North American Review of Economics and Finance最新文献

This paper examines the risk sharing and investment incentive properties of debt and equity contracts in international financial markets. Using a Nash bargaining framework between the borrower and its lenders, debt repayment after renegotiation is derived. Renegotiable debt contracts provide better investment incentives than equity contracts, when the level of debt is not very high. For high levels of debt, when repayment due is above a renegotiated debt repayment, disincentives for investment arise. Risk sharing between lenders and borrowers is better under equity contracts when investment takes place and debt contracts are not renegotiated.

The purpose of this paper was twofold: (1) to develop an open-economy-rational-expectations model to test the theoretical relationship between the price level and expectations about money and the exchange rate; and (2) based on the empirical results of the model, prescribe policy rules aimed at stabilizing inflationary expectations in Mexico. The major empirical findings were that the price formation in Mexico is positively related to both subjective money and exchange-rate expectations formed at period t. The correction path suggested by the empirical results is the implementation of an “activist” policy aimed at reducing both the ratio of real fiscal deficit and external debt to real gross domestic product from their current levels to the “ideal” levels of 1.6 and 11.3 percent of GDP, respectively.

This study extends the investigation of speculative efficiency and unbiasedness in the forward foreign exchange market to the foreign currency futures market. Consistent with the normal backwardation/contango hypothesis, results show that futures rates are not unbiased forecasts of future spot rates. A trading rule based on these results reveals attractive speculative opportunities which appear too large to be cccounted for by risk aversion of investors.

This paper reviews the theory and evidence on the location of economic activity by multinational enterprises (including its effect on trade flows) and explores the implications of MNE location for public policy. Transactional and locational approaches to understanding multinational behavior are explained, then these models are combined to consider both the forms in which technology is transferred and the countries in which multinationals locate their subsidiaries. While controlled investments are preferred by MNEs for some types of technology transfer, there is evidence of increasing participation also in joint ventures and other contractual forms.

The paper also considers the extent to which trade and investment are substitutes, an issue of some importance in the context of free trade agreements.

This paper examines the effect of sector-specific growth on real exchange rates, competitiveness, and the trade balance. Growth and accumulation in export- and import-competing industries exert their primary effect on the trade balance, while the direct effect of accumulation in non-tradables is on the real exchange rate. Thus, exchange-rate policies that are incompatible with non-tradables equilibrium are bound to fail. Furthermore, growth policies with strong biases toward tradables are often inferior to more balanced strategies, due to their adverse implications for real-exchange- rate movements and the trade balance.

This paper explores the implications of changing North American trade policies for dynamic comparative advantage and shows, with examples from the energy and high-technology sectors, how a new policy based on interdependence might work. Newly industrializing countries such as Mexico should aim to break into industries with progressively higher technological and value-added components, such as computer manufacturing—industries that are entering a period of expanded demand and going beyond the period of greatest capital intensity. Although few Mexican firms might be expected to enter such oligopolistic markets alone (at least in the short run), they could combine forces with established enterprises abroad in order to permit gradual market penetration. The examples in the paper illustrate the need for a stable macroeconomic framework for policymaking that includes exchange rates, investment incentives, relative price behavior, taxes, intellectual property rights, labor and environmental regulations, capital market policies, harmonization of standards, and other measures. There is also a need for policies that anticipate the potential private and social returns of activities that might be overlooked in a static framework.

This paper proposes that singular improvements in productivity and growth are a result of increased exports and imports, especially in the manufacturing sector, but that sustainable increases in growth can only emerge through industrial diversification. Trade liberalizations between Canada and the United States have caused a narrowing of manufacturing productivity differentials, a predominance of intraindustry trade, and a positive Canadian trade balance for manufactured end products and fabricated materials. Sustained growth, however, relies more on the diversification of the industrial structure. Toward this end, Canadian trade policies should: (1) concentrate productivity in the exportable, rather than importable, sectors, (2) rationalize and specialize between rather than within industries, (3) encourage two-way trade in each industry, (4) liberalize trade gradually to avoid interindustry disruptions, and (5) redirect job real- location funds toward worker retraining and firm-specific modernization programs.