Nighttime lights are increasingly used by social scientists as a proxy for economic activity and economic development in subnational spatial units. However, so far, our understanding of what nighttime lights capture is limited. We construct local indicators of household wealth, education and health from geo-coded Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for 29 African countries. We show that nighttime lights
are positively associated with these indicators across DHS cluster locations as well as across grid cells of roughly 50 � 50 km. We conclude that nighttime lights are a good proxy for human development at the local level.
The aim of the paper is to foresee the constitutional and international status of Scotland and Northern Ireland following the triggering of the art. 50 Treaty of the European Union's (TEU) mechanism by the British Government, with a special focus on the possible termination of the free movement of goods within the British Isles.
We analyze the role of Domestic Value Chains (DVCs) for Global Value Chain (GVC) integration. In the presence of industry specific fixed costs of fragmenting production and of switching across input suppliers, DVCs can either be stepping stones or stumbling blocks for GVCs. Focusing on backward linkages, that is the sourcing of intermediates, we provide robust empirical evidence in favour of the stepping stone hypothesis. In our benchmark specification a one standard deviation increase in DVC integration raises subsequent GVC integration by about 0.4%. To identify the mechanisms at work, we exploit two dimensions of industry level heterogeneity: product differentiation and relationship specificity. Product differentiation can be taken as a proxy of fragmentation costs, while relationship specificity can be taken as a proxy of the costs of switching between suppliers. We find that DVC integration is less conducive to GVC integration in industries that are characterized by relatively high switching costs and relatively low fragmentation costs. This finding supports our hypothesized mechanism.
Countries can challenge potential trade violations using the WTO's dispute settlement system, yet many policies that appear to violate WTO rules remain unchallenged, even when they have a significant economic impact. Why is this? We argue that the likelihood that a country challenges a protectionist policy is linked to how concentrated or diffuse the policy is. When a policy is concentrated|because it affects only one country|litigation is a private good, meaning that a country that pays the cost of litigation receives the full benefit of litigation. But when a policy is "diffuse" - because it affects many countries - litigation is a public good and countries face a collective action problem: many countries can benefit from litigation, but each country wants to free-ride by having another country pay the cost. The resulting selection effect has two consequences. First, the free-rider problem reduces the likelihood that a diffuse policy will be challenged in any given period, generating a longer "enforcement delay" for diffuse trade violations. Second, cases must have higher odds of success in order for countries to overcome the collective action problem, meaning that conditional on being filed, cases that challenge concentrated policies will be less likely to succeed in litigation than cases that challenge diffuse policies. We leverage selection effects to test our argument using data on the timing and outcomes of trade disputes. The evidence, which considers all WTO disputes from 1995 to 2013, bears out these beliefs.
Zimmermann, Thomas A.: WTO Dispute Settlement - An Important Trade Policy Instrument; Presentation at the 64th Session of the OECD Steel Committee; Paris (La Défense): Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 22 May 2008 / Präsentation an der 64. Sitzung des OECD Stahlausschusses; Paris (La Défense): Organisation für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (OECD), 22. Mai 2008 (Download [English]: 241 KB)
