Suchergebnisse

Kenwood and Lougheed's classic book has been the benchmark introduction to the development of the global economy for decades. For this fifth edition, Michael Graff has brought the story up to date to include events from the early part of the twenty first century – continued globalization, the emergence of Asia as an economic power and the greater role played by business on the international scene. Beginning with the industrial revolution, the book charts the long nineteenth century, the impact of colonialism, the fast pace of technology growth and the impact of global wars. New features to this edition include: · a prologue explaining the initial conditions faced by the world economy in 1820, detailing the beginnings of international trade and the influence of slavery; · greater coverage of developing countries; · increased coverage of World Wars I and II and of the twentieth century; · a number of appendices outlining the economic concepts and theories underlying the text. This new edition of Growth of the International Economy provides the reader with a clear understanding of the factors which have been instrumental in creating the economic environment we face two hundred years after the industrial revolution.

Abstract
Switzerland's employment growth since the early 2000s was very high in both historical and international perspective, despite solid real wage increases and only moderate GDP growth. Yet, the reasons for the remarkable creation of jobs are largely unknown. We aim at filling this gap by studying the underlying characteristics and drivers of the Swiss "job miracle". We first outline the characteristics of the "job miracle" and show that the observed job growth correlates with a substantial increase in the labor intensity of economic activity. We then discuss five potential drivers of the unprecedented employment growth, which are consistent with the facts. Our empirical results suggest that immigration was the key factor in explaining the "job miracle" as it raised local demand and thereby triggered the creation of additional jobs.

Towards the end of 2009, the world economy was recovering from its deepest recession since the end of World War II. Most countries around the world took resort to fiscal policy in order to foster this recovery. In this paper, we first discuss the pros and cons of discretionary fiscal policy from a history of economic thought perspective. Next, we summarise the fiscal policy measures taken in Switzerland. Then we use simulations with the KOF macroeconomic model to assess the effects on the Swiss economy of a) the Swiss measures on the one hand and b) the fiscal stimulus packages taken by Switzerland's most important trading partners on the other. The KOF September 2009 forecast, which incorporates the fiscal stimuli that were launched or in the pipeline at that time, serves as the baseline scenario. To assess the impacts of the fiscal stimulus packages in Switzerland and abroad, we re-run the KOF macroeconometric model counterfactually, modifying the variables pertaining to the domestic and the international economy respectively to represent a situation in which no fiscal action had been taken. We find that the spillover from the foreign efforts to curb the recession clearly dwarfs the effect from the domestic stimulus packages. This holds even if we resort to an extremely cautious scenario where external demand for Swiss exports derived from the weighted GDP of the most important importers is only 50% of what it would be in normal times. Hence we conclude that in addition to its own (rather limited) efforts to fight the recession, Switzerland took a long free ride that by far exceeded the short one it paid for.

Towards the end of 2009, the world economy was recovering from its deepest recession since the end of World War II. Most countries around the world took resort to fiscal policy in order to foster this recovery. In this paper, we first discuss the pros and cons of discretionary fiscal policy from a history of economic thought perspective. Next, we summarise the fiscal policy measures taken in Switzerland. Then we use simulations with the KOF macroeconomic model to assess the effects on the Swiss economy of a) the Swiss measures on the one hand and b) the fiscal stimulus packages taken by Switzerland's most important trading partners on the other. The KOF September 2009 forecast, which incorporates the fiscal stimuli that were launched or in the pipeline at that time, serves as the baseline scenario. To assess the impacts of the fiscal stimulus packages in Switzerland and abroad, we re-run the KOF macroeconometric model counterfactually, modifying the variables pertaining to the domestic and the international economy respectively to represent a situation in which no fiscal action had been taken. We find that the spillover from the foreign efforts to curb the recession clearly dwarfs the effect from the domestic stimulus packages. This holds even if we re-sort to the extremely cautious scenario where external demand for Swiss exports derived from the weighted GDP of the most important importers is only 50% of what it would be in normal times. Hence we conclude that in addition to its own (rather limited) efforts to fight the recession, Switzer-land took a long free ride that by far exceeded the short one it paid for.