Dealing with Losers addresses the transition costs associated with most policy reforms and strategies for mitigating those costs in order to facilitate the necessary political compromises to ensure that socially desirable reforms move forward. This book examines widely disparate public policy contexts - from trade liberalization to agricultural supply management, immigration, and climate change policy - to illustrate the importance, in political economy terms, of well-considered transition cost mitigation strategies.
This compelling two-volume collection presents the major literary contributions to the economic analysis of the consequences of trade liberalization on growth, productivity, labor market outcomes and economic inequality. Examining the classical theories that stress gains from trade stemming from comparative advantage, the selection also comprises more recent theories of imperfect competition, where any potential gains from trade can stem from competitive effects or the international transmission of knowledge. Empirical contributions provide evidence regarding the explanatory power of these various theories, including work on the effects of trade openness on economic growth, wages, and income inequality, as well as evidence on the effects of trade on firm productivity, entry and exit. Prefaced by an original introduction from the editor, the collection will to be an invaluable research resource for academics, practitioners and those drawn to this fascinating topic.
Can knowledge of financial policies in developing countries over four decades help the socialist economies of Asia and Eastern Europe become open market economies in the 1990s? In all these countries the loss of fiscal and monetary control has often resulted in high inflation that undermines the liberalization process itself. In the second edition of The Order of Economic Liberalization, Ronald McKinnon builds on his influential work on the liberalization of financial markets in less developed countries and outlines the progression necessary to move from a "repressed" to an open economy. New to this edition are chapters that contrast the gradual Chinese approach to liberalizing domestic and foreign trade with the "big bang" approach followed by some Eastern European countries and republics of the former Soviet Union. Financial control and macroeconomic stability, McKinnon argues, are more critical to a successful transition than is any crash program to privatize state-owned industrial assets and the banking system.
In a neoliberal era, when the ideology of the free market governs community development as much as international trade, a conflict between capital and tradition is inevitable. Issues such as the value ascribed to honour and social prestige are difficult to negotiate with economic opportunity. Using the example of a 'traditional' Nepalese market town, Katharine Neilson Rankin explores how economic liberalization has blended with local cultures of value. Utilizing the ethnographic method of anthropology and the comparative and normative thrust of geography, Rankin undertakes a critique of neoliberal approaches to development. She demonstrates how market-led development does not expand opportunity, but rather deepens existing injustice and inequality, which is further exacerbated by planners eager to implement market-led approaches relying on naively idealistic notions of 'social capital' to expand poor people's access to the market. The Cultural Politics of Markets makes a clear case for a strategic merger between anthropological and planning perspectives in thinking about the issue of market transformation.
This book examines the dynamics shaping the economic process of economic liberalisation in Indonesia since the mid-1980's. Much writing on the process of economic liberalisation in developing countries views economic liberalisation as the victory of economic rationality over political and social interests. In contrast, this book argues that economic liberalisation should not be understood in these terms, but rather in the way that political social interests shape processes of economic reform in both a positive and negative sense. Specifically, Rosser argues that economic liberalisation needs to be understood in terms of the extent to which economic crises shift the balance of power and influence within society away from coalitions opposed to reform and towards those in favour of reform. In the Indonesian context, the main coalitions that need to be examined in this respect are the politico-bureaucrats and the conglomerates who have generally opposed reform and mobile capitalists who have generally supported reform. Based on extensive original research, and providing much new material, the book considers the politics of economic policy-making in Indonesia in a range of sectors including the capital market, intellectual property law, the banking industry, and the trade and investment sectors. Analysing why the nature of economic policy in Indonesia has varied over time, this study argues that there is nothing inevitable about a transition to a fully-fledged liberal market order in Indonesia, and outlines possible future scenarios for the country's political economy.
