Aspects Of Economic Structure Research Articles

Inflation and the Structure of Economic and Political Systems

Theories of inflation emphasize different aspects of economic and political structure as the root causes of inflation. We reexamine these root causes, including two aspects of economic structure that have received no or little analysis in this context: the natural resource sector and the shadow economy. Using a large panel data set and a more extensive set of explanatory variables, our main findings are that higher inflation is associated with an increase in the size of the natural resource sector, the shadow economy, greater political instability, and less democratic political systems. These results also hold for subsamples of developing countries. The consistency in finding that the natural resource sector and shadow economy are determinants of inflation suggest that these aspects of economic structure should receive increased attention in assessing the causes of inflation, along with the usual focus on political structure.

Competition and innovation for smart and creative society (CISCS)

The globalization of world economy has changed many aspects of economic structure, speed of technology development, patterns of innovation, competition between nations as well as between companies. In addition, humanity is facing a new historical crisis of global climate, which has prompted varied perspectives of the impact and implication of this crisis on socio-economic horizon of societies. However, despite these various perspectives, there seems to be a converging view that global forces of technology and innovation have strengthened globalization of economic processes. Given this positivist view, it seems that the globalization process will be further intensified regardless of neo-liberalist groups or political progressive groups. (Dicken 2011; Stern et al. 2006). While the intensification of the globalization process has made the world economy more integrated than ever, it has generated a harsh competition environment for smalland medium-sized corporations (SMEs) and multinational corporations (MNCs) in domestic and global markets. Such a severe competition pushes companies, regional and national governments, and universities to collaborate with one another for creating technological innovation and development that arise from R & D activities. In order to be competitive, many advanced nations and newly industrialized nations have built a system of triple helix collaboration that is corporatism between industry, academia, and government. The platform of the triple helix is an innovative cluster in a region, representing a symbol of regional competitiveness as well as that of a national competitiveness in a nation. (Park 2012; Shienstock 2007; Porter 1998). Although there may still be gaps in our understanding of the innovation processes, it is clear that the technological innovation has made a major contribution to the world economy, as well as to the globalization processes. In particular, information and communication technologies (ICT) and transportation technologies have played pivotal roles in improving productivity based on automatization and flexibility, as well as in global logistics based on a rapid transportation system. Additionally, frequent innovation shortens product life cycles that increase competition between companies on national and global markets. (Dicken 2011; Florida 2008). The expanding globalization process based on economic competition between major economic actors has lead to the emergence of global environmental issues that we have to tackle in the twenty-first century. As a result, sustainable development has become the uppermost important issue in the global community. To create sustainable development, proper energy consumption and protecting environment have become key parameters of the global environmental agenda. Therefore, many nations are keen to integrate technology innovation into low-carbon-based green growth strategies that can be the first step towards building a smart and creative society. (Kang 2012). Furthermore, the global economic environment has been changed fundamentally since the global financial crisis starting with subprime mortgage crisis in the US housing market in 2008. Since then the major world economies such as the USA, the EU, and Japan have been sluggish, while the new emerging markets such as China and India continue to generate a relatively high economic growths. Due to the global economic downturn, national economies have been facing challenges how to recover their economic S.-C. Park (&) Graduate School of Knowledge Based Technology and Energy, Korea Polytechnic University, Seoul, South Korea e-mail: scpark@kpu.ac.kr

Twenty Years of Economic Transition in the Balkans: Transition Failures and Development Challenges

AbstractThis paper seeks to review and evaluate a series of theoretical and policy issues with regards to the process of transition and European accession of the Balkan countries. We begin by reviewing some key aspects of economic structure and performance relating to the processes of transition and integration. We then examine in turn what these aspects imply for the assumptions of theory and policy concerning the speed of transition, the benefits of integration, and the process of convergence, as well as for the policy approach to transition, accession and development that was followed in the Balkans. We conclude that this stock-taking, twenty years since the advent of transition in the Balkans and at a time when the region starts to slowly recover from the effects of the global economic crisis, highlights the need for a radical revision of the growth model of the region and the design of a concrete Development Plan for its future.

Economic Power and Political Influence: The Impact of Industry Structure on Public Policy

Political scientists have devoted considerable attention to the ways in which economic power can be translated into political influence. Yet there has been little empirical research capable of confirming or denying general hypotheses about the political implications of various aspects of economic structure. This article seeks to begin filling this gap by first identifying five aspects of economic structure likely to affect an industry's political influence (firm size, industry size, market concentration, profitability, arid geographic dispersion) and then testing these aspects by analyzing how well they account for variations among industries in their success at securing public policies of benefit to them, especially in two policy arenas: federal corporate income taxes and state excise taxes. What emerges most clearly from this analysis is an empirical confirmation of the popular hypothesis linking firm size to political influence with respect to both federal corporate tax policy and state excise tax policy. Beyond that, we find reasonably strong negative relationships between political influence and market concentration, profitability, and industry size – the latter lending interesting support to Mancur Olson's argument about the political disabilities of large groups. In the process, the article suggests a potentially fruitful new way to get beyond the case study approach in studying the impact of economic power on political influence, and thus a way to bring to bear more powerful methodological tools on this central issue of modern democracy.

Economic Power and Political Influence: The Impact of Industry Structure on Public Policy

Political scientists have devoted considerable attention to the ways in which economic power can be translated into political influence. Yet there has been little empirical research capable of confirming or denying general hypotheses about the political implications of various aspects of economic structure. This article seeks to begin filling this gap by first identifying five aspects of economic structure likely to affect an industry's political influence (firm size, industry size, market concentration, profitability, arid geographic dispersion) and then testing these aspects by analyzing how well they account for variations among industries in their success at securing public policies of benefit to them, especially in two policy arenas: federal corporate income taxes and state excise taxes. What emerges most clearly from this analysis is an empirical confirmation of the popular hypothesis linking firm size to political influence with respect to both federal corporate tax policy and state excise tax policy. Beyond that, we find reasonably strong negative relationships between political influence and market concentration, profitability, and industry size – the latter lending interesting support to Mancur Olson's argument about the political disabilities of large groups. In the process, the article suggests a potentially fruitful new way to get beyond the case study approach in studying the impact of economic power on political influence, and thus a way to bring to bear more powerful methodological tools on this central issue of modern democracy.

Dynamic Coupling, Optimizing and Regional Interdependence

R EGIONAL interdependence studies focus on geographical structure of economic variables. It seems evident that significant breakthroughs have been made in the past two decades towards improving theoretical understanding in this area. Progress in the application of interregional models to policy analysis has also been made. In agricultural economics, one must cite among other pioneers the works of Mighell and Black, Fox, Heady and Egbert, and Judge. I think it can be fairly said that no work in this field will be done that does not in some way benefit by their influence.' On the other hand, I do not think that any future work will extend these basic studies much beyond their current contributions without attention to two major aspects of economic structure. The first of these is intertemporal structure or, in short, dynamics. The second is the interconnectedness of production (or more generally, supply), transportation, and demand. It is now time to launch a major attack on these twin citadels. Without it we shall have neither an adequate understanding of interregional competition nor an adequate foundation for policy analysis and appraisal. This paper is devoted to an elaboration of the need for these two focal points and to a sketch of an appropriate research strategy.