The political economy of Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR)
Selective literature review and preliminary agenda for research: Recent insights on war economies have important implications for disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR). This paper identifies an underlying dilemma of DDR: on the one hand, in order to convince warring factions to commit to peace, DDR strategies will have to offer significant incentives that in turn may entrench the factions’ economic and political standing. On the other hand, offering the armed factions important peacetime roles may jeopardise post-war economic reconstruction, perpetuate cycles of underdevelopment and risk entrenching instability. It is argued in the paper that while more insights are needed on how DDR can be improved, it is equally important to go one step further and identify the positive as well as negative consequences for the economy, the market and the state when attempts at comprehensive disarmament and reintegration of combatants are undertaken. The paper discusses key findings from the literature on political economy of armed conflict and suggests possible directions for new research.
Utenlandsinvesteringer i fiskeri- og havbruksnæringen - resultater fra en spørreundersøkelse
Notatet gjengir en undersøkelse blant norske fiskeribedrifters investeringer i utlandet. Undersøkelsen er basert på dybdeintervjuer med 10 bedrifter. Bedriftene omfatter store konsern og små bedrifter innenfor flere deler av fiskerisektoren. Svarene i undersøkelsen peker i retning av at markedsadgang er et vesentlig motiv for norske fiskeribedrifters investeringer i andre land. I noen sammenhenger er dette kombinert med motiver om billig arbeidskraft og om tilgang til fiskeressurser. Undersøkelsen viser også at bedrifter både driver oppkjøp av eksisterende bedrifter og investeringer i ny produksjon. Teknologiske faktorer, som at norske bedrifter er spesielt konkurransedyktige på sine felt, bidrar også til investeringer i andre land. I fiskerisektoren er politiske reguleringer mer omfattende enn i mange andre næringer. Derfor skjer utenlandsinvesteringer i denne næringen i hovedsak innenfor oppdrett og fiskeforedling, og i mindre grad i fiske. Det norske virkemiddelapparatet for norsk næringsliv har bare i begrenset grad hatt betydning for de bedriftene som har deltatt i undersøkelsen.
Trade Openness and Economic Growth : Do Institutions Matter?
Do lower policy-induced barriers to international trade promote economic growth in countries with poorly developed institutions? Several studies have found a general and positive relationship between trade openness and growth on average, but many of them are marred by methodological shortcomings and considerable unexplained variation in the results. I propose that good institutions of conflict management are a contingent and mediating factor that can help to explain data heterogeneity. Without such institutions, countries that integrate with world markets become vulnerable to external shocks, possibly unleashing domestic conflicts and uncertainty detrimental to growth. This hypothesis is given empirical support by analysing an interaction variable between openness and institutions, integrated in a growth regression for a sample of 94 countries. The interaction variable is positive, significant and robust to a standard list of control variables. For countries with the least developed institutions of conflict management, greater openness is ceteris paribus found to reduce growth rates. The results reveal the inadequacies of a ‘one size fits all’ approach to trade liberalisation, and indicate that complementary institutional reforms may be necessary if a country is to reap the full growth effects of openness.
WTO-forhandlingene om markedsadgang for industrivarer og fisk (NAMA)
Notatet gir en oversikt over forhandlingene om markedsadgang for industrivarer i WTO, herunder fisk. I WTO forhandles om øvre grenser for tollen, såkalt bundet toll, mens landene i praksis kan ha lavere anvendt toll. 60-70% av tollen for industrivarer og fisk er bundet på verdensbasis. For et land midt på treet er bundet toll for fisk gjennomsnittlig 34%, mens den anvendte tollen er 14%. Det må derfor betydelige tollreduksjoner til for at anvendt toll skal bli mye redusert. U-landenes andel av verdenshandelen med industrivarer har økt kraftig de senere år, og noe av denne eksporten møter høy toll. U-landene står også for mer enn halvparten av verdenseksporten av fisk. Norsk sjømateksport står i dag overfor en tollbelastning på 1.1-1.4 milliarder NOK, og en vellykket WTO-runde kan kanskje bety at 3-400 millioner av dette forsvinner. På kort sikt er gevinstene størst i store og etablerte eksportmarkeder, men på sikt kan WTO-liberalisering bidra til at nye eksportmarkeder blir tilgjengelige.
Geographical spread of corruption : Policies, institutions and cross-country economic interaction. Part I: Issues, theory
The international aspects of corruption have received considerable attention in both research and policy: What determines whether a country is highly corrupt or not? Most research has sought to answer this question by considering each country as reflecting the same kind of mechanism explaining both the high and low outcomes. In this paper some of the theoretical explanations suggested in the literature are reviewed at the same time as it suggests how the question needs to be rephrased if each country’s corruption rate is influenced by an internationally open economic system.
French foreign policy and the limits of Europeanisation : The changing French position on EU enlargement
This article focuses on the changing French position on EU enlargement. The aim of the analysis is to study the interplay between the foreign policy of the EU and the foreign policy of France, but also between the official French foreign policy and the French public opinion. Most of the literature on EU enlargement underestimates the importance of public opinion. This article is therefore an attempt to present a more comprehensive understanding of the changing French position on enlargement by combining a top down with a bottom up approach. By doing this the analysis do not consider whether enlargement is good or bad, but rather how a member state’s position on this issue may change both through a process of Europeanisation and as a result of changes in domestic public opinion.
As safe as the Bank? : Household financial behaviour and economic reasoning in post-soviet Russia
This study examines the financial behaviour of Russian households from the collapse of communism to the financial melt down in August 1998. By transforming savings into investment, financial intermediaries are important to economic growth. In post-Soviet Russia, financial intermediaries were increasingly unable to attract new household savings, as people turned to foreign currency. What determined the allocation of household savings? The study considers the three main alternatives households could turn to: The state savings bank; commercial financial companies; and foreign currency, mainly dollars. But how do we go about to explain the behaviour of millions of individuals over time? Economists usually assume that people maximise returns on their assets. Financial behaviour would then reflect economic variables such as interest rate, exchange rate and inflation. Such a view fits uneasily with observed behaviour in post-Soviet Russia. However, why would people not allocate their savings in the most profitable way? This study holds that to understand why people do what they do, we should listen carefully - although not uncritically - to what they say and how they say it. On this view, we can explain the behaviour of individuals only if we can understand them. And - since social phenomena are constituted by the behaviour of individuals - such understanding is crucial to the causal explanation of macro level phenomena. The historical narrative thus becomes an important vehicle for explanation of the contemporary world. Through analysis of discourses on financial institutions, as they appeared in newspapers of the day and as I have been able to gather from interviews conducted in 2004, this study identifies certain dramatic events that altered the way Russians perceived different financial institutions and their view on trust, risk and profitability, and finds that such changes in perception go a long way to explain the changes in observed behaviour in this period.
The Norwegian import regime for agriculture
Norway maintains one of the highest levels of protection for agriculture in the OECD, but the tariff structure is not so transparent due to the extensive use of specific tariffs, i.e. tariffs expressed in NOK/kg or the like. In this paper, we use world market prices and Norwegian import prices to calculate ad valorem equivalents of specific tariffs. This shows that 28% of the tariff lines in agriculture are above 100%, and 10% are above 300%. The average of MFN applied tariffs is in the range 73-103%, depending on the calculation method. Protection is somewhat lower (54-74%) for goods exported by developing countries. While the Least Developed Countries have zero tariffs, other developing countries obtain 10-15% tariff reductions under the GSP system of tariff preferences. Tariff rate quotas provide some increase in market access. Protection of grains and feedstuff raises the forage costs in agriculture, and especially feedstuffs are important in the exports of developing countries.