Theorizing Transition provides a comprehensive examination of the economic, political, social and cultural transformations in post-Communist countries and an important critique of transition theory and policy. The authors create the basis of a theoretical understanding of transition in terms of a political economy of capitalist development. The diversity of forms and complexities of transition are examined through a wide range of examples from post-Soviet countries and comparative studies from countries such as Vietnam and China. Theorizing Transition challenges many of the comfortable assumptions unleashed by the euphoria of democratisation and the triumphalism of market capitalism in the early 1990s and shows transition to be much more complex than mainstream theory suggests.
This volume includes many of Edward D Mansfield's contributions to research on the political economy of trade. Among the topics addressed are the effects of power relations and international economic institutions on trade flows, the influence of domestic politics on trade policy, the factors that shape the mass public's attitudes toward trade, and the determinants of the formation and expansion of international trade agreements. The Political Economy of International Trade is an essential reference for scholars and graduate students interested in the international political economy. Contents:Systemic Approaches to the International Trading System:The Concentration of Capabilities and International TradePower Politics and International TradeAlliances, Preferential Trading Arrangements, and International TradeInternational Institutions and the Volatility of International TradeThe Political Economy of Trade Policy and Trade Attitudes:The Political Economy of Nontariff Barriers: A Cross-National AnalysisFree to Trade: Democracies, Autocracies, and International TradeVotes and Vetoes: The Political Determinants of Commercial OpennessSupport for Free Trade: Self-Interest, Sociotropic Politics, and Out-Group AnxietyThe Political Economy of Preferential Trading Agreements:The Proliferation of Preferential Trading ArrangementsWhy Democracies Cooperate More: Electoral Control and International Trade AgreementsVetoing Co-operation: The Impact of Veto Players on Preferential Trading ArrangementsMultilateral Determinants of Regionalism: The Effects of GATT/WTO on the Formation of Preferential Trading ArrangementsThe Expansion of Preferential Trading Arrangements Readership: Postgraduates, researchers, academics, and policymakers interested in international political economics. Key Features:Covers a much broader range of topics than other competing titlesAddresses the international influences on trade flows, the domestic influences on both trade flows and trade policy, and how individuals in the United States perceive trade, and also addresses the international and domestic influences on trade agreements between countries The author and his co-authors are among the most prominent scholars of international political economy Keywords:Political Economy;International Trade;Globalization
Combining theoretical and empirical insights, this book provides an in-depth analysis of South Asia's transition in the areas of democracy, political economy and security since the end of the Cold War. It provides a close scrutiny to the state of democracy and political economy in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
This report is a review of the global regulatory environment that surrounds the marketing of food (including non-alcoholic beverages) to children. It covers regulation of television advertising, in-school marketing, sponsorship, product placement, Internet marketing, sales promotions, and United Nations codes applicable to the regulation of marketing to children. The report concludes with a summary of key issues, knowledge gaps, and questions to guide future research and policy development.
One of the most enduring questions in economics involves how a nation could accelerate the pace of its economic development. One of the most enduring answers to this question is to promote exports -either because doing so directly influences development via encouraging production of goods for export, or because export promotion permits accumulation of foreign exchange which permits importation of high-quality goods and services, which can in turn be used to expand the nation's production possibilities. In either case, growth is said to be export-led; the latter case is the so-called "two-gap" hypothesis (McKinnon, 1964; Findlay, 1973). The early work on export-led growth consisted of static cross-country com parisons (Michaely, 1977; Balassa, 1978; Tyler, 1981; Kormendi and Meguire, 1985). These studies generally concluded that there is strong evidence in favour of export-led growth because export growth and income growth are highly correlated. However, Kravis pointed out in 1970 that the question is an essen tially dynamic one: as he put it, are exports the handmaiden or the engine of growth? To make this determination one needs to look at time series to see whether or not exports are driving income. This approach has been taken in a number of papers (Jung and Marshall, 1985; Chow, 1987; Serletis, 1992; Kunst and Marin, 1989; Marin, 1992; Afxentiou and Serletis, 1991), designed to assess whether or not individual countries exhibit statistically significant evidence of export-led growth using Granger causality tests.
