Re: nafta
Mexican real GDP increased 5.2 percent, and the real value of the peso was quite high in 1994, both factors that would have boosted U.S. exports to Mexico. As a result, it is unlikely that NAFTA and its lower trade barriers were the only influence on bilateral trade flows. To isolate the effects of NAFTA, one must account for the effects of changes in income, exchange rates, and trade with other countries; only then can NAFTA trade be ascertained. (David M. Gould Has NAFTA changed North American trade? Economic Financial Review, 1998, issue Q 1, pages 12-23) Using a gravity model Gould found that U.S. export growth is about 16.3 percentage points higher per year with NAFTA. The increase in exports to Canada was estimated to be 8.6 percent due to NAFTA - which is not too surprising given the the US and Canada had a free trade agreement in 1989. Also, in the winter 2001 issue of The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Burfisher, Robinson, and Thierfelder in The Impact of NAFTA on the United States concluded that the mainstream forecasts during the NAFTA debate were basically correct: NAFTA has had relatively small positive effects on the U.S. economy and relatively large positive effects on Mexico. Scott Merryman On Wed, 24 Apr 2002, Wei Dai wrote: According to http://www.ustr.gov/naftareport/intro.htm: During NAFTA's first five years, U.S. merchandise exports to Mexico increased 90 percent. U.S. merchandise exports to Canada, our largest trading partner, increased 55 percent. Together, this meant $93 billion in export growth from 1993 to 1998-two fifths of the growth in U.S. exports to the world. (end quote) The U.S. GDP is only $10 trillion so the $93 billion increase already represents a 1 percent increase. Where does the 0.1 to 0.2 number come from? Is Paul Krugman saying that even without NAFTA, U.S. export to Mexico and Canada would have increased by $80 billion?
Re: General Theory
The book is The Failure of the New Economics : An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies by Henry Hazlitt Scott Merryman On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, John Jernigan wrote: Hello all, this is my first post. I remember reading someplace that someone had written what was essentially a line-by-line response to Keynes General Theory based on libertarian grounds. Does anyone know what I'm talking about and is it any good? John Jernigan
Re: nafta
John, Paul Krugman has an article on NAFTA you might find interesting. HOW IS NAFTA DOING? It's Been Hugely Successful - As A Foreign Policy http://www.pkarchive.org/trade/nafta.html He writes NAFTA's defenders are saddled with a big public relations problem: The agreement was sold under false pretenses. Over the protests of most economists, the Clinton Administration chose to promote NAFTA as a job-creation program. Based on little more than guesswork, a few economists argued that NAFTA would boost our trade surplus with Mexico, and thus produce a net gain in jobs. With utterly spurious precision, the Administration settled on the figure of 200,000 jobs created--and this became the core of the pro-NAFTA sales pitch. The overall number of U.S. jobs, however, was never going to be noticeably affected by swings in our trade balance with Mexico. Our economy employs more than 120 million workers; it has added more than 8 million jobs since 1992. Job growth has slowed since 1994, but not because those 200,000 export-related jobs failed to materialize (the real culprit is the Federal Reserve's interest rate policies). If job creation isn't the point of NAFTA, what is? Another possible justification is the classic economic argument that free trade will raise U.S. productivity and hence living standards. Few economists, however, thought the pact would yield large gains of this type. Mexico's economy is simply too small to provide America with the opportunity for major gains from trade. Typical estimates of the long-term benefits to the U.S. economy from NAFTA are for an increase in real income on the order of 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent. So, where's the payoff from NAFTA for America? In foreign policy, not economics: NAFTA reinforces the process of economic and political reform in Mexico. Scott Merryman On Sun, 21 Apr 2002, john hull wrote: Howdy, I recently visited a web page by a political scientist that seemed to suggest that NAFTA was a failure. I'd enjoy reading your opinions on the question of whether NAFTA made the world a better place or a worse place, or if it really had no impact. Also, if you could also say why you feel this way or that would be interesting as well. You're the best! -jsh __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Games - play chess, backgammon, pool and more http://games.yahoo.com/
Re: Upward Sloping Demand Curves
You can download it at: http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?ABSTRACT_ID=232542 Scott Merryman --- Where's the paper printed? I did a search on Econlit and couldn't find anything. Daljit Dhadwal
