Number of results to display per page
Search Results
1642. Currency Boards or Dollarization — Solutions or Traps
- Author:
- John Chown
- Publication Date:
- 08-1999
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Chatham House
- Abstract:
- Currency boards have been suggested for Russia, and adopted elsewhere in eastern Europe. Brazil's fixed rate has had to be abandoned, but Argentina is considering replacing its currency board with dollarization, and suggesting this solution for the rest of Latin America. Fixed exchange-rate regimes (and the crawling peg in Russia) have collapsed in Southeast Asia but Hong Kong, which had a formal currency board, has (so far) survived.
- Topic:
- Economics and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Central America, Caribbean, and North America
1643. U.S. Commercial Diplomacy
- Author:
- Raymond J. Albright, S. Robbin Johnson, David J. Rothkopf, Christopher B. Johnstone, and Gary C. Hufbauer
- Publication Date:
- 05-1998
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- In the larger scheme of U.S. trade, government financing agencies do not loom as large as fiscal and monetary policies, dollar exchange rates, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Yet, the acronym financial agencies—the Export–Import Bank (Ex–Im), Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), and Trade Development Agency (TDA) —are prominent in the current debates of what is needed to keep American exports competitive, especially in the most dynamic areas of U.S. trade growth—Asia and Latin America.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, and International Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- United States, Latin America, and North America
1644. Transcript: World Economic Update I
- Author:
- Daniel K. Tarullo, John Lipsky, Bruce Steinberg, and David Jones
- Publication Date:
- 11-1998
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Abstract:
- Mr. Daniel K. Tarullo: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We'd like to get started promptly so that we can end promptly. Welcome to this morning's session on the update of world economic conditions. This is the first in what we anticipate to be a series of updates, perhaps quarterly, sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, probably right here in this room, part of a continuing effort to focus on world economic conditions, both for themselves, and as they intersect with foreign policy concerns.
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, Asia, South America, Latin America, and North America
1645. Negotiating Economic Transitions in Liberizing Polities
- Author:
- Frances Hagopian
- Publication Date:
- 05-1998
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- How do governments struggling to consolidate new democracies enact effective stabilization and adjustment policies, reform the public sector, and deregulate markets? And what has been the impact of economic liberalization on political institutions and systems of political representation? Treating economic and political transitions as mutually interdependent, this paper couples these questions to suggest a reformulation of the conventional wisdom about how economic liberalization proceeds and how political interests are determined. It challenges the assumption that neoliberal reform is most readily achieved in liberalizing polities when visionary political leaders surrounded by coherent economic teams with comprehensive programs in place act with a wide margin of autonomy from society. It also questions the contention that structures of political representation are the outgrowth of either economic organization or the product of state engineering. The paper makes two arguments. Its central argument is that economic reform is accomplished most readily when government reformers, acting through available clientelistic, corporatist, and party-based networks of mediation, negotiate the compliance of public and private sector representatives of social actors for the introduction of market-oriented reforms. They trade public resources or legislation favoring the representational status of political or social actors in the present for the agreement of those actors to accept diminished state resources for their organizations or constituents in the future. The use of specific networks of negotiation, moreover, influences the design of liberalization policies and helps to account for national differences in the pace and sequence of economic reform measures. The paper's second argument is that those systems of political representation that are strengthened as a result of the temporary advantages that accrue to them during the process of state retreat will endure even when they are incompatible with economic liberalism. This is so because the politicians and group leaders who manage these networks have the opportunity to design institutions that will allow them to accommodate themselves and adapt their power bases to economies in which the market plays a larger role.
- Topic:
- Economics and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- South America, Latin America, Central America, and North America
1646. Collective Management of International Financial Crises
- Author:
- Saori N. Katada
- Publication Date:
- 07-1998
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
- Abstract:
- The world has experienced many financial crises. Despite numerous research and policy efforts in prevention to present them at of large scale, the global economy has not seen economists' (and investors') Nirvana of financial globalization without the occasional crises. On the contrary, the increasing dynamism and changing nature of financial flows across national borders seem to have created a larger number of new problems for creditors, debtors and international financial institutions. That has typically been true for middle income countries in Latin America and Asia and, very recently, in Eastern Europe, which have been integrated into the international financial system. During the two decades between the late 1970s and the late 1990s, three major sets of financial crises originated from those middle income countries, intensifying concerns for international financial stability.
