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Abstract:
This paper is about the critics of the "doers" of globalization. It describes who they are, where they came from, what they want, how economists, policymakers, and others might understand them better, and where globalization might head from here. Many critics are themselves strongly internationalist and want to see globalization proceed, but under different rules. Some, particularly the protesters in the streets, focus mainly on what is wrong with the world. But some of them put forward broad alternative visions and others offer detailed recommendations for alleviating the problems they see arising from status quo globalization. Most of them have roots in long-standing transnational advocacy efforts to protect human rights and the environment and reduce poverty around the world. What brings them together today is their shared concern that the process by which globalization's rules are being written and implemented is undermining democracy and failing to spread the benefits broadly. This paper sketches the key issues and concerns that motivate the critics in a way that is broadly representative and intelligible to economists. It finds more resonance for the critics' agenda in economics than they commonly recognize. And it attempts to capture the concerns of Southern as well as Northern critics and to analyze the issues that divide as well as bring them together. Finally, it evaluates those issues and alternative proposals on which even globalization enthusiasts and the critics might come together cooperatively.

globalization

Abstract:
We map United States comparative advantage between 1980 and 1995, by trading partner and region, using Balassa's export-based index of Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA). We find: temporally stable and ubiquitous US comparative advantage in differentiated producer goods (except disadvantage in Japan); somewhat less stable and less sweeping US disadvantage in standardized producer goods; chaotic and diverse patterns of US RCA in consumer goods (especially in the Chinese market). Our most significant findings are surprisingly sharp geographical differences in patterns of US RCA and surprisingly small differences across sub-sectors of 1, 2, and 3-digit SITC classifications - regional, but not sectoral, niche' specialization. The high overall variability across regions in RCA indexes seems unrelated to obvious explanations such as proximity or lingual/historical ties to the US. In producer goods, RCA variability across regions correlates somewhat better with accounts of trade diversion and of regional preferences for and discrimination against US exports. We find only scant evidence of high or increasing variability across disaggregated commodity sub-groups in US RCA indexes. Such variability is often the prediction of theories of comparative advantage that are based on vertical specialization, product differentiation, or scale and agglomeration economies.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
This paper integrates the contributions to a forthcoming volume of the same title by the authors. The volume analyzes and empirically examines linkages between the real and financial variables that themselves link open economies-- "linkage" thus has a double meaning. Two types of linkages are discussed. Structural linkages describe differences across economies and among sectors in market structure (competitive/oligopolistic), productivity growth, and openness to trade. Inter-temporal linkages describe differences across economies and over time or circumstance in saving preferences and capital formation, government budgets, portfolio shares of "inside" and "outside" assets, and openness to mobile financial flows. Structural linkages are important chiefly for explaining sustained divergences in national competitiveness as measured by purchasing-power-parity norms. Inter-temporal linkages also account for them, as well as for sustained divergences in current and capital-account positions, geographical growth rates, and national incomes of residents.

Abstract:
This paper characterizes and evaluates what has been called variously the new, new-view, strategic or industrial organization approach to international trade and trade policy. This approach analyzes trade in "strategic environments," those in which small numbers of large, self-consciously independent agents interact, and in which their activities themselves are interdependently (strategically) linked. The new view's perspectives have been controversial but often because they have been misunderstood. Many of its subtler strengths have remained hidden. The misunderstandings and subtler strengths of the approach are the main themes of the paper. Its secondary emphasis is on applied and empirical work in the new tradition and its policy implications, with special regard to Pacific trade and investment.

Abstract:
Employing a 'factor-content' model that relates sectoral growth to regional factor endowments, we find that 1) U.S. state factor endowments are reasonably strong correlates of cross-state sectoral growth in value-added, with patterns that accord well with intuition; 2) that inter-sectoral differences in productivity change are marked -- estimates range from negative to annual rates over 10 percent; 3) little evidence of unusual growth linkages either from sector to sector or state to state, such as might be expected from recent discussions of externalities,... 4) ...nor of correlation between unusually strong sectoral growth and unusual levels of export dependence, another putative channel of externalities. Our principle data set is a 1987-89 panel of: sector-by-sector, state-by-state value added and international exports, as well as state endowments of patents, structural capital, and as many as six types of labor. 'Unusual' growth and exports are defined as the residual growth and international exports left unexplained by endowments.

