Stephen S Golub

• Professor at Swarthmore College

Benin is a small, slow-growing economy whose development relies on two sources of rent that are controlled by self-centred elites: cotton export and illegal cross-border trade with Nigeria. Patrimonialism governs Beninese society as a forceful struggle for political power takes place between the oligarchs who control these sources and use them as f...

Using Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) transcripts from 1960 to 2010, this paper examines the evolution of the Committee's approach to the inflation‐unemployment tradeoff. We find: (1) FOMC discussions have increasingly emphasized inflation relative to unemployment and (2) this shift occurred during the Volcker era and has continued even as inf...

This paper examines sub-Saharan Africa's (SSA) bilateral trade and cost competitiveness with China. We document an extraordinary imbalance in the structure of bilateral trade in that China overwhelmingly exports manufactured products to SSA and almost exclusively imports primary products in return. Our principal means of assessing the competitivene...

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 eas...

Although levels of intra-regional trade in SSA are very low, informal cross-border trade (ICBT) is thriving almost everywhere in Africa. Informal trade can involve two types of illegality, in the goods themselves (e.g. narcotics) or in the manner of trading (evasion of customs duties and regulations). Both types of illegal trade occur in Africa. We...

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 ar...

This paper documents and analyses the predominance of informal employment in Africa and shows that lack of demand for labour rather than worker characteristics is the main reason for pervasive underemployment. Integration into the global economy and exports of labour-intensive products are vital to boosting the demand for labour in Africa. Africa h...

Official trade statistics indicate very little intra‐African trade, but this is often because of the prevalence of unrecorded trade, particularly smuggling. This paper explores smuggling from Benin and Togo into Nigeria. Nigeria has very high import tariffs and bans on certain products. Togo and Benin have deliberately maintained low import barrier...

The informal sector in West Africa has become increasingly internationalized in the last few decades. This chapter explores informal cross-border trade— that is, smuggling—in West Africa, focusing on Senegal and Benin. According to official trade data, regional trade flows are minimal despite the West Afri-can Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) an...

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...

This paper quantifies and analyses the extent of restrictions on inward foreign direct investment (FDI) in the service sector in developed and developing countries. Services account for an increasing share of global FDI. Recognition of the economic benefits of FDI clashes with nationalistic economic, political and national security concerns about f...

Summary Much of inter-regional trade in Africa is unrecorded and consists of smuggling. The Gambia is almost wholly enclosed within Senegal, yet official trade statistics show almost no trade between the two countries, failing to capture large-scale smuggling. Smuggling reflects pre-colonial traditional trading relationships, the artificial nature...

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 co...

This paper provides a new perspective on Chinese international competitiveness in manufacturing using relative unit labour costs. We find that Chinese unit labour costs are about 25-40 per cent of US labour costs. They are also low relative to costs in the EU, Japan, Mexico, Korea and most other newly industrialising countries. However, China's rel...

In this paper, we seek to understand the effects of international competitiveness on export performance in Senegal at the industry level over 1974-1998. To this end, we have calculated two indices of competitiveness in manufacturing, namely: relative unit labor costs (RULC) and relative producer prices (RELPR). For these indices, we compare the Sen...

The Jones-Kierzkowski model of global fragmentation of production draws attention to the efficiency of 'service links' connecting 'production blocks' in different countries. Country-specific service links include transport and telecommunications infrastructure and the overall business climate. Mobile factors of production, most prominently foreign...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the effect of infrastructure provision on industry-level productivity and international specialization, as suggested by Clarida and Findlay's (1992 ) model. We calculate total factor productivity (TFP) for 18 developed and developing countries and 10 manufacturing industries, and study the effects of sup...

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...

The new South African government has embraced globalization, with mixed results to date. Controversies center on South Africa's international cost competitiveness and whether South African exports respond to changes in competitiveness. We measure competitiveness by relative unit labor costs. We find that South African relative unit labor costs decl...

Ce document évalue l¿importance des politiques frontalières et non frontalières pour l¿intégration économique mondiale. L¿étude est axée sur quatre orientations largement préconisées : supprimer les restrictions explicites du commerce et de l¿IDE ; promouvoir la concurrence intérieure ; améliorer la réactivité du marché du travail ; mettre en place...

Ce document présente de nouvelles mesures des restrictions visant les investissements directs étrangers (IDE) dans les pays de l¿OCDE. Différentes sortes de restrictions sont considérées : les limites de la participation étrangère, les procédures d¿examen sélectif ou de notification, et les restrictions concernant la gestion et les opérations des e...

This paper assesses the importance of border and non-border policies for global economic integration. The focus is on four widely-advocated policies: removing explicit restrictions to trade and FDI; promoting domestic competition; improving the adaptability of labour markets; and ensuring adequate levels of infrastructure capital. The analysis cove...

This paper provides new measures of restrictions on inward foreign direct investment (FDI) for OECD countries. Several different types of restrictions are considered: limitations on foreign ownership, screening or notification procedures, and management and operational restrictions. These restrictions are computed for nine sectors and eleven sub-se...

