BiblioVault - Books about Economics & Trade

Measurement of Nontariff Barriers

Alan V. Deardorff and Robert M. Stern, Editors

University of Michigan Press, 1998

As tariffs on imports of manufactures have been reduced as a result of multi-lateral trade negotiations, interest in the extent to which existing nontariff barriers may distort and restrict international trade is growing. Accurate and reliable measures are needed in order to address the issues involving the use and impacts of nontariff barriers. This study assesses currently available methods for quantifying such barriers and makes recommendations as to those methods that can be most effectively employed. The authors focus both on the conceptual issues arising in the measurement of the different types of nontariff barriers and on the applied research that has been carried out in studies prepared by country members of the OECD Pilot Group and others seeking to quantify the barriers.

Nontariff barriers include quotas, variable levies, voluntary export restraints, government procurement regulations, domestic subsidies, and antidumping and countervailing duty measures. The authors discuss the many different methods available for measuring the effects of these and other nontariff barriers. Illustrative results are presented for industrial OECD countries, including Australia, Canada, Germany, Norway, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Finally, the authors offer guideline principles and recommend procedures for measuring different types of nontariff barriers.

Economists, political scientists, government officials, and lawyers involved in international trade will find this an invaluable resource for understanding and measuring NTBs.

Alan V. Deardorff and Robert M. Stern are Professors of Economics and Public Policy, University of Michigan.

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Measuring Economic Sustainability and Progress

Edited by Dale W. Jorgenson, J. Steven Landefeld, and Paul Schreyer

University of Chicago Press, 2014

Since the Great Depression, researchers and statisticians have recognized the need for more extensive methods for measuring economic growth and sustainability. The recent recession renewed commitments to closing long-standing gaps in economic measurement, including those related to sustainability and well-being.

The latest in the NBER’s influential Studies in Income and Wealth series, which has played a key role in the development of national account statistics in the United States and other nations, this volume explores collaborative solutions between academics, policy researchers, and official statisticians to some of today’s most important economic measurement challenges. Contributors to this volume extend past research on the integration and extension of national accounts to establish an even more comprehensive understanding of the distribution of economic growth and its impact on well-being, including health, human capital, and the environment. The research contributions assess, among other topics, specific conceptual and empirical proposals for extending national accounts.

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Mekong Delta

Ecology, Economy, and Revolution, 1860-1960

Pierre Brocheux

University of Wisconsin Press, 1995

Mining a wealth of archival sources in France and Vietnam, Pierre Brocheux constructs a fascinating picture of how French capital and technology transformed the Mekong Delta. By draining the swamps and encouraging a particular pattern of Vietnamese settlement, the French cultivated a volatile society, bound together by lines of credit and poised at the brink of social revolution. From the cutting of the first canals in the 1880s to the eruption of the Viet Cong’s insurgency in the 1950s, this book illuminates the subtle interactions between ecology and social change in a tropical delta. The Mekong Delta is valuable for students of the Vietnamese Revolution and for scholars of peasant movements around the globe. It fills a major gap in our knowledge of the social change that swept the great deltas of Southeast Asia.

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Mexican Financial Development

By Dwight S. Brothers and Leopoldo Solís M.

University of Texas Press, 1966

The development of the Mexican financial system as it has related to the remarkable growth of the Mexican economy is examined in this book.

Believing that a better understanding of the past will permit a more nearly accurate appraisal of contemporary problems and facilitate the choice of intelligent policies in the future, the authors present a detailed chronicle and analysis of components of the Mexican financial system, with primary emphasis on the period from 1940 to the mid-1960s.

Separate chapters are devoted to the money and capital market, the formulation and execution of monetary and financial policies, and the nature of Mexican financial experience in both the public and private sectors of the economy. The authors offer a theoretical explanation of the record of Mexican experience, based upon their analysis of relationships between monetary policy, domestic stability, and external equilibrium, as well as upon their analysis of factors governing the growth of domestic indebtedness, the development of financial intermediation, and the operation of the loanable funds market. The final chapter of the book, a review of Mexican experience from 1960 to 1965, speculates with respect to the future course of Mexican financial development and offers specific proposal for future monetary and financial policies.