Abstract:
This paper assesses the place of active trade policy in U.S. industrial change.The growing role of imperfectly competitive multinational corporations provides new arguments for more active U.S. trade policy, as does an increased social consensus that governments should insure what markets do not. Arguments against more active U.S. trade policy stem from its manage ability in a democratic system of checks and balances, from its possible perception as a form of policy aggression, and from the likelihood that there are feasible alternatives to trade policy with smaller implementation costs, administrative costs, incentive costs, and resource-diversion costs. Considered promising among such alternatives are government adjustment programs, foreign-exchange-market intervention, and macroeconomic renovation. Sections 2 and 3 of the paper describe how international economic and policy environments encourage industrial change and pressure U.S. trade policy. Section 4 describes the pros and cons of more active U.S. trade policy where imperfectly competitive industrial structure and missing insurance markets are taken as facts of life. Section 5 assesses alternatives to more active U.S.trade policy, including, in addition to those mentioned above, strict reliance on market forces.

Abstract:
In this paper we investigate relationships between trade, wages, and the rewards to skill for U.S. workers during the period 1981 - 92. We measure U.S. trade flows with three groups of trading partners -- industrial countries, newly industrial countries, and primary producers -- and we estimate the correlation of these trade flows with several types of wage premiums, using conditioning methods that separate pure wage premiums from the return to education industry by industry. We find that greater U.S. trade with newly industrializing countries is associated with increased rewards to skill and reduced rewards to pure labor, consistent with heightened wage inequality and distributional conflict. The opposite is usually true of greater trade with traditional industrial countries. Our interpretation of these results rests on two models. One is a model of North-North intraindustry trade in differentiated, skill-intensive intermediate goods ("horizontal" exchange) and North-South intraindustry trade in intermediates for finished manufactures ("vertical" exchange). The second is a simple model of industry wage premiums that are rewards for loyalty, firm-specific knowledge, or (dis)amenities, in which we posit different premiums for skilled and less-skilled workers whose labor markets are segmented from one another.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
This paper explores the new interconnections between real and financial policies that affect international transactions. Among other conclusions are the following. (1) In a world of spatially mobile capital and reasonably accurate expectations, trends in international competitiveness and financial asset yields are tightly linked. Volatility in one causes volatility in the other. Policies that affect one affect the other.Financial policy influences real exchange rates and alters the pressures for trade and industrial policy. Trade and industrial policy causes overshooting of financial variables, and alters the pressures for financial policy.(2) Any failureto make real and financial policy stable, credible,systematic, and predictable generates volatile and costly signals to reallocate resources. The problems with this are unpredictability more than inefficiency and resource disorder more than resource mis-order.(3) Stable, credible, systematic, and transparent exchange-rate policy can allay resource disorder by limiting deviations around economic trends.Economic trends can be enhanced in the presence of well-defined market imperfections by stable, credible, systematic, and transparent trade and industrial policies. (4) To reduce the likelihood of global resource disorder, real and financial policy options may involve retreating from multilateralism and from unrealistically binding rules. Sensible and timely alternatives seem to be aggressive bilateral peacemaking, non-inclusive coalition formation, and the formulation of credible "conventions" to govern government policy, both real and financial.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
The goals of trade adjustment assistance (TAA) are to ease transition, compensate injury, and bleed political pressure for protectionism. Section I of the paper outlines the economic principles underlying these goals, and their shifting historical importance in the U.S. Sections II and III of the paper discuss the personal characteristics of a representative sample of worker recipients of TAA in 1976, and their labor market success in several subsequent years. Their experience is compared to that of a matched sample of workers receiving standard unemployment insurance (UI). Comparisons in Section II focus on differences in mean characteristics and experience between the TAA and UI samples, controlling only for whether workers returned eventually to the firm from which they were initially separated. Comparisons in Section III focus on differences between the TAA and UI samples in their ability to recover lost employment and income, using a regression approach that in principle controls for all relevant variables, and not for just one.