Despite some favourable conditions and a number of policy reforms, Senegal's participation in the global economy remains tenuous. This paper uses a Ricardian framework to study Senegal's international competitiveness in manufacturing. Wages, productivity and unit labour costs in Senegal are compared to those of other developing countries. Senegal's...

Despite some favourable conditions and a number of policy reforms, Senegal's participation in the global economy remains tenuous. This paper uses a Ricardian framework to study Senegal's international competitiveness in manufacturing. Wages, productivity and unit labour costs in Senegal are compared to those of other developing countries. Senegal's...

With the end of apartheid in the early 1990s and the new government's implementation of the outward-oriented GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution) strategy, South Africa has shifted towards greater integration into the global economy. GEAR substantially liberalized international trade with the hope of expanding employment and promoting econo...

We would like to thank Matthew Stern and Chris Loewald for inviting us to write this paper and their support and encouragement. All the views expressed are personal.

According to the classical Ricardian theory of comparative advantage, relative labor productivities determine trade patterns. The Ricardian model plays an important pedagogical role in international economics, but has received scant empirical attention since the 1960s. This paper assesses the contemporary relevance of the Ricardian model for US tra...

In the first postwar decades, dramatic steps toward trade liberalization were taken by the developed countries (the “North”) through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations. At that time, most developing countries (the “South”) were pursuing protectionist import-substitution policies and calling for a “New International Econo...

Does trade with low-wage countries steal American jobs and, hence, rob American workers of higher wages and a higher standard of living? Most economists think trade is not guilty as charged. Instead, they cite concepts such as comparative and absolute advantage and differences in productivity to explain why trade, particularly trade with low-wage c...

This paper attempts to extend the range of countries covered by the IMF`s multilateral real exchange rate indexes based on relative unit labor costs (REER-ULCs) in manufacturing. A data set was assembled that permits calculation of REER-ULCs for 23 newly industrialized, developing, and transition countries in addition to the 21 industrial countries...

This paper examines the structure and direction of developing Asia’s trade over the past two decades. The impacts on developing Asia of the economic slowdown in 2009–2010 in high-income countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes the European Union (EU), Japan, and United States (US) are projected t...

This paper examines the structure and direction of developing Asia’s trade over the past two decades. The impacts on developing Asia of the economic slowdown in 2009–2010 in high-income countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes the European Union (EU), Japan, and United States (US) are projected t...

This paper concerns the gains from international trade in risky assets, with an application to the United States and Japan. I examine the role of international financial markets in diversifying the risks associated with the aggregate consumption opportunities of a nation (social risk) and the risks related to individual agents' consumption opportun...

This paper uses a Ricardian framework to clarify the role of microeconomic and macroeconomic factors governing the time-series and cross-sectional behavior of sectoral trade balances. Unit labor costs and trade balances are calculated for several sectors for the seven major industrial countries. The time-series and cross-sectional variation in sect...

This paper uses a Ricardian framework to clarify the role of microeconomic and macroeconomic factors governing the time series and cross-section behavior of sectoral trade balances. Unit labor costs and trade balances are calculated for several sectors for the seven major industrial countries. The time series and cross-section variation in sectoral...

Feldstein and Horioka (1980) observed that net capital flows have been small in relation to domestic saving and investment flows for OECD countries in the post-war period, which they interpreted as evidence of low capital mobility. This paper argues that the correlation between gross domestic and international financial flows can be a better indica...

Foreign-currency government borrowing has implications for modelling asset markets and the balance of payments. Geographical balance-of-payments flows can be misleading indicators of exchange-rate pressures in a world characterized by foreign-currency govenment debt, because the latter alter the currency composition of global asset supplies in a ma...

The bivariate relationship between real exchange rates and the real long-term interest rate differential has been investigated in a number of recent studies. By exchange-rate-equation standards, this specification does a relatively good job of tracking the historical movements in the dollar-Deutschemark and the dollar-yen bilateral exchange rates,...

The report argues that aid volatility is an important source of volatility for the poorest countries. Following a method already applied by the Agence Française de Développement, the report argues that loans to LICs should incorporate a floating grace period, which the country could draw upon when hit by a shock. The definition of a shock should in...

This dissertation examines the behavior of the foreign exchange market during the 1973 to 1982 period of flexible exchange rates using a combination of analytical and institutional perspectives. Chapter One discusses the expansion of international financial markets and the parallel development of the asset-market approach to exchange-rate determina...

Dornbusch (1980) has observed a correlation between unexpected exchange-rate changes and unexpected current account balances, which he interprets as evidence in favor of the ‘news’ hypothesis of exchange-rate determination. It is shown here that his test is flawed by simultaneity problem.

The paper develops an analytical model of NS commodity trade which is used to estimate the effects of reciprocal elimination of these trade barriers for eight commodities. It is estimated that processing would increase by 9% in the LDCs and decline by less than 1% in the DCs. The LDC export revenue for the eight-commodity sample would increase by 1...

This paper reviews controversies regarding linkage of international trade and labor standards. Pressures for international harmonization of labor standards arise in the context of increased trade between countries with large disparities in wages. The paper also discusses the history of labor standards.

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...