnowitz examines theories of the business cycle, including Keynesian and monetary theories and more recent rational expectation and real business cycle theories. He also measures trends and cycles in economic activity; evaluates the performance of leading indicators and their composite measures; surveys forecasting tools and performance of business and academic economists; discusses historical changes in the nature and sources of business cycles; and analyzes how successfully forecasting firms and economists predict such key economic variables as interest rates and inflation.
