Economics

World Trade Report 2009

Subhasis Bera — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:01:27 +0000

World Trade Report 2009

Trade Policy Commitments and Contingency Measures

The theme of this year’s Report is “Trade policy commitments and contingency measures”. The Report examines the range of contingency measures available in trade agreements and the role that these measures play. Also referred to as escape clauses or safety valves, these measures allow governments a certain degree of flexibility within their trade commitments and can be used to address circumstances that could not have been foreseen when a trade commitment was made. Contingency measures seek to strike a balance between commitments and flexibility. Too much flexibility may undermine the value of commitments, but too little may render the rules unsustainable. The tension between credible commitments and flexibility is often close to the surface during trade negotiations. For example, in the July 2008 mini-ministerial meeting, which sought to agree negotiating modalities — or a final blueprint — for agriculture and non-agricultural market access (NAMA), the question of a “special safeguard mechanism” (the extent to which developing countries would be allowed to protect farmers from import surges) was crucial to the discussions.

One of the main objectives of this Report is to analyze whether WTO provisions provide a balance between supplying governments with necessary flexibility to face difficult economic situations and adequately defining them in a way that limits their use for protectionist purposes. In analyzing this question, the Report focuses primarily on contingency measures available to WTO members when importing and exporting goods. These measures include the use of safeguards, such as tariffs and quotas, in specified circumstances, anti-dumping duties on goods that are deemed to be “dumped”, and countervailing duties imposed to offset subsidies. The Report also discusses alternative policy options, including the renegotiation of tariff commitments, the use of export taxes, and increases in tariffs up to their legal maximum ceiling or binding. The analysis includes consideration of legal, economic and political economy factors that influence the use of these measures and their associated benefits and costs.

Download pdf:

> Complete report (196 pages; 1865KB)

> DG Foreword (2 pages; 111KB)

> Contents and abbreviations (6 pages; 115KB)

> Acknowledgements and disclaimer (2 pages; 113KB)

> Executive Summary (11 pages; 172KB)

I- The trade situation in 2008-09 (18 pages; 408KB)

II- Trade policy commitments and contingency measures

> A. Introduction (2 pages; 119KB)

> B. Flexibility in trade agreements (26 pages; 273KB)

> C. Economics, disciplines and practices (80 pages; 817KB)

> D. Empirical evidence (32 pages; 358KB)

> E. Conclusions (2 pages; 101KB)

> Bibliography (8 pages; 185KB)

> Technical notes (4 pages; 110KB)

A Pedestrian’s Guide to the Economy(Books Download))

Subhasis Bera — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 15:48:48 +0000

A Pedestrian’s Guide to the Economy
by Orley Amos

Publisher: AmosWEB 2008

Description:
Most books on the economy are written by economists for economists. As a handy reference source, this text provides answers to many of the most asked, a few of the least asked, and some of the never asked questions about the economy. The author begins with seven fundamental features of the economy that you probably know, but then again, may not. Because it gives you a working start into the economy, this journey is best taken before moving on to the more detailed topics in section II.

Home page url

Download or read it online here:

Download link

(online html)

Problems in Microeconomics

Subhasis Bera — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:22:48 +0000

Problems in Microeconomics

Problems in Microeconomics is a set of practice problems and interactive lecture displays for students and faculty in introductory courses in microeconomics. The problems were written by Byron W. Brown, Professor of Economics at Michigan State University.

Most of these problem sets will see a new birth of freedom as part of the course materials being developed by Aplia, Inc., a publishing company founded by Paul Romer, Professor of Economics at Stanford University. The problem sets are being reprogrammed in Flash which eliminates the need for students and faculty to have Excel to use the problems. Return here from time to time for updates on publication plans.

How to do the problems: General information

Info for students, including getting started

Info for faculty, including a short descripton of topics covered

Download a problem set

The New Economics of Nuclear Power

Subhasis Bera — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 04:22:46 +0000

This World Nuclear Association Report entitled “The New Economics of Nuclear Power” provides international perspective and definitive analysis of the costs of constructing and operating nuclear power plants in the 21st century. The Report’s principal conclusion holds fundamental importance for energy planners: In most industrialized countries today, new nuclear power plants offer the most economical way to generate base-load electricity – even without consideration of the geopolitical and environmental advantages that nuclear energy confers.

Download The New Economics of Nuclear Power

PDF format, 309KB, 32Pages.