The most important conclusions of the research are the following. (1) The majority of TAA recipients in 1976 were not permanently displaced, but returned eventually to their former employers. A far greater proportion of UI recipients suffered permanent displacement. (2) Workers receiving TAA had higher incomes on average than their counterparts who received only UI. Their incomes furthermore fell less frequently below the poverty line. (3) TAA recipients nevertheless experienced more frequent and enduring transitional unemployment than did UI recipients, and did not return to their former income level as rapidly. (4) The reasons for conclusion (3) were unclear. It could not readily be explained by differences between the TAA and UI samples in permanence of layoff, generosity of program benefits, age, experience, industry, affluence, economic environment, socioeconomic status, or behavioral responses to any of these variables.

Conclusions (1) and (2) are at variance with most previous work on TAA. Conclusion (3) is not, but the traditional explanations for it are those that conclusion (4) rules out.

Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to describe United States trade policy since World War II, and to assess the possibility for ongoing U.S.trade-policy leadership. U.S. trade policy has shown remarkable consistency since World War II. It has never been as purely free-trade-focussed as some commentators suggest, but it has not recently shifted toward isolationism as dramatically as alarmists fear. It has almost always been best described as "open, but fair," with injury to import competitors being the measure of "fairness." The general consistency of U.S. trade policy over time is quite remarkable given the frequent change of political party in power, especially in the executive branch, but also in the Congress. U.S. trade-policy leadership seems still potentially strong despite a decline in U.S. hegemony. It is clearly strong in a protectionist direction.Any shift toward aggressive insularity justifies parallel trade-policy aggression in the eyes of trading partners. It is arguably strong ina liberalizing direction as well. The U.S. seems ideally poised for aggressive trade-policy peacemaking; perhaps multilaterally, but perhaps also bilaterally; perhaps with its traditional industrial trading partners, but perhaps also with Japan and newly industrializing Asian countries that play so importanta role in U.S. trade, and that, on many matters,may be closer in spirit to U.S. economic philosophy than Europe, Canada, or Latin America.

Abstract:
This paper develops unique disaggregated data for three U.S. automakers and three Japanese to assess how changes in exchange rates, factor costs, and voluntary export restraints have affected recent price competitiveness in the U.S. passenger car market. We find support for several familiar relationships. The support provided by the experience of the late 1970s is straightforward. The dollar`s foreign- exchange value fell below its historical trend, in both nominal and cost- adjusted (real) terms, relative to the major suppliers of U.S. auto imports. U.S. price competitiveness tracked U.S. cost competitiveness quite closely, as average prices of U.S. automakers rose more slowly than those of their principal rival firms (all Japanese). "Misalignment" of the dollar toward weakness by historical norms was reflected in competitive relative pricing by U.S. auto firms, again with respect to a historical norm. The support provided by the experience of the years 1980-1985 is more complex and interesting. Strong offsetting forces appear to have been at work. Relative to major auto suppliers, the effective nominal dollar rose gradually toward its level of the mid-1970s, but the effective real "auto dollar" rose much faster, increasing to a level well above its historical norm by early 1985. U.S. cost competitiveness deteriorated not so much because of exchange rates, but because unit labor costs in manufacturing rose in the U.S. relative to those in major auto suppliers. U.S. auto price competitiveness began to deteriorate correspondingly, but soon stopped, and instead improved gradually between 1982 and 1985, ending up at about the same level in 1985 as in 1980. The Voluntary Restraint Arrangements (VRAs) with Japan, which began in 1981, seem to be the explanation for why the negative effects of exchange rates and costs on U.S. auto price competitiveness were offset. The VRAs are also a reason why average prices of U.S. automakers rose faster than other U.S. prices as measured by the consumer price index, and why in Japan, average prices on auto sales to the U.S. rose much faster than other Japanese prices. In sum, "misalignment" of the dollar toward strength by historical norms and deteriorating labor cost competitiveness, which tended to undermine the competitiveness of U.S. auto firms, were offset by the Japanese VRAs, which buttressed it. The VRAs, however, undermined the inter-sectoral competitiveness of autos.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

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No abstract is available for this paper.

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No abstract is available for this paper.