Countries pass through different stages of structural transformation. In the early stage of development, economic activity is dominated by agriculture and mining. As a country develops, firms adopt new technology and move toward industrialization and faster economic growth. Eventually, the society matures when political and economic institutions are well established, and the society moves towards mass consumption. In a matured economy, generally government interventions are replaced by privatizations in production and trade. Accordingly, international trade barriers are reduced as a country moves towards later stages of development. Recently the US government has moved against the trend by imposing tariffs on China’s imports. There is a literature on positive effects of trade liberalization and economic growth. Not unsurprisingly, the Chinese government retaliated by introducing tariffs on US produced goods. For the time being, the result of this trade war on US and China’s trade...
Category - Mehdi Siamak MONADJEMI
University of New South Wales, Australia
The Australian dollar is known as a commodity currency because it is sensitive to fluctuations of commodity prices. Although the structure of Australian production has historically moved from the primary commodities to manufacturing and services, market expectations of the currency are still strongly influenced by the variation of the commodities’ prices. Recent evidence show that the Australian dollar has fluctuated in response to the growth of the Chinese economy. The empirical results from this study show that commodity prices as represented by oil price changes and the growth of China’s economy are the most important variable influencing the Australian currency.
The financial crises of 2007-2008, caused wide-spread falling output and unemployment, in the affected countries and also globally. The severity of the recession was such that it was called the “Great Recession”. As a result of an increase in demand from China and India, at the same time, oil prices rose significantly. The empirical results from this study show that oil price changes negatively affected global growth rate in the 1970s but not in the 1990s and 2000s. These results suggest that the Great Recession in 2008 that initiated by the financial crises, was independent of a significant rise in oil prices.
There is now considerable disquiet about the appropriate monetary strategy that central banks should follow in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Several influential commentators have called for the abandonment of inflation targeting. Empirical research examining three major economies demonstrates that inflation targeting was effective prior to the crisis and a more flexible form of targeting may still be appropriate after the crisis.
