Anne O. Krueger - Böcker

International trade and trade policy have become increasingly important and complex in recent years. In this comprehensive introduction to the key aspects of international trade policy, noted authority Anne O. Krueger explains what has happened and why these issues are so difficult. With evidence-based analysis and an even-handed approach, International Trade: What Everyone Needs to Know lays the foundation to understand what trade does and does not do. Focusing on the importance of trade in both goods and services, Krueger explores the effects of various trade policies step-by-step and demonstrates why economists generally support free trade. Krueger considers the historical experience, highlighting how technological changes and reduction of trade barriers helped transform the world economy. Tariffs, antidumping and countervailing duties, government procurement policies, preferential trading arrangements, trade with developing countries and emerging markets, and the World Trade Organization are examined. Krueger tackles the fundamental questions surrounding trade including: What are the benefits and costs? What are trade deficits and do they matter? Why do some people favor protectionism and barriers to trade? How does trade policy affect workers? Written in question-and-answer format, this non-technical introduction to the policies of international trade provides an indispensable guide to one of the most crucial elements of the global economy.

Despite a number of economic crises in the mid- to late 1990s, Latin American economies in general have improved dramatically in recent years, largely due to macroeconomic reforms. This book brings together prominent economists and policymakers to assess the results of a decade of these reforms, highlighting both the many success stories and the areas in which further work is needed. Contributors offer case studies of individual countries and regional overviews that cover monetary, financial and fiscal policies. For example, now that inflation rates have been stabilized, one suggested "second stage" monetary reform would be to focus on reducing rates from high to low single digits. Financial sector reforms should centre on improving regulation and supervision. Finally, since fiscal stability has already been achieved in most countries, new fiscal reforms need to focus on institutionalizing fiscal discipline, improving the efficiency and equity of tax collection, and modifying institutional arrangements to deal with increasingly decentralized federal systems.

The rapid emergence of East Asia as an important geopolitical-economic entity has been one of the most visible and striking changes in the international economy in recent years. With that emergence has come an increased need for understanding the problems of interdependence. As a step toward meeting this need, the National Bureau of Economic Research joined with the Korea Development Institute to sponsor this volume, which focuses on the complexities of tax reform in a global economy. Experts from Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, Japan, and Thailand, as well as the United States, Canada, and Israel examine the major tax programs of the 1980s and their domestic and international economic effects. The analyses reveal similarities between the United States and countries in East Asia in political constraints on policy making, and taken together they show how growing interdependence interacts with domestic economic and political concerns to affect issues as politically vital as tax reform. Economists, policymakers, and members of the business community will benefit from these studies.

During the first three decades following the Second World War, an increasingly open international trading system led to unprecedented economic growth throughout the world. But in recent years, that openness has been threatened by increased protectionism, regional trading arrangements--Europe 1992 and the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement--and setbacks in negotiations on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. In Trade and Protectionism, American and East Asian scholars consider the dangers of this trend for the world economy and especially for East Asian countries. The authors look at the current global trading system and at the potential threats to East Asian economies from possible regional arrangements, such as separate trading blocks in the Western Hemisphere and Europe. They cover trade between the United States and Japan, Korea and Japan, and Japanese-East Asian trade policies; trade in agriculture and semiconductors and the frictions that have jeopardized this trade; and direct foreign investment.The contributors round out the work with discussions of the political economy of protection in Korea and Taiwan and political economy considerations as they affect trade policy in general. This is the second volume of the National Bureau of Economic Research-East Asia Seminar on Economics. The first volume, The Political Economy of Tax Reform, also edited by Takatoshi Ito and Anne O. Krueger, addresses tax reform in the global economy.

This volume explores East Asia's macroeconomic experience in the 1980s and the economic impact of East Asia's growth on the rest of the world. The authors explore the causes of capital flows, changes in trade balances, and exchange-rate fluctuations in East Asia and their effects on other countries. These 14 papers are organized around four themes: the overall determinants of growth and trading relations in the East Asian region; monetary policies in relation to capital controls and capital accounts; the impact of exchange-rate behaviour on industrial structure; and the potential for greater regional integration. The contributors examine interactions among exchange-rate movements, trade balances and capital flows; how government monetary policy affects capital flows; the effect of exchange rates on industrial structure, inventories, and prices; and the extent of regional integration in East Asia.

