The World Crisis: the globalisation of the general crisis of Fordism

SUMMARY The present crisis in the world economy is traced to the exhaustion of ‘Fordism’, the ‘regime of accumulation’ consolidated in North America and Western Europe after 1945 in which mass production technology led to rapid increases in labour productivity, while new wage?bargaining systems and welfare states averted a crisis of overproduction such as that in the 1930s. The decline in profits from the late 1960s onwards was ultimately met by monetarist deflation, leading to global recession. The article concludes by considering two alternative escape routes from the crisis, with radically different social and political implications. RESUMEN La crisis mundial: globalización de la crisis general del fordismo La actual crisis de la economía mundial marca el agotamiento del ‘fordismo’, régimen de acumulación consolidado en Norteamérica y Europa Occidental después de 1945, cuya producción tecnológica masiva generó un rápido incremento de la productividad laboral, mientras que el surgimiento de nuevos sistemas de bienestar y de negociaciones salariales impidió una crisis de sobreproducción similar a la de la década de 1930. La declinación de las utilidades que se inició a fines de la década de 1960, fue alcanzada finalmente por la deflación monetarista, conduciendo a una recesión global. El artículo concluye considerando dos vías alternativas para salir de la crisis, las cuales tienen implicaciones sociales y políticas radicalmente diferentes. SOMMAIRE La crise mondiale: l'universalisation de la crise générale du Fordisme La crise actuelle de l'économie mondiale remonte à l'extinction du ‘Fordisme’, le ‘régime d'accumulation’ consolidé en Amérique du Nord et en Europe Occidentale après 1945, et dans lequel la technologie de production massive a entrainé des augmentations rapides de la productivité alors que les nouveaux systèmes de négociations salariales et les régimes d'Etats?Providence évitaient une crise de sur?production semblable à celle des années 30. La diminution des profits depuis à peu près la fin des années 60 a provoqué une déflation monétaire entrainant une récession générale. L'article conclut en analysant deux solutions différentes à la crise, avec des implications sociales et politiques radicalement opposées

Analysis of the Role of Tariff Concessions in East Asia

While there are many studies focusing on the impacts of various trade policy agreements across the world in the recent years, there is not much focus in the literature on the extent to which these agreements are implemented later, in terms of the aspects agreed upon therein. In this paper, we firstly identify the past achievements of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) in East Asian regions in terms of tariff removals and suggest future rooms for further economic benefits from trade liberalization in the region. Secondly, we provide the tariff concession dataset in the GTAP Data Base, which distinguishes the tariff removals agreed in these EPAs in East Asia but not implemented yet, from the existing overall tariffs in the benchmark year. As the standard GTAP Data Base only incorporates enforced tariff reductions through the base year applied tariffs, to analyse future trade integration, it might be worth it to integer commitments that are not yet implemented. We do that at the HS6 levels for East Asian EPAs that allows us to compare the economic impacts of partial versus complete implementation of the trade liberalization agreed in East Asian EPAs. Our results suggest that taking those commitments into account economically matters and that such satellite dataset might be taken as actual baseline for future policy simulations.JEL Classification Codes: D58, F13, F14, F15, F17The earlier version of this study was presented at the 18th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis on 17-19 June, 2015 in Melbourne

Has China displaced the outward investments of OECD countries?

As China has rapidly emerged as one of the world's largest investors abroad, there has been a hectic debate in the literature on whether its emergence as a major foreign investor may have undermined the importance of western industrialised economies, including those in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This paper aims to investigate whether this is the case. The study uses a panel dataset covering 155 countries, including 33 in the OECD, where China had invested during 2003–09. This is by far the most comprehensive dataset of China's outward foreign direct investment (OFDI). A two-stage least squared (TSLS) regression approach is adopted for our econometric models according to an established augmented gravity model in the literature. The empirical results show clear evidence that China's OFDI displaces that of the OECD countries, but the argument that China's emergence is a ‘new colonialism’ is not supported as OECD countries' OFDI in resource abundant host countries, particularly that in Africa and Latin America, does not appear to have been displaced by China's OFDI