The Effects of Globalization on the Location of Industries in the OECD and European Union

Most international trade theory, whether classical or "new," predictst that increased globalization will be associated with increased locational concentration of particular economic activities, and hence increased specialization of national and regional economies, due to the greater freedom for industries to locate according to comparative advantage and economies of scale, and to integrate production systems based on an internationalization of intermediate goods sourcing. Relatively little empirical evidence exists on whether these predictions are correct. This paper presents the results of a statistical investigation of the trade-location relationship, using the OECD-STAN database, from 1970 to 1995. This investigation shows that in spite of rapidly rising trade, only in a very few industries has the spatial distribution changed substantially over the period studied. While intra-industry trade has risen across-the-board, locational concentration and specialization have increased little, if at all, in the European Union countries, and European economies remain much less specialized than equivalent regions of the USA. The paper then tries to speculate as to why this might be the case. Much of the intra-industry trade observed in Europe is probably not intermediate divisions of labor (production sharing), but head-to-head competition of largely national industries competing around similar products, through cross-market penetration. The question is how they manage to survive as such in an age of globalization. One hypothesis is that there are evolutionary dynamics involved: mature national firms and production clusters have capacities to adapt to changing circumstances which permit them to survive in more open markets. One major technique for adaptation is product differentiation, both horizontal (making the same products as competitors, through uptake of global state-ofthe- art knowledge) and vertical (quality differentiation, based on superior local knowledge). In this sense, the response of the European economies to globalization may reflect fundamentally different evolutionary dynamics from their American counterpart, whose regions integrated early on before they had mature industrial complexes, and where new industries tend to assume highly localized patterns, that serve as locational cores for the entire national industry. Most importantly, all of this implies that we need to develop non-deterministic theories of the relationship between trade and location, which take into account much more than the standard factors of comparative advantage and scale and integrate a dynamic evolutionary perspective.Globalization, locational specialization, product differentiation

The Washington Consensus: A post-mortem

After guiding development policies for nearly 20 years, the "Washington Consensus" lies in shambles. Although selected components remain relevant for development policies around the world, some specifics of the broader policy "package" and, more generally, the concept of a standardized package of policies applicable to all developing countries has clearly been discredited. Criticism has been directed at the assumed link from economic liberalization of international trade and financial flows to more rapid economic growth. Apart from a handful of developing countries, admittedly including some large and important ones, most of the world saw little of the promised economic benefit from widespread and on-going trade and financial liberalization, initially. Many countries actually regressed, when evaluated against broader socio-economic development goals, including income inequality. We conclude that differences in initial conditions (history, culture, geography and levels of industrial and institutional development) preclude any single development policy package from being universally effective.Trade liberalization Financial liberalization Governance institutions Income inequality Washington Consensus

Trade and the location of industries in the OECD and the European Union

Trade and location theory identifies forces that could lead to locational dispersion (comparative advantage) or locational concentration (scale economies) in the face of globalizing markets, each with different consequences for specialization and the adjustment costs associated with integration. However, these forces can play themselves out in very complex ways if locational change principally affects intermediate production. Moreover, effects of history may be important, if locational patterns which exist prior to integration reflect either strong external economies or, as we argue, strong institutionalized capacities to respond to more open markets. This could especially be the case in the context of Europe, whose territories are generally less specialized than the states of the USA. To see how these different effects are operating today, empirical measurement is required. Using a data set which allows changes in locational distribution of manufacturing industries in the OECD to be measured, we show that Europe does not seem to be ‘Americanizing’ its economic geography. Many sectors are actually spreading out in Europe, implying that the effects of history have remained strong up to this point. Specialization increases are weak in most European economies as well. The OECD has a more complex picture of spread and concentration. Some of the implications for further research on agglomeration, intra‐industry trade, and integration are brought out in the conclusion

Clinical and Polygraphic Improvement of Breathing Abnormalities After Valproate in a Case of Pitt-Hopkins Syndrome.

Pitt-Hopkins syndrome is a rare genetic form of severe psychomotor delay, caused by mutations in transcription cell factor-4 gene and characterized by distinctive dysmorphic features and abnormal breathing pattern. The current report describes the polygraphic features of the syndrome's typical breathing pattern in a patient both in wakefulness and in sleep. The control of these breathing alterations is important to prevent the neurological sequelae linked to chronic cerebral hypoxemia in early ages. No data are available on effective treatment options for breathing abnormalities of Pitt-Hopkins syndrome. The authors polygraphically documented a reduction of apneic and hypopneic phenomena, with a significant improvement in saturation values, after the introduction of sodium valproate