The increased mobility and volume of international capital flows is a major trend in international finance. While countries worldwide have engaged in financial deregulation, this pattern is most pronounced in East Asia, where it has created a major effect on the behaviour of exchange rates, interest rates and capital flows. In these 13 essays, American and Asian scholars analyze the effects of financial deregulation and integration on East Asian markets. Topics covered include the roles of the United States and Japan in trading with Asian countries, macroeconomic policy implications of export-led growth in Korea and Taiwan, the effects of foreign direct investment in China, and the impact of financial liberalization in Japan, Korea, and Singapore. Demonstrating the complexity of financial deregulation and the challenges it poses for policy makers, this volume seeks to provide a picture of the overall status of East Asian financial markets for scholars in international finance and Asian economic development.

The volume of capital flows between industrial and developing countries has grown dramatically in the past decade and has become a major issue in a world that is increasingly "globalized." Here Takatoshi Ito and Anne O. Krueger, two leading experts on this topic, have assembled a group of scholars who address different types of capital flows—bank lending, bonds, direct foreign investment—and the implications they hold for economic performance. With its particular focus on the Asian financial crises, this work presents a new model for policy makers everywhere in thinking about the role of private capital flows.

In recent years the tremendous growth of the service sector has outstrippped that of manfacturing in many industrialized nations, causing economists to focus on both the policy issues raised by services and the differences between production and delivery of goods and services. This is the first book-length attempt to analyze trade in services in the Asia-Pacific region. Contributors provide overviews of issues involved in studying the service sector; investigate the impact of increasing trade in services on the economies of Taiwan, Korea and Hong Kong; present detailed analyses of specific service sectors; and extend our understanding of trade in services.

Over the last twenty-five years, there has been an acceleration in the move from government regulation toward privatization. Governance, Regulation, and Privatization in the Asia-Pacific Region is the first thoroughgoing account of the relative success of the different approaches to privatization as undertaken in Korea, China, Australia, and Japan. In most contexts, privatization is expected to yield greater efficiency and cost effectiveness while avoiding the corruption and bloated budgets of government regulation or monopoly control. But broad-scale privatization, as implemented in East Asia, has also yielded its share of difficulties when ill-designed. Due to a lack of both legal infrastructure and management guidelines, privatization sometimes created a vacuum in corporate governance for some of the region's most important industries and in some cases merely reinstated monopoly-like configurations. The papers presented in this book analyze the experiences of privatization in several industries, including railroads and telecoms, as well as corporate governance problems, accounting issues, and challenges for the future in East Asia.

The World Trade Organization was established in the 1990s, superseding the GATT and providing a stronger institutional foundation for international trading arrangement among countries. As an international organization it faces a number of challenges, including achieving agreement over trade in services, bringing in new members from the economies in transition and developing countries, making the strengthened dispute settlement mechanism effective, and bringing about an increasingly open multilateral trading system. This volume analyzes the challenges and opportunities confronting the WTO. Several chapters address the WTO's institutional capacity directly, through such issues as the way national policies may influence or constrain the WTO, the difficulties of achieving coherence with the World Bank and the IMF, and the resources available to the WTO's secretariat in relation to the tasks it faces.Other papers in this volume consider more contemporary policy issues facing the WTO, including how to bring services trade into an open multilateral framework, how dispute settlement mechanisms can be improved, and how other concerns, such as labour standards and environmental issues may be addressed. Two papers focus on the WTO's relationship to developing countries and countries in transition, and an introductory chapter provides an overview of the WTO's operation. The text presumes no technical background in economics.

The World Trade Organization was established in the 1990s, superseding the GATT and providing a stronger institutional foundation for international trading arrangement among countries. As an international organization it faces a number of challenges, including achieving agreement over trade in services, bringing in new members from the economies in transition and developing countries, making the strengthened dispute settlement mechanism effective, and bringing about an increasingly open multilateral trading system. This volume analyzes the challenges and opportunities confronting the WTO. Several chapters address the WTO's institutional capacity directly, through such issues as the way national policies may influence or constrain the WTO, the difficulties of achieving coherence with the World Bank and the IMF, and the resources available to the WTO's secretariat in relation to the tasks it faces.Other papers in this volume consider more contemporary policy issues facing the WTO, including how to bring services trade into an open multilateral framework, how dispute settlement mechanisms can be improved, and how other concerns, such as labour standards and environmental issues may be addressed. Two papers focus on the WTO's relationship to developing countries and countries in transition, and an introductory chapter provides an overview of the WTO's operation. The text presumes no technical background in economics.

