Global Economy Journal

Industrial and agricultural pollution emissions are compared with levels of economic activity as countries move up the per capita income scale. Pollution emissions are found to be concentrated among the lower income countries. Industrial CH₄ and both agricultural CH₄ and N₂O emissions display the highest degrees of concentration among poorer countries relative to their GDP shares. Agricultural CH₄ and N₂O emissions are more concentrated among the poorer countries than are industrial CH₄ and N₂O emissions. Little improvement in environmental quality will result from implementing costly emissions reductions in the industrial nations alone. Environmental policies must focus on lower- and middle-income countries. More attention must be devoted to reducing agricultural pollution emissions. Improving the economic activity–environmental tradeoff will require a global approach to reducing greenhouse gases.

Scholars at the intersection of agricultural trade policy and health regulation have speculated that some governments, under the pretext of health protection, have adopted food safety and plant and animal health regulations to shield domestic farmers from foreign competition. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between trade protection for agriculture and the number of trade-restricting sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) regulatory notifications issued by World Trade Organization (WTO) members. We construct an empirical model to determine the influence of agricultural protectionism, agricultural interest groups, consumer sentiment, and institutional capacity on changes to a government’s SPS rules. The findings suggest that governments’ adoption of trade-restricting sanitary and phytosanitary regulations are influenced by agricultural protectionism, even after controlling for consumer awareness and institutional capacity. The evidence suggests that health related trade policies are substituting for more traditional forms of agricultural protectionism.

Previous literature suggests that trade contributes to knowledge and technology spillovers among trading partners. Using panel data and country-specific fixed effects, we show that the technology of a country is explained by existing technology of its major trading partners. We build an endogenous growth model for OECD countries for the 1960–2010 period; we draw the residuals to measure the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) of each country. Then, using spatial econometrics, we regress the TFP of each country on previous TFP of its major trading partners. In addition, we run a Random Coefficient Model, to let this relationship vary randomly by country. Finally, we run the endogenous growth model again, but now it includes the spatial lag term as an explanatory variable.

In the Ministerial meeting of ASEAN held in 1998, the devastation caused by Asian financial crisis remained the point of contemplation. The participants enthusiastically discussed the need to establish common currency and exchange rate system in order to counter any financial crisis anticipated. The ever-growing financial crisis threatening every region in the world has compelled the economists to acknowledge the elevating need of financial cooperation in their respective territories. This is certainly meant to ensure economic stability at both economic and political level. The authors, in the course of this paper, have focused the need to materialize the ideal of promoting monetary integration in the major economies of South, South East, and North East Asia. Calculating Optimum Currency Area (OCA) Index, the authors in a way present costs and benefits associated with the adoption of this currency union. Demand and supply sides of each economy are tested as a pre requisite of OCA in order to provide a good rationale in favor of selection of regions. For this purpose, Structural VAR Analysis (SVAR) method was employed and innovation accounting is done through variance decomposition of forecast errors, impulse response function and correlation matrix. The theory of OCA has been tested by (i) calculating the OCA index estimated by simple OLS method and (ii) following Bayoumi and Eichengreen extrapolating the variability of exchange rate data. The common consensus drawn from the two approaches adopted implies that there is a good potential in the region excluding China to construct a currency union particularly amongst South and North East Asian economies. It is worth mentioning, however, that some of these will have to work harder to join and become an effective member of this currency merger.

This article looks at the preconditions that an emerging economy needs to fulfill, before it can adopt inflation targeting as a monetary policy regime. The study is conducted using the Indian economy as a case study. We conduct sector-wise analysis of the Indian economy to evaluate the independence of India’s monetary policy from fiscal, external, structural and financial perspectives. Dominance from any of these sectors may divert monetary policy from the objective of maintaining price stability in the economy. Our analysis suggests that among the four dominance issues, the issue of “structural dominance” is the most acute for India. Supply shocks, hitting the economy due to structural bottlenecks, pose a major threat to the independent conduct of monetary policy. This study concludes that inflation band targeting with a wide target range would be a feasible monetary policy option for India.

This paper investigates the exchange rate pass-through into import prices on aggregate and disaggregates data levels in Jordan. We employ the bounds testing approach to cointegration and error correction model in a sample of annual data over the period 1976–2011. This fundamental topic has considerable policy implications. The current paper concludes that nominal exchange rate fluctuations and oil prices are the core determinants of import prices either on aggregate or disaggregate data level. The short-run and long-run nominal exchange rate pass-through elasticities coefficients in Jordan are incomplete and equal to 0.13. Besides, in the short-run, oil prices have larger effect on Jordan’s import prices compared to nominal exchange fluctuations.

Trade liberalization and reinforcing industry-specific assistance measures have been instrumental in globalizing the Australian textile, clothing, footwear (TCF) and motor vehicle industries by re-orienting production from the domestic to international market. As a result, output and has contracted in the former industry whilst expanding in the latter industry. These results are in line with TCF and motor vehicle production in other western market economies. This, in turn, indicates that labour intensive industries are likely to be contracting whilst capital intensive industries dominate production in these economies. This has important implication for manpower policies in that they need to be formulated to upgrade the skills of the labour force in order to facilitate the expanding production of capital intensive goods, thereby promote employment growth in the long run.