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571. International Monetary Policy Coordination and Financial Market Integration

Author:
Alan Sutherland
Publication Date:
12-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
The welfare gains from international coordination of monetary policy are analysed in a two-country model with sticky prices. The gains from coordination are compared under two alternative structures for financial markets: financial autarky and risk sharing. The welfare gains from coordination are found to be largest when there is risk sharing and the elasticity of substitution between home and foreign goods is greater than unity. When there is no risk sharing the gains to coordination are almost zero. It is also shown that the welfare gain from risk sharing can be negative when monetary policy is uncoordinated.
Topic:
Economics, Human Welfare, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

572. The Next Wave of HIV/AIDS: Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, India, and China

Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
The number of people with HIV/AIDS will grow significantly by the end of the decade. The increase will be driven by the spread of the disease in five populous countries—Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, India, and China—where the number of infected people will grow from around 14 to 23 million currently to an estimated 50 to 75 million by 2010.This estimate eclipses the projected 30 to 35 million cases by the end of the decade in central and southern Africa, the current focal point of the pandemic.
Topic:
Human Welfare and Poverty
Political Geography:
Africa and Asia

573. Military Operations: Information on U.S. Use of Land Mines in the Persian Gulf War (GAO-02-1003)

Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
The utility of land mines on the modern battlefield has come into question in recent years, largely because of their potential for causing unintended casualties and affecting U.S. forces' maneuverability. These concerns were raised during the Persian Gulf War (August 1990 to April 1991). In the Gulf War, the Department of Defense (DOD) deployed over 580,000 military personnel and a wide array of conventional weapons and munitions that it had designed and acquired primarily to fight the Soviet Union. The munitions used by these forces included several types of land mines and represented the largest U.S. combat use of its newer aircraftand artillery-delivered scatterable self-destructing land mines. Since the United States was attacked on September 11, 2001, DOD has been reviewing war plans to ensure that the military services are ready to meet future U.S. national security needs. This effort includes plans for the use of land mines. U.S. Gulf War experience documented in DOD after-action and lessons-learned reports provides insights concerning land mines.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, and Human Welfare
Political Geography:
Persia

574. Optimal Monetary Policy with Durable and Non-Durable Goods

Author:
Christopher J. Erceg and Andrew T. Levin
Publication Date:
07-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
The durable goods sector is much more interest sensitive than the non-durables sector, and these sectoral differences have important implications for monetary policy. In this paper, we perform VAR analysis of quarterly US data and find that a monetary policy innovation has a peak impact on durable expenditures that is roughly five times as large as its impact on non-durable expenditures. We then proceed to formulate and calibrate a two-sector dynamic general equilibrium model that roughly matches the impluse response functions of the data. While the social welfare function involves sector-specific output gaps and inflation rates, we find that performance of the optimal policy rule can be closely approximated by a very simple rule that targets a weighted average of aggregate wage and price inflation rates. In contrast, some commonly-prescribed policy rules (such as strict price inflation targeting and Taylor's rule) perform very poorly in terms of social welfare.
Topic:
Economics, Human Welfare, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

575. Health Care in Germany

Author:
Christa Altenstetter
Publication Date:
05-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Union Studies Center
Abstract:
The question of whether the introduction of competition and managed care in the German health care system means a "new paradigm" or simply a "stalemated strategy" was raised in a 1999 issue of Health Affairs by Lawrence Brown and Volker F. Amelung (1999). In that same issue, Uwe E. Reinhard (1999) responded with a question of his own: "Why would Germany wish to emulate the US style of managed care, with its as yet unproven effect on quality and outcomes?" The core of their disagreement seems to center around two issues. First, can competition and managed care flourish in a political culture and healthcare system where central policy-making and enforcement arrangements are embedded? The distinct political economy and history of Germany may create conditions that are not conducive to competition and managed care, unlike the US. The second issue that leads to the different interpretations above is the elusive concept of quality in health care, especially how to measure and achieve it.
Topic:
Government, Human Welfare, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Germany

576. Ámbito y Papel de los Especialistas en las Reformas en los Sistemas de Salud: Los Casos de Brasil y México