This record of Mexican financial development contains much that should be of interest to others engaged in related theoretical and empirical studies, including many lessons for those countries confronted with circumstances and problems not too unlike those encountered in Mexico.

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The Microstructure of Foreign Exchange Markets

Edited by Jeffrey A. Frankel, Giampaolo Galli, and Alberto Giovannini

University of Chicago Press, 1996

The foreign exchange market is the largest, fastest-growing financial market in the world. Yet conventional macroeconomic approaches do not explain why people trade foreign exchange. At the same time, they fail to explain the short-run determinants of the exchange rate.

These nine innovative essays use a microstructure approach to analyze the workings of the foreign exchange market, with special emphasis on institutional aspects and the actual behavior of market participants. They examine the volume of transactions, heterogeneity of traders, the time of day and location of trading, the bid-ask spread, and the high level of exchange rate volatility that has puzzled many observers. They also consider the structure of the market, including such issues as nontransparency, asymmetric information, liquidity trading, the use of automated brokers, the relationship between spot and derivative markets, and the importance of systemic risk in the market.

This timely volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in the economics of international finance.

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A Monetary and Fiscal History of Latin America, 1960–2017

Timothy J. Kehoe

University of Minnesota Press, 2021

A major, new, and comprehensive look at six decades of macroeconomic policies across the region

What went wrong with the economic development of Latin America over the past half-century? Along with periods of poor economic performance, the region’s countries have been plagued by a wide variety of economic crises. This major new work brings together dozens of leading economists to explore the economic performance of the ten largest countries in South America and of Mexico. Together they advance the fundamental hypothesis that, despite different manifestations, these crises all have been the result of poorly designed or poorly implemented fiscal and monetary policies.

Each country is treated in its own section of the book, with a lead chapter presenting a comprehensive database of the country’s fiscal, monetary, and economic data from 1960 to 2017. The chapters are drawn from one-day academic conferences—hosted in all but one case, in the focus country—with participants including noted economists and former leading policy makers. Cowritten with Nobel Prize winner Thomas J. Sargent, the editors’ introduction provides a conceptual framework for analyzing fiscal and monetary policy in countries around the world, particularly those less developed. A final chapter draws conclusions and suggests directions for further research.

A vital resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of economics and for economic researchers and policy makers, A Monetary and Fiscal History of Latin America, 1960–2017 goes further than any book in stressing both the singularities and the similarities of the economic histories of Latin America’s largest countries.

Contributors: Mark Aguiar, Princeton U; Fernando Alvarez, U of Chicago; Manuel Amador, U of Minnesota; Joao Ayres, Inter-American Development Bank; Saki Bigio, UCLA; Luigi Bocola, Stanford U; Francisco J. Buera, Washington U, St. Louis; Guillermo Calvo, Columbia U; Rodrigo Caputo, U of Santiago; Roberto Chang, Rutgers U; Carlos Javier Charotti, Central Bank of Paraguay; Simón Cueva, TNK Economics; Julián P. Díaz, Loyola U Chicago; Sebastian Edwards, UCLA; Carlos Esquivel, Rutgers U; Eduardo Fernández Arias, Peking U; Carlos Fernández Valdovinos (former Central Bank of Paraguay); Arturo José Galindo, Banco de la República, Colombia; Márcio Garcia, PUC-Rio; Felipe González Soley, U of Southampton; Diogo Guillen, PUC-Rio; Lars Peter Hansen, U of Chicago; Patrick Kehoe, Stanford U; Carlos Gustavo Machicado Salas, Bolivian Catholic U; Joaquín Marandino, U Torcuato Di Tella; Alberto Martin, U Pompeu Fabra; Cesar Martinelli, George Mason U; Felipe Meza, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México; Pablo Andrés Neumeyer, U Torcuato Di Tella; Gabriel Oddone, U de la República; Daniel Osorio, Banco de la República; José Peres Cajías, U of Barcelona; David Perez-Reyna, U de los Andes; Fabrizio Perri, Minneapolis Fed; Andrew Powell, Inter-American Development Bank; Diego Restuccia, U of Toronto; Diego Saravia, U de los Andes; Thomas J. Sargent, New York U; José A. Scheinkman, Columbia U; Teresa Ter-Minassian (formerly IMF); Marco Vega, Pontificia U Católica del Perú; Carlos Végh, Johns Hopkins U; François R. Velde, Chicago Fed; Alejandro Werner, IMF.

