Search

Begin New Search Topic International Trade and Finance Publication Year within 25 Years

2051. Workforce Intermediaries for the Twenty-first Century

Author:
Robert Giloth
Publication Date:
11-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
American Assembly at Columbia University
Abstract:
Confronted with businesses facing a long-term shortage of skilled workers and evaluations showing that job training for the poor over the past 25 years had produced only meager results, a number of groups throughout the country have sought to find a more effective approach. The efforts of these partnerships, which editor Robert Giloth calls 'workforce intermediaries', are characterized by a focus on improving business productivity and helping low-income individuals not just find a job, but advance over time to jobs that enable them to support themselves and their families. This book takes stock of the world of workforce intermediaries: entrepreneurial partnerships that include businesses, unions, community colleges, and community organizations. Noted scholars and policy makers examine the development and effectiveness of these intermediaries, and a concluding chapter discusses how to provide a more coherent approach to increasing the viability and capacity of these important institutions.
Topic:
Economics, Education, Human Welfare, International Trade and Finance, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2052. Promoting U.S. Economic Growth and Security Through Expanding World Trade: A Call for Bold American Leadership

Author:
Research and Policy Committee of the Committee for Economic Development
Publication Date:
06-2003
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Conference Board
Abstract:
This report presents a leadership vision of a strong and open global trading system, and urges the United States and its trading partners to adopt vital policy reforms, including delinking agricultural subsidies from prices and production while opening agricultural markets everywhere, and eliminating all tariffs and non-tariff barriers in both manufacturing and services.
Topic:
Security, International Trade and Finance, Leadership, Economy, and Economic growth
Political Geography:
North America, Global Focus, and United States of America

2053. Monetary Policy Rules and the International Monetary Transmission

Author:
Leonor Coutinho
Publication Date:
10-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
This paper analyses alternative monetary policy rules for the ECB, using a two "country" model of the euro area and the US, that assumes monopolistic competition, sticky prices and optimizing agents. The alternative rules analyzed for the ECB are ranked by their ability to stabilize consumption, output, and inflation and maximize consumers' welfare. The analysis contributes toward understanding the trade-offs faced by policymakers in open economies and provides some support for the current design of the ECB's operational framework. The results suggest that stabilizing money-growth, in addition to inflation, gives an additional degree of freedom to stabilize output. Although price stability is likely to remain the primary objective of the ECB, monetary policy must "without prejudice of price stability (...) support the general economic policies in the Community..." (Article 2). Hence monitoring money, under certain assumptions about the shocks hitting the economy, may deliver a better outcome in terms of output stabilization which should allow the ECB to fulfill its secondary but nonetheless important commitment.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

2054. The Economic Impact of Enlargement on the European Economy: Problems and Perspectives

Author:
Paul Brenton
Publication Date:
10-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
Much of the attention on the economic aspects of the forthcoming enlargement of the EU have concentrated upon the high-profile issues which are linked to the level of relative economic development in the acceding countries; the perceived threat of large-scale migration and the budgetary costs arising from implementation of EU agricultural and regional policies. This paper briefly discusses that these are not insurmountable problems and stresses that the main difficulties from the next enlargement may arise from the effective inclusion of the acceding countries into the Single Market, the microeconomic hub of the EU. We discuss that the process of regulatory harmonisation will become more difficult in an EU of 25 or more members, which entails greater emphasis on the principle of mutual recognition as the main tool for ensuring freedom of movement of goods and services. However, mutual recognition has its limits and is likely to be less effective the more diverse the countries involved.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe

2055. Outsourcing and Inequality

Author:
Paul Brenton, Bob Anderton, and Eva Oscarsson
Publication Date:
10-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
This paper brings together and analyses the results of empirical analyses which, in contrast to most other studies, find that trade has been a significant cause of labour market inequality in various industrialised countries. The approach is based upon the concept of outsourcing – whereby the low-skill parts of the production chain are 'outsourced' to low-wage countries. A distinguishing feature of the empirical work is the use of highly detailed trade data, which allow imports from high- and low-wage countries to be separately identified at the industry level. Using cost minimisation framework, we show that imports from low-wage countries have made a significant contribution to the decline in the wage-bill share and/or relative employment of less-skilled workers in the UK, the USA, Sweden and Italy. We also show how the country-specific characteristics of outsourcing can lead to quite different inequality outcomes in different countries. In line with other studies, we also find that technology has played an important role in causing the increase in inequality in many countries. However, there is also some evidence that some of the rapid increase in the application of new technologies in recent decades has been trade-induced through mechanisms such as 'defensive innovation'.
Topic:
Economics, Industrial Policy, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States and United Kingdom

