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End-Notes: 47, Myth and Reality of External Constraints On Development, Economic Journal
End-Notes: 47, Myth and Reality of External Constraints On Development, Economic Journal
CHAPTER 2
* The author acknowledges the helpful comments of Helmut Forstner and Tracy
Murray, but is himself responsible for any errors and omissions. The views expressed
in this article are personal and not necessarily those of UNIDO.
CHAPTER 3
* This chapter is a slightly revised version of Chapters 2 and 3 of Thames Essay No.
47, Myth and Reality of External Constraints on Development, by James Reidel,
published by the Trade Policy Research Centre, London. It also contains material
published in 'Trade as an Engine of Growth in Developing Countries, Revisited',
Economic Journal, March, 1984, pp. 56-73. Thanks are due to Cambridge Univer-
sity Press and the Trade Policy Research Centre for permission to republish in this
volume.
1. The opening of an economy to trade leads to changes in relative prices and shifts
in the distribution of income, both of which may also affect growth. A detailed
analysis of the effects on growth of efficiency gains and resulting shifts in relative
prices and income distribution is contained in Corden (1971).
2. For reference to, and a critique of, the Nurkse-Prebisch-Myrdal thesis, see
Irving B. Kravis (1970).
3. This model, which is characteristic of the traditional colonial economy, is
described and analysed empirically in Thomas Birnberg and Stephen Resnick
(1975).
4. A typical expression of the view that exports of developing countries in general
are tied to growth in developed countries is contained in the World Development
Report produced by the World Bank in 1978: 'Since the industrial countries'
demand for imports depends on their income, their growth is very important to
the export prospects of developing countries' (p. 13).
5. The failure to take account of the 'price factor' in explaining increased substitu-
tion for exports of primary commodities from developing countries was one of
several telling criticisms of Professor Nurkse's thesis detailed by Cairncross
(1960).
6. As Ian Little notes in his Economic Development: Theory, Policy and Interna-
tional Relations (New York: Basic Books, 1982), trade between countries at
different wage levels is also alleged to be unfair by trade unionists in developed
188
End-Notes 189
CHAPTER 4
1. Chapter 5 does in fact devote some attention to the wider issue of the impact of
the incentive structure of relative prices in the discussion on 'true' tariffs and
subsidies, but the aim there is to identify the 'incidence' or burden of protection
between sectors.
2. Given the difference in elasticity conditions in international markets and differ-
ences in the composition of imports and exports in many developing countries,
the divergences from unity are likely to be absolutely greater in the case of IS
than EP regimes.
3. These concern the choice of weights (Wi and w) and of the criterion for
categorising products as importables (m) and exportables (x). For a discussion of
these problems see Krueger et al. (1981).
4. South Korea can be identified as having reversed trade strategies from IS to EP
in the early 1960s.
5. This approach tends to capture only the 'direct' effects of trade policy interven-
tions on vahie-added.
6. The motivation for a particular trade strategy on the part of national policy-
makers has, in any case, varied between countries and over time.
7. Countries that rely on administrative control of imports are unlikely to allow
190 End-Notes
CHAPTERS
1. The role of interest groups in the formation of policy has been extensively
discussed in the context of the political economy of protection. Essentially this
involves the application of public choice ideas to the domain of trade policy. A
useful introduction to the subject is provided by Frey (1985).
2. See Corden (1974) for a thorough appraisal of the theory of optimal interven-
tion, and Greenaway (1983) for a terser review.
3. Domestic resource cost (DRC) analysis is a related concept to effective protec-
tion. The technique essentially attempts to evaluate the domestic resources
End-Notes 191
CHAPTER 6
* This chapter draws in part upon MacBean, 'Export Instability and Economic
Growth', published in METU, Studies in Development, 77 (1-2), 1984, and Mac-
Bean and Nguyen, Commodity Problems: Policies and Prospects (Croom Helm,
1987). The authors are grateful to the Overseas Development Administration for a
research grant which aided this work. The Overseas Development Administration
bears no responsibility for any of the opinions expressed here.
