Results for “china”
2938 found

FCPA as embargo

by  Tyler Cowen in

It turns out Andrew Spalding has a paper on the topic.  Here is the abstract:

Although the purpose of international anti-bribery legislation, particularly the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, is to deter bribery, empirical evidence demonstrates a more problematic effect: in countries where bribery is perceived to be relatively common, the present enforcement regime goes beyond deterring bribery and actually deters investment. Drawing on literature from political science and economics, this article argues that anti-bribery legislation, as presently enforced, functions as de facto economic sanctions. A detailed analysis of the history of FCPA enforcement shows that these sanctions have most often occurred in emerging markets, where historic opportunities for economic and social development otherwise exist and where public policy should encourage investment. This effect is contrary to the purpose of the FCPA which, as the legislative history shows, is to build economic and political alliances by promoting ethical overseas investment.

These perverse and unanticipated consequences create two policy problems. First, the sanctions literature suggests that the resulting foreign direct investment void may be filled by capital-rich countries that are not committed to effectively enforcing anti-bribery measures. This dynamic can be observed, for example, in China's aggressive investment in Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia, and creates myriad ethical, economic, and foreign policy problems. Second, by enforcing these laws without regard to their sanctioning effects, developed nations are unwittingly sacrificing poverty reduction opportunities to combat bribery. The paper concludes with various proposed reforms to the text and enforcement of international anti-bribery legislation that would further the goal of deterring bribery without deterring investment.

Here is my previous post on the FCPA and Haiti.

Markets in everything vending machines in everything

by  Tyler Cowen in

The Passive-Aggressive Release Machine.

The “Passive Aggressive Anger Release Machine” is a machine that allows you break a dish or two until you feel better. All you have to do is insert a dollar, and a piece of china will slowly move towards you until it falls to the bottom and breaks into a million pieces.

Want to do it again? Insert another dollar.

The photo at the link is quite good.  For the pointer I thank Chug.

Why did it take so long for humans to have the Industrial Revolution?

by  Tyler Cowen in

That's a reader request from the especially loyal Harrison Brookie.  First, you might wish to go back and read the MR reviews and debates of Greg Clark's Farewell to Alms,

More generally, extended periods of economic growth require that technologies of defense outweigh technologies of predation.  They may also require that the successful defender, at the same time, has good enough technology to predate someone else and accumulate a sizable surplus.  Parts of Europe took a good deal from the New World and this may have mattered a good deal.

Building a strong enough state to protect markets from other states is very hard to do; at the same time the built state has to avoid crushing those markets itself.  That's a very delicate balance.  China had wonderful technology for its time and was the richest part of the world for centuries but never succeeded in this endeavor, not for long at least.

England was fortunate to be an island.  Starting in the early seventeenth century, England had many decades of ongoing, steady growth.  Later, coal and the steam engine kicked in at just the right time.  English political institutions were "good enough" as well and steadily improving, for the most part.

Christianity was important for transmitting an ideology of individual rights and natural law.  As McCloskey and Mokyr stress, the Industrial Revolution was in part about ideas.

There are numerous other factors, but putting those ones together — and no others — already makes an Industrial Revolution very difficult to achieve.  It did happen, it probably would have happened somewhere, sooner or later, but its occurrence was by no means easy to achieve.  The Greeks had steam engines, proto-computers, and brilliant philosophers and writers, but still they did not come close to a breakthrough.

One question is how long the Roman Empire would have had to last to generate an Industrial Revolution and don't mention the Eastern Empire smartypants.

If you are asking why the Industrial Revolution did not occur in the Mesozoic age, or other earlier times, genetic factors play a role as well.

Assorted Links

by  Alex Tabarrok in

1. More on Israel's new "no-give, no-take" organ donation system.

…Robby Berman, founder and director of the Halachic Organ Donor Society,
a Jewish organization based in New York, said ultra-Orthodox Jews can't
have it both ways…. "Every Jew has a right to be against an organ donation, but then you can't come and say 'give me an organ.''

2. Are birds shrinking due to climate change?  At last, the climate change and evolution deniers can unite.

3. Not from the Onion: Apple: Free iPad With Every Replacement Battery.

4. Chinese airports at nowhere:

"…when the $57-million airport opened in late 2007. Local officials were
so confident that tourists would flock to this beautiful, mountainous
county in southwestern China that they made the terminal big enough to
accommodate 220,000 passengers annually…A grand total of 151 people flew in and out of Libo last year."

Addendums

5. Inhalable chocolate and coffee.

6.  Matt Ygelsias, world's most underpayed blogger?

Hat tips to Daniel Lippman and Dave Undis.

Where should you wish to visit in a hurry?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is the reader request:

A friend remarked that on his trip to Cuba, the inclusion of modern buses imported from China had started to erode the charm of the vintage car culture we associate with the island. This is one factor, among many (including the possibility of the embargo being stopped), that made her travel to the island before it changed too much.

What other countries (or cities) are undergoing signficant change and will be presumably very different in a few years from now? Which ones would you travel to if you had the chance now before they underwent that change?

Here is my list of places to visit in a hurry:

1. Cuba

2. Bali, Laos, and Cambodia, which are all losing traditional culture.

3. Any wildlife or game reserve.

4. Yemen (maybe too late already?)

5. Tibet and possibly Bhutan

I can't bring myself to put North Korea on that list.

Here is my list of places which will only get better to visit:

1. China (air pollution will diminish, reading MR might become easier)

2. India (pollution will diminish, sanitation will improve)

3. Greece (someday will be cheaper)

4. Canada, New Zealand, and Australia: they don't have much old stuff anyway and what they do have will be preserved.  The U.S., in contrast, was interesting in the 1950s (or the 1920s) in a way these places were not and many aspects of that period are being lost. 

