Comparative Advantage and the Cross Section of Business Cycles

Comparative Advantage and the Cross Section of Business Cycles PDF Author:
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 50

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Comparative Advantage and the Cross Section of Business Cycles

Comparative Advantage and the Cross Section of Business Cycles PDF Author:
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 50

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Book Description


Comparative Advantage and the Cross-section of Business Cycles

Comparative Advantage and the Cross-section of Business Cycles PDF Author: Aart Kraay
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business cycles
Languages : en
Pages : 62

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Book Description
Business cycles are both less volatile and more synchronized with the world cycle in rich countries than in poor ones. We develop two alternative explanations based on the idea that comparative advantage causes rich countries to specialize in industries that use new technologies operated by skilled workers, while poor countries specialize in industries that use traditional technologies operated by unskilled workers. Since new technologies are difficult to imitate, the industries of rich countries enjoy more market power and face more inelastic product demands than those of poor countries. Since skilled workers are less likely to exit employment as a result of changes in economic conditions, industries in rich countries face more inelastic labour supplies than those of poor countries. We show that either asymmetry in industry characteristics can generate cross-country differences in business cycles that resemble those we observe in the data.

Comparative Advantage and Heterogeneous Firms

Comparative Advantage and Heterogeneous Firms PDF Author: Andrew B. Bernard
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This paper examines how country, industry and firm characteristics interact in general equilibrium to determine nations' responses to trade liberalization. When firms possess heterogeneous productivity, countries differ in relative factor abundance and industries vary in factor intensity, falling trade costs induce reallocations of resources both within and across industries and countries. These reallocations generate substantial job turnover in all sectors, spur relatively more creative destruction in comparative advantage industries than comparative disadvantage industries, and magnify ex ante comparative advantage to create additional welfare gains from trade. The relative ascendance of high-productivity firms within industries boosts aggregate productivity and drives down consumer prices. In contrast with the neoclassical model, these price declines dampen and can even reverse the real wage losses of scarce factors as countries liberalize.

Hysteresis and Business Cycles

Hysteresis and Business Cycles PDF Author: Ms.Valerie Cerra
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1513536990
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 50

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Book Description
Traditionally, economic growth and business cycles have been treated independently. However, the dependence of GDP levels on its history of shocks, what economists refer to as “hysteresis,” argues for unifying the analysis of growth and cycles. In this paper, we review the recent empirical and theoretical literature that motivate this paradigm shift. The renewed interest in hysteresis has been sparked by the persistence of the Global Financial Crisis and fears of a slow recovery from the Covid-19 crisis. The findings of the recent literature have far-reaching conceptual and policy implications. In recessions, monetary and fiscal policies need to be more active to avoid the permanent scars of a downturn. And in good times, running a high-pressure economy could have permanent positive effects.

Benefit Incidence and the Timing of Program Capture

Benefit Incidence and the Timing of Program Capture PDF Author: Peter Lanjouw
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Educacion primaria
Languages : en
Pages : 41

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Book Description
August 1998 Benefits from schooling and antipoverty programs in rural India were captured early by the nonpoor. The poor tend to benefit from program expansion, and lose from contraction. Conventional methods of assessing benefit incidence hide this fact. Survey-based estimates of average program participation conditional on income are often used in assessing the distributional impacts of public spending reforms. But program participation could well be nonhomogeneous, so that marginal impacts of program expansion or contraction differ greatly from average impacts. Using the geographic variation found in sample survey data for rural India for 1993-94, Lanjouw and Ravallion estimate the marginal odds of participating in schooling and antipoverty programs. Their results suggest early capture of these programs by the nonpoor. Thus, conventional methods of assessing benefit incidence underestimate the gains to India's rural poor from higher public outlays, and their loss from program cuts. This paper-a product of Poverty and Human Resources, Development Research Group-was prepared as a background paper for the Bank's 1998 Poverty Assessment for India. The authors may be contacted at [email protected] or [email protected].

Total Strangers Or Soul Mates?