World e-Parliament Report 2008

Subhasis Bera — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 03:55:59 +0000

World e-Parliament Report 2008

Download PDF:

Complete report (zip file – 3.9 Mb)
Executive summary (140 kb)

Download the Report by chapter

Cover (254 kb)
Foreword and Acknowledgments (412 kb)
Executive summary (140 kb)
Contents (142 kb)
Introduction (664 kb)
Chapter I: Parliament, ICT and the Information Society (312 kb)
Chapter II: Vision, Innovation and Leadership (319 kb)
Chapter III: Implementing the Vision: Management,
Planning and Resources (603 kb)
Chapter IV: Infrastructures and Services (1.415 kb)
Chapter V: Documenting the Legislative Process (1.247 kb)
Chapter VI: Parliamentary Websites (1.015 kb)
Chapter VII: Building a Knowledge Base for Parliament (729 kb)
Chapter VIII: Parliaments and Citizens: Enhancing the Dialogue (880 kb)
Chapter IX: Cooperation and Coordination (294 kb)
Chapter X: Conclusions and Recommendations (252 kb)
Bibliography (225 kb)
Annexes (425 kb)

Corrigendum for the English printed version of the World e-Parliament Report 2008

UNESCAP Report: Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2008

Subhasis Bera — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 04:03:36 +0000

Download

The Survey 2008

The accompanying files enable the Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2008 to be downloaded in full or on a Chapter by Chapter basis. A Readership Survey also accompanies this page. Completion of the Survey would greatly assist UNESCAP staff to further raise its profile and be a more effective tool for readers.

Previous Survey

UNIDO: Industrial Development Report 2009

Subhasis Bera — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:47:56 +0000

Industrial Development Report 2009

Breaking in and moving up: New industrial challenges for the bottom billion and the middle-income countries This year’s report, entitled “Breaking in and moving up: New industrial challenges for the bottom billion and the middle-income countries” focuses on countries that have been left behind. It is about the opportunities and constraints faced by two groups of countries: the countries of the “bottom billion” trying to break into global markets for manufactured goods, and the middle-income countries that are striving to move up to more sophisticated manufacturing. The report focuses predominantly on manufacturing, but it also discusses resource extraction, which is the other major type of industrialization in developing countries. It also highlights three aspects of structural change in industry. As industrialization proceeds, what does it produce, where does it locate, and where are its outputs sold? The report seeks to improve our understanding of these processes of structural change, and sets out some economic policy responses to support breaking in and moving up in the global industrial economy. The report was launched in London on the 23 February 2009 by Kandeh K. Yumkella, UNIDO Director-General, together with the lead author of the report, Professor Paul Collier, University of Oxford.

Download the IDR:

Summary (pdf, 3.6M)

Full Report (pdf, 7.9M)

General Statistical Open Source

Subhasis Bera — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 08:35:16 +0000