What suggestions do you have?  Iraq definitely belongs to one list or the other, we just don't know which.

Update on Austro-Chinese business cycle theory

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is David Ignatius:

My favorite analyst of bubble economies is David M. Smick, who predicted the U.S. financial mess in his book "The World Is Curved." He notes some worrying statistics: Until the global financial crisis, Chinese exports represented 43 percent of its gross domestic product. To make up for collapsing foreign demand once the recession hit in 2009, China launched a $1.8 trillion stimulus and lending program — amounting to about 38 percent of its GDP. This money was supposed to reach consumers, but Smick estimates that 85 percent of the subsidized loans went to state-run companies and banks — pumping the investment bubble even larger.

Here is from the FT:

Prices of commercial and residential property in China’s 70 largest cities rose by 10.7 per cent in February from the same period a year earlier, a marked increase from the 9.5 per cent year-on-year gain in January, according to China’s statistics bureau.

I believe that in a time when the U.S. fiscal stimulus is under political fire, many American economists have been reluctant to criticize the Chinese program and send a potentially mixed message. 

On a separate but related note, here is a piece on forthcoming rural migration in China.

Can all European countries be like Germany?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Martin Wolf says no.  For instance:

But Germany can be Germany – an economy with fiscal discipline, feeble domestic demand and a huge export surplus – only because others are not.

To be sure, Greece is unlikely to end up as "like Germany."  But in this argument — which I'm seeing pop up in many places — I think there is a slight conflation between absolute and relative market shares.

Say that Portugal, Italy, and Greece were more like Germany, economically speaking that is.  Toss in Albania to make the contrast starker.  They would have higher productivity and higher output.  They would export more.  But with their higher wealth, they would import more too.  That includes more imports from Germany, most likely.  German *net exports* might well decline, as Germans buy more olive oil and high-powered computer software from Albania.  But German exports need not decline *on net* (over a longer run of continuing global growth they certainly will not decline) and that should prove good enough for the German model to sustain itself.

No economist thinks that being wealthy is a zero-sum game.  "Being like Germany" isn't exactly the same as being wealthy, but the German model succeeds (in large part) because of its high absolute level of exports.  "Net exports" is a zero-sum game at any single point in time, but when it comes to secular growth that's also not the variable which matters.

The bottom line is that people are blaming Germany (and China) a bit too much here.

Mistakes in Grenada

by  Tyler Cowen in

After Hurricane Ivan, the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) paid for the new $40 million national stadium, and provided the aid of over 300 labourers to build and repair it. During the opening ceremony, the anthem of the Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan) was accidentally played instead of the PRC's anthem, leading to the firing of top officials.

That's from Wikipedia.

*Country Driving*

by  Tyler Cowen in

The author is Peter Hessler and the subtitle is A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory.  It is the account of the author's driving journeys throuh the Middle Kingdom.  Here is one bit:

…Chinese drivers haven't grasped the subtleties of headlight use.  Most people keep their lights off until it's pitch-dark, and then they flip on the brights.  Almost nobody uses headlights in rain, fog, snow, or twilight conditions — in fact, this is one of the few acts guaranteed to annoy a Chinese driver.  They don't mind if you tailgate, or pass on the right, or drive on the sidewalk.  You can back down a highway entrance ramp without anybody batting an eyelash.  But if you switch on your lights during a rainstorm, approaching drivers will invariably flash their brights in annoyance.

I found this to be an excellent travel memoir, a very good book on transportation economics, a wonderful book on China, and most of all a first-rate study of the adjustments and changing norms which accompany rapid economic development.  I also found it to be a very funny book and, for whatever reason, I don't find most books funny. 

Here is another bit on China:

Often I passed billboards dedicated to the planned-birth policy, whose catchphrases ranged from tautology ("Daughters Also Count as Descendants") to unsolicited advice ("Marry Late and Have Children Late") to outright lies ("Having a Son or a Daughter Is Exactly the Same").  As I drove west, the messages became bigger, until barren hillsides were covered with slogans, as if words had swelled to fill the empty steppes, "Everybody Work to Make the Green Mountain Greener" — this in forty-foot-tall characters across an Inner Mongolian mountain that was neither green nor the site of a single working person.

Recommended.

Test your moral intuitions, Kunming edition

by  Tyler Cowen in

This was a truly strange article, not only for its content but also for its odd shifts in tone.  It seems that in China there is a theme park of dwarfs who perform for tourists; this reader felt he had stepped into a Brian Barry article.  Here is one sample of what goes on:

And there is the Swan Lake parody, a crowd pleaser in which male dwarfs dress up in pink tights and tutus and wiggle their derrières.

“The first time I wore that, I felt really awkward,” said Chen Ruan, 20, who used to collect refuse with his parents. “But then I got up on stage and people liked it. People were applauding and I felt proud.”

So is this morally OK?  Among other things, the article suggests that this theme park is raising the status of dwarfs, and the disabled, in China, at least relative to how things had been.  You'll note that Chen Ruan, cited above, used to pick up refuse. 

Is it better or worse that some of the dwarfs seem to enjoy the work?  In this kind of "few other good employment options, culture of face-saving and honor, don't insult the boss to prestigious foreigners" setting, are there any employee reports that a reporter actually could trust and pass along at face value?  What is the proper moral stance of a journalist toward a story like this one?

By the way, the piece claims that the park is not (yet?) profitable.