Total Strangers Or Soul Mates? PDF Author: J. Luis Guasch
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Caribbean Area
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
August 1998 As Latin American and Caribbean countries have liberalized their trade regimes, they have enthusiastically adopted antidumping measures that reduce competition. Competition laws are only beginning to make their appearance in the region. Antidumping and competition policies are strangers in the region when they should be soul mates. As a result of trade reforms in the 1980s and 1990s Latin American and Caribbean countries became more open than at any time since World War II. However, these countries have recently begun to use antidumping measures as the new protection weapon of choice, as other barriers to trade have been reduced. In fact, the fastest growing antidumping actions are within regional integration arrangements, where they are being applied by member countries against each other. Guasch and Rajapatirana argue that antidumping is anticompetitive and that its usual justification as a counter to predatory behavior is not relevant in the region. It is imperative, they say, that antidumping be contained if not altogether eliminated. While they find that safeguards are less anticompetitive than antidumping, they believe that all exceptional protection measures, such as antidumping, countervailing, and safeguards, should be considered together with competition policies. In other words, they should become soul mates rather than remain total strangers. Guasch and Rajapatirana do not find that fine-tuning antidumping policy is a good option. Rather, they believe that both trade and competition policymaking ought to be brought under a single entity, as in Peru. This would lead to a more competitive solution. This paper-a product of the Finance, Private Sector, and Infrastructure Group, Latin America and the Caribbean Region-is part of a larger effort in the department to. The authors may be contacted at [email protected] or [email protected].

Crisis Management in Argentina During the 1994-95 Mexican Crisis

Crisis Management in Argentina During the 1994-95 Mexican Crisis PDF Author: Eduardo J. J. Ganapolsky
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Kriser
Languages : en
Pages : 39

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Book Description
The Mexican crisis of 1994-95 had strong spillover effects on Argentina. The Argentine government successfully announced a series of policies to mitigate the contagion effects. This paper studies how capital markets reacted to each policy announcement and news. Capital markets welcomed announcements that demonstrated a firm commitment to the currency board. The agreement with the IMF, the dollarization of reserve deposits in the central bank, and changes in reserve requirements had a strong positive impact on market returns. After a period of higher volatility, the appointment of a new finance minister significantly decreased the variance of stock and bond returns, while lower reserve requirements increased the volatility of interest rates.

Calm After the Storms

Calm After the Storms PDF Author: Francisco H.G. Ferreira
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Chile
Languages : en
Pages : 54

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Book Description
With the profound political and economic changes of the 1970s and 1980s behind it, and regardless of its trade patterns, Chile's income distribution is, for the moment, calm. Education may be the most important variable affecting the structure of, and changes in, inequality in Chile. After rising in the 1960s, falling in the early 1970s, and rising again from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, income inequality seems to have stabilized in Chile since about 1987. With the stormy period of economic and political reform of the 1970s and 1980s well over, no statistically significant Lorenz dominance results could be detected after 1987. Scalar measures of inequality confirm this picture of stability but suggest a slight change in the shape of the density function-with some compression at the bottom compensated for by a stretching at the top. As inequality remained broadly stable, sustained economic growth led to substantial poverty reduction, according to a range of measures and with respect to three different poverty lines. Poverty mixed stochastic dominance tests confirm this result. All of these findings are robust to different choices of equivalence scales. An examination of the factors underlying these trends suggests that an equilibrium has (for the moment) been reached between rising demand for and supply of skills-the demand for skills associated with technological progress and the supply of skills associated with expansion of education. Chile's trading pattern might well be tangential to its recent distributional dynamics. This paper-a product of the Poverty Reduction Group, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network-is part of a larger effort in the network to understand income distribution dynamics in developing countries. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project Poverty and Income Distribution Dynamics in a High Growth Economy: The Case of Chile, 1987-94 (RPO 681-59). Francisco H.G. Ferreira may be contacted at [email protected].

Manufacturing Firms in Developing Countries

Manufacturing Firms in Developing Countries PDF Author: James R. Tybout
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Developing countries
Languages : en
Pages : 66

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Appraising Workfare Programs

Appraising Workfare Programs PDF Author: Martin Ravallion
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Costos de mano de obra
Languages : en
Pages : 29

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Book Description
This paper offers some simple analytic tools for a rapid appraisal of workfare programs. It discusses requirements for successful programs and explains the conditions and information requirements that should be taken into account when designing and implementing such programs. Programs are studied in the abstract and from stylized versions of a range of actual programs.