The MFA Paradox: More Protection and More Trade?

The textile industry's political power stemmed from its importance in southern states plus the power of the Southern delegation in the U.S. Congress in the 1960s. The strongest resistance to the industry's pressure for protection came from the foreign policy interests of the Executive branch. A constellation of influences explains why negotiated, or voluntary export restraints (VERs), sanctioned by international agreements (the Multi-Fiber Arrangement) was the form protection took. First, the Japanese industry, at the time the world's leading textile exporter, already in the 1930s had exhibited a willingness to accept negotiated agreements to trade disputes. Second, the U.S. Executive, having been a leader in establishing the GATT system to control the sort of unilateral restrictive actions that contributed to the 1930s depression, was reluctant to take unilateral action. Third, the arrangement was acceptable to the U.S. industry because, through their particular power over agricultural legislation, the Southern delegation won passage, as amendments to agriculture bills, of legislation to enforce these 'voluntary' restraints at the U.S. border. But because enforcement remained with the Executive branch, it tended to follow the letter of the agreements, hence exports could continue to expand by shifting to new product varieties and to new supplier countries.

Time Consistent Portfolio Selection Under Short-Selling Prohibition: from Discrete to Continuous Setting

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Using attribute construction to improve the predictability of a GP financial forecasting algorithm

Financial forecasting is an important area in computational finance. EDDIE 8 is an established Genetic Programming financial forecasting algorithm, which has successfully been applied to a number of international datasets. The purpose of this paper is to further increase the algorithm’s predictive performance, by improving its data space representation. In order to achieve this, we use attribute construction to create new (high-level) attributes from the original (low-level) attributes. To examine the effectiveness of the above method, we test the extended EDDIE’s predictive performance across 25 datasets and compare it to the performance of two previous EDDIE algorithms. Results show that the introduction of attribute construction benefits the algorithm, allowing EDDIE to explore the use of new attributes to improve its predictive accuracy

Improving coastal livelihoods through sustainable aquaculture practices - a report to the collaborative APEC Grouper Research and Development Network

Wild-harvest fisheries for live reef fish are largely over-exploited or unsustainable because of over-fishing and the widespread use of destructive fishing practices such as blast and cyanide fishing. Sustainable aquaculture – such as that of groupers – is one option for meeting the strong demand for reef fish, as well as potentially maintaining or improving the livelihoods of coastal communities. This report from a short study by the STREAM Initiative draws on secondary literature, media sources and four diverse case studies from at-risk reef fisheries, to frame a strategy for encouraging sustainable aquaculture as an alternative to destructive fishing practices. It was undertaken as a component of the APEC-funded project Collaborative Grouper Research and Development Network (FWG/01/2001) to better understand how recent technical advances in grouper culture and other complementary work – including that of the Asia-Pacific Marine Finfish Aquaculture Network (APMFAN) hosted by NACA – could better support the livelihoods of poor coastal communities. (PDF contains 49 pages

The relevance of outsourcing and leagile strategies in performance optimization of an integrated process planning and scheduling

Over the past few years growing global competition has forced the manufacturing industries to upgrade their old production strategies with the modern day approaches. As a result, recent interest has been developed towards finding an appropriate policy that could enable them to compete with others, and facilitate them to emerge as a market winner. Keeping in mind the abovementioned facts, in this paper the authors have proposed an integrated process planning and scheduling model inheriting the salient features of outsourcing, and leagile principles to compete in the existing market scenario. The paper also proposes a model based on leagile principles, where the integrated planning management has been practiced. In the present work a scheduling problem has been considered and overall minimization of makespan has been aimed. The paper shows the relevance of both the strategies in performance enhancement of the industries, in terms of their reduced makespan. The authors have also proposed a new hybrid Enhanced Swift Converging Simulated Annealing (ESCSA) algorithm, to solve the complex real-time scheduling problems. The proposed algorithm inherits the prominent features of the Genetic Algorithm (GA), Simulated Annealing (SA), and the Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC). The ESCSA algorithm reduces the makespan significantly in less computational time and number of iterations. The efficacy of the proposed algorithm has been shown by comparing the results with GA, SA, Tabu, and hybrid Tabu-SA optimization methods

Securitization in East Asia

Securitization offers a range of benefits for Asiaâs financial systems and economies as a mechanism to assist funding and investment. As a form of structured finance, reliable and efficient securitization can assist development by enabling financial systems to deepen and strengthenâthus contributing to overall economic growth and stability. It must be recognized, however, that there are both overt and more subtle risks in certain uses of securitization. The credit and liquidity crisis that began in the United States and spread to other developed financial systems in mid-2007 exposed the danger associated with securitization: excessive risk-taking or regulatory capital arbitrage rather than a tool to assist more conventional or conservative approaches to funding, risk management, or investment. Securitization has also been criticized for rendering financial markets opaque, while contributing to a growing emphasis in the global economy of credit intermediation conducted in capital markets rather than through banks. This study examines the institutional basis of these concerns by investigating the use of securitization in East Asia, questioning both the growth in regional activity since the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis, and the reasons for it remaining constrained. The paper concludes with a discussion of proposals to support proper development of securitization in the region, including institutional mechanisms that could better allow securitization to enhance development and financial stability. If East Asia begins to make fuller use of securitization, its motive will be to meet funding or investment needs in the real economy rather than balance sheet arbitrage of the kind that peaked elsewhere in 2007.Securitization; East Asia; debt markets; risk transfer

The Real Effects of Asset Market Bubbles: Loan- and Firm-Level Evidence of a Lending Channel

This paper studies how a shock to the financial health of banks, caused by a decline in the asset markets, affects the real economy. The land-market collapse in Japan provides an ideal testing field in separating the impact of a loan supply shock from demand shocks. I find that banks with greater real estate exposure have to reduce lending. Firms' investment and market valuation are negatively associated with their top lender's real estate exposure. The lending channel is economically important: it accounts for one-third of lending contraction, one-fifth of the decline in investment, and a quarter of value loss

Extremal dependence in European capital markets

For a sample of six countries with dirty/free float regimes over 1999-2002––the United States, Japan, the Czech Republic, Poland, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, we investigate whether paired currencies exhibit a pattern of asymptotic dependence on the euro. That is, whether an extremely large appreciation or depreciation in the nominal exchange rate of one country might transmit to the euro, and vice versa. In addition, we investigate whether stock markets of European countries, outside the Euro zone, have exhibited extreme-value dependence on their exchange rates against the euro. In general, after controlling for volatility clustering and inertia in returns, we do not find evidence of extreme-value dependence either between paired exchange rates or between paired stock indices and exchanges rates. However, for asymptotic independent paired returns, we find that tail dependency of exchange rates is stronger under large appreciations than under large depreciations. In addition, we find a weak association between large currency depreciations and declining stock prices.extreme-value dependence, DVEC models

On the pedagogy of examinations in Hong Kong

We present a portrayal of the pressures exerted on Hong Kong students by the examination system. However, the examination experience in China should not be confused with the contemporary emphasis on examinations in North American schools. We involve both teachers and students in experiential writing with respect to their experiences of examinations. These writings provide opportunity for reflections about pedagogical questions and dimensions of examinations in Hong Kong schools and society. We describe the historical background, the functions and the nature of examinations in Hong Kong. It is in the context of an awareness of such cultural traditions and present day global pressures that teachers (and their students) may gain a more thoughtful pedagogical perspective.postprin