North American Review of Economics and Finance最新文献

This paper analyzes the United States and United Kingdom activities of Japanese banks by integrating their activities in these two markets with the regulatory environment for banks in Japan and Japan's overall external financial position, as well as with business opportunities in the two host countries. The paper concludes that the regulatory environment in Japan, including restraints on interest rates and possible quantitative restraints, has had an impact on activities of Japanese banks in these two foreign markets.

Japanese banks appear to have adjusted to their domestic regulatory environment by using their London branches as a flexible funding source and their U.S. offices in extending commercial and industrial loans to Japan-based companies as well as a substitute location for interbank trading. In both markets Japanese banking offices are large net barrowers from unrelated banks because of constraints on raising funds in their homer market.

The recent protectionist trend in trade policy in the United States and other OECD countries is making it more difficult for debtor countries, such as Mexico, to meet their external obligations. In contrast, Mexico and most other debtor nations have adopted more liberal trade policies in recent years. The success of the United States-Canada Free Trade Agreement will expand trading opportunities in the North American economies; however, Mexico is expected to encounter difficulties in competing in this market because of the barriers to trade and investment flows that have existed in the past. This paper discusses the potential impact of a North American Free Trade Agreement on the Mexican economy and the prospects for such an agreement in the current political economy.

In our examination of how recent developments (to 1988) in debt and credit markets have affected the Canadian economy, we compare the recent experience of borrower behavior in Canada with that in the United States, looking at debt-GDP ratios for various sectors and the corporate debt-equity ratio. In the late 1980s, the key differences between the two countries in the financial behavior of both the household and corporate sectors derive, we believe, from the sharper shock faced by Canadians in the early 1980s. Our examination of the relationship between credit growth and the growth of spending in the Canadian economy utilizes credit-indicator models developed at the Bank of Canada. We find that over the 1980–1987 period forecasts of the growth of real GDP and nominal GDP based on indicator models using real total household credit and nominal consumer credit, respectively, have narrowly outperformed the best bivariate monetary indicator models.

Changes in manufacturing performance in Canada will be necessary to take full advantage of improved access to the United States market as problems of productivity are more pronounced in the smaller Canadian-owned firms and plants. The problems of unit costs have been intensified by the recent higher value of the Canadian dollar, which put recent costs at the highest level above comparable United States costs in 30 years.

Promising routes for management to deal with such problems of competitiveness would include increased specialization, faster adoption of new technology, and price reductions made possible by increased productivity. Public policy can facilitate these adjustments at the micro level by appropriate macro and environmental policies.

This paper presents estimates of the income of undocumented Western Hemisphere aliens working in the continental United States. It is estimated that annual earnings of undocumented Western Hemisphere aliens were approximately $7 billion during the 1980s. Although the unreported income of undocumented Western Hemisphere aliens was significant, $3.7 billion per year, it does not appear to have resulted in a significant tax loss. The tax loss is estimated to be about $85 million per year during the early 1980s, increasing to slightly less than $190 million per year in the latter part of the 1980s.