- Topic:
- Economics, Globalization, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Israel, East Asia, Latin America, Central America, and North America
1647. Theoretical Explanations of Trade Competitiveness and a North American Application
- Author:
- Imtiaz Hussain
- Publication Date:
- 01-1998
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- How do we reconcile economic competitiveness with trade regionalism? This exploratory investigation first takes stock of how competitiveness has been defined by both economists and political scientists, then extracts an inclusive model from the different literatures, and finally broadly assesses business transactions and trends across North America using that model. Beginning with the Ricardo-Viner and Hecksher-Olin explanations, various types of competitiveness articulated by Michael Porter, Mancur Olson, and David Mares are subsequently brought in. preliminary findings presented as hypotheses for future testing, suggest that: that evaporation of hegemony has resulted in multiple claims to competitiveness across North America, policy convergences are more widespread and common than ever before, regional-level cooperation provides an efficient means for all three countries to offset global competitiveness, and domestic interests, though still a potential veto force, are slowly embracing, rather than opposing, supranational efforts.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Europe and North America
1648. Agriculture and Supranationalism: A Comparative Study on North American and West European Policy-Making Experiences
- Author:
- Imtiaz Hussain
- Publication Date:
- 01-1998
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- The proliferation of regional trading blocs in the 1990s raises a fundamental question: To what extent is policy-making shifting from the national government to a regional entity? The conversion of GATT into the World Trade Organization, also in the 1990s, further complicates the search for an answer since new or revitalized multilateral rules also exert influences upon policy outcomes. I apply that question to a study of farm policy, with the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as my cases. The next two sections profile the importance of agriculture and my rationale in selecting the two cases before pointing gout the organization of the remainder of the study.
- Topic:
- Agriculture and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Europe and North America
1649. Dispute Settlement, Domestic Institutions and Political Integration in North America: A Comparative Study
- Author:
- Imtiaz Hussain
- Publication Date:
- 01-1998
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- Created to cultivate interaction between domestic and supranational economic arrangements/institutions, the North American Free Trade Agreement is in increasing need of arrangements/institutions which bridge political boundaries as well. The document's binational panels, for instance, have been authorized to review domestic duty determinations, but have also dragged domestic political practices, customs, arrangements, and institutions into the supranational arena, in turn exposing potentially deep differences across national boundaries. A comparative study of both basic and complex domestic political structures, affected directly or indirectly by NAFTA's dispute settlement procedures, reveals: that as reciprocal relationships increase, arrangements and/or institutions at both levels, domestic and supranational, become more vulnerable; and that different experiences across national boundaries may produce uneven degrees of integration. These findings lead to an explorative assessment of political integration stemming form the economic integration currently underway.
- Topic:
- International Relations, International Trade and Finance, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- North America
1650. Environmental Protectionism and Comparative Observations in West Europe and North America
- Author:
- Imtiaz Hussain
- Publication Date:
- 01-1998
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- Environmental concerns were seen by some as "a welcome guest in the free trade party" when they were first taken seriously in the early 1990s. Although they have since mushroomed in size and significance, the debate rages if policy measures are responding to demand. Trading behavior, for example, has not altered appreciably owing to the mounting pressures, but agreements increasingly acknowledge the need for safeguards. On the one hand is the problem of public pressure, very often of grassroots origins, upon policy-makers at all levels—multilaterally, internationally, regionally, nationally, and locally. On the other is the inquiry if policy impact is evolving differently, not only at various policy-making levels, but also in various parts of the world. How, indeed, have concerns and policy measures meshed? My broad response elaborates why environmental protectionism is chosen as a topic first, then explains the selection of cases for comparison, before turning to theoretical considerations, the empirical study itself, and finally drawing conclusions and implications, all in that order.
- Topic:
- Development and Environment
- Political Geography:
- Europe and North America