"War . . . is merely an idea, an institution, like dueling or slavery, that has been grafted onto human existence. It is not a trick of fate, a thunderbolt from hell, a natural calamity, or a ...desperate plot contrivance dreamed up by some sadistic puppeteer on high. And it seems to me that the institution is in pronounced decline, abandoned as attitudes toward it have changed, roughly following the pattern by which the ancient and formidable institution of slavery became discredited and then mostly obsolete."-from the Introduction
War is one of the great themes of human history and now, John Mueller believes, it is clearly declining. Developed nations have generally abandoned it as a way for conducting their relations with other countries, and most current warfare (though not all) is opportunistic predation waged by packs-often remarkably small ones-of criminals and bullies. Thus, argues Mueller, war has been substantially reduced to its remnants-or dregs-and thugs are the residual combatants.
Mueller is sensitive to the policy implications of this view. When developed states commit disciplined troops to peacekeeping, the result is usually a rapid cessation of murderous disorder.The Remnants of Warthus reinvigorates our sense of the moral responsibility bound up in peacekeeping. In Mueller's view, capable domestic policing and military forces can also be effective in reestablishing civic order, and the building of competent governments is key to eliminating most of what remains of warfare.
We classify the empirical literature on the wage impact of immigration into three groups, where studies in the first two groups estimate different relative effects, and studies in the third group ...estimate the total effect of immigration on wages. We interpret the estimates obtained from the different approaches through the lens of the canonical model to demonstrate that they are not comparable. We then relax two key assumptions in this literature, allowing for inelastic and heterogeneous labor supply elasticities of natives and the "downgrading" of immigrants. "Downgrading" occurs when the position of immigrants in the labor market is systematically lower than the position of natives with the same observed education and experience levels. Downgrading means that immigrants receive lower returns to the same measured skills than natives when these skills are acquired in their country of origin. We show that heterogeneous labor supply elasticities, if ignored, may complicate the interpretation of wage estimates, and particularly the interpretation of relative wage effects. Moreover, downgrading may lead to biased estimates in those approaches that estimate relative effects of immigration, but not in approaches that estimate total effects. We conclude that empirical models that estimate total effects not only answer important policy questions, but are also more robust to alternative assumptions than models that estimate relative effects.
Unlike economies as a whole, manufacturing industries exhibit strong unconditional convergence in labor productivity. The article documents this at various levels of disaggregation for a large sample ...covering more than 100 countries over recent decades. The result is highly robust to changes in the sample and specification. The coefficient of unconditional convergence is estimated quite precisely and is large, at between 2–3% in most specifications and 2.9% a year in the baseline specification covering 118 countries. The article also finds substantial sigma-convergence at the two-digit level for a smaller sample of countries. Despite strong convergence within manufacturing, aggregate convergence fails due to the small share of manufacturing employment in low-income countries and the slow pace of industrialization. Because of data coverage, these findings should be as viewed as applying to the organized, formal parts of manufacturing.
Lacking a long time series on the assets of the very wealthy, Saez and Zucman (2015) use US tax records to obtain estimates of wealth holdings by capitalizing asset income from tax returns. They ...document marked upward trends in wealth concentration. We use data on tax returns and actual wealth holdings from tax records for the whole Norwegian population to test the robustness of the methodology. We document that measures of wealth based on the capitalization approach can lead to misleading conclusions about the level and the dynamics of wealth inequality if returns are heterogeneous and even moderately correlated with wealth.
Iraq can be considered the 'perfect storm' which brought out the stark differences between the US and Europe. The disagreement over the role of the United Nations continues and the bitterness in the ...United States against its betrayal by allies like France is not diminishing. Meanwhile, the standing of the United States among the European public has plummeted. Within Europe, political tensions between what US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld euphemistically called the 'Old' Europe and the 'New' Europe continue to divide. To fully comprehend these rifts, this volume takes a specific look at the core security priorities of each European state and whether these interests are best served through closer security collaboration with the US or with emerging European structures such as the European Rapid Reaction Force. It analyzes the contribution each state would make to transatlantic security, the role they envisage for existing security structures such as NATO, and the role the US would play in transatlantic security.