1. See Kubuta (1969), Moran (1983, pp. 198-202), Lawson (1974, p. 59), Stein
(1978, pp. 279--82); Leith (1970, pp. 268-9).
2. See MacBean (1966, pp. 28-30, 108-10, 114, 116, 121, 124-7); Lim (1976, pp.
311-22).
192 End-Notes
3. See MacBean (1966, pp. 32, 113), Caine (1954), Knudsen and Parnes (1975), and
Yotopoulos and Nugent (1976, ch. 18).
4. The most recent are Moran (1983) and Adams and Behrman (1982). See the
references there.
5. MacBean (1966) was concerned with whether export instability was a general
problem for LDCs, and availability of data was the only criterion for inclusion in
the sample studied. Several later studies used a sample of countries which prima
facie were more likely to be affected by export instability, e.g. Glezakos (1973).
Most subsequent studies have followed suit.
6. Asymmetrical expectation on the part of investors considering the upswings (as
permanent) and downswings (as temporary) is really not rational. However, as
long as the expansion of the industry is profitable, this expectation will appear to
be justified ex-post.
7. See Obidegwu and Nziramasanga (1981). From the results of simulations of an
econometric model of copper in Zambia, the authors concluded that stabilising
the copper price has no impact on the Zambian economy, since the rest of the
economy is insulated by net international reserves changes and the foreign share
of net exports. Unstable copper price had no adverse effect on economic growth
(p. 109).
8. Even where the ratchet effects are in fact present, insufficient sample variance in
instability in time-series studies can cause failure to detect them. Therefore, one
cannot even say that Adams and Behrman have shown that one route-ratchet
effects - were not present, unless, over the period investigated, there was
sufficient variation in instability for the individual countries involved.
CHAPTER 7
* The work reported in this chapter was completed while the author was employed
in the Commodities Division of the Research Department of the International
Monetary Fund in Washington DC. The author is indebted to Ke-Young Chu, Nihad
Kaibni and Tom Morrison (IMF) and to Alan Winters (World Bank and University
College of North Wales, Bangor) and Hans Singer (University of Sussex) for their
comments on earlier versions. Especial thanks are due to Ximena Cheetham for her
outstanding research assistance. All views expressed in this paper, and any remain-
ing errors, are the responsibility of the author alone.
1. Although attention throughout this chapter is focused on the NBTT (real price of
commodities), it is useful to note that in his seminal work on long waves,
Kondratieff (1935) viewed nominal commodity price movements as one of the
major components of the long-run cyclical behaviour of the world economy and
found evidence in their behaviour of three great cycles during the period since the
end of the 1780s, with duration between forty-seven and sixty years (p. 107). For
further discussion see Lewis (1978, pp. 69-93) and Sapsford (1985a, p. 6).
2. The series analysed by Prebisch (1950) referred to the net barter terms of trade of
the United Kingdom for its complete merchandise trade from 1876 to 1947. As
the UK was, for much of this period, the major exporter of manufactures and
importer of primary commodities, Prebisch interpreted the secular increases in
the UK's terms of trade as implying a secular deterioration in the net barter terms
of trade of primary products traded world-wide. However, Singer (1950) based
his case on arguably more direct statistical evidence taken from his earlier
unsigned United Nations (1949) study.
3. Autocorrelation is a common problem in time-series analysis. It arises when
End-Notes 193
successive values of the disturbance term are related, for instance due to the fact
that shocks have a prolonged influence. When autocorrelation exists, failure to
treat the problem in some way can result in the usual confidence tests which
econometricians use being invalid. The Durbin-Watson statistic is a diagnostic
statistic used to test for the presence of autocorrelation. Its value ranges between
o and 4. Values of around 2 are consistent with an absence of autocorrelation.
Values tending towards 0 are consistent with positive autocorrelation, while those
tending towards 4 are consistent with negative autocorrelation. The precise values
at which it will be deduced that autocorrelation is present depends upon the
sample size and the number of variables in the model.
4. The Cochrane-Orcutt estimation procedure is a statistical method of correcting
for autocorrelation.
