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5202. Ten years of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership - accomplishments and prospects
- Author:
- Agata Kołakowska
- Publication Date:
- 10-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Polish Institute of International Affairs
- Abstract:
- Ever since the European Economic Community came into being in the late 1950s, the member countries have always shared a belief that development of economic cooperation, especially through trade, is crucial to fostering good relations with Arab world nations. It was, however, essential to define the kind of cooperation that was to be pursued with countries which were then French colonies and enjoyed trade privileges. The first association agreements were concluded with the three Maghreb states in 1969. As time went by the EEC hammered out a more integrated approach to the non-member countries of the Mediterranean Basin with cooperation focussed on economic and development-related matters—a policy that chimed with the expectations of all the partners. The idea of framing a long-range plan to establish a free-trade area was grounded in a belief in the necessity of enhancing mutual relations in fields that were likely to yield the biggest benefits.
- Topic:
- Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Regional Cooperation
- Political Geography:
- Europe
5203. Monitoring Country Progress in Eastern Europe and Eurasia
- Author:
- Robyn Murphy and Ron Sprout
- Publication Date:
- 09-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United States Agency for International Development
- Abstract:
- This paper presents an abridged version of USAID/E's 10th edition of its annual report which monitors country progress in the twenty-nine transition country region. The salient findings include: (1) 2005 progress in economic reforms in the transition region was comparable to the good pace of economic reforms in recent years. (2) 2005 data show a continuation of the growing democratization gap between CEE and Eurasia that has been evident since the early transition years. (3) The twenty nine transition countries generally fall into four fairly distinct reform groups: (a) Northern Tier CEE; (b) Southern Tier CEE; (c) Eurasian reformers; and (d) Eurasian non-reformers (Turkmenistan, Belarus, and Uzbekistan). (4) Economic growth rates in the region continue to exceed global norms, and within Eastern Europe and Eurasia, continue to be highest in Eurasia in large part due to favorable primary product trends. (5) Many social indicators continue to recover, apparently at least partly in response to improving economic conditions, including falling poverty and infant mortality rates, and rising real wages and education enrollment rates. (6) Yet many countries are (still) experiencing increasing unemployment rates and the life expectancy gap between CEE and Eurasia continues to grow. (7) And some of the transition countries have among the highest crude death rates worldwide along with among the lowest fertility rates (and birth rates) worldwide.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and Health
- Political Geography:
- Eurasia, Eastern Europe, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Belarus
5204. Globalization, Private Security, and Democratic Processes: Implications for the Democratic Peace?
- Author:
- Deborah Avant
- Publication Date:
- 11-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for International Peace and Security Studies
- Abstract:
- During the 1990s and into this century, a robust market for force emerged alongside and intertwined with state military forces. The rise of stateless forces associated with globalization is often seen as breaking down barriers between states and enhancing the prospects for peace, particularly among advanced democracies. Stateless forces, in particular marketbased security, may also, however, alter the functioning of democracies. A widely held, albeit often implicit, assumption of much theory and research in international relations, especially in the literature on the democratic peace, is that states rely on their own military organizations rather than hired guns to project force. The question addressed here is whether the attributes that have been identified as promoting trust among democracies remain strong when states rely on private forces instead of, or in addition to, public ones. If greater reliance on the market to satisfy security needs affects the transparency, constitutionalism and public consent of their foreign policy processes, the market for force could have implications for trust among democracies – and at the extreme, perhaps even for the democratic peace. Overall, we conclude that the use of private security by the US threatens to weaken key institutional mechanisms taken to enhance trust between it and other democracies.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Economics, Globalization, and Markets
- Political Geography:
- United States
5205. Flying Geese or Sitting Ducks: China's Impact on the Trading Fortunes of other Asian Economies
- Author:
- Alan J. Ahearne, John G. Fernald, John W. Schindler, and Prakash Loungani
- Publication Date:
- 12-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
- Abstract:
- This paper updates our earlier work (Ahearne, Fernald, Loungani and Schindler, 2003) on whether China, with its huge pool of labor and an allegedly undervalued exchange rate, is hurting the export performance of other emerging market economies in Asia. We continue to find that while exchange rates matter for export performance, the income growth of trading partners matters far more. This suggests the potential for exports of all Asian economies to grow in harmony as long as global growth is strong. We also examine changes in export shares of Asian economies to the U.S. market and find evidence that dramatic changes in shares are taking place. Many of these changes are consistent with a 'flying geese' pattern in which China moves into the product space vacated by the Asian NIEs or with greater integration of trade across Asia in the production of final goods. Nevertheless, China's dramatic gains in recent years do increase the pressure on Asian economies, particularly in ASEAN and South Asia, to seek areas of comparative advantage.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Foreign Exchange, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
- Political Geography:
- China, South Asia, and Asia
5206. Predicting Sharp Depreciations in Industrial Country Exchange Rates
- Author:
- Jonathan H. Wright and Joseph E. Gagnon
- Publication Date:
- 11-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
- Abstract:
- This paper considers the prediction of large depreciations (both nominal and real) in a panel of industrialized countries using a probit methodology. The current account balance/GDP ratio has a modest but statistically significant effect on the estimated probability of a large depreciation, and gives slight predictive power in an outof- sample forecasting exercise. The CPI inflation rate also has a modest but statistically significant effect in predicting nominal depreciations and has slight predictive power, but this effect is not present for real exchange rates. The GDP growth rate occasionally has a significant effect. A higher current account balance (surplus) tends to reduce the probability of a sharp depreciation; a higher inflation rate tends to increase the probability of a sharp depreciation; and a higher GDP growth rate perhaps tends to reduce the probability of a sharp depreciation.
