Außenwirtschaft und internationale Wirtschaftsbeziehungen

Increasing trust in bankers to enhance savings: experimental evidence from India

Description: 

According to economic theory, repeated interactions can play a crucial role in shaping trust. We randomly allocated people to treatments that promote interactions with bankers. Next, these people play incentivised trust games with their own banker and with an anonymous other banker. While the effect on trust in the own banker is limited, the impact on trust in other bankers is important. We also find account savings strongly associate with trust in one's own banker. Our experiment suggests that trust in one's banker matters for savings, but that it is more difficult to influence than trust in bankers in general.

Structural conditions for novelty: the introduction of new environmental clauses to the trade regime complex

Description: 

When do parties introduce novel clauses to a system of contracts or treaties? While important research has investigated how clauses diffuse once introduced, few empirical studies address their initial introduction. Drawing on network theory, this paper argues that novel clauses are introduced when agreements are concluded in certain structures of earlier agreements and the clauses they include. This paper demonstrates this argument using the example of 282 different environmental clauses introduced into the trade regime complex through 630 trade agreements concluded between 1945 and 2016. We find that trade agreements are more likely to introduce novelties when they involve parties with a diversity of experience with prior environmental clauses and introduce more novelties when more parties are less constrained by prior trade agreements between them. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, power asymmetry between the negotiating parties is not statistically significant.

Preferential trade agreements and multilateral liberalization

Does leverage predict delinquency in consumer lending?: evidence from Peru

Description: 

This paper examines to what extent household leverage—as measured by the debt-to-income (DTI) ratio—predicts delinquency in Peru’s consumer credit market. A model is estimated to assess the relation between delinquency and the DTI ratio. The initial and current DTI ratios are assessed as delinquency predictors. The results confirm that the current DTI ratio is effective for predicting delinquency. This evidence supports its use in financial regulation to improve household credit risk assessment and control.

Globotics and development: when manufacturing is jobless and services are tradable

Description: 

Globalization and robotics (globotics) are transforming the world economy at an explosive pace. While much of the literature has focused on rich nations, the changes are quite likely to affect developing nations in important ways. The premise of the paper - which should be regarded as a thought-piece - is based on an extreme thought experiment. What does development look like when digitech has rendered manufacturing jobless and many services freely traded? Our conclusion is that the service-led development path may become the norm rather than the exception; think India, not China. Since success in the service sector is based on quite different factors than success in manufacturing, development strategies and mindsets may have to change. This is an optimistic conclusion since it suggests that developing nations can directly export the source of their comparative advantage - low-cost labor -without having first to make goods with that labor.

WTO dispute settlement post 2019: what to expect ?

Description: 

What does the imminent demise of the WTO Appellate Body (AB) mean for the settlement of ongoing and future trade disputes? This editorial discusses two 'unlikely solutions', at least in the short term: the US lifts its veto on AB appointments; a WTO organ unlocks the impasse. Appeals pending on 10 December 2019 will most likely be carried-over pursuant to (contested) Rule 15 of the AB Working Procedures. For panel reports released after that date, four main scenarios emerge: (i) appeals 'into the void' blocking the panel report, (ii) no appeal ex post, or ex ante no appeal pacts, (iii) Article 25 appeal arbitration, (iv) 'floating' panel reports (interim or final), neither adopted, nor appealed/blocked. The transformation fromGATT toWTOtook half a century. Regular veto rights in the settlement of trade disputesmay be back in amatter of months. It is one thing to lose theAB, quite another to return to pre-WTOdispute settlement where panel outcomes are not automatically binding and power relations play a considerably greater role. At the same time, it would be wrong to equate a (temporary?) return to GATT-style dispute settlement with the collapse of a rules-basedWTO system.

Is globalization finally re-balancing ? Novel ways of levelling the playing field for labour

Building legal capacity for a more inclusive globalization: introduction and summary of findings

The TradeLab Network of Legal Clinics: capacity building for a more inclusive globalization

Building legal capacity for a more inclusive globalization: barriers to and best practices for integrating developing countries into global economic regulation

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