This paper addresses the influence of foreign trade and investment on inequality or, more generally, on the distribution of income, with a focus on developing countries. There has been some scholarly debate on the influence on economic growth of economic openness to the rest of the world. Since growth affects the level of poverty and the distribution of income, the trade–growth nexus is also addressed.
"Distribution of income" has several quite different meanings, apart from the issue of the specific measurements that are used to describe it. Economic theory has mainly been concerned with the functional distribution of income, that is, with the returns to different identifiable factors of production and their respective shares in total income of a particular country, such as the share of labor income in national income. Popular and political discourse is more concerned with the size distribution of income, such as the fraction of national income accruing to the top ten percent, or the bottom decile, of residents of the country in question — and in particular on whether inequality has risen or declined. In recent years, concern with the size distribution of income has extended to the global distribution, where observations are on countries, grouped by per capita income, rather than on individuals.
The two concepts of distribution are related by the ownership of the factors of production, especially land in a predominantly agrarian economy, capital in a modern economy. If ownership of land and capital were evenly distributed across a population, even significant changes in the functional distribution of income would have little impact on the size distribution of income.
Cooper, Richard. "Growth and Inequality: The Role of Foreign Trade and Investment." Working Paper 01–07, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 2001.
Market exchange rates can move around a lot, particularly but not only around currency crises. For this reason, they can properly be averaged over several years for international comparisons. However, the Chinese yuan has been fixed at roughly 8.3/dollar since 1994. In my view it is modestly undervalued, as evidenced by the steady growth of China's foreign exchange reserves, the result of central bank market intervention to keep the yuan from appreciating. China has also had a significant trade surplus in recent years. However, it still maintains controls on outflows of domestic capital. And it is about the enter the WTO, following which under the access agreements China must reduce its import barriers much more than its trading partners do. Many Chinese are fearful of withering foreign competition. If these fears prove to be valid and widespread, the yuan might have to depreciate over the next five years, although my guess is the required depreciation will be modest, e.g. 10-15 percent. Moreover, WTO membership may result in more inbound foreign investment, thus mitigating the required depreciation or even eliminating it altogether. The bottom line is this: the market exchange rate provides a much better basis for converting Chinese GDP into dollars than does some artificially constructed ppp rate. Following the pattern of Japan and Korea, the real exchange rate of the rmb might appreciate over time, as China develops, but that process will occur at a modest rate, over decades.
437_senatetst.pdfPaper presented at Congress public hearing "Chinese Budget Issues and the Role of the PLA in the Economy," December 7, 2001.
The "new economy" has become a buzzword to characterize the American economy, with positive connotations but imprecise meaning. Sometimes it is used to refer only to selected high technology sectors, specifically computers, semiconductors, software, and telecommunications. But usually the term implies significant changes in the US economy as a whole. At its most dramatic, the term suggested that the traditional business cycle has been banished, inflation and unemployment have been brought forever under control, US long–term growth rates have increased significantly, and the high–value stock market was not over–valued and indeed would continue to rise.
More modestly, it suggests that the structure of the US economy has changed fundamentally, with the implication, inter alia, that monetary and fiscal measures affect the economy differently from the way they did in the past. Finally, it suggests that US productivity growth has returned to, or at least toward, the high levels it enjoyed in earlier years, before the slowdown of the mid–1970s.
This paper will discuss the factual bases for conjecturing that the United States might indeed have a "new economy," review the controversies and evidence surrounding that claim, and suggest how the emergence of a "new economy," if indeed there is one, might affect economies elsewhere in the world, including the Asia–Pacific region.
436_paftad_september.pdf