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1612. The European Union and North America
- Author:
- Edward A. Fogarty
- Publication Date:
- 10-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute of European Studies
- Abstract:
- This paper assesses the past, present, and future of transatlantic commercial relations in terms of EU trade strategies. After surveying the medium-term trajectories of the relationships with the United States, Mexico, and Canada-both separately and as a group-it will consider several possible sources of European Union trade preferences vis-à-vis NAFTA, including interest groups' incentives to seek to capture national and European governing institutions, the balance between the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, European leaders' desire to balance against overweening American power, and possible attempts to construct either a common Western identity or, alternatively, a European identity in contradistinction what the United States seems to represent. The hope is that these different approaches provide a contrasting set of interpretations whose comparison side-by-side allows new insights into the dynamics governing EU-North American trade relations.
- Topic:
- International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, Canada, North America, and Mexico
1613. Global Economic Prospects
- Author:
- Michael Mussa
- Publication Date:
- 09-2002
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics
- Abstract:
- The global economic recovery is continuing but at a somewhat slower pace than was anticipated six months ago. Specifically, using the country weights from the IMF's World Economic Outlook, the forecast for real GDP growth in the world economy during 2002 (i.e., on a fourth-quarter-to-fourth-quarter basis) is cut by about half a percentage point to 3 percent—a pace that is slightly below my estimate of the potential growth rate for world GDP. This downward revision reflects primarily slower growth than earlier expected during the first half of 2002 in most industrial countries and the expectation that growth will remain somewhat more sluggish than earlier expected at least through year-end. For 2003, the forecast for global economic growth is also cut by about half a percentage point—to 4 percent—reflecting both general factors suggesting slightly weaker performance in many industrial and developing countries and the particular economic risks arising from possible military action against Iraq and from potential credit events affecting key developing countries. Despite these downward revisions, however, there is little doubt that the world economy will see significant improvement this year from the 1 percent growth recorded in 2001, and it is still reasonable to expect further improvement to a growth rate modestly above global potential during 2003.
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- United States, Iraq, Europe, Israel, Asia, South America, Latin America, and North America
1614. Economic Issues Raised by Treatment of Takings Under NAFTA Chapter 11
- Author:
- Edward M. Graham
- Publication Date:
- 11-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics
- Abstract:
- This working paper examines, from an economic perspective, the treatment of takings (property rights) under NAFTA Chapter 11. To be more precise, the paper examines the treatment of takings as environmental groups fear might be established as the result of investor dispute settlement under this chapter; as of the date of this writing, most of the cases that have the potential to be precedent-setting have not been finally decided, albeit one—the Metalclad case—has been decided in a way that is unsettling to environmentalists. The author attempts to determine whether requiring public compensation of private investors for diminishment of value resulting from government regulatory action has the potential of achieving anything close to an “optimal” outcome from a societal cost-benefit point of view (defined below). This determination makes use of tools of economic analysis and, in particular, Coase's theorem regarding achieving optimal outcomes where negative externalities are present. The overall conclusion is that, although Coase's theorem can be invoked to argue that such an outcome can be achieved either via a “polluter pays” approach or a “public pays” (or “public must compensate”) approach, as a matter of practical application, the first approach is preferable to the second for a number of reasons, including government “fiscal illusion” and “moral hazard.”
- Topic:
- Economics and International Organization
- Political Geography:
- United States, Latin America, and North America
1615. Globalized and Localized Digital Divides Along the Information Highway: A Fragile Synthesis Across Bridges, Ramps, Cloverleaves, and Ladders.
- Author:
- Carl Cuneo
- Publication Date:
- 01-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
- Abstract:
- There has been a tendency, especially in North America and Europe, and among technology enthusiasts and some educators, to assume that the whole world is connected to the Internet, and surfs the World Wide Web. Why would we use the term, 'World Wide Web', if we were not talking about a global phenomenon? However, Internet statistics show that only about six to eight percent of the world's six billion population is connected to the Internet. Approximately ninety-two percent of the world is NOT connected to, nor uses, the Internet. 1 The erroneous assumption of universal connectivity is not simply a statistical mistake. Governments, corporations, community organizations, and individuals make many incorrect decisions, with sometimes dramatic and far-reaching consequences, on the basis of the assumption that most of the world is connected to the Internet. Not only is the vast majority of the world not connected to the Internet, most people do not even have the computers, skills, experience, interest, or awareness to become connected. The disconnected are not randomly distributed, but have specific demographic, social, economic, racial, ethnic, gender, gerontological, and political characteristics that amount to a systematic bias of exclusion, often referred to as the “digital have-nots”. Similarly, the connected are not randomly distributed, but possess particular demographic, social, economic and political characteristics making up what has become known as the ““Digital Haves””. The separation, chasm, abyss, canyon, gulf, or distance between the ““Digital Haves”” and “digital have-nots” has become known as the “Digital Divide.”
