Research Topics

An Assessment in the Context of the IMF Rulings for Greece

Developing countries, led by China and other BRICS members (Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa), have been successfully organizing alternative sources of credit flows, aiming for financial stability, growth, and development. With their goals of avoiding International Monetary Fund loan conditionality and the dominance of the US dollar in global finance, these new BRICS-led institutions represent a much-needed renovation of the global financial architecture. The nascent institutions will provide an alternative to the prevailing Bretton Woods institutions, loans from which are usually laden with prescriptions for austerity—with often disastrous consequences for output and employment. We refer here to the most recent example in Europe, with Greece currently facing the diktat of the troika to accept austerity as a precondition for further financial assistance.

It is rather disappointing that Western financial institutions and the EU are in no mood to provide Greece with any options short of complying with these disciplinary measures. Limitations, such as the above, in the prevailing global financial architecture bring to the fore the need for new institutions as alternative sources of funds. The launch of financial institutions by the BRICS—when combined with the BRICS clearing arrangement in local currencies proposed in this policy note—may chart a course for achieving an improved global financial order. Avoiding the use of the dollar as a currency to settle payments would help mitigate the impact of exchange rate fluctuations on transactions within the BRICS. Moreover, using the proposed clearing account arrangement to settle trade imbalances would help in generating additional demand within the BRICS, which would have an overall expansionary impact on the world economy as a whole.

What are the prospects for economic recovery if Greece continues to follow the troika strategy of fiscal austerity and internal devaluation, with the aim of increasing competitiveness and thus net exports? Our latest strategic analysis indicates that the unprecedented decline in real and nominal wages may take a long time to exert its effects on trade—if at all—while the impact of lower prices on tourism will not generate sufficient revenue from abroad to meet the targets for a surplus in the current account that outweighs fiscal austerity. The bottom line: a shift in the fiscal policy stance, toward lower taxation and job creation, is urgently needed. 

As domestic exports usually require imported inputs, the value of exports differs from the domestic value added contained in exports. The higher the domestic value added contained in exports, the higher the domestic national income created by exports will be. In this case, exports will expand the domestic market. Therefore, exports will push economic growth in two ways: through their direct effect on aggregate demand, and through their effect on the domestic market. For these reasons, the estimate of the magnitude of the domestic value added contained in exports helps explain the capacity of exports to lead economic growth.

Domestic exports may be classified as direct and indirect exports. Direct exports are the goods sold to other countries; indirect exports are the domestically produced inputs incorporated in direct exports. The distinction between direct and indirect exports leads to a distinction between direct and indirect domestic value added contained in exports. The income of the factors directly involved in the production of exports constitutes direct domestic value added; the income contained in domestically produced inputs incorporated into exports constitutes the indirect domestic value added. Therefore, the magnitude of indirect value added depends on the density of the domestic intersectorial linkages.

The aim of this paper is to present an estimation of the domestic indirect value added contained in Mexico’s manufacturing exports in two ways. The first derives from the fact that a direct exporting sector may be the vehicle through which other sectors export in an indirect way; this leads us to estimate the indirect value added contained in exports by sector of origin. The second refers to the destination of this indirect value added—that is, to the direct exporting sectors in which the value added contained in indirect exports of each sector appears.  

Based on the input-output table for Mexico (National Institute of Statistics and Geography–INEGI 2008), we estimate the domestic value added contained in inputs used to produce Mexican manufacturing exports. We show separately the domestic value added from maquiladoraexports and from exports produced by the rest of the manufacturing sector. In order to distinguish the indirect value added in exports by sector of origin and destination of the intermediate inputs, we work with square matrices of indirect domestic value–added multipliers.

A Review of the Literature

This paper provides a survey of the literature on trade theory, from the classical example of comparative advantage to the New Trade theories currently used by many advanced countries to direct industrial policy and trade. An account is provided of the neo-classical brand of reciprocal demand and resource endowment theories, along with their usual empirical verifications and logical critiques. A useful supplement is provided in terms of Staffan Linder’s theory of “overlapping demand,” which provides an explanation of trade structure in terms of aggregate demand. Attention is drawn to new developments in trade theory, with strategic trade providing inputs to industrial policy. Issues relating to trade, growth, and development are dealt with separately, supplemented by an account of the neo-Marxist versions of trade and underdevelopment.

Is the B Really Justified?

The term BRIC was first coined by Goldman Sachs and refers to the fast-growing developing economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China–a class of middle-income emerging market economies of relatively large size that are capable of self-sustained expansion. Their combined economies could exceed the combined economies of today’s richest countries by 2050. However, there are concerns about how the current financial crisis will affect the BRICs, and Goldman has questioned whether Brazil should remain within this group.

Senior Scholar Jan Kregel reviews the implications of the global crisis for developing countries, based on the factors driving global trade. He concludes that there is unlikely to be a return to the extremely positive conditions underlying the recent sharp increase in growth and external accounts. The key for developing countries is to transform from export-led to domestic demand-led growth, says Kregel. From this viewpoint, Brazil seems much better placed than the other BRIC countries.