2056. Who Needs Foreign Banks?

Author:
Daniel Gros
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
This paper shows that countries with weak banking system and fiscal institutions, might benefit from the presence of foreign banks, which can constitute a commitment and transparency device. Foreign banks can also reduce the probability of self-fulfilling speculative attacks. A strong presence of foreign banks can make a currency peg feasible in the first place by rendering it more resistant to speculative attacks. The European experience is instructive in this respect. In all of the candidate countries from Central and Eastern Europe (CEEC) the banking system is now dominated by foreign banks. This is now taken for granted, but it is unusual if one looks at the existing EU-15 members, where foreign banks play a marginal role in even the smallest economies.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe

2057. Interdependent Growth in the EU: The Role of Trade

Author:
María Garcia-Vega and José A. Herce
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
After properly modelling growth externalities and using spatial econometric techniques we investigate whether economic integration promotes interdependent growth among countries. We conclude that this has been indeed the case for advanced OECD countries and that, for those countries belonging to the EU, through successive enlargements, the effect has been even stronger. More precisely, if every (trade) partner of a given country experiences an extra growth of 1 percentage point, this economy will profit from an extra 0.5 point, and if this country belongs to the EU it will have an additional increase of its rate of growth of 0.2 points. Both figures can be interpreted as growth externalities with the latter suggesting that an integration process like the one followed by the EU has an (positive) effect on growth.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe

2058. Making EU Trade Agreements Work: The Role of Rules of Origin

Author:
Paul Brenton and Miriam Manchin
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
A key element of the EU's free trade and preferential trade agreements is the extent to which they deliver improved market access and so contribute to the EUs foreign policy objectives towards developing countries and neighbouring countries in Europe, including the countries of the Balkans. Previous preferential trade schemes have been ineffective in delivering improved access to the EU market. The main reason for this is probably the very restrictive rules of origin that the EU imposes, coupled with the costs of proving consistency with these rules. If the EU wants the 'Everything but Arms' agreement and free trade agreements with countries in the Balkans to generate substantial improvements in access to the EU market for products from these countries then it will have to reconsider the current rules of origin and implement less restrictive rules backed upon by a careful safeguards policy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Economics, Government, Human Rights, International Trade and Finance, Migration, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe and Balkans

2059. The Development of European Citizenship and its Relevance to the Integration of Refugees

Author:
Joanna Apap
Publication Date:
01-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
Achieving an integrated Europe involves political and social unity as much as economic integration. Thus, the issue of European citizenship is central to the debate about European integration. Union citizenship needs to be distinguished from national citizen ship. Every citizen of the Union enjoys a first circle of nationality rights within a member state and a second circle of new rights enjoyed in any member state of the EU. The presence of immigrants in Europe also raises wider questions for government policy in the field of citizenship. There are various issues that arise in the European context with respect to the boundaries of citizenship. One of the main questions in this regard is the extent to which the division between European Union citizens and third country nationals will continue to prevail.
Topic:
Economics, Government, Human Rights, International Trade and Finance, Migration, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe

2060. Non-Cooperative Dynamics of Multi-Agent Teams

Author:
Robert L. Axtell
Publication Date:
07-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
Results on the formation of multi-agent teams are reviewed and extended. Conditions are specified under which it is individually rational for agents to spontaneously form coalitions in order to engage in collective action. In a cooperative setting the formation of such groups is to be expected. Here we show that in non-cooperative environments—presumably a more realistic context for a variety of both human and software agents—self-organized coalitions are capable of extracting welfare improvements. The Nash equilibria of these coalitional formation games are demonstrated to always exist and be unique. Certain free rider problems in such group formation dynamics lead to the possibility of dynamically unstable Nash equilibria, depending on the nature of intra-group compensation and coalition size. Yet coherent groups can still form, if only temporarily, as demonstrated by computational experiments. Such groups of agents can be either long-lived or transient. The macroscopic structure of these emergent 'bands' of agents is stationary in sufficiently large populations, despite constant adaptation at the agent level. It is argued that assumptions concerning attainment of agent-level (Nash) equilibrium, so ubiquitous in conventional economics and game theory, are difficult to justify behaviorally and highly restrictive theoretically, and are thus unlikely to serve either as fertile design objectives or robust operating principles for realistic multi-agent systems.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and Latin America