"Real Exchange Rates and the International Mobility of Capital"

This paper demonstrates that the terms of trade are determined by the equalization of profit rates across international regulating capitals, for socially determined national real wages. This provides a classical/Marxian basis for the explanation of real exchange rates, based on the same principle of absolute cost advantage which rules national prices. Large international flows of direct investment are not necessary for this result, since the international mobility of financial capital is sufficient. Such a determination of the terms of trade implies that international trade will generally give rise to persistent structural trade imbalances covered by endogenously generated capital flows which will fill any existing gaps in the overall balance of payments. It also implies that devaluations will not have a lasting effect on trade balances, unless they are also attended by fundamental changes in national real wages or productivities. Finally, it implies that neither the absolute nor the relative version of the Purchasing Power Parity hypothesis (PPP) will generally hold, with the exception that the relative version of PPP will appear to hold when a country experiences a relatively high inflation rate. Such patterns are well documented, and in contrast to comparative advantage or PPP theory, the present approach implies that the existing historical record is perfectly coherent. Empirical tests of the propositions advanced in this paper have been conducted elsewhere, with good results.

"Explaining Long-Term Exchange Rate Behavior in the United States and Japan"

Conventional exchange rate models are based on the fundamental hypothesis that, in the long run, real exchange rates will move in such a way as to make countries equally competitive. Thus they assume that, in the long run, trade between countries will be roughly balanced. The difficulty in assessing expectations about the consequences of trade arrangements (such as NAFTA or the EEC) is that these models perform quite poorly at an empirical level, making them an unreliable guide to economic policy. To have a sound foundation for economic policy requires operating from a theoretically grounded explanation of exchange rates that works well across a spectrum of developed and developing countries. This paper applies the theoretical and empirical foundation developed in Shaikh (1980, 1991, 1995), and previously applied to Spain, Mexico, and Greece (Roman 1997; Ruiz-Napoles 1996; Antonopoulos 1997), to the explanation of the exchange rates of the United States and Japan. Such a framework implies that it is a country's competitive position, as measured by the real unit costs of its tradables, that determines its real exchange rate. This determination of real exchange rates through real unit costs provides a possible explanation for why trade imbalances remain persistent and a policy rule-of-thumb for sustainable exchange rates. The aim is to show that a theoretically grounded, empirically robust, explanation of real exchange rate movements can be constructed that also can be of practical use to researchers and policymakers.

"Measuring Capacity Utilization in OECD Countries: A Cointegration Method"

This paper derives measures of potential output and capacity utilization for a number of OECD countries, using a method based on the cointegration relation between output and the capital stock. The intuitive idea is that economic capacity (potential output) is the aspect of output that co-varies with the capital stock over the long run. We show that this notion can be derived from a simple model that allows for a changing capital-capacity ratio in response to partially exogenous, partially embodied, technical change. Our method provides a simple and general procedure for estimating capacity utilization. It also closely replicates a previously developed census-based measure of U.S. manufacturing capacity-utilization. Of particular interest is that our measures of capacity utilization are very different from those based on aggregate production functions, such as the ones provided by the IMF.

Measures of the Real GDP of U.S. Trading Partners: Methodology and Results

This paper provides the details of the construction of new quarterly measures of the real GDPs of the 36 U.S. trading partners that are taken into consideration by the Federal Reserve in its "broad exchange rate" indexes. These new measures have some important advantages. First, they allow the construction of various income aggregates and sub-aggregates, which makes it possible, for example, to match the Federal Reserve's "broad," "major-currency," and "other important" trading partner effective exchange rates and, more broadly, to discuss the geographical and geopolitical determinants of U.S. trade. Second, they allow the construction of variants of the two different types of measures that are utilized in the literature, namely direct and export-share-weighted sums of trading-partner real GDPs. Finally, given that our new measures of GDP for these countries can be directly compared to each other, they can be of interest for other researchers who need a consistent dataset on a quarterly basis.international growth, economic measurement, GDP quarterly estimates

Performance of Post Graduate Students Using Multiple Regression Analysis (Case Study)

The present study is focused to analyze the performance of post graduate students through various statistical parameters. In order to estimate the performance of Post Graduate Students, who are enrolled in different fields of Science, Technology and Humanities at Mehran University of Engineering & Technology (MUET) Jamshoro. The modified model of MLR is used to represent the Number of Degree Holders Students (ND) and would be utilized for those who obtained their master’s degree within time duration or well time to be considered as dependent variable,  the initially enrolled student denoted as (NS) number of students and with their obtained CGPA to be considered as independent variable. The result of this research would help to estimate the performance of post graduate students. For this study multiple linear regression model can also be generalized as,............. Keywords: Student’s performance, Multiple Linear Regression (MLR), Hypothesis testing. DOI: 10.7176/MTM/10-8-01 Publication date: December 31st 2020

"How Fragile is the U.S. Economy?"

As we projected in a previous strategic analysis, the U.S. economy experienced growth rates higher than 4 percent in 2004. The question we want to raise in this strategic analysis is whether these rates will persist or come back down. We believe that several signs point in the latter direction. In what follows, we analyze the evidence and explore the alternatives facing the U.S. economy.

BARRIERS IN IMPLEMENTATION OF E-BUSINESS TECHNOLOGIES IN SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES (SMEs) IN PAKISTAN

The current research investigates the Barriers in implementation of E-Business Technologies in Small and Medium enterprises (SMEs) in Pakistan. Data were collected from 2000 respondents by using simple random technique. A structural questionnaire was developed for the data collection and reliability and validity of data. It was revealed that most of the SMEs business owners are not familiar in using internet and in many cases they are not computer literate. It was further revealed that Government should provide some basic computer training to the Small and Medium Enterprises so they will able to use computer. The proper implementation of E-Business technologies in SMEs in Pakistan, Government and other related agencies can initiate E-Business in SMEs to achieve competitive edge

The Stock Market and the Corporate Sector: A Profit-Based Approach

This paper shows that the empirical movements of stock prices can be explained directly by fundamentals. The real stock market rate of return is shown to closely track the real incremental rate of profit of the corporate sector, with the two rates displaying similar means and standard deviations. It is argued that the two are linked by capital flows between the sectors through a process we call "turbulent arbitrage". Actual equity prices closely track the prices closely track the prices warranted by this model, and unlike the standard results, are less volatile than the warranted ones. The theoretical approach taken in this paper implies that the incremental profit rate is the required rate of return for the stock market return. The observed volatility on stock market returns and prices arises from the fact that the required rate is itself highly volatile, driven by cyclical and other short term fluctuations in aggregate demand. It is then easy to see why conventional theoretical models, which typically assume constant required rates of return (discount rates) and constant dividend growth rates, are largely unable to explain the movements in stock prices. On the other hand, since the incremental rate of profit (net of interest) is essentially the change in earnings normalized by investment, the findings of this paper accord well the experience "on the street" that stock price movements are driven by interest rates and changes in earnings.