Contents: Introduction: US security policy and the new Europe, Tom Lansford. Old Europe: French security agenda in the post-9/11 world, Robert J. Pauly, Jr; A changing view of responsibility? German security policy in the post-9/11 world, Scott Brunstetter; Britain and transatlantic security: negotiating two bridges far apart, Mary Troy Johnston; Russia and the 'Old' Europe versus 'New' Europe debate: US foreign policy and the Iraq War 2003, Mira Duric; Benelux security policy, Dirk C. van Raemdonck; Italian security in the Berlusconi era: business as usual, Mark Sedgwick. New Europe: In search of security: Bulgaria's security policy in transition, Blagovest Tashev; The dilemma of 'dual loyalty': Lithuania and transatlantic tensions, Dovile Budryte; Czech Republic's Role with regard to the trans-atlantic security challenges, Petr Vancura; Poland's security and transatlantic relations, Andrzej Kapiszewski with Chris Davis; Slovakia, Ivo Samson; Hungary, László Valki; Romania's position towards the evolution of the transatlantic link after 11 September 2001, Mihail E. Ionescu; Conclusion: values and interests: European support for the intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, Michael Mihalka; Select Bibliography; Index.
Tom Lansford is Assistant Dean for the College of Arts and Letters, and Associate Professor of Political Science, at the University of Southern Mississippi in Long Beach, Mississippi, USA. Blagovest Tashev is Director, Security Studies Program, George C. Marshall Association-Bulgaria and Adjunct Professor, St. Kliment Ohridski Sofia University, Bulgaria.
We document how demand shocks in export markets lead French multiproduct exporters to reallocate the mix of products sold in those destinations. In response to positive demand shocks, French firms ...skew their export sales toward their best-performing products. We develop a theoretical model of multiproduct firms and derive the specific demand conditions (with endogenous price elasticities) needed to generate these product-mix reallocations. Under those demand conditions, the increased competition from demand shocks in export markets also induces productivity changes within the firm. We empirically test for this connection between demand shocks and the productivity of multiproduct firms. We find that this connection is economically substantial.
This paper investigates how collusion between regulators and firms affects workplace safety using the case of China’s coal mine deaths. We argue that decentralization makes collusion more likely and ...that its effect is strengthened if the transaction costs of collusion are lower. These hypotheses are tested by investigating the impact of decentralization contingent on regulators’ characteristics. Exploring both decentralization and centralization reforms in the coal mine industry, we find that decentralization is correlated with an increase in coal mine death rates. Moreover, this increase in mortality is larger for the regulators with lower transaction costs (proxied by the locality of origin).
Using employer-employee matched and firm production quantity and input data for Portuguese firms, we study the endogenous response of productivity to firm reorganizations as measured by changes in ...the number of management layers. We show that, as a result of an exogenous demand or productivity shock that makes the firm reorganize and add a management layer, quantity-based productivity increases by about 6%, while revenue-based productivity drops by around 3%. Such a reorganization makes the firm more productive but also increases the quantity produced to an extent that lowers the price charged by the firm and, as a result, its revenue-based productivity as well.
We study how the shadow economy affects pollution and how this effect depends on corruption levels in public administration. Production in the shadow economy allows firms to avoid environmental ...regulation policies; a large informal sector may be accompanied by higher pollution levels. Our theoretical model predicts that controlling the levels of corruption can limit the effect of the shadow economy on pollution. We use panel data covering the period from 1999 to 2005 in more than 100 countries to test this theoretical prediction. Our estimates confirm that the relationship between the shadow economy and the levels of pollution are dependent on the levels of corruption. Our results hold when we control for the effects of other determinants of pollution, time varying common shocks, country-fixed effects and various additional covariates.
► Our theoretical model shows the pollution effect of the shadow economy depends on the level of corruption. ► We use panel data covering the period from 1999–2005 from more than 100 countries to test our theoretical prediction. ► Our main result is that corruption reinforces the damaging effects of the shadow economy on environmental quality.
This paper estimates the impact of competition policy on total factor productivity growth for 22 industries in twelve OECD countries over 1995 to 2005. We find a positive and significant effect of ...competition policy as measured by created indexes. We provide results based on instrumental variables estimators and heterogeneous effects to support the causal nature of the established link. The effect is particularly strong for specific aspects of competition policy related to its institutional setup and antitrust activities. It is also strengthened by good legal systems, suggesting complementarities between competition policy and the efficiency of law enforcement institutions.
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