General Statistical OSS

The R Project is an OSS tool under GNU for statistical analysis
GGobi is an OSS data visualization system for viewing high-dimensional data
GNUPlot is a portable command-line driven interactive data and function plotting utility, in use by INSEE
Dashboard is a free software written by Jochen Jesinghaus of the JRC in ISPR to visualise complex indices and their relations
iPlots is a package for the R-project which provides high interaction statistical graphics, written in Java
Mondrian is an advanced statistical data-visualization system written in JAVA, with the main emphasis on for Categorical Data, Geographical Data and Large Datasets
Demetra is the single interface in which the two seasonal adjustment methods Tramo/Seats and X-12-Arima are implemented. It facilitates the application of these modern time series techniques to large-scale sets of time seriesin the explicit consideration of the needs of production units in statistical institutes New 30-Jan-2007
Gretl is a cross-platform software package for econometric analysis, written in the C programming language. New 30-Jan-2007
τ-ARGUS is a software program designed to protect statistical tables, while µ-ARGUS is a software program designed to create safe micro-data files. They are both results of the CASC-project New 30-Jan-2007
Ploticus is a free non-interactive software package for producing plots, charts, and graphics from data; developed in a Unix/C environment and running on various Unix, Linux, and win32 systems. Ploticus is good for automated or just-in-time graph generation, handles date and time data, and has basic statistical capabilities. It produces a wide range of full-colour charts. Ploticus is script-driven, though for many uses scripts don’t need to be written because so-called prefabs (see ploticus prefab ) exist. Ploticus has the following limitations: scant support for mathematical formulas and scientific notations; binary data cannot be plotted with Ploticus; files cannot be read directly from MySQL, Oracle, Excel, Access, etc. (though Ploticus graphs can be exported into PowerPoint, Word, etc.) New 16-Mar-2007
AutoClass C is an unsupervised Bayesian classification system that seeks a maximum posterior probability classification and thus aims to discover the ‘natural’ classes in the data. It can use mixed discrete and real valued data. Cases have probabilistic class membership. Autoclass allows correlation between attributes within a class and predicts “test” case class memberships from a “training” classification. AutoClass C is limited by memory requirements that are roughly in proportion to the number of data, times the number of attributes (the data space); plus the number of classes, times number of modeled attributes (the model space); plus a fixed program space.Autoclass has some limitations with regard to handling very large data sets (processing time might become excessive). New 16-Mar-2007
Dap is a small statistics and graphics package, based on C, licensed under GPL (version 2 or later ones). It provides core methods of data management, analysis, and graphics commonly used in statistical consulting practice. Using DAP requires familiarity with basic C syntax. As of Version 3.0, DAP can read SAS programs, thereby freeing the user from having to learn any C at all. The manual contains a brief introduction to the C syntax needed for C-style programming for Dap. Because Dap processes files one line at a time, rather than reading entire files into memory, it can be, and has been, used on data sets that have many lines and/or many variables. New 16-Apr-2007
MCSim is a simulation and statistical inference tool for algebraic or differential equation systems,licensed under GPL (version 2 or later). It was created specifically to perform Monte Carlo analyses in an optimized, and easy to maintain environment. MCSim is a simulation package, written in C, which allows to design statistical or simulation models (eventually dynamic, via ODEs), perform Monte Carlo stochastic simulations, and Bayesian inference through Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulations New 16-Apr-2007

Data Transmission Tools

The RDRMES Toolbox was created on behalf of EEG6 WG 4
GENEDI is a tool to create GESMES messages
The freeware POLYVAL is a popular GESMES and GESMES/TS tool
Another useful GESMES tool is the ECB Checker

The ECB GESMES/TS Generator is a simple Excel application to generate GESMES/TS

Software for Primary Data Collection

Chiba is an Open Source Java Implementation of the W3C XForms standard

Richard Epstein on Happiness, Inequality, and Envy (podcast)

Subhasis Bera — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 08:34:17 +0000

Richard Epstein on Happiness, Inequality, and Envy

Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the relationship between happiness and wealth, the effects of inequality on happiness, and the economics of envy and altruism. He also applies the theory of evolution to explain some of the findings of the happiness literature.

Play Time: 56.52

Download Size: 26.1 MB (Right-click or Option-click, and select “Save)

Podcast Highlights

0:36 Intro. Happiness research in economics. Standard models of economics assume people have well-ordered utility functions. Social progress in this model comes from two agencies: since you know that people are selfish, trade generates mutual gains, local improvement; if selfish and take from someone else, gain and someone else loses, so prohibition of force. Neoclassical position: cooperation yes, aggression no. Happiness literature: ulterior fashion designed to undercut this market calculus. Behavioral economics line: people are not nearly as rational; backdrop of systematic uncertainty and ignorance. No problem with prohibition of force, so negative side of utilitarian calculus remains pretty much intact. Happiness literature designed to deal with other issues. Logic of neoclassical model implies mutual gains from trade but doesn’t guarantee gains of equal proportion. High dispersions of income off of a higher median. A lot of people worry about this because they are worried about relative status. Suicide contest if your relative preferences really matter. Russian proverb: My neighbor has a cow, I do not. Genie gives me one wish. It’s not for me to have two cows, but for him to have none. Part of happiness literature: world is designed to make everybody miserable. Okay to take away the wealth. Both of these fields are designed to explain why it is that government action in the field of redistribution and guaranteed minimum rights is useful and to undercut “cooperation yes, aggression no, redistribution last. Starting from other end. May seem to be matter of order, but where you start may dictate where you went. Produces perfect equality with everybody poor.

