The Irish macroeconomic response to an external shock with an application to stress testing

The Irish economy has recently endured a period of turbulence as a result of the collapse of the domestic property market bubble and the onset of the global financial crisis. There are two critical vulnerabilities in the Irish economy at present. The first is the potential for sluggish economic growth due to a slowdown in external demand, which impacts on the government's ability to meet budgetary targets. The second concern relates to the financial stability of the banking system given the escalating mortgage crisis. Our results show that Irish economic growth is highly sensitive to the performance of its trading partners and any international slowdown will hinder Ireland's growth prospects. The model used suggests that the appropriate policy response is to pursue further gains in competitiveness. We estimate the impact of an external slowdown on mortgage delinquency using a new dataset on the loan books of the commercial banking sector. The results suggest that a negative one standard deviation shock to US GDP growth leads to an increase of 1600 in the number of mortgages in arrears for at least 90 days. Arrears are driven by unemployment and negative equity in the model. We discuss policies to contain the mortgage crisis by improving these intermediate target variables.     

Cross-Atlantic implications of the new US policy mix

This paper will assess implications of shifting policy mix in the US for global imbalances and adjustment, with a focus on the euro area, using the European Commission’s QUEST model. Following early market euphoria after the elections on the account of expected “decisive” pro-market policies, uncertainty regarding the composition and timing of the new administration's economic policies has been the norm. Early proposals included a substantial fiscal stimulus which, combined with a tightening monetary stance, was expected to drive up long-run interest rates and the dollar, leading to widening global imbalances and potential instability. Today the expansionary impact of the fiscal plans is the subject of a heated debate while monetary policy continues to tighten steadily and risks related to a protectionist trade agenda remain pronounced. Contrary to initial expectations, real interest rates and the dollar have weakened, while global imbalances persist. Addressing policy and structural needs in the US – and abroad – is a necessary condition to rein in global imbalances. In this context, this paper will discuss the role of the G20/G7 to promote a coordinated policy approach and in particular to what extent the G20/G7 can deal with the transition from crisis management to the balancing of heterogeneous preferences among the policy makers to promote global growth and stability.     

Russia and Regional Institutions in the Asia-Pacific Region

Until the past few years, post-Soviet Russia devoted insufficient attention to multilateral processes of cooperation in the Asia-Pacific Region (APR). This situation gradually started to change in the period leading up to and during Russia’s stint as chair of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in 2012. An additional stimulus to more active Russian participation in institutions of regional cooperation in the APR was implementation of the policy of the “turn to the East,” which became especially urgent after the crisis of 2014 in Russia’s relations with the West. As it happened, however, Russia strengthened its ties with multilateral institutions in the APR at exactly the time when many mechanisms of cooperation were in crisis and weakened by tensions between China and the United States in the region and also by competing regional projects promoted by these powers.     

中国投资东盟的驱动机制探析

中国自提出"走出去"战略11年来,对外直接投资呈现较快增长。在世界经济总体放缓、美国经济复苏乏力、欧债危机日益严重的国际背景下,中国企业对外直接投资的区位选择是决定国际化战略能否成功的关键因素之一。当前,对外直接投资在中国和东盟的经济合作中还具有巨大潜力。驱动中国企业对东盟直接投资的因素主要有市场因素、生产成本因素、经营发展因素、政策因素等几个方面。     

Combining Work and Care: Carers' Decision-making in the Context of Competing Policy Pressures

Issues related to paid work and care are of global importance, reflecting the twin pressures of population ageing and efforts to increase labour market participation. Informal carers of sick, disabled or older people can experience tensions between policies aimed at support for care and support for employment. This article discusses a study of carers’ decision‐making around work and care, drawing on evidence from interviews with 80 working‐age carers in England. Carers are not homogeneous; their circumstances and needs differ reflecting age, gender, ethnicity, labour market participation, and the condition and/or needs of the person they support. This diversity is illustrated by contrasting rural and urban carers’ decisions and experiences about work and care. Key factors that impact on carers’ decisions are: current and anticipated financial need; the constraints arising from receipt of carers’ and other means‐tested income maintenance benefits; personal identity; job opportunities and scope for flexibility; social services provision; carers’ own health. Distance, travel times and transport are unique additional challenges for rural carers who (wish to) work. These difficulties are further intensified when they intersect with other factors such as the Carer's Allowance, the local labour market and social services provision. The findings are evaluated in terms of the adequacy of current government policy measures.     

