scholarly journals Income Effects on the Trade Balance in the United States: Analysis by Sector

2008 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 967-982
Author(s):  
Dragan Miljkovic ◽  
Rodney Paul

This study examines the causes of the countercyclicality of the trade balance in the three major sectors of the U.S. economy: services, manufacturing, and agriculture. These results are compared with the results pertinent to the U.S. economy as a whole. At the macroscopic level, Sachs' hypothesis seems to explain the countercyclicality of the trade balance, while results are mixed across individual sectors. The services sector may be explained by Sachs’ hypothesis, while results for the manufacturing sector are more consistent with the real business cycle hypothesis. The results for the agricultural sector, however, cannot be explained by either hypothesis.

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Ahmed ◽  
Mark Granberg ◽  
Victor Troster ◽  
Gazi Salah Uddin

AbstractThis paper examines how different uncertainty measures affect the unemployment level, inflow, and outflow in the U.S. across all states of the business cycle. We employ linear and nonlinear causality-in-quantile tests to capture a complete picture of the effect of uncertainty on U.S. unemployment. To verify whether there are any common effects across different uncertainty measures, we use monthly data on four uncertainty measures and on U.S. unemployment from January 1997 to August 2018. Our results corroborate the general predictions from a search and matching framework of how uncertainty affects unemployment and its flows. Fluctuations in uncertainty generate increases (upper-quantile changes) in the unemployment level and in the inflow. Conversely, shocks to uncertainty have a negative impact on U.S. unemployment outflow. Therefore, the effect of uncertainty is asymmetric depending on the states (quantiles) of U.S. unemployment and on the adopted unemployment measure. Our findings suggest state-contingent policies to stabilize the unemployment level when large uncertainty shocks occur.


Author(s):  
Javad Gorjidooz ◽  
Bijan Vasigh

The Maquiladora industry was created in the mid-1960 as the United States terminated the Bracero program. The main objective of the Bracero program was to bring in Mexican workers to fulfill U.S. agricultural labor demand. The end of the Bracero program left thousands of unemployed farm workers in Mexican cities bordering the U.S. The Maquiladora programs intent was to subsidize foreign manufacturers that set up plants on the Mexico side of the border to create jobs for the Mexican workers. Mexico allowed plants to temporarily import supplies, parts, machinery, and equipment necessary to produce goods and services in Mexico duty-free as long as the output was exported back to the United States. U.S. firms, as well as other multinational companies, responded enthusiastically to the lure of cheap labor. Mexico experienced high economic growth and become a major player in exporting intra-industry products to the U.S. The NAFTA and other free trade agreements signed by Mexico helped the economic growth of the Maquiladora region. Maquiladora employment increased significantly since the inception of the Maquiladora industry and Maquiladora exports now account for half of Mexicos total exports. The Maquiladora industry is U.S.-demand driven since most of Mexicos Maquiladora production is destined for the U.S. market. The recent recession in the U.S. took a heavy toll on Mexicos Maquiladora industry. Another challenge to the Maquiladora industry is raising global competition, particularly from China. Therefore, the magnitude of the industrys contraction during the most recent recession suggests that there are more factors influencing the industry than just the business cycle. This paper presents the creation of the Maquiladora industry, its success following the NAFTA agreement, and its recent downturn. It also explores the answers to the following questions: How much of the Maquiladora downturn was due to the business cycle? How much was due to structural change? Is the Maquiladora industry ready to face rising global competition?


Author(s):  
Donald A. Wilhite ◽  
Mark D. Svoboda

Drought occurs somewhere in the United States almost every year and results in serious economic, social, and environmental costs and losses. Drought is more commonly associated with the western United States because much of this region is typically arid to semiarid. For example, this region experienced widespread drought conditions from the late 1980s through the early 1990s. The widespread and severe drought that affected large portions of the nation in 1988 resulted in an estimated $39 billion in impacts in sectors ranging from agriculture and forestry to transportation, energy production, water supply, tourism, recreation, and the environment (Riebsame et al., 1991). In the case of agriculture, production losses of more than $15 billion occurred and especially devastated corn and spring wheat belts in addition to reducing exports to other nations. In 1995, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) estimated annual losses attributable to drought at $6–8 billion (FEMA, 1995). Since 1995, drought has occurred in nearly all parts of the country, and many regions have been affected on several occasions and in consecutive years. Most of the eastern United States experienced an extremely severe drought in 1998– 99, and in parts of the southeast, drought occurred each year from 1999 through 2002, especially in Florida and Georgia. Figure 9.1 depicts nonirrigated corn yields for Nebraska for the period from 1950 to 2002. Nebraska is one of the principal agricultural states in the United States, and corn is one of its primary crops. The drought effects on yields are most apparent during the severe droughts of the mid-1950s, mid-1970s, 1980, 1983, 1988–89, and 2000. Extremely wet years, such as 1993 in the eastern part of the state, also depressed corn yields. Monitoring drought presents some unique challenges because of its distinctive characteristics (Wilhite, 2000). The purpose of this chapter is to document the current status of drought monitoring and assessment in the United States, particularly with regard to the agricultural sector.