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Monetary Politics

Exchange Rate Cooperation in the European Union

Thomas H. Oatley

University of Michigan Press, 1998

A single currency--and the necessary prior condition of exchange rate cooperation and the stabilization of exchange rates--has been an elusive goal of many European leaders for more than twenty years. While much of the literature on exchange rate cooperation within the European Union focuses on the integration of national economies as the driving force, Thomas Oatley draws on public choice models to develop an explanation of exchange rate cooperation based on domestic politics. The author then tests hypotheses derived from this model in a detailed consideration of the various efforts to stabilize currencies since the 1970s. Oatley argues that monetary policy has distributional effects and is used by policy makers to achieve domestic policy goals. Thus domestic politics plays an important role in defining the approach leaders take to monetary integration. Oatley suggests that leaders supported the creation of the European Monetary System because governments saw a link to the Bundesbank as a useful instrument to help slow the growth of wages, redistribute income from labor to capital, and achieve domestic stabilization. The later collapse of the System reflected the unwillingness on the part of many leaders to continue to follow the Bundesbank's lead as well as the Bundesbank's own reservations about monetary integration.
Given the rising strife in countries such as France over the domestic costs of monetary integration, Oatley's domestic politics explanation will be useful in understanding the continued efforts of European policy makers to work towards an integrated currency. This book should appeal to political scientists and economists interested in international cooperation, the European Union and exchange rate systems.
Thomas Oatley is Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of North Carolina.

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Much Ado about Culture

North American Trade Disputes

Keith Acheson and Christopher Maule

University of Michigan Press, 2001

In Canada, the audio-visual and print industries are referred to as the cultural industries, whereas the United States calls them the entertainment industries. These language distinctions are accompanied by different domestic policies and political discourses. The United States has relatively open policies toward these activities, while Canada has adopted an inward-looking approach. Failure to integrate cultural industries into NAFTA and WTO has led to trade disputes between Canada and the United States over copyrights, television licensing, violence in media, and discriminatory magazine policy, indicating the need for an agreed-upon process for settling cultural trade disputes.
Much Ado about Culture explores the differing sets of policies--cultural nationalism versus the open option--and the resulting conflicts in the context of technological developments as well as international agreements dealing with trade, investment, copyright, and labor movements. The Canadian cultural industries are examined, from film and television production and distribution to broadcasting, publishing, and sound recording. Several areas of recent conflict, such as Sports Illustrated, Country Music Television, and Borders Books, highlight the types of policies disputed, the process followed, and the conclusions reached. Finally, the authors propose an alternative approach to constraining national cultural policies by international agreement that would allow the gains from openness to be realized while serving legitimate cultural concerns.
Authored by the acknowledged experts on trade disputes in the cultural arena, this book will be essential reading for international economists, policymakers, and lawyers interested in the cultural industries.
Keith Acheson and Christopher Maule are Professors of Economics, Carleton University, Ontario.

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The Mystery of Economic Growth

Elhanan Helpman

Harvard University Press, 2004

Far more than an intellectual puzzle for pundits, economists, and policymakers, economic growth--its makings and workings--is a subject that affects the well-being of billions of people around the globe. In The Mystery of Economic Growth, Elhanan Helpman discusses the vast research that has revolutionized understanding of this subject in recent years, and summarizes and explains its critical messages in clear, concise, and accessible terms.

The tale of growth economics, as Helpman tells it, is organized around a number of themes: the importance of the accumulation of physical and human capital; the effect of technological factors on the rate of this accumulation; the process of knowledge creation and its influence on productivity; the interdependence of the growth rates of different countries; and, finally, the role of economic and political institutions in encouraging accumulation, innovation, and change.

One of the leading researchers of economic growth, Helpman succinctly reviews, critiques, and integrates current research--on capital accumulation, education, productivity, trade, inequality, geography, and institutions--and clarifies its relevance for global economic inequities. In particular, he points to institutions--including property rights protection, legal systems, customs, and political systems--as the key to the mystery of economic growth. Solving this mystery could lead to policies capable of setting the poorest countries on the path toward sustained growth of per capita income and all that that implies--and Helpman's work is a welcome and necessary step in this direction.

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