美欧债务危机应对策略的国际比较

美欧债务危机不断蔓延,其发展状况牵动着全球经济的神经。债务危机爆发后,美欧都采取了紧缩财政、增加市场流动性等措施。但因国情各异,二者在自救实力、政策配合等方面存在明显差异。在美欧债务危机给中国带来新的冲击的严峻局势下,中国应对美欧债务危机的诱发因素和应对策略进行反思,寻找出一条使中国经济稳健发展的道路。     

19世纪60-80年代俄国境内朝鲜移民法律地位形成的中朝因素探析

19世纪60-80年代,随着俄国积极吸引劳动力开发远东政策的推行,朝鲜移民数量逐年增加,其法律地位亟待确立.在19世纪下半叶东北亚各国利益角逐与权力制衡的背景下,俄国朝鲜移民的法律地位问题不仅关乎俄国自身大计,更牵涉了中朝利益.通过对解密的俄罗斯帝国对外政策档案及相关原始资料的分析,我们认为,中朝两国对俄国积极安置朝鲜移民政策进行了全力抵制,不仅影响了俄国境内朝鲜移民法律地位的形成,还阻止了俄国东北亚战略计划的实施.在中朝两国的反对下,俄国仅部分地确立了其境内朝鲜移民的合法地位,这大大限制了俄国远东地区的朝鲜劳动力数量,破坏了俄国利用朝鲜移民开发远东,并以此为契机渗入朝鲜、角逐东北亚的战略计划.     

An Analysis of the Determinants of the Changes in China’s Foreign Exchange Reserves’ Nominal and Real Rates of Return

We use decomposition and regression to examine the reasons for the changes in nominal and real rates of return of China’s foreign exchange reserves between 2002 and 2009. The results show that the US financial market risk premium is the most important determinant of changes in the nominal rate of return, while the US dollar exchange rate and the bulk commodity price are the two key determinants of changes in the real rate of return. From empirically based research, one may conclude that the loose monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve increases China’s foreign exchange reserves’ nominal rate of return but decreases the real rate of return and that the European debt crisis has an uncertain impact on China’s foreign exchange reserves’ nominal rate of return but may well raise the real rate of return.     

The Influence of “Made in China” on the Great Moderation of the Global Economy：An Empirical Test Based on Value Chains*

We have collected data on China’s 22 main trading partners for 1984-2012 and used System GMM to study the influence of “Made in China” on the “Great Moderation” of the global economy. Our research shows that although trade scale, real effective exchange rate, oil prices, fixed capital investment and other variables have significantly expanded global economic volatility, “Made in China” has markedly restrained output growth rate fluctuations in countries around the world and price fluctuations in developed countries, helping the global economy develop with “high growth, low volatility.” “Made in China” is a long-term variable in the context of the global value chain. China needs to take advantage of global value chain restructuring to further upgrade and develop processing and manufacturing industry and expand its presence in the international market. It could choose to adopt a “mirror strategy” and launch trade sanctions targeting counterpart industries or enterprises to counter irrational trade sanctions from the developed countries. At the same time, however, it is important for China to make its own contribution to improve global economic governance and building a new international economic order in the era of global value chains by strengthening its policy coordination with other countries.     

二十一世纪中国经济周期平稳化现象研究(英文)

本文的目的在于回答两个问题：第一，21世纪中国经济周期平稳化的原因何在？第二，21世纪中国经济波动的来源何在？利用统计分析和构造的多方程结构宏观经济模型，我们发现第一个问题的答案几乎完全在于国内因素，包括国内需求冲击的稳定和信贷市场中的自稳定机制；就第二个问题而言，21世纪中国经济波动的最大来源在于国外需求冲击和国内需求冲击——前者对GDP的波动影响较大，而后者则更多地影响CPI。本文的另一个发现是，传统的盯住货币供应量的货币政策对稳定GDP和CPI几乎没有效果。本文的政策建议之一是，在全球危机的背景下，稳定总需求的国内经济刺激政策依然很重要。本文的另一个建议是，为了摆脱全球化的负面影响，我们需要更加依靠城市化而非工业化，并在国内调整各个区域的经济角色。     

Reconsidering the philanthropic foundation minimum payout policy under a “new normal”

With the increasing salience of foundations in many policy fields, and recent changes in market conditions, policies towards foundations designed decades ago seem outdated. In this article we suggest reassessing foundation payout minimums. To examine the impact of payout rates on grantmaking foundations lifespan and performance under “new normal” economics, we simulate multiple foundations lifecycles using Monte Carlo methods in diverse capital market conditions, with varied investment and payout strategies.We find that while under past market regime perpetuity seems to be a given, under more probable future scenarios, foundations might face increasingly early mortality and endowment depletion, limiting their potential impact. Furthermore, lower payout rates allow for higher lifetime grantmaking, higher mean annual grantmaking, and lower giving volatility. Accordingly, we suggest a tiered payout policy, in line with foundations’ missions and proper financial planning.     