5. Because of data availability problems it was not possible to adjust the UN series
(which also formed the first element of Spraos's hybrid series) for petroleum
movements as far back as 1900. However, some calculations reported in Sapsford
(1984) suggest that the adopted procedure (involving the linking of more recent
petroleum-exclusive data to earlier petroleum-inclusive data) might not be too
unreasonable.
6. As already noted, it is not possible to properly appraise Spraos's own reported
equations because of the absence of reported D-W statistics. However, replica-
tion of his OLS estimation procedure and re-estimation by the Cochrane-Orcutt
iterative procedure confirms the significance of each of the sub-period trends (see
Sapsford 1985a, table 1, equations 1.3-1.5). Notice also that Spraos's equation
(10) relates to the World Bank (petroleum inclusive) series rather than the hybrid
series; where the latter is made up of the UN series for the period 1950 to 1956
and the World Bank (petroleum inclusive) series thereafter. However, a negative
and significant trend is also clearly evident from a 1950-1970 sub-period re-
gression of the hybrid series (Sapsford, 1985a, table 1, equation 1.4).
7. For a formal proof, see Sapsford (1981, pp. 506-7).
CHAPTER 9
afforded to the capital-intensive good in the domestic sector artificially lowers the
wage rate, and, second, the wage rate tends to be low in terms of world prices for
the good facing the firms in the zone compared to the wage in terms of domestic
prices in the domestic sector. The theoretical analysis of this issue in the context
of the 2 X 2 X 2 model incorporating all the assumptions stated earlier, comes to
the conclusion that welfare necessarily decreases more in this case than in the case
where FDI flows into the domestic sector. This is based on the argument that
foreign firms totally specialise in the production of the labour-intensive good in
the zone, and they pay labour employed in the zone, at least partly, in the form of
the capital-intensive good. Labour would prefer to be paid in the capital-intensive
good because of its relatively high price in the domestic economy. Foreign firms
do not produce the capital-intensive good but are able to buy it at world market
prices. Further, they repatriate profits in the form of the relatively cheap labour-
intensive good. In the domestic sector, however, foreign capitalists cannot buy
the capital-intensive good at world market prices because of the presence of a
tariff on the good. Hence they are forced to pay a relatively high wage in terms of
the capital-intensive good in the domestic zone. Hence welfare decreases more if
FDI flows into the zone than in the case were it flows into the domestic sector.
CHAPTER 11
1. This is because for accounting purposes it may price imported intermediate inputs
from the parent company at virtually anywhere between marginal cost and final
price, depending upon the prevailing rates of company taxation within the two
economies.
2. This might be on the insistence of the donors that foreign aid should not substitute
for domestic tax effort.
3. The payment is not necessarily retained by the tax official. Village headsmen and
other local dignitaries may be compensated for providing information on their
villagers, their ownership of land, cattle, and so forth.
4. Tariffs on intermediate inputs effectively reduce the degree of protection afforded
to final goods. For this reason it is necessary to distinguish between 'nominal' and
'effective' rates of protection, and it is worth noting that the latter may be
negative in certain cases (see chapter 5).
5. The intuitive explanation for this result is that if a country is successful in
changing the terms of trade in its favour by the adoption of tariffs, it effectively
increases the price of its exports. The precise consequences then depend upon the
foreigners' demand for importables. For this and related arguments see Johnson
(195~1).
6. For purposes of exposition in what follows, we will consider tariff revenues as
being representative of trade tax revenues as a whole.
7. This example is culled from the writer's own experience.
References
195
196 References
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References 197
206
Author Index 207
209
210 Subject Index
true subsidy 89, 91-2, 189 World Bank 61, 84, 122-3, 125-6,
true tariff 89, 91-2, 189 188, 189, 190, 193
two-gap models 68 world trade
as an engine of growth 3, 25-54
UNCTAD 4,121,128, 166 expansion 1
unequal exchange 69-70 and output 1, 2
volume 1,2
value added 79-80
negative 79-80, 84-86 X-efficiency 76