North American Review of Economics and Finance最新文献

This historical paper reveals that international economic integration is neither new or necessarily driven by technological change, and examines the traditional, pre-1940, “vertical” multinational, which invested up- and downstream of their innovation, in light of this fact. An analysis is given of how this older multinational relates to current, “horizontal” firms, which produce a number of products in several places. Using the language of industrial organization theory, this paper shows that technological discoveries of the late nineteenth century explain the shift in multinational organization and the emergence of global oligopolies.

This paper examines Mexico's trade and development policies and analyzes how these policies complement or conflict with those of the other North American nations. Looking closely at the periods 1950–1973 and 1973–1975, the authors explain how Mexico's development policies have marred or enhanced its ability to interact with the United States and Canada. They then show how the Mexico's history and strengths make it a strong candidate for partnership with Canada and the United States in a new North American Free Trade Agreement, a multilateral arrangement that will be important for continued economic prosperity in the North American region.

This paper focuses on Mexico's possibilities in the world economy, especially in North America. Any successful policy must reorient Mexico's development away from oil and import substitution and toward exports. Proposed reforms would involve (1) devaluing the exchange rate and unifying the official and free-market exchange rates; (2) liberalizing imports by abolishing import restrictions, eliminating official import reference prices, and reducing those tariffs exceeding 40 percent; (3) reducing the existing bias against exports of the incentive system; and (4) limiting the public sector's influence in the economy by reducing the public sector deficit, liberalizing the financial sector, and denationalizing public firms outside basic industries.

This paper considers the recent wave of privatization activity as a consequence of rent-seeking among competing special-interest or pressure groups. The dynamic interaction of interest groups through a political system generates repetitive, irregular waves or cycles of rent-creation, rent-transfer and, ultimately, rent-dissipation as the essence of the political process that determines transitory political outcomes (legislation, administrative decisions, as judicial interpretations). This perspective is used as a framework for speculation about the general and county-specific determinants of the worldwide upswing in privatization activity and the differences in privitization experiences of countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom.

The widely repeated assertion that the United States has become “the world's greatest debtor nation” is based on reports of its “net international investment position.” This position relates not exclusively to debt but rather to the difference between net United States claims to foreign assets and net foreign claims to United States assets. Major portions are equities and direct investment, the latter valued at “book” or original cost.

Estimates of the current value of direct investment, either market value on the basis of share prices or replacement cost, effect huge asymmetric adjustments. As United States direct investment abroad is generally much older, it has appreciated much more than foreign direct investment in the United States. With adjustments as well for the market value of gold and for bad debts, it is estimated that the United States net international investment position was more or less in balance at the end of 1987 and in only relatively small deficit at the end of 1988.

Empirical evidence of the existence of currency substitution in Barbados between 1973 and 1986 is provided. Within an environment of trade restriction, foreign exchange control, and a black market for foreign exchange, the demand for money is estimated using the black-market premium as one of the independent variables. This variable as a proxy measures the opportunity cost of holding domestic money vis-à-vis foreign money, and its statistical significance indicates the existence of currency substitution in the demand for only M1, which could render stabilization policies ineffective.

This paper surveys the recent literature on the effects of United States protection. Most of these studies find that tariffs provide limited benefits to protected industries but cause considerable harm to household and industrial consumers of protected goods. Most studies do, however find some terms-of-trade benefits to the United States in the present structure of protection. Also, studies of quotas find that they have become more important in recent years and that they are a major source of welfare losses for the United States. This general agreement regarding the effects of United States policy arises from papers employing different research methodologies and addressing different questions.

This paper uses five financial accounting ratios with three alternative loan-portfolio diversification measures to classify failures among small commercial banks that occurred during 1984. Classifications for one, two and three years before failure are performed using linear probability, logit, probit, and discriminant analysis models. Validation is done through the U-Method. The results indicate that the logit and probit functional forms may offer an advantage over the more frequently used discriminant analysis. U-Method classification accuracy is approximately 86 percent for the logit and probit models.

The money-income causal relationship is examined using the Hsiao (1979) causal testing method for alternative definitions of money and different detrending transformations. The results for Barbadian data suggest that each detrending transformation will induce different lag specifications in the causal regressions and that the implied causal directions are sensitive to both the definition of money and the detrending technique used. An unambiguous result, based on an examination of the components of money, is that quasi-money Granger-causes income. A recommendation of the paper is that tests for unit roots be used prior to performing the causality tests.