Trade Liberalisation and Export Performance in Selected Developing Countries

This article examines the impact of trade liberalisation on export growth for a sample of 22 developing economies. The research applies dynamic panel data models based on fixed-effects and generalised methods of moments (GMM) estimators. In addition, heterogeneous panels for the complete sample, as well as for different regions of the world, are estimated using a time-series/cross-section technique. The main findings are that trade liberalisation is a significant determinant of export performance, but its effect varies across continents. Export duties have a small detrimental effect on export growth, while relative price changes and world income growth have the expected signs.     

Fair trade slippages and Vietnam gaps: the ideological fantasies of fair trade coffee

Fair trade coffee sales have boomed since the late 1980s, making it one of the most recognised forms of ‘ethical consumerism’ in the world. Around the same time exports of lower quality coffee beans from Vietnam also boomed, launching Vietnam from an insignificant coffee exporter to the world’s second largest with historically unprecedented speed. These disparate projects have had significant impacts on thousands of farmers – with Vietnam’s new class of coffee producers representing three and a half times the number of coffee families certified by fair trade. Northern actors, however, have given far more public and positive attention to fair trade. This article will argue that this difference does not stem from a strictly objective appraisal of the relative merits and shortcomings of each project, but from the compatibility of fair trade with ‘free trade’ and its emotionally charged ideological fantasies. This includes unconscious beliefs and desires around individualism, voluntarism, democracy and the affirmation of the exaggerated power of Northern consumers – as opposed to the Southern agency and complicated collective action implied by Vietnamese coffee statecraft.     

The globaliser dragon: how is China changing economic globalisation?

There are many studies on the effects of both economic globalisation and the rise of China. These core issues of the contemporary international agenda entail major economic, military, environmental, social and cultural transformations in most nations. While there is also an abundant literature on how globalisation supported the rise of China, there are scarce publications on how China became one of the primary drivers of globalisation. This article assumes that understanding the power of globalisation over countries is as crucial as assessing the power of certain countries over the process. In this sense, it uses the recently created ‘theory of globalisers’ to analyse how is China transforming contemporary economic globalisation. The conclusion is that China became an ‘economic globaliser’ in the twenty-first century. As the largest exporter, the second largest importer, the third largest provider of foreign direct investments, and a major supplier of high-tech goods, the Asian giant is a vital partner for several economies in different continents. In this context, Beijing’s globalisation strategy aims at both securing the benefits of globalisation and reforming the international economic order, but without a revolutionary stance.     

Alliances,Trade Discrimination,and the Global Trade Regime

Although nondiscrimination is a central tenet of the global trade regime, discrimination was in fact common under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, particularly against developing countries. The latter have recently sought to end such discrimination through World Trade Organization rules: for example, the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) prohibited quota discrimination in this sector. I examine the ATC's impact on US discrimination, asking whether the ATC ended the US policy of favoring allies with generous textile and clothing quotas. I find that, while the United States favored allies before the ATC, this favoritism vanished in the post-ATC period. The ATC thus accomplished its goal of ending explicit textile and clothing discrimination. This result underscores the potential for multilateral rules to control trade discrimination and implies that popular theories of trade policy may be contingent on such rules.     

“发展陷阱”的形成原因分析——兼论中国经济落入发展陷阱的必然性

陷入“发展陷阱”之前的追赶型国家,往往会出现以美元计量的人均名义GDP增长率快于以本币计量的人均实际GDP增长率,这实际上也就是国际相对成本的上升和国际相对竞争力的下降,国内外市场因此会不断被更低收入国家蚕食;人均美元收入的快速提高产生的对生活品质的追求,会导致大量有效需求向发达国家转移。这些表现在企业收支上,也就是成本的提高与收入的减少;在国家层面则表现为外贸收支逆差增加和外汇储备减少或外债增加,由此落入“发展陷阱”。我国目前可能正处在该陷阱的入口。     

Measuring international conflict: Developing cross‐country time‐series data

This paper develops a new time series of conflict data from 1948 to the present through statistical estimation of a pooled time‐series of the two most frequently used dyadic events data sets: Conflict and Cooperation Data Bank (COPDAB) (1948–1978) and World Events Interaction Survey (WEIS) (1966‐present). The resulting data series is the longest possible time‐series annual data of dyadic interaction based on daily events. The paper also provides an example of performing a Vector Autoregression (VAR) analysis of conflict and trade in a three‐country setting, utilizing the integrated data. Compared to the COPDAB and WEIS data, the integrated data have a large degree of variation and produce forecasting results that are more complex than those from the COPDAB and WEIS separately.     

人民币汇率变动对中美贸易结构收支的影响——基于SITC分类标准的实证分析

人民币汇率变动能否解决中美双边贸易失衡问题一直是国内外学者研究与争论的焦点。实证分析表明,人民币汇率的水平变动无法起到调节中美两国贸易收支的作用,但适度增加汇率波动弹性有助于缓解贸易失衡。因此,只有消除对人民币升值的预期、进行经济结构调整以及改善外商直接投资的流向,才能从根本上恢复中美之间的贸易平衡。     

中朝经贸关系发展现状与前景展望

2000年以后,中朝双边经贸关系迅速发展,双边贸易额、投资额均大幅增长,朝鲜对中国的经济依存度也逐年增加。虽然增速很快,但中朝之间贸易投资总额仍然不高,两国的经济交往仍面临很多障碍,朝鲜的外汇短缺、外贸交流体制的不健全、封闭的政策以及朝核危机等问题均为两国经济交往带来了阻碍。展望未来,中朝经贸关系具有很大的提升空间与发展潜力,根据两国面临的经济形势,建立中朝自由贸易区是一个具有战略意义的选择。     

北京市西城区劳动合同制度实施情况

《北京市劳动合同规定》实施以来,西城区的劳动合同制度基本建立,但在劳动合同制度实施过程中也存在着一些问题。必须进一步提高对劳动合同重要性的认识,加大实施劳动合同制度宣传力度,加强劳动合同的管理和监督力度,尽快出台《劳动合同法》及其密切相关的法律法规,社会各方要密切配合,合力推进。     

试论在共建共享和谐社会中工会组织的四个作用

构建社会主义和谐社会是艰巨复杂的系统工程,工会组织作为党领导下的群众组织,在共同建设、共同享有和谐社会中具有不可替代的重要作用。组织群众是工会工作的基础,引导群众是工会工作的关键,服务群众是工会工作的核心,维护群众合法权益是工会工作的基本职责。