Exploring the political and economic determinants of trade protection, this study provides a range of information on key American industries and documents the process of seeking and conferring protection. Eight analytical histories of the automobile, steel, semiconductor, lumber, wheat, and textile and clothing industries demonstrate that trade barriers rarely have unequivocal benefits and may be counterproductive. They show that criteria for awarding protection do not take into account the interests of consumers or other industries and that political influence and an organized lobby are major sources of protection. Based on these findings, a final essay suggests that current policy fails to consider adequately economic efficiency, the public good, and indirect negative effects. This volume should interest scholars in economics, business, and public policy who deal with trade issues.

This summary examines the level, form and evolution of American trade protection. In case studies of trade barriers imposed during the 1980s to help the steel, semiconductor, automobile, lumber, wheat, and textile and clothing industries, the contributors trace the evolution of efforts to obtain protection, protectionist measures and their results. A chapter assessing the common themes that emerge from the studies concludes that the focus of current trade law is exclusively on the individual protection-seeking industries, with little regard for indirect effects on using industries or for consumers. Reform could usefully take these effects into account. This volume should interest policymakers, business executives, and anyone interested in trade policy formulation and practice.

This book examines how Japan should cope with fiscal challenges, as demands on the budget from an ageing society have necessitated the reigning in of public debt and the revamp of the pension and healthcare systems. It combines insights from academic research with the views of policymakers to distil key issues that need to inform public debate.

This volume is intended to provide a survey of thought about exchange-rate determination as it emerged in the decade of the 1970s. This survey differs from many, however, in that the field itself is in a state of rapid change. Understanding the changes and the reasons for them is therefore essential if the reader is to have a basis for understanding future advances in knowledge and the further evolution of the system. The survey is also intended to reach non-specialist professional economists whose balance-of-payments theory was learned before the 1970s, as well as to provide graduate students and advanced undergraduates with an up-to-date account of the field. In most respects, the theory of exchange-rate determination is based upon an analytical structure equivalent to that analyzing the determinants of the balance of payments under fixed exchange rates. The difference is that the shifts in excess demand for foreign exchange lead to quantity adjustments under fixed rates and price adjustment under flexible rates. Thus, attention turns first to exchange-rate, or balance-of-payments, determination. Thereafter formal analyses of differences and similarities between the functioning of the alternative systems are considered, reflecting the focus of the profession and the mainstream of research of this period.

A traditionally conservative country in financial matters, India enacted a series of reforms in response to its balance of payments crisis in the early 1990s. But since then only halting progress has been made, raising concerns about India's rising fiscal deficit, inefficiencies in its financial system, and its still relatively closed economy.This book analyzes some of the complex issues currently facing the Indian economy. Looking at India in the international economy, the first section examines reforms of policies toward trade and capital inflows, including issues in exchange rate policy and international business prospects. The second section addresses banking and financial markets, tracking the reforms to date and establishing the need for upgraded technology. The final section compares India's fiscal performance with that of other developing countries, highlighting worrying trends, and presents concrete policy recommendations to advance Indian reforms.

The author considers the implications of deeper integration in the international economy for developing countries. She traces the reasons for the developing countries' reversals of earlier policies and demonstrates the importance of the open trading system for them.Anne O. Krueger is professor of economics at Stanford University

Globalization, by which is meant the increasing economic interdependence among nations, has been a critical ingredient in enabling enormous improvement in mankind's condition. While progress has not always been smooth, and has not come without dislocation for some, the economic policy challenge has been, and is, to enable the realization of the large potential benefits of globalization while simultaneously reducing the negative side effects and providing safety nets for those whose lives are disrupted in the process.This volume focuses on the successes of globalization, and some of the main economic policy challenges and solutions that arise to enhance the benefits and lower the costs. It covers different aspects of globalization, sovereign debt restructuring, development of the financial sector and financial crises in Asia, Turkey, Brazil, etc. The final part of the book covers multilateral international organizations, namely the World Trade Organization, the IMF and the World Bank.