6:15 Used by environmentalists, anti-growth. If you are very poor, increases in material well-being do lead to gains in happiness but not after a while. Neoclassical answers to the environmental question. Environmentalists: We really want gas to be $4/gallon because people will drive less. Giving up a lot of consumption, though. Right way to do this is to have a tax on pollution. Happiness proponents would say: all that extra consumption is an illusion. Don’t get any happier driving around, should spend more time with your family. Theory of revealed preferences. We see people moving hard to get raises. Happiness literature suggests that everyone is under deep delusions about what makes them happy and the guys running the survey know better. Methodological fallacy: data seem to suggest that when you have higher incomes you don’t necessarily have a whole lot higher level of happiness. Example: international megadeal. People make pact: I’ll be miserable for a few years if you’ll make me rich in the longer run. So, in the short run they report being less happy. They don’t want to be unhappy forever, so eventually take a lower paying job–and report being happier. To tell people they have to have a constant ratio between happiness and income at all stages in life is a restriction on freedom. Can’t put together these megadeals unless you get people on an airplane at the drop of a hat. Adopt an information strategy rather than a coercion strategy: publish anything you want on happiness, and people can read it and decide. People understand these kinds of tradeoffs. Don’t necessarily take the job that pays the most money; or the one that pays the least. Tradeoff. Example: Academics don’t make as much money but make that choice, trading off happiness against income. Market ranks jobs out there; people know their own utility functions and decide for themselves what they want to do. Envy’s a terrible emotion in this world. Envy literature. Most people have a relative amount of good cheer for the success of others. Nurses don’t seethe that doctors earn more than they do. What you do see is that resentments are great if two people have similar ranks but one is doing more of the work.

16:02 Wealth-meaningfulness tradeoff: religious literature, both literally and secular religions, preachers: people who want us to recognize that the bigger car and fancier job title doesn’t always lead to more happiness. Even though we may know that it’s hard to act that way. Revealed preference ignores regret. Law firm example. Easy to romanticize and vilify. People do make mistakes. Goes both ways: I could have been a contender. Some people take the safe job. Can regret low risk strategy as well as high risk strategy. Have to gain the self-knowledge as to what you really like. Getting married; serious illness like cancer. If repetition eases the pain of decision, we find that resources are most strapped at the time we need them most. Nothing about a system of economics which will insulate people from hard choices or remove uncertainty. Hayekian insight: if you subsidize farmers to minimize the fluctuations they experience, then all the fluctuations are borne by people providing the subsidies. Need stable legal rules instead. No way that we can remove uncertainty; no way we can remove regret. High risk, high stakes decisions: people who try to make them alone make mistakes. Literature on behavioralism always has people acting in voids in experiments. When you are in trouble, you want to get the view of someone a little removed from the situation. Dynamic labor market in the United States; dynamic marriage market also. Costs of errors are lower in the United States. Clark [clerk] in Scrooges firm. Key advantage of U.S. system of education, competitive at highest level. English and French system route people at an early age. Creates standardization within these professions. In an American law school you get variety in age and background. Richer array of understanding results, stronger people at the top. Competition creates variation and variation creates excellent. Those are the kinds of things that tend to be missed by these models. Almost always solipsistic. Natural tendency to cooperate with people they like, friends, is not present in behavioralist models. Element of trust leads to gains from trade.

24:52 Envy. Theme in literature, working paper, tension: wealth doesn’t make you happy but relative wealth seems to be very important in these studies. Complicated literature: truth within limits. Assume group of people who all have about the same wealth. Within this group, one popular, one nerd or doormat. Informal social rankings; competitive; if someone has high status, someone else inevitably has to have a low status. Misery literature. Maybe woman is disappointed she is not getting married but doesn’t want to wreck someone else’s engagement. Just wish you’d been a little bit better. People tend to say “Congratulations.” Opposite direction in other body of literature: optimistic. Give people choice on how to spend money: make an investment of 10; can recover 12 for yourself or 20 for a group of 4 people of whom you are only 1. Turns out surprising number of people willing to expand and share the wealth. Unlike the usual form of sharing the wealth, which is income redistribution through taxation which shrinks the pie, people are willing to take less. Nice kind of feature. Reduces the serious problem associated with the creation of public goods. See someone littering in a public park. Littering will cost everyone 10, but I’m only 1 out of 100. Why would I want to stop this guy and risk some kind of retribution? Everyone should be indifferent. Always one or two people who do go up to the litterer and ask. At a discrete cost to themselves they are improving the group. Modest public spiritedness on the part of many but not all. Can you reconcile the literatures? The most natural characteristic is variability. There will be some who are selfish, some generous. Some evolutionarily have empathy; others do not. Most of the distribution is around the middle. In a market system you can encourage the do-gooders at one end of the distribution. The last thing you want to do is tax them. Snuff out the bad guys and encourage the good guys. Back together: Guy with envy can’t kill the neighbor’s cow. Guy with envy can go out and cooperate with someone else. System works fairly well.

