Measures Of International Transport Cost For OECD Countries

This paper presents new estimates of country-specific international transport costs for 21 OECD countries over the period 1973-2005. The methodology is based on direct measures of air, maritime, and road transport costs rather than on cif/fob ratios or other balance of payments data employed in previous studies. Transport costs are calculated as costs per kilogramme for each mode of transport at a bilateral level and then aggregated. Australia and New Zealand are found to have the highest transport costs among the OECD countries considered, followed by Japan. The time trends are sensitive to the choice of deflator, but the results do not show an overall downward trend in transport costs for OECD countries, contrary to conventional wisdom, but consistent with Hummels’ (2007) recent study of global transport costs

OECD\u27s FDI Regulatory Restrictiveness Index: Revision And Extension To More Economies

This paper provides a revised measure of regulatory restrictions on inward foreign direct investment (FDI) for OECD countries and extends the approach to 13 non-member countries. The methodology is largely similar to that adopted in the previous version of the OECD indicator and covers three broad categories of restrictions: limitations on foreign ownership, screening or notification procedures, and management and operational restrictions. The FDI restrictiveness indicator captures statutory deviations from national treatment , i.e. discrimination against foreign investment. When combined with other factors having an influence on foreign investment decisions, it has proven to be a good predictor of countries\u27 inward FDI performance

Does China Still Have A Labor Cost Advantage?

In recent years wages in China have been rising and the yuan has appreciated, potentially eroding China’s cost advantage in manufactures. This paper explores the evolution of China’s relative unit labor costs in manufacturing over 1998-2009. Between 1998 and 2003 China’s unit labor costs fell, but since 2003 they have increased both absolutely and relative to US unit labor costs. Much of the rise in China’s relative unit labor costs can be traced to a real appreciation of the yuan against the dollar. Despite the recent rise, China’s unit labor costs remain low relative to those in most other countries

What Were They Thinking? The Federal Reserve In The Run-Up To The 2008 Financial Crisis

The Federal Reserve (the Fed) is responsible for monitoring, analyzing and ultimately stabilizing US financial markets. It also has unrivalled access to economic data, high-level connections to financial institutions, and a large staff of professionally trained economists. Why then was it apparently unconcerned by the financial developments that are now widely recognized to have caused the 2008 financial crisis? Using a wide range of Fed documents from the pre-crisis period, particularly the transcripts of meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), this paper shows that Fed policymakers and staff were aware of relevant developments in financial markets, but paid infrequent attention to them and disregarded significant systemic threats. Drawing on literatures in economics, political science and sociology, the paper then demonstrates that the Fed\u27s intellectual paradigm in the years before the crisis focused on ‘post hoc interventionism’ – the institution\u27s ability to limit the fallout should a systemic disturbance arise. Further, the paper argues that institutional routines played a crucial role in maintaining this paradigm and in contributing to the Fed\u27s inadequate attention to the warning signals in the pre-crisis period

Defining And Measuring Green FDI: An Exploratory Review Of Existing Work And Evidence

This paper was developed at the request of the OECD Working Party of the Investment Committee to document efforts to date to define and measure green FDI and to investigate the practicability of various possible definitions, as well as to identify investment policy restrictions to green FDI. It does so by reviewing the literature and existing work on the contributions of FDI to the environment; by providing a two-part definition of green FDI; and by discussing various assumptions necessary to estimate the magnitude of \u27green\u27 FDI

Informality, Trade Policies And Smuggling In West Africa

In West Africa, recorded intra-regional trade is small but informal cross-border trade (ICBT) is pervasive, despite regional integration schemes intended to promote official trade. We argue that ICBT must be understood in light of two features of West African national boundaries: divergent economic policies between neighboring countries and the ease with which informal operators can ship goods across borders. We focus on two ICBT clusters: Senegal–The Gambia and Nigeria–Benin–Togo. Nigeria and Senegal have protected their domestic industries with high import barriers, whereas Benin, Togo and The Gambia have maintained lower import taxation. These differential trade policies, together with high mobility of goods and people across borders, lead to widespread smuggling, with goods imported legally in low-tax countries and re-exported unofficially to countries with higher import duties