The role of macroeconomic policies in the global crisis

This paper argues that the lack of timely and decisive policy action to correct domestic and external imbalances contributed crucially to the build-up of financial excesses that led to the financial crisis and the Great Recession. We focus on 2002–2007 and perform a number of counterfactual simulations to investigate two central elements of the story, namely: (a) an over-expansionary US monetary policy and the absence of effective macro-prudential supervision, which permitted a prolonged expansion of debt-financed consumer spending and (b) the choice by China and other emerging countries to pursue an export-led growth strategy supported by pegging their currencies to the US dollar, in conjunction with sluggish domestic demand in major advanced economies characterized by low potential output growth. The results of the simulations lend support to the view that if substantial, globally coordinated demand rebalancing had been undertaken early on, the macroeconomic and financial imbalances would not have accumulated to the extent that they did and the financial turmoil might have had less drastic global consequences.     

The Political Consequences of Outsider Labour Market Status in the United States: A Micro‐level Study

This article contributes to recent research that seeks to understand the political consequences of ‘outsider’ labour market status. There is an emerging consensus that labour market outsiders have systematically different policy preferences and display systematically different political behaviour to securely employed ‘insiders’ in Europe. Yet the political consequences of outsider status in the USA are less clear. They may be expected to differ from those that have been documented in the European context, because: (1) the USA is characterized by low employment protection of insiders; and (2) there is evidence that Americans are more reluctant than Europeans to hold governments responsible for personal economic hardship. We therefore use the General Social Survey to examine how outsider labour market status is related to voting behaviour and to social policy preferences in the USA. We find that the concept of ‘labour market outsider’ – as conventionally operationalized – holds little explanatory power in the American context. Disaggregating the outsider category, our results suggest that the political consequences of outsider labour market status may be contingent on individual beliefs about government responsibility.     

From Subsidiarity to 'Free Choice': Child- and Elder-care Policy Reforms in France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands

This article analyses the patterns of reform in care policies in Bismarckian welfare systems since the early 1980s. Based on a comparison of France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, the article shows that these reforms share similar logics and trajectories, which can be explained by the shared conservative and corporatist traits of Bismarckian labour markets and welfare state institutions and their impact on labour market adjustment possibilities and preferences. Indeed, we argue that care policy reforms have been very closely linked to specific employment strategies, and the politics of welfare without work and subsequent attempts to shift away from such a labour-shedding strategy go a long way in explaining both the nature and the timing of child- and elder-care policy reforms in Bismarckian welfare systems. The article also shows how a focus on promoting ‘free choice’ in all four countries has justified the introduction of measures that have simultaneously reinforced social stratification in terms of access to the labour market – meaning that some women have much more ‘free choice’ than others – and weakened certain labour market rigidities. To conclude, we argue that care policy reforms have provided a backdoor for the introduction of labour-cheapening measures and for increasing employment flexibility in otherwise very rigid labour markets.     

Policy Diffusion and Policy Transfer in Comparative Welfare State Research

For many years, comparative welfare state research has followed a ‘methodological nationalism’ in the sense that countries were treated as independent units. Yet the recent ‘spatial turn’ in comparative politics has also influenced welfare state research. For some years now, the field has been witnessing a growing interest in questions about interdependencies and policy diffusion between countries. In this article, we provide a structured overview of the state of the art in the policy diffusion and transfer literature that deals specifically with social policy. We present and critically evaluate existing theoretical concepts and quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches that enable the analysis of interdependencies between countries. Moreover, we summarize the empirical findings of quantitative and qualitative studies on the diffusion and transfer of social policy, from some pioneering studies to the latest findings. Against this background we point out what we believe to be promising avenues for future research. We focus on five areas: theoretical work on the mechanisms underlying diffusion and transfer; methodological approaches; the impact of domestic institutions and policy characteristics on social policy diffusion and transfer; programme‐specific dynamics; and the systematic combination of horizontal and vertical interdependencies.     