Author:
Raquel Abrantes Pêgo and Célia Almeida
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to consider the role played by the community of public health experts in the contemporary health sector reform process. It discusses the issue based on the case of Brazil and Mexico, because, as specialists, public health researchers in both countries have directed their participation to influencing the conflict over the reorientation of health policy in their respective countries. One of their approaches has consisted in developing a new cognitive framework that underpins technical health sector reform projects understood as policy proposals with technical content. Our purpose is to show that these experts manage to influence the national debate over health sector reform when the technical and scientific discussion leaves the academic sphere and goes to the realm of social and political debate. In our opinion, this occurs because this technical and scientific knowledge has been held out, independently of its intrinsic value, as a political and ideological alternative platform for sustaining a health sector reform proposal which, once transformed into a policy project, has served to aggregate certain political and social forces and not others. The study sets out each case separately, in each showing first the emergence of a new body of thinking in the field of public health (Collective Health in Brazil and New Public Health in Mexico). It then demonstrates how these groups of experts have articulated and interacted with specific political and social forces within their respective societies, and analyses how they have become a political stream within health institutions in the struggle to control the sector's future.
Topic:
Development and Human Welfare
Political Geography:
Brazil, South America, Latin America, Central America, North America, and Mexico

577. Conflict Prevention

Author:
Roberto Aliboni
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
The Barcelona Declaration has to be considered as an international peacebuilding regime. International peacebuilding regimes, according to the definition of the International Crisis Group-ICG, are “international laws, norms, agreements and arrangements - global, regional or bilateral in scope - designed to minimise threats to security, promote confidence and trust, and create frameworks for dialogue and co-operation”. They are geared to prevent conflict and to post-conflict management (including preventing conflicts from re-escalating).
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Human Welfare, and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe and Barcelona

578. Human Rights

Author:
Sebastiano Maffettone
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
In this paper I propose a version of human rights theory based on an interpretation of the ethics of international relations. This interpretation is built around the idea of responsible development and around the recognition of different ways of constructing local identities. Such a formulation –in my opinion- can be considered intellectually tenable and practically useful in order to obtain a more stable peace in an age characterized by numerous ethnic and religious conflicts. Everything considered, the consistency of the cultural and the legal interpretations with an ethical reading of human rights would seem to be, if not fully evident, quite acceptable today. On the other hand, the relation between this legal and cultural approach to human rights and the treatment of human rights as economic-social rights is more likely to give rise to problems. Indeed, I maintain that an ethical interpretation of sustainable development could provide this missing element of the general construction. I may say that, somehow, in the proposed theory, I am trying to combine into a single conceptual framework the three historical or classical - whichever you prefer – versions of human rights, meant as personal liberty, economic-social rights and protection of cultural minorities, respectively.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Human Rights, Human Welfare, and International Cooperation

579. Reducing urban and industrial pollution in Russia

Author:
Steve Gale
Publication Date:
02-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Agency for International Development
Abstract:
A USAID wastewater treatment project improved Moscow's drinking water and its companion watershed development project advanced environmental education in the districts near Moscow. A third project in Volgograd failed to build a viable air quality monitoring program to curb pollution. Sustainability and replicability were undercut by failure to plan for replication from the outset and promotion of state-of-the-art (rather than appropriate) technology. Lack of good baseline data and the inability to distinguish results stemming from the projects from those related to the economic downturn made independent assessment of project effectiveness difficult.
Topic:
Environment, Human Welfare, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Asia, and Moscow

580. Risk and Reward: U.S. - E.U. Regulatory Cooperation on Food Safety and the Environment

Author:
David L. Aaron and C. Boyden Gray
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
In recent years, environmental protection and food safety have been among the most volatile issues in the U.S.-European relationship. While they are now overshadowed somewhat by the transatlantic debate over Iraq and other political and military matters, tensions over environment and food safety are just below the surface, and — if not addressed — w ill have enduring corrosive and divisive effects. Indeed, the current acrimony over these issues has contributed to concern about an erosion of shared transatlantic values and a deterioration in U.S.-European relations generally. Moreover, as recently demonstrated at the Johannesburg UN summit on sustainable development, the failure of the United States and Europe to work together on these issues does not just have bilateral consequences. It represents a significant lost opportunity to provide leadership in addressing environment and food safety on a global level. The United States and Europe have both been leaders in these areas — a fact that is overlooked far too often in the current debate. The impact of their current differences has been felt most concretely in the transatlantic trade arena, in a series of persistent disputes. But these differences represent far more than just another transatlantic trading issue. Unless they now find a way to reconcile their different perspectives and approaches, the United States and the European Union will miss real opportunities to work together in addressing global environmental and public health issues.
Topic:
Environment and Human Welfare
Political Geography:
United States and Europe