The effect of trade liberalisation on environmental conditions has yielded significant debate in the energy economics literature. Although research on the relationship between energy consumption, emissions and economic growth is not new in South Africa, no study specifically addresses the role that South Africa's foreign trade plays in this context. A surprising fact given trade is one of the m...

This study investigates the effects of  macroeconomic variables and their role in development of foreign exchange market. The foreign exchange market is the mechanism by which a person of firm transfers purchasing power form one country to another, obtains or provides credit for international trade transactions, and minimizes exposure to foreign exchange risk. The foreign exchange transaction i...

Over the past years, the relationship between foreign trade and economic growth has been the debate of economic research in academe. On this issue, economists at home and abroad used the relative data of china and got different conclusions by different methods. At first, this thesis reviews the theories of the relationship between foreign trade and economic growth, and then sum up the main argu...

What determines the decision of an inventor to seek patent protection in a foreign jurisdiction, particularly one where intellectual property rights protection is weak? This paper focuses on competition as a determinant of the patenting decision in the context of the recent foreign patenting surge in China. Using a database that comprises of all patents granted by China’s State Intellectual Pro...

This paper analyses GATT/WTO trade negotiations in an oligopolistic multicountry setting and identifies a new rationale for trade agreements. When set unilaterally, tariffs are inefficiently high, both for familiar terms-of-trade reasons, but also to restrict market access of foreign firms. Trade agreements neutralise both the terms-of-trade and the market-access externalities and help countrie...

he Asian currency crisis of 1997-98 was characterized by an abrupt reversal of foreign capital flows. Before the crisis, foreign capital inflows had allowed the crisis countries to attain a higher level of investment spending than could have been supported by domestic saving alone. Domestic and foreign investors suddenly lost confidence, liquidating their local asset holdings, and moving their ...

OUNTERTRADE is tied trade. In a typical transaction a CPE or LDC imports goods and the exporting party usually a firm in a western industrial country commits itself to make an offsetting purchase at some future date. Since the mid seventies countertrade has become a significant phenomenon in international trade. Reasonable estimates vary between 10 and 20 per cent of world trade (see OECD, 1985...

a r t i c l e i n f o The countercyclical trade balance ratio is among the key stylized facts about open economies. The magnitude of the correlation between the trade balance and output, however, differs from country to country. In particular , the trade balance ratio is more negatively correlated with output in emerging economies than in developed economies, suggesting that the trade balance i...