Is trade liberalization a solution to the unemployment problem?

This paper examines how trade liberalization affects the growth rate of sectoral employment in developed and developing countries. The estimation results imply that trade openness in the form of higher trade volumes has not been successful in generating jobs in developing countries. The overall weak, negative employment response to trade volumes may be explained by the negative output response to trade openness in these countries. Our estimates also indicate that higher trade volumes have adverse effect on industrial employment in developed countries. Moreover, while they have positive effect on employment in industry and services in developing countries, trade barriers have adverse effect on employment growth in services for developed countries. Our overall results imply that while trade barriers have relatively little adverse effects and/or in some case a positive effect on employment both in developing and developed countries, higher trade volumes have an adverse effect on industrial employment in developed economies. Thus, trade openness is not in itself a solution to the unemployment problems of developing countries and yet it has not been the prime factor to blame for the lower employment levels in developed countries.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Publisher Connection: Export-Led Growth in the UAE: Multivariate Causality Between Primary Exports, Manufactured Exports and Economic Growth

The principal question that this research addresses is the validity of the Export-Led Growth hypothesis (ELG) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) over the period 1981–2012, focusing on the causality between primary exports, manufactured exports and economic growth. Unit root tests are applied to examine the time-series properties of the variables, while the Johansen cointegration test is performed to confirm or not the existence of a long-run relationship between the variables. Moreover, the multivariate Granger causality test and a modified version of Wald test are applied to examine the direction of the short-run and long-run causality respectively. The cointegration analysis reveals that manufactured exports contribute more to economic growth than primary exports in the long-run. In addition, this research provides evidence to support a bi-directional causality between manufactured exports and economic growth in the short-run, while the Growth-Led Exports (GLE) hypothesis is valid in the long-run for UAE

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS-ZEMEDELSKA EKONOMIKA

This study investigates the effect of the exchange rate volatility and the real exchange rate on the bilateral agricultural exports flows of Turkey to 46 countries. A panel data set, which contains 46 cross-sections and 1840 observations, is used for exports of the selected agricultural commodities to countries from 1971 to 2010. Our empirical results based on a gravity equation show that while the exchange rate volatility does not exert a significant effect on the Turkish agricultural commodity exports, the real exchange rate has a statistically significant effect on the agricultural commodity export flows. Regardless of the region chosen, raisins and tobacco exports are very much sensitive to the real exchange rates. It means that any depreciation in the Turkish Lira leads to higher exports for these commodities. We have also some interesting results on other commodities. Exports of dried figs show no sensitivity to the exchange rate or its volatilities, except for the EU countries. For the full sample, exports of citrus, grape and hazelnuts increases as the TL depreciates. The sensitivity of hazelnut to the real exchange rates varies among regions

JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS

This paper demonstrates that trade liberalization does not have a simple and straightforward relationship with growth using a large number of openness measures for a cross section of countries over the last three decades. We use two groups of trade openness measures. The regression results for numerous trade intensity ratios are mostly consistent with the existing literature. However, contrary to the conventional view on the growth effects of trade barriers, our estimation results show that trade barriers are positively and, in most specifications, significantly associated with growth, especially for developing countries and they are consistent with the findings of theoretical growth and development literature. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

IKTISAT ISLETME VE FINANS

Infant mortality rates drastically declined in Turkey during the last two decades but there are still wide variations within the country. For example, the infant mortality rate in the East region is twice as high as the West-South region average. This paper investigates the socioeconomic and demographic determinants of infant mortality at the regional level using Turkey Demographic and Health Survey, 1998 and 2003 data. Estimates of the zero-inflated negative binomial models find a number of significant determinants of infant mortality, including health, education and socioeconomic status variables. However our regressions results establish that the rural mortality model is different from the urban mortality model and that further significant differences exist between regional models