Globalization and Trade Flows: What You See is Not What You Get!

The trade collapse that followed the recent financial crisis has led to a renewed interest on the measurement issues affecting international merchandise trade statistics in the new globalized economy. The international fragmentation of industrial production blurs the concept of country of origin and calls for the production of new statistics on the domestic content of exports, with a view of estimating trade in value added. Alongside, the international statistical community has revised in 2010 the concepts and definitions on both, international merchandise trade and trade in services statistics. This paper discusses the various issues related to the concepts of goods for processing and intra firm trade in trade statistics, and provides an overview of the method of analysing the impact of the fragmentation of production in international value chains

A Retrospective Look at the U.S. Productivity Growth Resurgence

It is now widely recognized that information technology (IT) was critical to the dramatic acceleration of U.S. labor productivity growth in the mid-1990s. This paper traces the evolution of productivity estimates to document how and when this perception emerged. Early studies concluded that IT was relatively unimportant. It was only after the massive IT investment boom of the late 1990s that this investment and underlying productivity increases in the IT-producing sectors were identified as important sources of growth. Although IT has diminished in significance since the dot-com crash of 2000, we project that private sector productivity growth will average around 2.5 percent per year for the next decade, a pace that is only moderately below the average for the 1995-2005 period

Compassion Fatigue: Communication and Burnout toward Social Problems

This study establishes the construct of \u27\u27compassion fatigue\u27\u27, encompassing desensitization and emotional burnout, as a phenomenon associated with pervasive communication about social problems. The study marks the first-known empirical investigation of compassion fatigue as it relates to media coverage and interpersonal communication about social problems. A telephone survey methodology was used to measure compassion fatigue among a general, adult population toward four social problems: AIDS, homelessness, violent crime, and child abuse. Results indicate the existence of a compassion fatigue phenomenon, in varying degrees of magnitude, for every issue. Compassion fatigue was found to be a situational variable, rather than a personality trait. Cognitive, affective, and behavioral manifestations of compassion fatigue are identified, and significant predictors of compassion fatigue are discussed. The findings support the existence of a mass-mediated compassion fatigue phenomenon and suggest that the nature of contemporary media coverage may contribute to emotional fatigue with society\u27s problems

Under the Radar: Smokeless Tobacco Advertising in Magazines With Substantial Youth Readership

Objectives. In light of the Smokeless Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (STMSA) and the fact that smokeless tobacco advertising has received little attention, we examined industry data to assess smokeless tobacco advertising in popular magazines. Of particular interest was the level of advertising in magazines with high youth readership and the amount of reach and frequency that was generated among readers aged 12 to 17 years

The Impact of Regulations on Agricultural Trade: Evidence from the SPS and TBT Agreements

According to World Trade Organization rules, countries may adopt regulations under the Agreements on Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) and Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT). We analyze the structure of these measures in agricultural trade. The inventory approach suggests that European countries have among the lowest coverage ratios of all OECD countries. Using a gravity equation, we also estimate their stringency. Our results suggest that they significantly reduce developing countries' exports to OECD countries, but do not affect trade between OECD members. Furthermore, European imports are more negatively influenced by SPS and TBTs than imports of other OECD countries. Copyright 2008, Oxford University Press.