The cost of war: Impact of sanctions on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine

We use a computable general equilibrium model of world trade to quantify the possible impact of economic sanctions imposed by Western and other countries in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. If sender countries chose 100 % import tariffs and export taxes on trade with Russia, Russia’s GDP would decline by 3–7 % due to the resulting significant reduction in exports. By contrast, the GDP loss for those countries would be 0.2 % for the European economies, but only about 0.05 % for Japan. Although unlikely, the effect of China’s participation in the sanctions would be more significant than that of India. There are concerns about food and energy crises due to economic sanctions against Russia, but the effect on food supplies would not be a serious problem for either senders or third parties. The impact on energy supplies would affect all senders to some extent; for example, there would be a 3% reduction of energy consumption and a 3–4 % rise in electricity and town gas prices in Japan.     

Social Policy in a Cold Climate: Health and Social Welfare in Russia

The Russian Federation faces multiple challenges for its health and welfare systems and for the development of social policy responses. This article provides a review of some of the key challenges for social policy in Russia and assesses the adequacy of the responses to date. The author surveys recent developments in health and social welfare and makes recommendations on priorities for Russia's policy‐makers and international funders. A range of public health challenges including drug and alcohol misuse, health in prisons and mental health is discussed; HIV/AIDS is singled out for particular attention. While Russia is increasingly attracting the attention of social scientists in the West, there is uncertainty about models and concepts suitable for the analysis of this complex society. Although empirical trends are largely discussed in this article, it is argued that theoretical development is required and some suggestions are made about concepts of the ‘middle range’ to assist in future analyses. Intermediate theories, such as those relating to the management of personal welfare, and development of resilience in a formerly collectivized context, are identified as having explanatory potential for this task.     

Why Health Care Reform Now? Strategic Framing and the Passage of Obamacare

Economic reform and health care reform were both focal points outlined in President Obama's policy agenda, with increasing pressure to address economic and social insecurity given that President Obama entered office during the Great Recession (2007–09). The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as ‘Obamacare’) successfully passed in March 2010 in the context of the economic crisis. We argue that the strategic framing of the economic crisis, through reasoning and arguments linking health care reform with economic downfall, is important in understanding the successful passage of Obamacare, and that this is reflected through strategic frames in speeches delivered by the President on health care reform. Health care reform has been successful not in spite of but rather because of the economic crisis of 2008, that allowed President Obama to use a strategic frame focusing on costs and economic problems. The two main frames identified are the ‘market’ and ‘rights’ frames. President Obama's strategic frames specifically surrounding the economic and cost‐containment priority of health care reform are categorized as a ‘market’ frame in this article. He used this frame until the passage of the law in 2010, when the frame shifted to ‘rights’ frames, largely portrayed through anecdotes and focused on the concept of ‘access’ to care rather than the ‘cost’ of care. This is observable through tracking speeches and statements made in support of health care reform between 2009 and 2013.     

FDI in China and global production networks: Assessing the role of and impact on big world players

How can countries successfully engage in global production networks? We provide a Computable General Equilibrium analysis of the impact of FDI on global production networks in Textiles, Chemicals, Electronics and Machinery, dividing the world economy in six regions (China, East Asia, Japan, EU28, the U.S. and the group of Emerging and Developing Economies). Interestingly for the policy maker, although the four sectors have contrasting production technologies, their Chinese exports and imports still follow a similar trend: East Asia and Japan are Chinese main intermediate suppliers while the US, Europe and the Emerging and Developing Economies play more the role of final markets. FDI inflows have benefitted China and we quantify by how much they have raised Chinese wages, GDP, national income and export competitiveness. By contrast, being an intermediate supplier or playing mostly the role of big final market in the network is not enough to succeed in your integration with China. The extent of the (positive or negative) effects is very much related to whether the structure of production (i.e., sectors’ weight in GDP) of the different economies is similar to (and therefore more easily crowded out by) Chinese booming sectors.     

几何图示法在社工实务中的应用初探

社会工作是持守利他主义的助人理念,以科学的知识为基础、用科学的方法助人的服务活动.在社会工作实务工作中,社会工作者要在与服务对象彼此信任合作的和谐关系下,充分调动服务对象本身的潜能与积极性,共同探讨、研究服务对象的问题、家庭及社会环境,运用服务对象本身及其外部资源,增强服务对象解决问题的能力,达到帮助