- Topic:
- Economics, Foreign Exchange, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
5207. Real-Time Price Discovery in Global Stock, Bond and Foreign Exchange Markets
- Author:
- Torben G. Andersen, Tim Bollerslev, Francis X. Diebold, and Clara Vega
- Publication Date:
- 09-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
- Abstract:
- Using a unique high-frequency futures dataset, we characterize the response of U.S., German and British stock, bond and foreign exchange markets to real-time U.S. macroeconomic news. We find that news produces conditional mean jumps; hence high-frequency stock, bond and exchange rate dynamics are linked to fundamentals. Equity markets, moreover, react differently to news depending on the stage of the business cycle, which explains the low correlation between stock and bond returns when averaged over the cycle. Hence our results qualify earlier work suggesting that bond markets react most strongly to macroeconomic news; in particular, when conditioning on the state of the economy, the equity and foreign exchange markets appear equally responsive. Finally, we also document important contemporaneous links across all markets and countries, even after controlling for the effects of macroeconomic news.
- Topic:
- Economics, Foreign Exchange, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
- Political Geography:
- United States
5208. The U.S. Current Account Deficit and the Expected Share of World Output
- Author:
- John H. Rogers and Charles Engel
- Publication Date:
- 04-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
- Abstract:
- We investigate the possibility that the large current account deficits of the U.S. are the outcome of optimizing behavior. We develop a simple long-run world equilibrium model in which a country's current account is determined by the expected discounted present value of its future share of world GDP relative to its current share of world GDP. The model suggests that under some reasonable assumptions about future U.S. GDP growth relative to the rest of the advanced countries – more modest than the growth over the past 20 years – the current account deficit is near optimal levels. We then explore the implications for the real exchange rate. Under some plausible assumptions, the model implies little change in the real exchange rate over the adjustment path, though the conclusion is sensitive to assumptions about tastes and technology. Then we turn to empirical evidence. Two empirical analyses of current account sustainability using actual data suggest that the U.S. is not keeping on a long-run sustainable path. One is a direct test of our model, which finds that the dynamics of the U.S. current account – the increasing deficits over the past decade – are difficult to explain under a particular statistical model (Markov-switching) of expectations of future U.S. growth. But, if we use survey data on forecasted GDP growth in the G7, our very simple model appears to explain the evolution of the U.S. current account remarkably well. We conclude that expectations of robust performance of the U.S. economy relative to the rest of the advanced countries is a contender – though not the only legitimate contender – for explaining the U.S. current account deficit.
- Topic:
- Economics, Foreign Exchange, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
- Political Geography:
- United States
5209. The Miniskirt and the Veil: Aid and Islam in Bulgaria
- Author:
- Dana Steinberg (ed)
- Publication Date:
- 02-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Wilson Center
- Abstract:
- In 1989, while traveling through Spain, Kristen Ghodsee stared in disbelief at the television in the bus station in Barcelona as images appeared of the Berlin Wall crumbling. A year later, she backpacked through Eastern Europe to witness the unprecedented changes in the region. But these countries that held such promise soon suffered economic collapse, and Ghodsee wondered what went wrong.
- Topic:
- Economics, Gender Issues, Islam, and Religion
- Political Geography:
- Eastern Europe and Bulgaria
5210. Corporate Governance in Canada and the United States: A Comparative View
- Author:
- Edward J. Waitzer and Jay W. Lorsch
- Publication Date:
- 04-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Wilson Center
- Abstract:
- Drawing on expertise from both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, the One Issue,Two Voices series is designed to stimulate dialogue on policy issues that have a significant impact on the bilateral relationship. This fifth issue in the series provides an up-to-date snapshot of how corporate governance practices differ between Canada and the United States. Authors Jay Lorsch of the Harvard Business School and Edward Waitzer of the Canadian law firm Stikeman Elliott are leading experts on corporate governance.Together they give us a comparison of the way our countries have responded to changes mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) passed by the U.S. government in 2002.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Economics, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- United States, Canada, and North America