Author(s):  
Assandé D. Adom ◽  

The relationship between a country’s manufacturing industry and net trade carries a great deal of complexity and proves critical as the economy matures. Moreover, debates in public arenas are oftentimes not helpful in alleviating confusions. This study attempts to empirically explore the nature of this relationship for the United States in particular. Using a set of structural vector auto-regressions, it reveals that the development of the manufacturing sector is inhibited in the long-run by worsening trade balances. However, this relationship does not appear significant. The implication of this finding weakens arguments singling out negative trade balances as driving forces behind the perceived woes of US manufacturing. Keywords: Manufacturing, Trade balance, United States, Cointegration, Vector auto-regression. JEL Classification: F14, F60, C51.


2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Barak Orbach

AbstractThis Article explores several meanings of a regulatory preference for government inaction. It explains the rise to dominance of this inaction preference in the United States and its distorting influence on the perception and understanding of regulation. Specifically, the Article demonstrates how basic terms in regulation, such as “government failure,” “regulatory capture,” and “deregulation,” acquired misleading connotations suggesting that government inaction is always superior to government action. The Article further explains how, through government inaction, the U.S. legal system accommodates rent extraction - the profitable exploitation of market imperfections and favorable laws. Several developments in recent decades have considerably improved the capacity of very small groups in society to collect rents, namely, use talent and positional advantages to gain increasing levels of earnings. The Article argues that the parallel rise of the inaction preference has contributed to this trend, primarily because the availability of rent extraction opportunities draws talent that utilizes them with growing effectiveness. The purpose of the Article is to clarify several aspects of the relationships between regulation and rent extraction or, more precisely, to emphasize that government inaction may entail undesirable income effects.


2007 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 457-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jungho Baek ◽  
Won W. Koo

The effects of the exchange rate and the income and money supply of the United States and its major trading partners on the U.S. agricultural trade balance are examined using an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. Results suggest that the exchange rate is the key determinant of the short- and long-run behavior of the trade balance. It is also found that the income and money supply in both the United States and the trading partners have significant impacts on U.S. agricultural trade in both the short and long run.


2008 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 403-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary W. “Bill” Herndon

First, please permit me the latitude to use a bit of poetic license in coining the term, “ethanolization,” which attempts to describe the upheaval and chaos witnessed across the agricultural sector attributed to the booming corn-based ethanol industry. Ethanolization has focused its impact on agriculture and, in particular, the U.S. agricultural sector as a combination of market-induced and policy-induced factors have created a “perfect storm” that is causing dramatic shocks to virtually every crop and livestock producer and agribusiness. Coining the term ethanolization also borrows from past eras in agriculture described as the “mechanization” of agriculture in the 1940s and 1950s and the “industrialization” of agriculture in the 1990s. Mechanization described a period when widespread adoption of farm machinery occurred across the United States. Then, industrialization, accredited to a body of writings by Draben-stott and Barkema, portrayed a “quiet revolution” of ever-increasing size and specialization of U.S. farms, ranches, and agribusinesses. Now, ethanolization attempts to characterize a similar revolution that is affecting essentially every facet of American agriculture.


1988 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Goldstein

Nowhere is America's hegemonic decline more evident than in changing trade patterns. The United States trade balance, a measure of the international demand for American goods, is suffering historic deficits. Lowered demand for American goods has led to the under-utilization of both labor and capital in a growing number of traditionally competitive American industries. Conversely, Americans' taste for foreign goods has never been so great. Japanese cars, European steel, Third World textiles, to name a few, are as well produced as their American counterparts and arrive on the U.S. market at a lower cost.


Author(s):  
Rosina Lozano

An American Language is a political history of the Spanish language in the United States. The nation has always been multilingual and the Spanish language in particular has remained as an important political issue into the present. After the U.S.-Mexican War, the Spanish language became a language of politics as Spanish speakers in the U.S. Southwest used it to build territorial and state governments. In the twentieth century, Spanish became a political language where speakers and those opposed to its use clashed over what Spanish's presence in the United States meant. This book recovers this story by using evidence that includes Spanish language newspapers, letters, state and territorial session laws, and federal archives to profile the struggle and resilience of Spanish speakers who advocated for their language rights as U.S. citizens. Comparing Spanish as a language of politics and as a political language across the Southwest and noncontiguous territories provides an opportunity to measure shifts in allegiance to the nation and exposes differing forms of nationalism. Language concessions and continued use of Spanish is a measure of power. Official language recognition by federal or state officials validates Spanish speakers' claims to US citizenship. The long history of policies relating to language in the United States provides a way to measure how U.S. visions of itself have shifted due to continuous migration from Latin America. Spanish-speaking U.S. citizens are crucial arbiters of Spanish language politics and their successes have broader implications on national policy and our understanding of Americans.


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