Exploring the Impact of Agricultural Price and Trade Policy Reform under Transition in Albania
Agricultural policy decision making in economies undergoing transition to market is in need of empirical tools for assessing the impact of alternative policy options. The econometric means available for such exercise, however, are limited for lack of data and structural breaks in economic behaviour. Synthetic, partial equilibrium, multi-market models offer a potential alternative. Such models have been used extensively, even in advanced economies, to offer valuable insights on the impact of alternative policy options. This paper shows the use of such a partial equilibrium, multi-market, synthetic-type model as a tool for agricultural policy analysis in a country in transition. The model is applied for Albania, a predominantly agricultural country that, after a period of centralism and autarky, aims to re-join the international economic system. The model, albeit its many limitations, offers some useful insights on the impact of alternative options available for agricultural price and trade policy.
European Union trade with Eastern Europe : adjustment and opportunities
The 'Europe Agreements' nominally provide the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs) with free access to European Union markets, but the Union has retained significant protection for certain 'sensitive' products. There are substantial benefits to the Union of a free trade regime with the CEECs: opening new export markets in the East, promoting the economic transformation of the CEECs, and strengthening their commitment to the liberal market economy and political democracy of the Union. Resistance to fully open policies reflects the concerns in some EU member states that free trade with the rest of the continent will economically damage their domestic industries. Others fear not just this direct competition in domestic markets but also the effect of increased competition in third markets and the possibility of investment diversion from their own countries to the CEECs. This volume explores those concerns from three approaches: cross-sectional studies of the likely long-run comparative advantage of the CEECs; the impact of opening up to the East on individual countries (France, Spain, and Greece); and the specific 'sensitive' sectors of steel and textiles. This book breaks new ground in analysing the actual impact of the changes in Central and Eastern Europe on trade and investment flows in Europe.
Aristocratic Century: The sinews of power: political
In his excellent book on the Secretaries of State, Mark Thomson offered ‘the paradox of continuing domination of the aristocracy and the simultaneous insignificance of the House of Lords, per se ’. It is true that, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, the supremacy of the House of Commons in financial matters was a wellestablished convention. The claims of the Commons to an undisputed control over money matters, which had been urged before the Civil War, were resumed immediately after the Restoration and a protracted dispute with the House of Lords began. In 1661 the Lords resolved that there were no precedents in history for this new claim by the House of Commons. In 1671, the Commons retorted that taxation ought not to be questioned by the Lords and in 1678 they reiterated that supply was ‘the undoubted and sole right of the Commons’ and ‘ought not to be changed or altered by the House of Lords’. The Lords' attempt in 1692 to assess their own taxes was also abandoned, though they retired under cover of a rather insubstantial smoke-screen that they maintained their power of amendment to be a ‘fundamental, inherent and undoubted right from which their lordships can never depart’. That established, they departed. Geoffrey Holmes quotes a nice example from 1702 when the bishop of Carlisle found himself the only peer answering to a money bill, ‘no other lord in the House regarded what was doing, this being only (pro forma) to preserve a seeming right to dissent from, or amend, any part of a money bill’.