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Development, Globalization, Poverty, and Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- Europe and North America
1616. Democratizing U.S. Trade Policy
- Author:
- Pat Choate and Bruce Stokes
- Publication Date:
- 11-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- Storm clouds signaling trouble with American trade policy have been gathering for some time. In the early 1990s, Congress barely approved creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and only strenuous efforts by the Clinton administration and the business community ensured passage of legislation creating the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the late 1990s, President Clinton twice failed to obtain congressional renewal of his trade-negotiating authority. The massive demonstrations during the meeting of the world's trade ministers in Seattle in 1999 reflected a widespread public unease with the impact of trade policy on a range of issues, from clear-cutting practices in the forests of Indonesia to the price of AIDS drugs in southern Africa. Today, public opinion polls consistently demonstrate that, although the American public supports freer trade in theory, it often has profound reservations about trade liberalization in practice. And the current global economic slowdown may only further polarize public opinion on trade issues.
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- United States, Indonesia, South America, and North America
1617. Border Effects within the NAFTA Countries
- Author:
- John H. Rogers and Hayden P. Smith
- Publication Date:
- 03-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
- Abstract:
- Using consumer price indexes from cities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, we estimate the "border effect" on U.S.-Mexican relative prices and find that it is nearly an order of magnitude larger than for U.S.-Canadian prices. However, during a very stable sub-period in Mexico (May 1988 to November 1994), the "width" of the U.S.-Mexican border falls dramatically and becomes approximately equal to the U.S.-Canadian border. We then show that when consideration is limited to cities lying geographically very close to the U.S.-Mexican border--San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Tijuana, Mexicali, Juarez, and Matamoros--the border width falls compared to that estimated with the full sample of U.S. and Mexican cities, but falls only very slightly. We also present evidence that the border effect in U.S.-Mexican prices is not primarily due to the border effect in U.S.-Mexican wages. Finally, using the prices of 276 highly dis-aggregated goods and services, we estimate the variability of relative prices of different items within Mexican cities. This measure of relative price variability declines during the stable peso sub-period, but by less than the decline in nominal and real (i.e., CPI-based) exchange rate variability. Our results are strong evidence of a "nominal border effect" in relative prices within NAFTA, but also indicate that real side influences are important.
- Topic:
- Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- United States, Canada, North America, and Mexico
1618. Community Control in a Global Economy: Lessons from Mexico's Economic Integration Process
- Author:
- Eliza Waters and Tim Wise
- Publication Date:
- 02-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
- Abstract:
- The North American Free Trade Agreement appeared to promise economic growth for Mexico and improved living conditions for its people. While the Mexican economy has recovered significantly from its post-NAFTA collapse, there is mounting evidence that many of the pre-NAFTA warnings of worsening poverty and deteriorating environmental conditions were true, if exaggerated. However one interprets the statistics, there is little doubt that the economic integration process, which began a full decade before NAFTA took effect, has created a significant restructuring of the Mexican economy, with some of the country's most vulnerable residents facing the harshest conditions.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Economics, Globalization, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- North America
1619. Assessing Scholarly Communication in the Developing World: It Takes More Than Bytes
- Author:
- David Block
- Publication Date:
- 01-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Social Science Research Council
- Abstract:
- STUDIES of scholarly communication in Western Europe and North America describe a world in crisis. (Borgman, 2000.) By the early 1990s, the cost of print journals had reached a level that discouraged their purchase by even the richest institutions, and digital editions of these works, a feature of the next decade, raised the ante higher still. Copyright, the legally-enforced ownership of ideas in some fixed form, has become more contentious in a digital realm, which potentially makes unauthorized usage as simple as "copy and paste." And, finally, while archiving scholarly publications has been difficult in the medium of acidic paper, it has become even more problematic in electronic form where the data themselves, the media that hold them and the computer programs that make them intelligible are all subject to decay or obsolescence. This triumvirate—spiraling information costs, control of information and its preservation for succeeding generations—constitutes the developed world's central focus for research and planning in scholarly communication. (Atkinson, 2000. NINCH).
- Topic:
- Development, Education, International Cooperation, Science and Technology, and Third World
- Political Geography:
- North America and Western Europe
1620. Jewish Life in Ukraine at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century: Part Two
- Author:
- Betsy Gidwitz
- Publication Date:
- 04-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
- Abstract:
- Local Jewish volunteer leadership in Ukraine is most likely to emerge in the federated community organizations established and nurtured by a small number of community rabbis, such as Rabbi Kaminezki in Dnipropetrovsk (Philanthropic Fund of the Dnipropetrovsk Jewish Community) or Rabbi Bleich in Kyiv (Kyiv Municipal Jewish Community), who endorse multiple Jewish community institutions. (Rabbi Vishedski of Donetsk supports a similar effort.) Federated Jewish organizations in Ukraine resemble North American Jewish federations in that they are associations engaged in community planning, fundraising, and budgeting for Jewish welfare, educational, and identity-building needs. Among their most important differences from North American federations is that, to date, each is closely associated with one particular rabbi and his synagogue. As noted, Rabbi Kaminezki has thwarted the activation of other Jewish religious and educational organizations in Dnipropetrovsk. In Kyiv, Rabbi Bleich is more welcoming to other Jewish religious groups, at least in theory; in practice, other Kyiv Jewish religious institutions are so weak (e.g., the Progressive and Masorti movements) or so confrontational (e.g., the Chabad congregation associated with Rabbi Asman) that significant collaboration is impractical.
- Topic:
- Security and Religion
- Political Geography:
- Ukraine, Middle East, Eastern Europe, and North America