Reverse Balkanisation? Trade Integration in South-East Europe. CEPS Working Document, No. 249, 11 August 2006

Recent research from the World Bank and elsewhere suggests that openness to trade was a vital ingredient in the transition of the former Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) that joined the EU in May 2004. Current EU association agreements in South East Europe indicate that future enlargements may need to accommodate the remaining former Yugoslav Republics as well as the existing candidate countries. This paper examines persistent concerns that trade openness in South East Europe generally, and the former Yugoslav Republics in particular, is much less advanced than it was for the former CEECs in the mid to late 1990s. In particular we examine the issue of whether the present network of bilateral trade arrangements put in place under the Stability Pact has had much effect in boosting trade integration and whether trade within the region is currently at or below its potential. Given the small size of many of the countries in the region, we find that trade patterns remain problematic. In some cases they are smaller than might be expected but in several cases there is an overdependence on trade with old Yugoslav neighbours. In view of this, we consider that current plans to extend the Stability Pact matrix of bilateral trade agreements into a pan-regional trade association are likely to be inadequate. A better option, and one more likely to have a more immediate effect, would be to extend the present Customs Union with Turkey to include trade with the entire South East European zone of countries linked to the EU

The fall of Doha and the rise of regionalism? CEPS Policy Brief No. 111, September 2006

The indefinite prorogation of the WTO’s Doha trade talks in July suggests that the global appetite for multilateralism may now be seriously weakened. In this new Policy Brief, CEPS Senior Research Fellow David Kernohan and T. Huw Edwards of Loughborough University look at how a failed or significantly delayed Doha round (say till 2009 at the earliest) could affect the scope and structure of any eventual WTO deal. In particular, if a rise in regionalism in the interim is inevitable, they ask whether the EU should reassess its regional trade policy objectives? A move from a multilateral focus to a twinned regional-multilateral trade policy stance will have consequences, both for practical reasons of EC ‘institutional capacity’ and for strategic reasons, in terms of choice of partner/s. Either way, tough decisions will have to be made. Wherever possible, the authors argue that these tactical choices should be preceded by careful technical analysis of the choice of regional partners and trading groups, as well as on traditional ‘diplomatic’ methods of trade partner selection

Parliament Buildings and the Sinking of the Titanic

The RMS Titanic was the ultimate symbol of the power and ubiquitousness of the British Empire. Everything was in the finest Edwardian Classic style. The public rooms were sumptuous with a grand Baroque stairway leading into the Grand Salon. There was the first-ever on board swimming pool, a Palm Court, a Parisian Café and a lounge modelled after a room at the Palace of Versailles. On the evening of 14 April, 1912, the ship hit an iceberg. It took two hours and 40 minutes after hitting the floating ice for the ship to go down. Construction of the Parliament Buildings in Wellington began in 1912. The finally approved design was an amalgamation of the winning competition entry of John Campbell and Claude Paton and the fourth placed design by Campbell and Lawrence. The design was in the distinct Edwardian Classic image of the British Empire but with only a little of the exuberance of some of Campbell's Imperial Baroque work. Interestingly, the building displayed some New Zealand character, most notably in the use of materials and in the Māori Affairs Committee Room. The building was not completed, half finished, until 1922. This paper discusses the nature of the entries to the Parliament Building competition and the politics surrounding the event. It focuses on the architecture of John Campbell, most notably his affinity for the Edwardian Classical style. The paper explores the significance of the style in the New Zealand context and conjectures on other influences that might have held some sway. Finally, the paper suggests the building might have benefited from suffering a fate similar to that of the Titanic

Greytown: the oldest inland colonial town

Greytown is the oldest town in the Wairarapa established under the Small Farms Association, and the oldest inland settlement of the British colonial era. In March 1854, at a meeting held in the Crown and Anchor Hotel in Wellington, 49 settlers selected town acres in Greytown. By the 1870s Greytown had its own newspaper, a school, a hospital and a flourishing retail and commercial base. In 1871 the Greytown Trust Act was passed and the town became a centre for farming, flax, and timber milling though it suffered from the regular flooding of the Waiohine river. Greytown became a borough in 1878 but stopped growing when the railway by-passed it. This paper explores the extant buildings from that period and issues around maintaining the Greytown Historic Heritage Precinct

