Working Paper
Macropolicy in the Rise and Fall of the Golden Age
The Golden Age was the era of demand management. Originally with monetary, and then fiscal policy, the governments of the advanced capitalist economies attempted to enhance and guide the accumulation process. They allocated credit, manipulated...
Working Paper
Protectionist Tendencies in the North and Vulnerable Economies in the South
This paper examines whether protectionist tendencies, in terms of both policy preferences and policy actions, in 'Northern' countries-looking in particular at the United States - seem to be an obstacle to the integration into the world economy of...
Working Paper
Will the Euro Trigger More Monetary Unions in Africa?
We analyse the prospects for greater monetary integration in Africa, in the wake of EMU. We argue that the structural characteristics of African economies are quite different to the EMU members but that much can be gained from monetary cooperation...
Working Paper
Costa Rica
Over the last thirty-five years, Costa Rican exports (in dollars) have grown at an average annual growth rate of 10.8 per cent. In the context of an import substituting industrialization and subregional integration, exports grew at increasingly...
Blog
From the Editor’s Desk (September 2012)
Tony Addison Mid-September finds UNU-WIDER very busy preparing for our big conference on climate change and development policy that takes place later...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (January 2012)
Tony Addison January saw the snow arrive in Helsinki. As I look out across the harbour, the scene is one of various shades of white and grey. The...
Journal Special Issue
Developing Countries in the WTO Regime
When the Uruguay Round was being negotiated and it was coming to a close, a number of estimates were made about the impact of the agreement on poor countries. Many of the assessments indicated that there would be a net loss for them while others came...
Journal Special Issue
South-South and North-South Trade Agreements
In this special issue, five articles address some of the challenges associated with integrating an existing S-S regional agreement with a new template that results from block negotiations with a northern partner. The compatibility issues this raises...
Working Paper
The resettlement of Vietnamese refugees across Canada over three decades
Welcoming 60,000 Southeast Asian refugees in the 1979–80 period has become a celebrated part of Canada’s history, but the eventual integration of these refugees into Canadian society has received insufficient attention. This study provides a...
Journal Article
Transmission of World Prices to the Vietnamese Economy
International economic integration has been a central policy goal for the Vietnam government since the doi moi reform was initiated in 1986. We explore the Vietnamese increasing integration into the world market and bouts of high inflation. Five...
Working Paper
Reforming the global monetary non-system
This paper proposes a comprehensive yet evolutionary reform of the global monetary non-system that evolved out of the breakdown of the original Bretton Woods arrangement in the early 1970s. It includes: (i) a global reserve system that mixes the...
Working Paper
Geography and Development in Africa
Geography causes African countries to experience a ‘proximity gap’. To overcome this gap a ‘big push’ may be needed in infrastructure. The cross-border nature of such infrastructure requires regional cooperation in at least four issues: transport...
Working Paper
Do Structural Reforms always Succeed?
In the last twenty years, Brazil has undergone several attempts of improving sustainable growth through stabilization programmes, and more recently, structural reforms in line with the Washington Consensus Agenda. The results, however, have been...
Working Paper
Measurement of a Multidimentional Index of Globalization and its Impact on Income Inequality
In this paper we present two composite indices of globalization. The first is based on the Kearney/Foreign Policy magazine and the second is obtained from principal component analysis. They indicate which countries have become most globalized and...
Working Paper
Economic Polarization Through Trade
The paper analyses the impact trade liberalization and economic integration have had on regional growth and regional disparities in Mexico over the last two decades. It is highlighted that the passage from an import substitution system to membership...
Working Paper
Controlling Asylum Migration to the Enlarged EU
We examine the ways in which candidate countries which are to join the EU in 2004 are responding to increasing asylum migration from the East and assess the impact of accession on their asylum and immigration laws and policies. It will be argued that...
Working Paper
Does Financial Openness Promote Economic Integration?
We study whether financial openness facilitates the economic integration of formerly centrally planned economies with the EU-15. Two dimensions of economic integration are considered: cross-country convergence of per-capita incomes and bilateral...
Working Paper
The Effects of (within and with EU) Regional Integration
We analyse two potential effects arising from regional (and with EU) integration—increased quality of institutions (including the quality of financial institutions) and, economic policies and reduced multilateral exchange rate volatility—in a...
Working Paper
Modelling Macroeconomic Linkages in a Monetary Union
We construct a structural macroeconometric model for member states of the West African Economic and Monetary Union. Fitting this model to annual and quarterly time series data allows us to identify the channels through which macroeconomic innovation...
Working Paper
The Characteristics of Macroeconomic Shocks in the CFA Franc Zone
In this paper we fit a VECM in output and prices to data from ten countries of the CFA Franc Zone. This model allows for various cross-country interactions in both the short run and the long run. The VECM parameters are used to estimate persistence...
Working Paper
Analyse du Processus de Convergence Dans la Zone UEMOA
L’objectif de cet étude est d’analyser l’état de la convergence dans l’UEMOA, de 1980 à 2001, à travers les critères de convergence définis dans son pacte de convergence. On utilise l’approche méthodologique de Haldane et Hall (1991) pour appréhender...
Working Paper
The Impact of Monetary Union on Macroeconomic Integration
In this paper we use data from 17 African nations in order to investigate the hypothesis that monetary union – represented in this case by the CFA Franc Zone – augments the extent of macroeconomic integration. The paper covers a number of dimensions...
Working Paper
An Aggregate View of Macroeconomic Shocks in Sub-Saharan Africa
This paper investigates the impacts and responses of macroeconomic shocks in some domestic economies in Sub-Saharan Africa over the period 1961-99; more specifically, it seeks to answer the question of whether there are any systematic differences in...
Working Paper
How Does Monetary Policy Affect the Poor?
The West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) has a history of monetary stability and low inflation. Nevertheless, there is substantial variation in relative prices within some UEMOA countries, in particular in the price of food relative to...
Working Paper
Growth and Trade Horizons for Asia
Economic emergence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and India has fundamentally altered the economic landscape of Asia and its relation to the global economy. Using the new dynamic global model, we present forecasts for Asian expansion over...
Working Paper
Regional Inequality, Industry Agglomeration and Foreign Trade
How do foreign trade and foreign direct investment affect regional inequality? Foreign trade and investment may affect internal economic geography, and the resulting industry agglomeration may contribute to regional inequality. This paper provides...
Working Paper
Component Trade and China’s Global Economic Integration
China’s engagement in the so-called international fragmentation of production – namely ‘cross-border dispersion of component production/assembly within vertically integrated manufacturing industries’ – has become an increasingly important form of its...