32:18 Over last 35-40 years, measured inequality has risen in income distribution. Large increase in immigration, demographic change in the 1970s due to an increase in the divorce rate. Returns to education have risen, especially at the high end; entrepreneurial environment, small group of people earn high rewards. Superstar literature, best athletes, entertainers, etc. Bernstein podcast: crime rates, health rates result. How does this inequality start to come about? If entrepreneurial activity, quite wonderful. How much consumer surplus did that entertainer generate? Probably dwarfs the income side. Michael Jordan’s salary vs. pleasure people got by watching him. Another side: systematic decline in the level of public education, correlates with breakup of family and strong oversight; barriers to entry up. Low ability people find it harder and harder to get to that first step. Created in the form of protectionist legislation barriers to entry so they can’t get on the train to begin with. Los Angeles. Unionization one, minimum wage hours another, resistance to vouchers and charter schools. Two-tier educational system. Large public school monopoly systems. NYC, Chicago. Higher returns to education at same time as inferior education given to some. Return to basics, students chosen at random, example. Worry about the social institutions that drag down the least fortunate in society. Can’t slip at an early age or it costs you twice as much to catch up. Jim Heckman: Interest, which is what you save from deferring education, is but a rounding error relative to the additional cost of trying to make that education go. Resentment.

40:38 Evolution: envy and the role of wealth in our lives. Socio-biology, evolutionary psychology. Attacked as form of sexism or racism. If individual self-interest were the only form of motivation in life, we would never be able to have children and never be able to go through the evolutionary cycle: have to find a way to get the next generation up to the same level. Wouldn’t take care of children. W. D. Hamilton: individuals are holders for their genes. Inclusive fitness, act not only to benefit yourself but those who are near and dear to you. Parents have protective instincts toward their offspring–humans, rhinoceros, not fish. Darwin: emotions are not immune from evolutionary pressures. Natural love and affection–legal literature term. Parents internalize your children’s welfare into your psyche. Question: Is happiness an emotion which will promote survival of the species? Within limits yes but not always. Parents can’t just walk away from a sick child in order to be happier–won’t be evolutionarily successful. Parents won’t answer that they are happy, but they wouldn’t choose any other kind of behavior. Happiness surveys falsely assumes a kind of hedonism which is inconsistent with the evolution of the species. Sense of dread, grieving; but can’t be so miserable you can’t take care of your other children. So complex. Happiness literature never looks at this–simply reports that people are not as happy with children as they expect. Momentary happiness may not be high, but lifetime happiness is. Worth the cost. Consistent with religious literature that is not aesthetic or pain-based. Hedonism is not the road to happiness. Father Sirico: attacks on hedonism, discount the future. People think Adam Smith was a proponent of getting whatever you can and get ahead; but that was not his view; Theory of Moral Sentiments. Word “sentiment”–what he meant was the effort to figure out how people react toward the misfortunes of others. You don’t treat them as acutely as if they are your own; but you are not completely indifferent either. Impossible to only care about your children but not your children’s friends. Theory of inclusive fitness. Prisoner’s Dilemma games don’t cause societies to founder. Individual utilities are inherently interdependent. Back to maxims: cooperative first but not aggressive. These sentiments increase the ability to be cooperative, but not perfectly. All you can say about the nature of human sentiments is that on balance we will have an easier time developing pro-social than anti-social behavior, but you still have to worry about the outliers. Hobbes.

52:23 Outliers: At one end, thug, breaks into 100 homes; at other end Thomas Edison, Sergei Brin. Real risk of the thug is when the thug has the power of the state to murder millions of people. Outlier at other end can do all kinds of good. Can you get a monopoly of power to control the thug without becoming the thug himself? Soviet Union, Pol Pot. Don’t want to worry only about the modest little risks. U.S. Constitution fragments power to the point where it becomes harder to perform heroic functions but also harder for anyone to become a tyrant. Danger of populism. Stoking the fire on envy will lead to a climate in which there will be long-term social stagnation. Safeguards weaker today than they have been. Gains from private rent-seeking activity are perhaps larger than they have ever been before.

[originally published in econtalk]