Human Rights: The Effect of Neighbouring Countries

We examine the geo-political and international spatial aspects of human rights (HR), using a purpose designed data-set. Applying tools from the spatial economics literature, we analyse the impact on a country’s HR performance of geographical proximity to its neighbours. Unlike previous studies, our approach treats this as partly endogenous: one country’s HR performance will affect its neighbours through a variety of potential geographical spillover mechanisms. We start with simple descriptive accounts, using scatter plots, of the geographic history of HR performance. Using a relatively simple spatial weighting model approach we compare each country’s HR performance with what would be predicted by regression on a weighted average of its neighbours’ performance (i.e. weightings depending positively on country population , and negatively upon distance), using a cross sectional and panel dataset of one hundred and sixty countries. We regress measures of population size, distance between countries, the prevalence of war or ethnic conflict, as well as per capita incomes and distribution, to test the general hypothesis that there may be positive spillovers between neighbours’ human rights performance. This is then extended to derive measures of HR performance relative to both economic, social and spatial factors.Human rights, spatial econometrics

Growth, human development, and trade: the Asian experience

This study looks at the three-way relationship between economic growth, human development, and openness to trade in a large panel of developing Asian economies. Using a theoretically motivated simultaneous equations system, we find that although human development contributes positively to economic growth, in the case of our Asian sample growth does not appear to have had a positive influence on human development. Uneven growth accompanied by lagging institutional development, preventing human capital formation, might have inhibited human development in the short to medium run. Complementary to the literature showing that growth is sustainable only when accompanied by human development, we confirm a role for trade liberalisation policies in achieving higher growth as well as human development

Empirical models of trade, direct investment and growth in developed economies

The importance of direct investment in the global economy seems clear. Yet surprisingly little agreement exists in economics as to what role FDI plays in international economic adjustment. This uncertainty is partly due to a lack of theoretical guidance, however the empirical literature has also failed to reach a conclusive view on the relationship between trade and investment. While an influential WTO (2001) study has concluded that trade and investment were complements, other reviews of the econometric literature contend that the issue is far from resolved. Clearly, both trade and investment correlate over time but a key issue is what endogenous assistance an individual country gains to growth, if any, from success in attracting/supplying FDI. The present study looks at FDI as a topic in the multi-country modelling literature. Here we find that existing models of FDI use predominantly aggregate measures, set in a partial equilibrium framework, which offer little scope for feedback effects from the supply side to investment demand. The approach adopted here has been to construct a small, three-country bilateral flow data-set for the US, Japan and UK, and to use the VAR methodology in which notions of causation are suppressed in the initial modelling. The problem then becomes one of isolating and identifying a convincing FDI vector from a system with initial estimates of multiple cointegrating vectors. A number of novel techniques are adopted to test for single equation integrity, within the VECM system, and six convincing bilateral FDI equations are eventually isolated. Subsequently a mixture of exogeneity testing and the use of the general-tospecific method within the systems setting follow, before six adequate FDI equations are formally identified within the system. The six long-run FDI equations that result are discussed in the context of the FDI literature. Building on three important strands in the literature, on trade, investment, and growth it appears that although FDI may not be linked to productivity growth within countries, it may play a part in linking growth rates - by linking supplyside innovation channels internationally. Whilst, at the same time, FDI may play a part in linking productivity improvements between countries, by stimulating world demand

Good neighbours matter: economic geography and the diffusion of human rights

© 2018, © 2018 Regional Studies Association. Using multi-country panel data, this paper investigates the geopolitical and economic aspects of human rights performance. Human rights performance depends on the relative levels of economic development and spatial proximity to ‘good’ and ‘bad’ neighbours. The paper tests for basic effects of income, and applies spatial weighting models, to analyse the neighbours’ impact on human rights levels, treating this impact as partly endogenous. It takes into account size and distance when comparing each country’s human rights performance with what would be predicted from a weighted average of its neighbours’ performance. There are (1) geographical clusters and (2) size and proximity effects for human rights performance