A new geography of preferences for Sub-Saharan African countries in a globalizing trading system

Trade between developing countries, or South-South trade, has been growing rapidly in recent years following significant reductions in tariffs. However, significant barriers remain, and there is currently reluctance among many developing countries to undertake further reductions. In addition African countries and in particular least developed African countries are still marginal players in this reframing of geography of trade. The erosion of preferential access to Northern markets remains their major concern and the status quo in multilateral liberalization could be seen as a desirable scenario. This emphasis on developed countries markets, principally Europe and the US, is likely to represent a missed opportunity for African countries. Unless those countries are granted broader preferences by the European Union and other developed countries, especially in agriculture, significant gains would be obtained from trade preferences provided by other developing countries. To assess this we compare the potential effects of the removal of barriers on trade between African countries and other developing countries with the gains from developed country liberalization. A general equilibrium model containing information on preferential bilateral tariffs is used to estimate the impacts.Africa, Exports, Market Access, Preferences

A new geography of preferences for Sub-Saharan African countries in a globalizing trading system

Trade between developing countries, or South-South trade, has been growing rapidly in recent years following significant reductions in tariffs. However, significant barriers remain, and there is currently reluctance among many developing countries to undertake further reductions. In addition African countries and in particular least developed African countries are still marginal players in this reframing of geography of trade. The erosion of preferential access to Northern markets remains their major concern and the status quo in multilateral liberalization could be seen as a desirable scenario. This emphasis on developed countries markets, principally Europe and the US, is likely to represent a missed opportunity for African countries. Unless those countries are granted broader preferences by the European Union and other developed countries, especially in agriculture, significant gains would be obtained from trade preferences provided by other developing countries. To assess this we compare the potential effects of the removal of barriers on trade between African countries and other developing countries with the gains from developed country liberalization. A general equilibrium model containing information on preferential bilateral tariffs is used to estimate the impacts

Tracking the Italian employees'TFR over their working life careers

In this paper we evaluate the expected evolution of the Trattamento di ?ne rapporto over the Italian employees?working life careers. We use adiminstrative (INPS) data to disentangle the amount that is expected to be accumulated until retirement, the amount expected not to accrue because of discountinuos working careers and/or paid as an anticipated withdrawal. This is relevant in the light of the recent pension system reforms that encourage the diversion of the TFR to pension funds.

1/N and Long Run Optimal Portfolios: Results for Mixed Asset Menus

Recent research [e.g., DeMiguel, Garlappi and Uppal, (2009a), Rev. Fin. Studies] has cast doubts on the out-of-sample performance of optimizing portfolio strategies relative to a naive, equally-weighted ones. However, most of the existing results concern the simple case in which an investor has a one-month horizon and mean-variance preferences. In this paper, we examine whether this finding holds for longer investment horizons, when the asset menu includes bonds and real estate beyond stocks and cash, and when the investor is characterized by constant relative risk aversion preferences which are not locally mean-variance for long horizons. Our experiments indicates that power utility investors with horizons of one year and longer would have on average benefited, ex-post, from an optimizing strategy that exploits simple linear predictability in asset returns over the period January 1995 - December 2007. This result is insensitive to the degree of risk aversion, to the number of predictors being included in the forecasting model, and to the deduction of transaction costs from measured portfolio performance.equally weighted portfolios; long investment horizon; real-time strategic asset allocation; public real estate vehicles; ex post performance; predictability; parameter uncertainty

Toward Semantics-aware Representation of Digital Business Processes

An extended enterprise (EE) can be described by a set of models each representing a specific aspect of the EE. Aspects can for example be the process flow or the value description. However, different models are done by different people, which may use different terminology, which prevents relating the models. Therefore, we propose a framework consisting of process flow and value aspects and in addition a static domain model with structural and relational components. Further, we outline the usage of the static domain model to enable relating the different aspects

International diversification and industry-related labor income risk

Do equity markets help diversifying away industry-related labor income risk? This paper reconsiders the hedging role of stock markets by focusing on international equity diversification, rather than domestic asset allocation, and on industry wage, rather than individual labor income. We test for differences in implied equilibrium equity portfolios across investors belonging to different industry-country pairs. We compare these industry-based portfolio holdings to the one that is optimal for an investor endowed with the average home-country labor income. Our results resurrect the role of equities in hedging wage risk by uncovering remarkable heterogeneity across industries within each investing country. Our analysis also delivers insights concerning the role of occupational pension funds in designing optimal portfolios for their members.optimal portfolio choice; international diversification; labor income risk; industry-specific human capital; occupational pension funds

Smoke in the water : the use of tariff policy flexibility in crises

As the economic crisis deepens and widens, fears of a return to the protectionist spiral of the 1930s become more common. However, an important difference between the 1930s and today is the existence of the World Trade Organization and the legal limits it imposes on the protectionist responses members can pursue. The objective of this paper is threefold. First, to assess the extent to which applied tariff can legally be raised without violating tariff-bound obligations, and compare it with what is economically possible. Second, to examine what has been the protectionist response of individual countries when facing an economic crisis since the creation of the WTO. Finally, to predict how far the protectionist responses will go during the current crisis. Results suggest that the policy space left when looking at what is economically possible is indeed quite large. However, in the recent past very little of the available policy space has been used by countries suffering from an economic crisis. Our predictions for the current crisis are modest tariff hikes in the order of 8 percent.International Trade and Trade Rules,Trade Policy,Free Trade,Debt Markets,Access to Finance

Trade Liberalisation and Informality: New stylized facts

The relationship between trade liberalisation and informal activity has not received the attention, whether theoretical or empirical, that it may deserve. The conventional view poses that trade liberalisation would cause a rise in informality. This paper uses three different data sets to assess the sign of the relationship. Empirical results provide a mixed picture. Macro founded data tend to produce results supporting the conventional view. Micro founded data do not. Empirical results also suggest that while informal output increases with deeper trade liberalisation, informal employment falls.Informal Sector, Trade Liberalisation, Cross-sectional Analysis, Time Series Analysis, Panel Analysis

Informal Labor Markets and Macroeconomic Fluctuations

This paper examines the adjustment of developing country labor markets to macroeconomic shocks. It models a two sector labor market: a formal salaried (tradable) sector that may or may not be affected by union or legislation induced wage rigidities, and an unregulated (nontradable) self-employment sector facing liquidity constraints to entry. This is embedded in a standard small economy macro model that permits the derivation of patterns of comovement among relative salaried/self-employed incomes, salaried/self-employed sector sizes and the real exchange rate with respect to different types of shocks in contexts with and without wage rigidities. The paper then explores time series data from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico to test for cointegrating relationships corresponding to the patterns predicted by theory. We identify two types of regime. The first corresponds to periods where demand shocks to the nontradable sector offer new opportunities to (informal) entrepreneurs, the informal sector expands ?procyclically,? and the exchange rate overshoots toward appreciation in the short run, or remains at its productivity determined levels. The second corresponds to periods of negative shocks to the formal salaried sector in the presence of wage rigidities where the sector plays a more traditional ?buffer? role during downturns. --Informality,Labor market dynamics,Self-employment,Real exchange rates