Neoliberalism, Global Imbalances, and Stages of Capitalist Development

This paper examines certain structural macroeconomic relations in the neoliberal global economy. The current global economy rests upon three unsustainable trends: the debt-driven U.S. consumption expansion; China’s excessive investment expansion; and the large and rising U.S. current account deficits. When these trends are eventually reversed or corrected, there could be major upheavals in the world economy. The decline of neoliberalism may pave the way for a new set of economic, political, and social institutions.Neoliberalism, U.S. Economy, Chinese Economy, Imbalances, Long Waves

Stock Market Liquidity and Economic Growth: A Critical Appraisal of the Levine/Zervos Model

Levine and Zervos (1998) presented cross-country econometric evidence showing that, in a sample of 47 countries, stock market liquidity contributed a significant positive influence on GDP growth between 1976-93. We show that the Levine-Zervos results are not robust to alternative specifications because of the incomplete manner in which they control for outliers in their data. We show that when one properly controls for outliers, stock market liquidity no longer exerts any statistically observable influence on GDP growth.

Neoliberalism, Global Imbalances, and Stages of Capitalist Development

This paper examines certain structural macroeconomic relations in the neoliberal global economy. The current global economy rests upon three unsustainable trends: the debt-driven U.S. consumption expansion; China’s excessive investment expansion; and the large and rising U.S. current account deficits. When these trends are eventually reversed or corrected, there could be major upheavals in the world economy. The decline of neoliberalism may pave the way for a new set of economic, political, and social institutions

Expression of HER2 in high-grade urothelial carcinoma based on Chinese expert consensus and the clinical effects of disitamab vedotin-tislelizumab combination therapy in the treatment of advanced patients

Background: A vast number of researchers have discovered high levels of human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2) expression in urothelial carcinoma (UC), but they do not use a uniform scoring system. Based on the 2021 edition of clinical pathological expert consensus on HER-2 testing in UC in China, we investigated the expression level and clinical significance of HER2 in high-grade UC. Furthermore, we looked at the prognosis of patients with locally advanced/metastatic UC after combining HER2 targeting antibody-drug conjugates (ADC) medication disitamab vedotin (DV) with programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitor tislelizumab.Patients and methods: From 2019 to 2022, we collected paraffin specimens of UC from the Department of Urology at the Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University. HER2 expression-related factors were investigated. Patients with advanced UC who have failed systemic chemotherapy at least once and had received immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) medication during second-line treatment were selected and treated with DV in combination with tislelizumab. We assessed the therapy’s efficacy and safety.Results: 185 patients with high-grade UC were included in this investigation. 127 patients (68.7%) were HER2 positive (IHC 2+/3+) according to the 2021 Clinical pathological expert consensus on HER2 testing in UC in China. The clinical stage of UC differed statistically significantly between the HER2-and HER2+ groups (p = 0.019). Sixteen advanced UC patients were treated with DV and tislelizumab for a median of 14 months. The disease control rate was 87.5%, while the objective response rate (ORR) was 62.5%. The ORR of HER2+ individuals was higher than that of HER2-individuals (70.0% vs. 50.0%). The median progression-free survival or overall survival was not reached. In this study, the incidence of treatment-related adverse events was 68.8% (11/16), with all of them being grade 1 or 2 adverse reactions.Conclusion: HER2 protein expressed at a high percentage in UC, and 68.7% patients expressed HER2 positive (IHC 2+/3+). HER2+ expression is positively correlated with higher clinical stage of UC. HER2 targeted ADC drug disitamab vedotin combining with PD-1 inhibitor tislelizumab has shown efficacy, safety and controllable adverse reactions in the treatment of advanced UC

A Modest Proposal for the G20

A group of international scholars and policy-makers met in Beijing on 18th of March 2011, to discuss reforms in the international monetary system. There is a general consensus that there is a need for fundamental reforms in that system, which, even if it has not caused recent imbalances and instability in the global economy, has certainly proved ineffective in addressing them. While such reforms will require extensive discussion and deliberation, the consensus of the Beijing Group was that there was a modest proposal which could be adopted this year by the G20: a limited expansion of the current SDR system. This modest proposal, while limited in scope, could be play an important role in initiating discussions of deeper reforms and which would, at the same time, make a modest contribution to restoring the world's fragile economy to health, helping to achieve the aim expressed in the G20 Pittsburgh declaration for a "strong, sustainable and balanced growth"

Inflation and Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Non-linear Analysis

This paper presents new non-linear regression estimates of the relationship between inflation and economic growth for 80 countries over the period 1961 – 2000. We perform tests using the full sample of countries as well as sub-samples consisting of OECD countries, middle-income countries, and low-income countries. We also consider the full sample of countries within the four separate decades between 1961 – 2000. Considering our full data set we consistently find that higher inflation is associated with moderate gains in GDP growth up to a roughly 15 – 18 percent inflation threshold. However, the findings diverge when we divide our full data set according to income levels. With the OECD countries, no clear pattern emerges at all with either the inflation coefficient or our estimated turning point. With the middle income countries, we return to a consistently positive pattern of inflation coefficients, though none are statistically significant. The turning points range within a narrow band in this sample, between 14 – 16 percent. With the low income countries, we obtain positive and higher coefficient values on the inflation coefficient than with the middle-income countries. With the groupings by decade, the results indicate that inflation and growth will be more highly correlated to the degree that macroeconomic policy is focused on demand management as a stimulus to growth. We consider the implications of these findings for the conduct of monetary policy. One is that there is no justification for inflation-targeting policies as they are currently being practiced throughout the middle- and low-income countries, that is, to maintain inflation with a 3 – 5 percent band

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This paper was written as part of a broader project on pro-poor macroeconomic policies in Sub-Saharan Africa, under the sponsorship of the United Nations Development Program. We are most grateful for the support of the UNDP. We are also grateful for comments on this specific aspect of the broader project from our co-workers Jerry Epstein, James Heintz, Leonce Ndikumana as well as from Michael Ash.

Public enterprises in mixed economies: Their impact on economic growth and social equity

Privatization is a crucial component of the neoliberal policies prevailing over much of the world in the past two and half decades. The underlying theoretical argument of these policies is that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are inherently inefficient and therefore hinder economic growth. However, the existing literature falls short of providing a solid theoretical basis for this argument. In fact, some argue that SOEs have the potential to contribute positively to economic growth and equity. Whether SOEs can realize this potential or not is an empirical question. Unfortunately, the few existing empirical studies considering the impacts of SOEs on growth and equity fail to offer any clear-cut conclusions. In addition, these empirical studies suffer some serious econometric and measurement problems. This study improves on the existing researches by utilizing a panel data set of all the mixed economies for the time period from the 1960s all through the 1990s. By applying fixed effects techniques, this study empirically explores the impacts of SOEs on economic growth and income equality. There are two main results. First, SOEs are found to have a significant and positive influence on per capita GDP growth. In addition, this study also identifies investment growth as one main channel of this influence. Second, it is shown that SOEs contribute significantly and positively to income equality. These results are supported by the summary statistics about public enterprises\u27 macro performances and case studies. The results from this study raise serious concerns over the desirability of indiscriminate privatization