The Maquiladora Industry: Recent Downturn And Future Prospects

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Javad Gorjidooz ◽  
Bijan Vasigh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Business Cycle ◽  
Labor Demand ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Competition ◽  
Bracero Program ◽  
Major Player ◽  
The Business Cycle ◽  
The U.S

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?

scholarly journals Asymmetric dynamics between uncertainty and unemployment flows in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Ahmed ◽  
Mark Granberg ◽  
Victor Troster ◽  
Gazi Salah Uddin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Business Cycle ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
The United States ◽  
Large Uncertainty ◽  
Monthly Data ◽  
Uncertainty Measures ◽  
Linear And Nonlinear ◽  
The Business Cycle ◽  
The U.S

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.

Economic Integration and Changes in the Business Cycle in East Asia: Is the Region Decoupling from the Rest of the World?

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yung Chul Park ◽  
Kwanho Shin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Business Cycle ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Financial Integration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Trade Integration ◽  
Global Integration ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
The Business Cycle

Countries in East Asia (EA) have made a great deal of progress in integrating their economies since the early 1990s. There has been a sustained increase in intra-regional trade in EA. On finance, however, regional financial integration has been lagging behind trade integration and EA has reached out to global financial markets to effect deeper global integration. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of intra-regional and extra-regional financial integration on changes in the pattern of EA's business cycle since 1990 to see whether there is any ground for “decoupling” of EA from the United States and the EU. On trade relations, the empirical results show that deepening trade integration contributes to more synchronized output movements among EA countries. There is also evidence that financial integration enhances more synchronization of output, but because its impact is not strong, the extra-regional integration does not necessarily dispute the prediction that EA's output movement has become more idiosyncratic than before, and therefore less closely tied with that of the United States.

New Estimates of Prewar Gross National Product and Unemployment

1986 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Romer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Business Cycle ◽  
Unemployment Rate ◽  
Serial Correlation ◽  
Gross National Product ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Product ◽  
Okun’S Law ◽  
Okun's Law ◽  
The Business Cycle

The paper examines in detail revised estimates of unemployment and gross national product for the United States before 1929. It first discusses the nature of the revisions to each series and contrasts the assumptions underlying the new data with those underlying the Kuznets GNP series and the Lebergott unemployment rate series. It then examines the business cycle properties of the new prewar estimates. In analyzes the volatility and serial correlation properities of the new macroeconomic series and investigates the Okun's Law relationship between unemployment and GNP, concluding with an evaluation of the assumptions underlying the old and new data.

scholarly journals Impact of institutional factors on economic growth in the United States in the years 1979–2007

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorota Kuder
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business Environment ◽  
Positive Influence ◽  
Institutional Factors ◽  
Working Population ◽  
Proportional Increase ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The U.S

The purpose of this article is to isolate and determine the importance of institutional arrangements in shaping the dynamics of the U.S. GDP in the years 1979–2007. The research hypothesis which has been verified here can be summarized as follows: institutions in the U.S. economy have a positive influence on economic growth through a significant impact on improving the business environment. Having regard to the division of the economy into institutional areas: economic system, labor market, financial market, education and R&D, the author selected these institutional factors which indicated that the operation could be important for the process of economic growth in the United States, and then measured the impact in the years 1979–2007. To verify the thesis about the impact of institutions on economic growth the author used one of the most popular tools in this kind of econometric research – the multiple regression analysis. The analysis revealed that during the period of all the analyzed institutional factors it was the proportion of the working population and the degree of unionization that most strongly influenced the economic growth of the United States – an increase in one of these factors was associated with a much more than proportional increase in the rate of the economic growth.

scholarly journals Has The Business Cycle Been Dampened? The Case Of Canada, Sweden And The United States

2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bakhtiar Moazzami ◽  
Bahram Dadgostar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Business Cycle ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Fluctuations ◽  
Real Output ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Output Data ◽  
Bretton Woods ◽  
Stabilization Policies ◽  
The Business Cycle

Have postwar stabilization policies reduced economic fluctuations compared to earlier periods? Using output data for Canada, Sweden and the United States for the period 1929-2005 and three different de-trending procedures, we found that postwar economic policies have been successful in reducing business cycle volatility. We also found that fluctuations in real output have been significantly dampened during the post-Bretton Woods era compared to earlier periods.

The Overall Effect of the Business Cycle on Crime

2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 436-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shawn Bushway ◽  
Matthew Phillips ◽  
Philip J. Cook
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Business Cycles ◽  
Business Cycle ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Motor Vehicles ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Statistical Association ◽  
The Business Cycle ◽  
Using Data

Abstract This paper analyses the 13 business cycles since 1933 to provide evidence on the old question of whether recessions cause crime. Using data from the United States, we find that recessions are consistently associated with an uptick in burglary and robbery, and a reduction in theft of motor vehicles. There is no statistical association with homicide. These patterns are suggestive of the relative importance of the various channels by which economic conditions influence crime.

A BIVARIATE AUTOREGRESSIVE PROBIT MODEL: BUSINESS CYCLE LINKAGES AND TRANSMISSION OF RECESSION PROBABILITIES

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 838-862 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henri Nyberg
Keyword(s):  
Business Cycle ◽  
Probit Model ◽  
The United States ◽  
Financial Variables ◽  
Method Of Maximum Likelihood ◽  
Special Cases ◽  
Out Of Sample ◽  
Explicit Formulae ◽  
The Business Cycle ◽  
The U.S

I propose a new binary bivariate autoregressive probit model of the state of the business cycle. This model nests various special cases, such as two separate univariate probit models used extensively in the previous literature. The parameters are estimated by the method of maximum likelihood and forecasts can be computed by explicit formulae. The model is applied to predict the U.S. and German business cycle recession and expansion periods. Evidence of in-sample and out-of-sample predictability of recession periods by financial variables is obtained. The proposed bivariate autoregressive probit model allowing links between the recession probabilities in the United States and Germany turns out to outperform two univariate models.

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